Scummies Ideas, Suggestions and Comments Thread

[Faraday]

I would prefer if hydras were ineligible for Paragon/Don and a "Best Hydra" award was created. Judge it on whatever subjective criteria you want, like Rising Star. Hydras would be eligible for things like Best Third Party/Most Memorable Moment still, but the 2 "main" awards should be based on single player skill, in all likelyhood. (I mean, I don't think I'd ever see myself wanting a hydra to win one of those "Big two",

anyway

.

[Faraday]

then there wouldn't nearly be enough nominations to justify the award

Also really don't think

this

would be a problem. There are a lot of hydra, I could see a similar amount or more of noms than say, Rising Star.

[Oversoul]

We should really not be giving awards to hydras. First off, it's not necessarily a practice that we want to indulge since there's already enough controversy about hydras in general. Second off, a hydra can already be nominated for any of the main awards, why create an award just for hydras? Third off, I think it would create an environment for people to try and hydra in games more just because there's an award for it -- and if it didn't do that, then there wouldn't nearly be enough nominations to justify the award. And finally, hydra play is a very subjective thing -- some hydras sign their posts, some don't, some have multiple people in them, some have split personalities, some speak with one voice, and I don't think trying to quantify those values as better or worse than the others is a good idea.

I agree with pretty much everything in this post. My earlier post was mainly an attempt to limit the introduction of too many hydra awards IF we are going to implement one.

[quadz08]

I think a "best hydra" award is silly; there's no reason to separate hydras in any regard

[Mr. Flay]

I agree with overquadz.

[xRECKONERx]

NEED WRITERS PLS

[Oversoul]

Suggestion:

force

bribe

require

ask Best Flavor winners?

[Mr. Flay]

No applicants yet? Boo.

[mastin2]

I just realized a potential flaw in the Rising Star award.

In theory? The award is for this:

This award is given to the player that is a rising star in the game of mafia, showing great promise to join the elite echelon of mafia players. This award replaces both the Best Newbie award and Most Improved Player awards, and judges may consider elements of both those previous awards in deciding this award.

For newbies that are on their ways to becoming stars, and vets who are rising up in the ranks. (Effectively.) In theory.

But in practice? The award is simply a combo-award between Don Corelone and Paragon of Mafia Hunters. By which, I mean, the player being nominated often is nominated more just because they're a good mafia player and a good town player, rather than because they're a true rising star. Granted, most of the nominations in 2013 were for players having joined the site in the last two years. But with only a couple of exceptions, nearly every player nominated was--by the time of their nomination--either already established among the elite (not rising to their ranks), or had enough games under their belt to have already become recognized (not becoming a star).

If by the time the ceremony rolled around, the players being nominated for the award having done so would be okay. But I mean it. Basically every nomination for rising star is of a player who has already become integrated thoroughly into the elite. Basically, I feel like the award is not being used for the purpose it was intended. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But it's something I thought I'd bring up.

[xRECKONERx]

"In practice" meaning from one year of the award being given out, right?

You're saying that every nomination is for someone who is already integrated, but I just don't see it.

Last year, the three "finalists" for the award were Tierce/Tammy/MattP. All of them were very new:

MattP joined at the end of Aug 2011, which would've given him about four months to be considered for the 2012 Scummies. His rise to being prolific happened in 2012, which is why he was considered for 2013. He was less than a year into his stay on the site at the time of his nomination.

Tierce joined even later than MattP (Nov 2011).

Tammy joined even later than Tierce (Jan 2012).

---

I guess I'm not seeing where the problem is, exactly. It's not like DGB got nominated for Rising Star -- last year, the finalists (and winner) were all among a pool of people who would've still been eligible for Best Newbie if it was still an award. As for this year's nominees... as I look through the list of nominees, everyone seems to be from late 2012 or 2013. And even then, I don't think join date is super relevant to this award. It is not just a "Best Newbie" replacement, it can also go to someone who hasn't had great play then suddenly has a breakout year.

If you could be more specific I feel as though I could address your concerns a bit better, but "Basically every nomination for rising star is of a player who has already become integrated thoroughly into the elite" just appears to be flat-out

objectively false

upon my inspection of the nominees list for this year + finalists list for last year.

[Oversoul]

Do you guys ever try to set precedents like other award things (oscars, Emmy's, etc) do?

[xRECKONERx]

elaborate?

[Oversoul]

Like giving the award to a women because she would be the first women. obviously not in the case on ms for the most part. Just things like that. I am curious although I think I know the answer.

[Faraday]

Like giving the award to a women because she would be the first women. obviously not in the case on ms for the most part. Just things like that. I am curious although I think I know the answer.

Nah, it's enough work trying to work out who deserves it.

[Scummies]

Bump, since this years are over.

Any feedback on awards that work/don't work - a gap you feel is missing and could do with being deserving of an award?

[Mr. Flay]

I still feel like Smooth Operator needs a tweak. It definitely ought to favor nominees who 'do more', whether that's more games, more complexity, etc.

Best Flavor is a coveted award, but it's just brutal on the judges.

Best Role goes in cycles...we're not done with it yet IMO.

Overall judging seemed to stall this year more than previously. Maybe judges should start doing rankings earlier, rather than voting and then trying to tiebreak.

:edit: As much as I dislike Hydras, I think a special award for them might work. It is a unique playstyle/mechanic, and takes a particular skill. Whether that skill is actually judgable is an exercise for the reader, of course.

[xRECKONERx]

I'd much rather see Best Role merge in with Best Mechanic/Mutation for real competition. This year, we even considered putting Mind Reader Mafia into Best Role because sometimes the line is very blurred. As zor pointed out, sometimes roles only work when you take into account the mechanic as well. Case in point--last year, with BBmolla's "Vengecop" thing, the cool part about it was the dead having a vote after the cop had a venge-investigate... but it wasn't "technically" part of the role, so it wasn't considered. Best New Role/Mechanic seems a little better just because there would be more competition. But I'm willing to shelf that idea if there's no support for it.

Re: Most Enjoyable Game... the issue is that having judges determine "Hey, how much did these players enjoy this game?" is always a shitty thing to ask them to do and it usually just ends up being a crapshoot. I feel as though some kind of system to determine finalists, such as the types of surveys that zoraster does after his games, then submitting a "top ten" to the community at large for voting, is the way to go. Sure, the 13-20 players in that game could vote for it so they would "win" (although we wouldn't actually give the award out to the players or anything, it'd just be for the game) but right now if a judge is in one of the games then we don't really have any difference in bias (it's just that we're more selective with who can have the bias). And instead of winning "Favorite Game", or any kind of actual Scummie being given out, that game would just be dubbed "Game of the Year 2014" or whatever and put into the history books. Buttons already hates having to give out the favorite game scummie anyway because it's a pain in the ass.

[Untrod Tripod]

Maybe this is just me, but imo the Role/Mechanic decision should be on a year-by-year basis

you don't HAVE to give out every role every year

[Faraday]

Er, that's already a thing. Nothing *has* to be given out. Although I think it does rarely happen that something isn't given out.

[quadz08]

I like Reck's Most Enjoyable idea.

Re: mechanic/role scummy- you could take nominations for both and then if the lines blur / there aren't many applications, you can merge them during judging. Just put that in those award descriptions from the beginning and you're good.

[Oversoul]

I like the Game of the Year suggestion.

Agree with Quadz. Best Role/Best Mechanic, have people suggest winners under the same award and then if the judges determine that a role and a mechanic separately deserve recognition they can give two separate awards.

[xRECKONERx]

Faraday is very against the GOTY idea... we'll have to deliberate further after we get new SSC members, but my compromise was that we change "Most Enjoyable Game" to a more "Best All Around Game" and still have it judged. The popularity contest nature of making it a public vote (and making it susceptible to trolls) is a little hard to get around.

I think quadz was suggesting taking nominations for both then merging them during judging; OS was suggesting taking nominations for one category then splitting them out. To be completely honest, if we're merging a category, I'd rather come up with a new catchall and be done with it (similar to what we did with Best Newbie & Most Improved => Rising Star). My main drive in changes this year is to streamline the process so that we don't have any redundant categories and can have stronger, healthier competition. I'm very pleased with how Rising Star & Kodak Moment have played out... less thrilled about Community Contributor. You'll notice we didn't award it this year because there just wasn't enough need for it.

I think I have a suggestion, though... "Community Contributor" being only social related things might be too narrow. I would say that things like community threads (i.e., PARTY HATS! etc) should be considered for Community Contributor... but also, what if we took some of what Professor Mafia currently does and stuck it there, too? Specifically, the work on the wiki aspect of it. This would allow us to push Professor Mafia into what I actually think it should be... an award for the person who did the best job at

teaching

the game of mafia or imparting knowledge to others. This would allow us to roll the boring and stale (seriously same 2-3 nominees for the past 3+ years) Best IC category into Professor Mafia and have Professor Mafia focus more on teaching, with Community Contributor being more on the grunt work/organizational stuff (I would imagine some stuff like data collection on games would fall into Contributor instead of Prof Mafia).

[zoraster]

first, sorry i wasn't more help with organizing things this year. Things have been kind of hectic and I've had a few other things on my plate MS side.

yeah. Bork should have won the Smooth Operator award. That he didn't was a failing of something. Equinox was an okay substitute for him, but the fact that there were arguments for Magua, who only moderated two games the entire year, only one of which was particularly notable (and the third in a series using similar mechanics even), was being seriously considered was not great. Not because I don't love Magua's mod style -- I certainly do. But because a body of work award where two of the selections have moderated 8 or so successful games and another who did 2 shouldn't really be in question.

I think maybe we should step back and rethink what are the things we want to recognize and what are the things that we can actually differentiate? In other words, clearing our minds about award categories, what are realistic things we can target that make our site better or show off a player's ability, etc.

For example here are some things that may be worthy of recognition without regard to differentiating them:

Player Side

The person who is toughest to catch as scum
The person who finds scum the best
The person who can control the town to get the lynches he wants to best (probably in some combination of either of the two above)
The person who makes games more fun to play in, not just funny or nice or whatever but people that make the game better by their presence.
The person who pulled victory from the mouth of defeat
The person who helped new players get better (IC or otherwise)
The person who players think of as the best overall player, regardless of their side.
The person who has shown the most improvement over the past year and is now one of the best players on the site

Moderator Side

The moderator who comes up with the most original ideas
The moderator who executes and refines an idea the best
The moderator who creates the most fun environment
The moderator who provided the best games over the past year
The moderator who did the nitty-gritty of moderating the best

Games

The game that's the most entertaining to read for an outsider
The game that shows off a town's teamwork best
The game that shows off a scum's teamwork best
The game that was most closely fought
The game that had the most original idea behind it
The game that used power roles the most effectively

Community Side

The poster who was the most thoughtful about mafia
The reviewer who helped games the most

The listmod who surveyed the most people in Large Theme Games

The person who makes the site a better place just by posting
The funniest poster
The most intelligent poster


Anyway that's a start. Feel free to add more things to that list. Of course not all of these can be made into an award. Some things are just too vague to really determine. Other things just don't provide enough of a handhold to differentiate between nominated categories. Others can and should be combined.

[mastin2]

I think maybe we should step back and rethink what are the things we want to recognize and what are the things that we can actually differentiate? In other words, clearing our minds about award categories, what are realistic things we can target that make our site better or show off a player's ability, etc.
For example here are some things that may be worthy of recognition without regard to differentiating them:

Player Side

The person who is toughest to catch as scum
The person who finds scum the best
The person who can control the town to get the lynches he wants to best (probably in some combination of either of the two above)
The person who makes games more fun to play in, not just funny or nice or whatever but people that make the game better by their presence.
The person who pulled victory from the mouth of defeat
The person who helped new players get better (IC or otherwise)
The person who players think of as the best overall player, regardless of their side.
The person who has shown the most improvement over the past year and is now one of the best players on the site

Moderator Side

The moderator who comes up with the most original ideas
The moderator who executes and refines an idea the best
The moderator who creates the most fun environment
The moderator who provided the best games over the past year
The moderator who did the nitty-gritty of moderating the best

Games

The game that's the most entertaining to read for an outsider
The game that shows off a town's teamwork best
The game that shows off a scum's teamwork best
The game that was most closely fought
The game that had the most original idea behind it
The game that used power roles the most effectively

Community Side

The poster who was the most thoughtful about mafia
The reviewer who helped games the most
The person who makes the site a better place just by posting
The funniest poster
The most intelligent poster


Anyway that's a start. Feel free to add more things to that list. Of course not all of these can be made into an award. Some things are just too vague to really determine. Other things just don't provide enough of a handhold to differentiate between nominated categories. Others can and should be combined.

I really, REALLY like this as a start. There's basically none in the list that I think aren't scummy-worthy, even though you're quite correct in that they shouldn't all be scummies and that some would be combined. I really can't think of anything to add to the list. It's just a matter of that division.

[TheButtonmen]

The person who makes the site a better place just by posting
The funniest poster
The most intelligent poster

Those are some pretty lackluster / difficult to judge / controversial categories right there.