What games/setups are good for new players?

[Psyche]

Still think it's possible to have the best of both worlds by having a newbie queue that works (at least in part) as a funnel to games initiated in other queues.

IMO priority should certainly not be to make newbie games reflective of site meta.
I'm not even sure if it should even be a minor priority beyond making sure the games are actual forum-based.
I struggle to think of any scenario where that interest should get in the way of pursuing the most newbie-friendly experience possible.

More broadly think site meta should prefer to shift to suit prospective newbies over than the converse where we try to "prepare" newbies for site meta.
Feel like discourse emphasizing otherwise doesn't sufficiently appreciate the hole that the site is gradually digger deeper into at the moment.

[Psyche]

iirc my idea in the other thread was to

1) identify what we like about the original newbie experience
2) devise how to make these things portable such that they could be readily included in games already typically run on the site by adding these things
3) include newbie-friendliness as a setup review factor; people interested in making their games newbie friendly would have their setups and key moderator posts reviewed for this and guided to meet holistic or concrete criteria
4) enforce a certain ratio of games across the site to be newbie friendly
5) use a revived newbie queue as a funnel of new players and quasi-ICs into newbie-friendly games (and into games in general when fast sign-up is the player's priority)

i think we already do something similar with the simple/complex normal distinction, provision of pre-made setups to people who just want to fire games, etc

i don't think this idea calls for some sort of radical reorganization of the site or a new attitude about competition, and they also seem implementable incrementally/modularly. For example, review for "Newbie-Friendly" badges can happen without a newbie-queue or explicit policies about what newbie-friendliness consists of or an enforced ratio of newbie-friendly games fired. But I do think the process of making something like this work would gradually make games across the site more newbie-friendly overall even if all the kinks aren't worked out from the getgo.

Examples...
- Supposing newbie-friendly criteria aren't too stringent, moderators looking to get a game running quickly will be incentivized to make their setups newbie friendly even if running newbie-friendly games aren't their priority.
- The frequency of newbie-friendly setups outside a pre-defined silo will influence people's basic expectations about how to run and play games even outside these contexts. Even stuff like the practice of reusing other mods' rulesets will help enforce a culture shift.
- A feedback process as games are fired will help identify areas for improvement at all levels (policy-makers, administrators, moderators, players) that can be acted on with relative frequency and flexibility as a natural byproduct of firing and running and playing games.

[Psyche]

The approach that seems to seek out a specific or small pool of newbie-friendly setups to have always firing IMO has the flaw that it narrows decision-making about the kinds of games to run to a single top-level policy commitment that down the line would require top-level decision-making to refine. There's one (or a few) official newbie-friendly setups and place to run them, and what everyone else is doing is secondary and might take more searching for a newbie to look for.

I'd rather "What games/setups are good for new players?" be a question that is continually posed as part of the setup review/firing process and involves anyone interested in running games rather than ahead of comparatively infrequent policy shifts involving only a smaller pool of highly-engaged stakeholders (site mods and -- more peripherally -- MD/site-ideas frequenters).

[Psyche]

Potentially portable features of Newbie Games:

- Small playerlists
- Simple, transparent setups (e.g., NewD3) that are easy to reason about without knowing site meta
- An "introduction and tips" post containing helpful links, key concepts and tips
- Readable rule lists that emphasize avoiding toxicity and are clear about what that means
- Volunteer ICs. We have a guide for those: https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?ti ... _a_good_SE And prior standards for being one: https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?ti ... Challenged https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?ti ... xperienced
- An enforced balance between Newbie, IC, and SE player sign-ups

[Psyche]

that was my idea too!
i think this can be easily combined with an effort to consistently fire games with a specific newbie-friendly format though
and in fact i think the policies would better together than apart

[Psyche]

suppose is hard to tell if mentorship or quickly firing games is more important for converting new users into regular players. but my intuition is honestly that the latter is more fundamental.

[Psyche]

well i kind of expect these games to be reasonably popular so maybe it won't matter. wish you best of luck.

EDIT: at least hope you'll keep the funnel option in mind if the queue starts to flag.