Board 8 > Anyone else see a SBAllen topic about updating the mod system for one second?

(+) Yeah! (+)

that and it didn't run on pidgin so I had to choose it over AIM and IRC :(
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I don't think I've ever Nope'd out of anything faster than Discord
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One of the neat suggestions in that other topic was to make all usermaps visible to all users. Would be a neat change.
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UltiXX posted...

The only legit reason to not like Discord is it killed forum activity.

Bad users did that
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XIII's whining in that topic is a comedic and ironic gold mine. The same dude who once said all Americans are dumb yanks who should be killed off by their own guns wants stricter moderation policies. Okay pal.

It's a shame Allen is going to have to read through all that conservative persecution complex bs to get any decent feedback on possible changes to the mod system.
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Rereading the big post I made there, I think I confused Mercs and Mafia...pretty sure I mixed up two games I don't play. Whoops, can't edit now. =/
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Nah you're just a liar, but it's all good. I feel a lot better after a nice discord pep talk. Nick is the fuckin man.

HaRRicH posted...

Rereading the big post I made there, I think I confused Mercs and Mafia...pretty sure I mixed up two games I don't play. Whoops, can't edit now. =/

they are both wretched hives of scum and villainy (mafia has more scum and mercs has more villainy)

they're fun you should play
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I'd love to better understand just what the heck they really are. Each time I pop my head into a topic when a game or round or whatever begins, I'm lost.
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i kinda understood how mercs worked when MWiS invented it and explained what it was years ago, even though i didn't play myself.

not going to attempt to understand whatever the heck it's become now, though.
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Mr Lasastryke posted...

i kinda understood how mercs worked when MWiS invented it and explained what it was years ago, even though i didn't play myself.

not going to attempt to understand whatever the heck it's become now, though.

It really hasn't changed in any fundamental way.
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ok, i haven't looked at a mercs topic in years. just thought people said it became more complex but maybe i'm misremembering.
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Mr Lasastryke posted...

ok, i haven't looked at a mercs topic in years. just thought people said it became more complex but maybe i'm misremembering.

I mean Mercs I was like playing Magic around the table with friends in '95, while current Mercs is if you really dug into the guts of tournament level rulings in order to move up to that level of play.

But it's still Magic.
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Yeah I think Mercs is probably a bit more complicated now but it was already complicated. We've been trying to tighten up the wording so things make more sense at least.
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HaRRicH posted...

I'd love to better understand just what the heck they really are. Each time I pop my head into a topic when a game or round or whatever begins, I'm lost.

I'll give a very brief mafia 101 because fuck mercs.

Mafia in its most basic form is a game with two opposed teams, generally referred to as "Town" and "Mafia" or "Scum". The basic concept is Informed Minority vs Uninformed Majority.

The majority of the players are Town. They only know that they're Town, and know nothing about anyone else.

A smaller number of players are Scum. They know who their teammates are and can usually freely talk in private.

The game is split into day and night phases. During the day phase, all players discuss and debate on one player to remove from the game. During the night, scum gets to remove one player from the game. In general, Town wins if they can eliminate all the scum, while Scum wins if they become the majority.

That's the very super basic form, at least.
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yeah, mafia is pretty simple to understand. more simple than mercs, at least!
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Mr Lasastryke posted...

yeah, mafia is pretty simple to understand. more simple than mercs, at least!

I can understand being lost if you just open a topic without an understanding of the basic concepts though.
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Sounds simpler than I've imagined it, thanks.

So then Town and Mafia can't have their conversations at the same places, right? And how big of a minority/majority difference is ideal for a game?
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There's a topic for everybody to talk during the day, and usually a separate forum for the mafia to talk. Mafia is usually between a third and a fourth of the players.
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Tom Bombadil posted...

There's a topic for everybody to talk during the day, and usually a separate forum for the mafia to talk. Mafia is usually between a third and a fourth of the players.

And the main game topic is the only place for town to talk, until we start getting into special roles and such.
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If youve played card games like avalon or eeen the mole, they are similar in concept
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Mr Lasastryke posted...

yeah, mafia is pretty simple to understand. more simple than mercs, at least!

the basic concept of mercs is pretty simple. players build up teams of video game characters that battle each other. people can vote on which team they think would win the fight.

also, characters have special abilities they can use. like, Sub-Zero can freeze someone at the start of the battle. Little Mac can challenge someone to a boxing match before the battle, and the loser is KOed.

it gets complex from a player's perspective because there are a lot of characters and a lot of abilities that sometimes interact in weird ways. so rocket's analogy to tournament level Magic is pretty good. but all of that is "under the hood," so to speak -- you don't need to understand any of that to come in and vote "yeah Trance Kuja destroys these fools" (or whatever).
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Yeah Mercs is a lot easier to vote in than it is to play. (and presumably easier to play than to admin)

I don't quite get the appeal of voting without playing but there are people like SEP who will do just that, so I guess it's fun for some people!
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"Who will win in a fight" discussions can be pretty fun!

Although I haven't clicked on a Mercs topic in years.
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does Discord speed up the issues with the board? ehh. It's just an alternative that many remaining users prefer. And we've lost a lot of users who provided content that was better handled by message boards.

I don't think discord removes a ton of content from the board. throw-away social topics "what are you doing this weekend" don't get a ton of posts these days.

Also the board seems more geared to people like me who are fine to rot away here, instead of luring new people, or promoting people like me to be more active. and maybe they just don't have the resources to give the site a makeover, really.

but that all said, I reiterate that SHINE is the one true king of board 8
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but muh projects :(
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HaRRicH posted...

I'd love to better understand just what the heck they really are. Each time I pop my head into a topic when a game or round or whatever begins, I'm lost.

Get the Starcraft 2 demo and play Mafia on it. Or if you're lazy and care less, play Town of Salem in your browser.

or foolmo's mafia discord bot i guess
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