Preparing flavor: How far do you go?

[Iammars]

I always having EVERYTHING READY at least a week before my game is due to start. Opening Post, Role PMs, some ideas for Vote Counts if I'm going to put flavor in them, Lynch Scenes... Am I doing a lot, or does everyone do this?

[rajrhcpfreak]

i have all my roles planned out for about a month. and im still 3rd on the mini reg list.

i have how the night scenes in my head but not writen out.

i havnt thought about vote counts yet.. i better get on it.

[Iammars]

Now to find out who voted the BJ option...

[BabyJesus]

Now to find out who voted the BJ option...

[Dourgrim]

I prepare the roles and the role PM's well ahead of time, but I don't do too much in the way of flavor for vote counts (prepared or otherwise)... and I completely wing death scenes, based on what happened in the thread during the last Day or so.

[Mr. Flay]

I'm with Dourgrim. I write out role PMs (and sometimes responses to role actions) ahead of time, and usually have my first-post flavor and my rules in Notes, ready to be copied over. I usually just use the CC2K for vote counts, though I do change the header bar. Death scenes are made up on the fly, though... and I try to work in the thread of voting somehow too (see Newbie Game 155, or Dodecamafia for some examples).

[Coron]

In my two games I've not done the flavor before hand and in the first I botched the flavor in the role pms giving some people a lot more than others... oh well. I do my lynch and death scenes on the fly, it's the only way to do it.

(p.s. I always have the roles ready to flavor before I sign up in any queues though)

[Tamuz]

Can't say, my game is running

And Iammars... about your role PMS...

[Aelyn]

When I modded Roleswap, I had the first few scenes planned out ahead of time, but tired quickly of using them and ended up with almost no flavor. I think I used too little in the game; it would certainly have been more fun with more.

However, in Les Miserables Mafia (which was insanely flavour driven), I couldn't plan any scene ahead of time, since i wanted every single night scene to be flavourful with all night occurances (deliberately hinting at what non-obvious choices had been made, etc) and I also wanted to work in lyrics from the songs in a flavourful way every morning. It was tough, but well worth it.

[armlx]

I adlib my games. Role PM's are written on the spot, opening flavor is minimal or spontaneous, and lynch scenes are based on things that happen.

However, every role interaction is laid out ahead of time, though I tend to miss things sometimes (ie. the brokeness of the mayor in Points Mafia). Once my 2 current games are over (one on this site, one on another) I will post my favorite roles.

[PolarBoy]

I haven't done many games, and I used a different approach on each one.

On Toybox and Homestar Runner, I had the roles written in advance, but wrote all the lynch and night scenes on the spot (this was difficult with Homestar Runner,as I was trying to mimic Strong Bad's voice and the SB e-mail format in the writing), although I definitely had ideas about the flavor. In Homestar Runner I also had some guidelines written up that I never posted concerning what sort of things would and would not be mentioned in the night scene post.

For Black and White I had no ideas in mind concerning flavor. The game was so simple that I just did whatever seemed like it would be fun to write for the scene.

For Wiki Mafia I I had very specific guidelines layed out for what would be said and how it would be said. But that game had an extremely terse style that was intended to very carefully control what the player's knew. I may revisit that experiment one day.

For Amy Winfrey Mafia I'm just writing role PMs and some flavor notes in advance, and any ideas that pop into my head for what would make a fun scene, given that the right situation arises, so that I don't forget when I go to actually write it. I think that'll be the most entertaining approach.