In post 52, chamber wrote:Talking about the queues for a moment, I've had a thought recently that we might have fucked up when we introduced the normal guidelines. Before that point, there was this notion that normals were easier to run than themes because its one less thing to think about. So we funneled the newbie mods into the mini normals first. Then we got a bunch of shitty mini normals cause it's where all the first time mods were, so we introduced a bunch of strict rules about what it means to be normal, put together review groups etc. Does it really still make sense to channel the first time mods into them if we are setting that higher standard for them? It might actually make sense to just open up mini themes to first time mods. This would also explicitly let them run blitz speed games.
This is an interesting point. I wonder if a better plan for first-time mods would be to either require or Strongly Recommend that they use a pre-approved setup
a la
the Open Queue, which is where I ran my first game. For my own first game I chose to run an open mostly because I had zero confidence in my ability to design anything close to a good and balanced setup, and there's a good chance I would have run a mini normal instead if I'd had that option.
chamber wrote:I think the intention of normals as they exist is to offer an extremely uniform experience, and those deadlines definitely change the experience. I don't think that's the goal of the open queue as it exists so personally see no issue with shorter deadlines there. I also think we can question whether that's what the normal queue should be.
I think I have a different perspective on what Normals are for, though I'm just some guy so my understanding isn't necessarily any better than anyone else's. When I sign up for a normal game it's because I want a closed setup but also want some assurance that I'm not going to be blindsided by some weird game-altering novelty that I couldn't have possibly anticipated when I signed up. As far as I'm concerned, short deadlines are not a weird novelty as long as they're advertised in advance.
(For that matter I'm less concerned than some about
which
roles and mechanics are allowed, so long as the list of possibilities is enumerable in principle; I'm totally fine with like Godfathers and Janitors and the like as long as everyone understands they're a possibility, though I do draw the line at lying in role PMs unless this is advertised as a possible part of the game. Which I guess proves that my idea of "what Normal is for" differs from the conventional one.)
“There are two kinds of people in this world: those who say, ‘There are two kinds of people in this world: those who say there are two kinds of people in this world,
and the other kind,
’ and those who
don’t
say. Well, then there’s me.” — J.R. “Bob” Dobbs
