Tips on being good mod?

[mastin2]

read your game.
there is nothing more frustrating as a player than a mod who doesn't really give a shit and is just going through the motions

Adding to this: mafiascum moves fast with its games.

Insanely

fast.

If you're modding a game, it is pretty much your #1 priority. I'd say that modding is worth at least three simultaneous games' worth of effort, at absolute minimum. You're responsible for not missing anything, you're responsible for keeping up to date, and this is in an environment where you can potentially see 20 pages in a real life day. (Generally only in Larges, but it's possible in Minis and Opens, too.) So you need to make sure that you can handle it, or if you can't handle it alone, that you've at least got a co/backup-mod. (After all, you can't be on 24/7, so if players want a VC every page, it can help to have a co/backup mod able to plop one down for you.)

Comprehensive Modding Guide for 2010

Vi is also the author of a follow-through article to the above, called how to mod enjoyable games. Read it, too.

A tip of my own is for designing games: when looking at roles you are interested in using, do some MD research about them. You obviously can't start an MD thread about a role you want to use, but looking around, you can generally find mostly-up-to-date info on most of the roles commonly used and even info on lesser-used ones. As an example, browse the Open setup ideas and discussion thread to see how those setups work.

Also, I want to reemphasize this one:

Be clear

Organize your opening posts / VCs in a way that emphasizes conciseness over pretty much anything else. Communicate public information in a way that will ensure it gets seen and is interpreted correctly.

This is something which I cannot stress enough. Short, sweet, and simple. In all aspects of the game. VCs, roles, opening posts, everything. You'd be surprised how many mods have, for instance, a clunky ruleset which mentions things that are obsolete and/or already included in sitewide rules. (Yes, we have sitewide rules! People who include the stuff in the link are being redundant.)

Bit of shameless advertising, but this is the ruleset I use (modified as necessary), more or less--it's less than a screenwidth long, yet conveys every rule a player should need to know.

[mastin2]

I do a list containing all players, and then a separate list of dead players. It works.

Yeah, do this. Don't combine them. That just looks ugly.

And as SXTLHGaiden said, it can be helpful to have in the OP (or directly below the OP) a link to day/nightstarts, so that a player can quickly jump to D1/D2/D3/etc. (Isoing the mod is extra work, and can be a bother if you're logged in, and there's content new that you don't want to read yet, because then isoing the mod will mark ALL that content as read.)

Also courteous is to send out daystart PMs to all players to let them know the day has begun. (I also argue in favor of sending a PM to every player who can take a night action for similar reasoning, but that might just be me.)

[mastin2]

Also courteous is to send out daystart PMs to all players to let them know the day has begun. (I also argue in favor of sending a PM to every player who can take a night action for similar reasoning, but that might just be me.)

To be honest I find this a little annoying. I'll notice on my own, and if I'm online in the first place then I'll probably do it about five minutes after you'd have sent the PM. Don't worry, you can trust me.
(Generally I do send out PMs to anyone who still hasn't posted 24 hours after the day opened, but that doesn't tend to be a lot of people.)

YMMV I guess.

I

tend to notice when a game's changed phases because I typically only hang around in one subforum these days (Large Theme) meaning I'll be there, but there are plenty of people who legitimately don't realize--especially for the D1 beginning. You'd not believe the number of times players post, "sorry, didn't realize this had started". Every game where daystart PMs weren't sent, I see at least one slot if not multiple that will show this.

That being said

, sending a daystart PM is the last thing I do. I give the flip and unlock the thread, send results to roles, update the OP and whatnot first (note that these things aren't necessarily in order), and then only after all of that, I'll send out the daystart PM--and by that time, some players have usually posted. I exclude the ones who have posted already. (Because, duh, they posted; they already know.)