Kouncil Announcements
M1025 has concluded, and several events transpired which warrant Kouncil attention. I've done my best to summarize in the
bolded underlined text below.
I.
During the game, an incredibly charming, handsome, and at times downright moronic dead player participating in spectator chat elected to edit his Discord nickname to “number 1 jamiet enjoyer” shortly after Jamiet99uk executed a successful fakeclaim. This change was noticed by a still living mafia player, who changed his nickname to riff off the first nickname change.
This is a friendly reminder that still living mafia players can see your nicknames when you are in spectator chat, so please do not edit your nickname to convey game-relevant information, even if unintentional.
Going forward, editing Discord nicknames in a way which conveys game-relevant information viewable by living players will be considered “unsanctioned communication” as contemplated by Rule 5.
II.
Also during the game, another player cast an end vote in size 2 font, which looks like this:
##end
While this vote was detected by the bot, and could be seen by quoting the post, this text is illegible just by plain reading of the post, and we do not believe players and GMs should have to take extra steps like zooming in the web page, quoting the post, etc. to detect such votes.
We announce a new rule which requires all votes, including end votes, to be cast in a legible font, which includes a font size sufficient for a normal viewer to read unaided.
III.
Also during the game, another player edited his post to correct a typo.
We previously needed no rule banning this behavior, as until very recently, editing functionality did not exist in the Forum Games section of webDiplomacy’s forum. Now that this functionality does exist,
we announce a new rule which bans editing and deleting of posts.
IV.
Also during the game, multiple players changed their avatars and signatures. Some of these changes involved game-relevant (though unimportant) information.
Signatures and avatars are also new additions to webDiplomacy’s forum, and pose a challenge for us because, much like the +1 system on the old forum, there is no log of who used the function, when, and how. Changes to signatures and avatars cannot be tracked unless someone actively sets out to log a user’s signature and avatar over time, which we consider an unreasonable overhead for GMs. We have discussed several solutions, including the following:
• Players may have signatures and avatars but may not convey game-relevant information in them at any time.
• Players may have signatures and avatars but may not change them after their in-game death until the conclusion of the game.
• Players may not have signatures or avatars while playing.
The last solution—an outright ban—is the most sensible from an overhead perspective, but we don’t wish to be fun police, as we know you enjoy these functions. For now,
we announce a new rule which bans the conveying of game-relevant information via signatures and avatars, but we will continue monitoring the situation to determine if a better solution exists. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions.
V.
Speaking of feedback and suggestions…
In the previous two games, GMs employed conventional roles with slight modifications on what was perceived as their “conventional” use. For instance, the Doctor in the previous game could self-save and could save the same target, including himself, on consecutive nights. These slight modifications, and the discussion that followed, renewed interest in a project to standardize webDiplomacy Mafia’s roles conventions and other similar mechanics.
We agree that this project is a worthy endeavor. We are working out exactly how to execute it—what form the project should take, where it should be hosted, how to best solicit your participation—
but we know that we are going to pursue this standardization project, so we wanted to let you know now and not leave it vaguely hanging.
We know that we want the involvement of the whole community, but we are not certain exactly what you would like to see in a standardization project like this. I have started a forum topic in the webDiplomacy Discord (invite link
HERE) to facilitate this conversation, but we also welcome discussion in this thread if you would prefer to use the forum to weigh in instead.
VI.
I am GMing the next Mafia game. Signups will be posted this evening.
VII.
As always, feel free to reach out to me or another Kouncil member with any concerns via webDip DM or Discord.
Thanks,
Eden
Mafia Kouncil