Geriatric Ruleset Discussion Thread

[mastina]

Most MD posts are about townplay and not wolfplay
There should be more about wolfplay

The thing about good scumplay is we don't really need any help with it since we seem to have a good idea of what it is given how many games are just disproportionately scum wins when by all rights they shouldn't be. You can say that's town incompetence to a large degree because yes it is in fact town incompetency, but to some extent it is also undeniable that there

is

some scum skill involved in those large number of scum wins.

The other thing about good scumplay is that good scumplay hasn't really evolved much. The same tips to being a good scum player written back in, say, 2011, still work when used today.

The same cannot be said for tips for town.

In other words--we generate the content we know we need. And we undeniably need more townplay advice since our townplay, by and large, is lacking. Especially since tips for town are inherently influenced by site meta. Yes, SOME advice for towns are timeless. But most of it is notably dated, products of their time. As the game evolves, so too does townplay. Thus new articles on it.

[mhsmith0]

I would say that it's far more an issue with crap town play than especially good wolf play.

I see often enough wolves getting away with things like:
1) Making blatantly opportunistic cases on townies who screwed up
2) Active lurking
3) Dry, bland, boring posting that never goes anywhere and is never intended to really go anywhere (somewhat different from #2 though they're often related)
4) Shooting people where NKA points substantially to them
5) Being flagrantly different from their town meta in really really obvious ways
etc

I'm trying to think of the town losses where I'd say that the wolves did particularly well, as opposed to town just flagrantly imploding (or just a major setup fuckup / lolmodkills / similarly dumb stuff)...
Open 635 (and even there the town play in MYLO was painful... but at least there you can say RC did a good job pocketing people and ranger/fa played solid wolf games too)
Lambert Simnel (on playdip)
debatably the 2016 hydra game I was in on MU

That's basically it. Basically every town loss I've been a part of, wolves didn't actually have to *DO* much of anything to win, and for the most part they didn't bother doing much of anything to win, since town was happy enough to hand them the win more or less for free.

[mhsmith0]

Like, I'd tend to agree with RC that the #1 key to quality wolfplay is the ability to manufacture a convincing-looking case on a townie (i.e. a case that 1) convinces townies your scumspect is a wolf; and 2) doesn't blatantly out you on the townflip of your target). How many wolves, even decently successful wolves by W/L record, have that basic skill? I'd guess it's not a particularly high # tbh... whcih is one of those reasons why I say it's just shitty town play rather than good wolfplay.

[RadiantCowbells]

It's extremely easy to be towny in a game where you don't really have to push mislynches to win as scum and just get to endgame and win.
The hard games are the ones where you have to push mislynches on objectively towny people and then survive their townflips and continue to push mislynches on more objectively towny people.

There's limited people who can swing that. There's a lot of people who can be generally towny as scum. If you can't push scum wincon then you will only win games where town lost it for themselves.

[TheButtonmen]

whats all this have to do with the geriatrics ruleset

yall need to go make your own threads to argue about the grand theory of mafia

[TheButtonmen]

not that the last three pages havent been a thrillin discourse to read

[StefanB]

I think even if Mathdinos (and other) posts are fascinating to read, I think they are asking the wrong question.
They big question is not if Geriatric is scumsided or not.
It is a vehicle for players who want to play but are not really comfortable to play in other games.
So it is good to have it, because it let players play who wouldn't play otherwise.
At the moment we are at the establishing phase for the generatic ruleset.

[xRECKONERx]

can we please not have 4 pages of completely unrelated discussion in here? what on earth.

demotivated town players is a factor of bad modding practices and/or player irresponsibility

[xRECKONERx]

like, need shorter prod timers. if you lurk out of a game for 72 hours catching up is gonna be a chore and then you're just /out

[AnonymousGhost]

I don't think Geriatric is scum sided by itself.

When you factor in who's more active - town, scum, or both - it certainly has the potential to be scum sided but only if the majority of town lurks. Chill Mafia was a geriatric win for a town who were all very involved in the game, for instance.

I do think that Geriatric should have a 36 hour prod timer, however.

Unless you're schedule isn't suited for being heavily involved in a game - this begs the question of what are you doing here in the first place if you can't commit -, then there really shouldn't be an excuse for going 72+ hours without posting. The game's not going to suddenly gain 15+ pages in the time that you start your catch up and the time that you post.

[xRECKONERx]

the 72 hour prod timer is a relic of the old days of MS when day deadlines were 1 month and prod timers were 72 hours and entire games were played in 20 pages

[xRECKONERx]

this is a 7 player newbie game that lasted nearly 7 months

chess mafia infamously lasted 2 years

[AnonymousGhost]

I guess the next question would be... how long should a player be allowed to go without posting any game relevant content in a Geriatric game? And what about players who are on V/LA?

[xRECKONERx]

V/LA would be handled the same way it's handled in any other scenario

it's not up to the mods to judge a player's post to be game relevant or not, it's up to the players

[AnonymousGhost]

A naked "prod dodge" does not reset the prod timer. To avoid being prodded/replaced for inactivity, include some game advancing content in your prodges, such as "got prodded; xxxx is still scum."

[*]If you have not posted for 48 hours you will receive a prod. If you do not post within 24 hours of a prod you will be replaced. A naked "prod dodge" does not reset the prod timer. To avoid being prodded/replaced for inactivity, include some game advancing content in your prodges, such as "got prodded; xxxx is still scum."

[*]Please announce if you are going on V/LA. I prefer this announced in thread unless there is a specific reason not to. If you are on V/LA, you are still expected to post in thread at least every 96 hours. If this is an issue for you, please discuss it with me PRIVATELY via PM.

Sorry. I was thinking of prod dodging posts and whether or not those reset the prod timer based on game advancing content.

[Creature]

"X is still scum"

The newest and most efficient way to prod-dodge without actually putting new content.

[mastina]

And what about players who are on V/LA?

My ruling for players that're V/LA is to extend the prod timer by 24 hours--if the normal prod limit is 48 hours, give them 72.

And then, give them an extra 24 hours to respond--if the normal allotted response time to respond is 24 hours, give them 48.

This gives them a grand total of two extra days, no more. This gives them some increased flexibility, but still holds them to a level of accountability. By a 48/24 system, this would mean a V/LA player has five days rather than three days to provide content, which seems to be about the right zone.

[mhsmith0]

"X is still scum"

The newest and most efficient way to prod-dodge without actually putting new content.

FWIW, the easiness of such an option is a decent % of why I show so little tolerance for posts that are completely nothing but prodges.

[GreyICE]

Having played in one I'll now weigh in. Geriatric rules are scumsided because HOLY SHIT THE PLAYERS.

Have you ever seen a town composed entirely of lurkers? Like I have a thought experiment that I pose: what if everyone played like that? Now I know. Now I know.

[AnonymousGhost]

Is it easy to get disengaged in a geriatric mafia game?

Don't think this was ever answered.

@Ranmaru - My opinion's slightly biased because I was two things:

a.) scum
&
b.) highly engaged in Open 715

For the sake of promoting discussion - and I think it'd be interesting to hear other people's opinions on this -, I'd say it's not easy to get disengaged with a geriatric game.

Ironically, it's easier for me - and this is just my opinion - to disengage from a non-geriatric game at this point. Non-Geriatric games are reaches an average D1 length of 50+ pages due to the lack of a posting restriction and faster pace. Since I don't have the time to dedicate to keeping up with those games, I have no current interest to /in for those types of games because it's very likely that I'd get behind which I would feel very bad about.

But because Geriatrics are at a slower pace, I can keep up and won't immediately think with dread, "How many pages will I have to read this time?"

Which I don't think is a good mindset for me to bring to a game since I'm turned off from engaging before I even begin and, obviously, isn't fair to everyone else involved.

[Creature]

Having played in one I'll now weigh in. Geriatric rules are scumsided because HOLY SHIT THE PLAYERS.

Have you ever seen a town composed entirely of lurkers? Like I have a thought experiment that I pose: what if everyone played like that? Now I know. Now I know.

Yeah, I feel like I'm gonna lurk myself as town in these games.

[MagnaofIllusion]

I echo Anon's posts - the mindset of the players playing a Geriatric game should not be "Its slow so I don't have to post" but "It's not spam central so if I make at the minimum a solid post each day I will not get drowned out". No excuse to get prodded in a Geriatric game IMO.

[Ranmaru]

Thank you ghost and Magna. I think if I do join a geriatric, I would try the 1 post a day thing. My problem is that I would be super engaged. I would most likely wall and interact with a few people like MOI. Then I would get impatient, have more thoughts, etc. How do I post less and cope with that?

[Korts]

I think you need to set posting guidelines for yourself, and try to stick to them.

Like, you can engage and respond to immediate issues, but no more than 5 posts back and forth. That way you'll still have half your daily allowance left.

Limit quotes to 2 or 3 max per post. If you need to refer to more, use links instead.

Limit the number of paragraphs per post to 5-6. Limit the number of lines per paragraph to 5-6. Use section headers do delineate different kinds of content.

Assuming you don't mind typing out BBCode all the time, you can also use breaks, horizonal lines, expandable spoilers, ordered and unordered lists, and anything else that can visually organize your thoughts.

Those are my general guidelines for myself, at least.

[Ranmaru]

Thank you, I will try that.