Verbose Group Proposal

[mith]

With MeMeMeet Mafia winding down, I've been fleshing out a couple of possible setups for my next game (the most recent "What game should I run next?" thread was lost in the crash; I'll probably start another one of those when I've got a better idea of what my schedule is going to be like the next few months).

I've mentioned previously the idea of having a group of players and moderators with standards of participation along the lines of (but less taxing than) Verbose Mafia 2, and my next game will probably be run under something similar, so perhaps it could be a first test of a new group. Whether this should be an official usergroup, or just a set of attitudes to be voluntarily followed, I'm not sure, but I thought it might be worth discussing such things here.

So, for now, a few questions:

1. Would you be interested in playing or moderating verbose-style games?
2. Do you think this should be an official usergroup, with membership requirements? If so, what do you think those requirements should be?
3. What participation (number of posts per game day or real-time day) standard should we have?
4. What verbosity (words or sentences per post) standard should we have?
5. Should there be any language (grammar and spelling) or formatting (use of tags and post layout) standards?
6. What game mechanics (for example, deadlines) should be standard?

[Fiasco]

1. very interested, if/when I get back into playing/modding at all
2. don't know; if I'm understanding this correctly, the verbose rules aren't meant to be followed outside of games specifically labeled "verbose", right?
3. maybe something like 7 posts a week, not counting posts within N hours of each other?
4. don't know, maybe like VM2 or more lenient, but I think extra one-liner posts should be OK if you're already meeting the verbosity standard
5. don't know, but I'm in favor of allowing quote tags (maybe with restrictions)
6. I like "day ends at deadline or lynch, whichever comes first"

[Zindaras]

1. Would you be interested in playing or moderating verbose-style games?
2. Do you think this should be an official usergroup, with membership requirements? If so, what do you think those requirements should be?
3. What participation (number of posts per game day or real-time day) standard should we have?
4. What verbosity (words or sentences per post) standard should we have?
5. Should there be any language (grammar and spelling) or formatting (use of tags and post layout) standards?
6. What game mechanics (for example, deadlines) should be standard?

1: Hells yeah! I'm the kind of guy who hates lurkers.

2: I don't think it's a bad idea. I think that many people know who the verbose people are.

3: One a real-time day?

4: Sentence or 10?

5: As long as the guy's posts are intelligible, I don't have a real problem with bad English.

6: I don't think you'll need to deadline Verbose games very often.

[petroleumjelly]

1. Would you be interested in playing or moderating verbose-style games?
2. Do you think this should be an official usergroup, with membership requirements? If so, what do you think those requirements should be?
3. What participation (number of posts per game day or real-time day) standard should we have?
4. What verbosity (words or sentences per post) standard should we have?
5. Should there be any language (grammar and spelling) or formatting (use of tags and post layout) standards?
6. What game mechanics (for example, deadlines) should be standard?

1.) I would be interested, yes (although probably not any time soon, as my hands are full)

2.) No, I do not think there should be a user group for Verbosity. As demonstrated in Verbose Mafia, even players who normally post one-liners (such as MBF, Fritz, CES, etc.) can have an incentive to

boost

their postingness if it is necessary for the game. In this sense, it is possible for "Non-Verbose" players to be Verbose if asked to.

3.) See above. I would expect that if a user-group was made at all, however, that they should be able to post at least 4 days a week.

4.) I think 50 words per post worked well in Verbose 2, although that can also deter posting if players really don't think they have

that

much to say.

5.) I think minimal use of quoting should be allowed (for example, I

hate

reading posts which simply quote other GIANT posts with a pithy comment underneath it:

links

should be used in lieu of such things). I really, really, really did not like the "no quote tags" and "no post referencing" rules in Verbose 2, since I could not easily attack people for things they had previously said. All it does is make the game more complex than it needs to be.

6.) When players are forced to be verbose, you should not also be forcing them to post quickly and under a deadline. However, I do think some sort of deadline would probably be necessary, or else the game will get

insanely

long. I suppose I can go both ways on this one.

[spectrumvoid]

1) Playing, yes. Too inexperienced to mod.
2) An official group. I do not want to risk it, hoping usual one-liners players will play correctly. Possible membership via voting?
3) Fine with anything. I prefer posts per real-time day, with consideration of time zones. I don't like per game day because it's hard to predict what will happen. Day 1 will obviously be long, but what about the subsequent days?
4) I don't know.
5) Standard grammar and spelling. Like PJ, I don't like the no quote rule. Maybe there should be a rule saying quotes should be edited for brevity? Maybe if the quoted part exceeds X number of lines, it has to be quoted 50% of its original length?
6) I think deadlines may be necessary, simply because players might end up going round and round.

[Yosarian2]

I'd be interested in playing verbose mafia games, sure. If you're talking about a general catagory of games I might consider lumping them together with speed mafia type games (games where the town has to lynch in very short periods of time, usually at least one lynch a week, and with other rules setups to encouge high participation and rapid posting, such as Lights Out Mafia and its sequal and the Speed Mafia mini game) as a catagory of games designed for people who intend to post quite frequently.

[Mr. Flay]

I think a mod should be able to set rules like posting limits/minimums for their games, either for specific roles or for the game as a whole (which should be announced ahead of time in the latter case). Specific limits/guidelines should be up to the mod, and extreme cases should be limited to Theme Park, and maybe Open Setups? I think the no [quote] rule was overkill. Quoted material being less than X% of the total post's length is fine, though.

I oppose a specific group of "Approved Verbosians" for reasons elaborated on in the Invitational Thread.

[Yosarian2]

The one thing I disliked about the Verbose mafia was the requirement that all posts be "a minimum of 5 sentences and a minimum of 30 words contained in those sentences." I'd have rather the requirement be that there be one post per real life day of that length, and allow other short posts during that day so long as you have that one long post.

[ShadowLurker]

1. Yes
2. Should be up to the mod
3/4. You must post one post with at least 250 words every two days and must make at least two other constructive posts every two days.
5. No.
6. Up to the mod, normal mafia game rules should all be in effect at minimum. An additional theme/game mechanic would probably be good as well.

[the silent speaker]

Meh, five and thirty isn't really all that onerous. Hell, this post has that. It comes to about two lines of text when you see it on the screen. I don't see it as a particularly big deal. (Of course, I was faking a restriction of every post containing every letter of the alphabet, so YMMV.)

[M4yhem]

1. Yes, very interested in playing. Modding- maybe in a few months.
2. Official usergroup, but make membership voluntary. I think most players here are mature/smart enough to know if they are verbose or not.
3. One post every two days, minimum.
4. Fifty words a day or a hundred words every second day.
5. Try to write in complete sentences and avoid deliberate misspellings. Write in english where possible, or provide a translator. I like the 'no more than 50% quotes' rule too. Be friendly.

6.

6. I like "day ends at deadline or lynch, whichever comes first"

I second this and suggest a deadline every fortnight.

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

1. I'd be up for both
2. Obviously I can't have another sleeping Doctor, us serial killas have it rough.
3. Number of posts per fixed period, I don't want to have to make 1 post every day but there should be at least 7 posts per week.
4. None, but have a separate checker for nonsense, like saying the same word over and what not
5. Yes, using tags is no fun, roleplaying is way more fun.
6. Longer deadlines would be nice.

[Mr. Flay]

3. Number of posts per fixed period, I don't want to have to make 1 post every day but there should be at least 7 posts per week.

This would make me much more likely to play a Verbose game. I'm sometimes out of town/away from the computer for days at a time, but would play harder when I'm back as a result if it was within the rules.

[Fiasco]

I think any deadlines should be player-number-dependent, like [2 + (number of living players) / 2] real days in each game day.

[Skruffs]

To be honest, if you don't have a time limit, 300 words is not really a lot. In fact, 'having' to post that much encourages players to dig into the meat of hte game. Instead of just skimming through for bolded words, you examine various posts for different sentence structures and such. It's really , I dunno, cool. And once you get started typing, it's not that hard to keep going. I guess I am saying, drop the number of posts per week requirement and increase the post count.
I guess it depends on your definition of verbose.

[Adele]

3. Number of posts per fixed period, I don't want to have to make 1 post every day but there should be at least 7 posts per week.

This would make me much more likely to play a Verbose game. I'm sometimes out of town/away from the computer for days at a time, but would play harder when I'm back as a result if it was within the rules.

yes

. I found verbose 2 way hard for that reason. More loosey-goosey make me happy.

[Fiasco]

You can't have a minimum number of posts per week as the

only

requirement; 48+ hour periods of silence can really bog a game down. They shouldn't be disallowed completely, but they shouldn't be common.

[Fiasco]

I've been thinking about this, and I've decided that I don't care whether or not people write long posts. What I would like to see is games including people who 1) can commit to posting at a reasonable rate during the (not too long) period the game will run, and 2) agree to an ethic of

not wasting people's time

. That means things like answering questions people ask you, anticipating obvious questions and answering them in advance, using comprehensible (not necessarily perfect) grammar, not being too lazy to make on-topic conversation whenever possible, giving people enough to work with (which probably means posts shouldn't always be short), not messing up the game for the heck of it, not delaying decisions unnecessarily, and lots more. I don't know how to turn this into some objective criterion, but it's what I think a verbose group should mean.

[mith]

I can agree with that. However, what I suspect VM2-style rules (even if more lax) would do is discourage almost all of the people that wouldn't follow the (subjective) criteria you listed. (And I think if everyone in the game were following those criteria, no one would have any trouble following a words-per-post or words-per-time-span requirement anyway.

(Will get back to thinking about this at some point. I'm probably going to be starting a new game in the next month or so, and want to have something to go on before then.)