I accidentally opened bay12 forums from my browser bar, so I decided to hop in and read a bit.
Just random thoughts. I might join a game sometime after "the crazy period".
Mafia Marathon
Holy shit you guys played a game of mafia for a year? That's nuts.
Not the first time that's happened. Though, it was technically played for a few months...
Along those lines, it would be really good to be more thoughtful about how to maintain our player base and improve board culture. What do we need that we don't have? How do we take care of everyone?
I'm aware that some players are just here to play a game and aren't really concerned with the culture, but we are in a social situation, and as such a social contract exists. What is the nature of that contract?
We could definitely do something like run a game in 72 hours over a long weekend; like a BM style setup, where each Day is, well, one day. It'd take some mucking about to make it work with timezones, and we probably couldn't do much by way of flavor.
You are right. That's part of the reason I started working on Mamobo. It could let us add more people and run quicker games that didn't rely on advanced mechanics to run (though, it could actually be possible eventually, if I got really bored)! It would be pretty flavorless, but they would at least allow for faster paced games.
Heyyy I was working on a mafia bot. Except I wanted it to handle BYOR style stuff too. I made an "engine" already twice or thrice, but each time I returned I realized I had done it all wrong, and the code sucked.
A method to generate entirely random setups as well as modify the power levels accordingly would be a great way to introduce some newer players to the game, if they love the power-heavy shenanigans without having to totally ruin the Day game.
I had a concept for that. Except balancing would be a nightmare due to nonlinear interactions...
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I think that I have definitely had a bit of a negative impact on this culture before this, so I kinda want to fix that. Mamobo seems like a really fun and cool way to do this, and I hope I'm getting to be a cool player and fix those early mistakes I made around here. Like, early me is kind of a giant toxic cesspool. Actually, not kind of. I think I got a lot of free passes because I was good at the game.
I... don't believe that should be the case anymore.
I felt this in my bones. I think I started when you were already just the cool guy, but I was more or less a teenager and, thus, asshole, back then too.
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Regarding why people leave/go on breaks... for me, it's just been other things. I got a lot of work, university, marriage, moving... and lots of activities I want to do outside of work, too.