for hosting

1. Don't lie to your players. It's frustrating and people feel like they're being toyed with for your amusement, not theirs.
2. Don't take away your player's votes. They feel powerless and lose interest in the game if they don't have a say.
3. Don't make your players invincible. Without risk, they lose interest in the game.
4. Don't be a player too. You are the host, your goal is to make it fun for the players and let them do their thing. If you want to play too, you shouldn't sign up to host, you should sign up to play.
5. Don't create more than one or two new roles. This includes tweaks to existing, established roles. Proper balance takes careful testing, and too many new roles is impossible to balance.
6. Don't have more special roles than normal people. Most players should have no ability at all.
7. Don't create roles with more than one ability. Remember that a lot of people don't even have one (if you're following commandment #6 as you should).
8. Always make sure that the time at which each round will end is known well ahead of time.
9. Always have a clear, fair plan on how to resolve ties and abstentions.
10. Remember that overpowered abilities spread amongst the sides is not balance, it simply breaks the scale in half.

I've been guilty of breaking some of these before myself, but I learned from them and won't do them again. I hope everyone else is willing to take the pledge before they sign up to host games in the future.

Looks good, mrxak.

I, EKHawkman, The Auroran Drop Pancake of the Ambrosia Software Web Board, Pledge to follow these commandments to the best of my ability and uphold their wisdom.

This should help clear up hosting questions, I fully planned to follow an almost exactly the same set of ideas for when I hosted next. I recommend that this be sticked for future reference.

This post has been edited by Manta : 03 May 2008 - 05:14 PM

You forgot Commandment 11.

11) If you're going to break Commandments 1, 2, or 4 during the course of the game, mark the game (on the signup sheet) as a Player-vs-GM game, so everyone knows what they're getting into.

This post has been edited by SoItBegins : 04 May 2008 - 02:55 PM

@soitbegins, on May 4 2008, 07:54 PM, said in mrxak's GTW Commandments:

You forgot Commandment 11.

11) If you're going to break Commandments 1, 2, or 4 during the course of the game, mark the game (on the signup sheet) as a Player-vs-GM game, so everyone knows what they're getting into.

No. Such a game would not be GTW. Thus, it doesn't belong here.

xander

There's only 10 commandments.

SIB subscribes to a slightly different Bible than the rest of us, mrxak.

@mackilroy, on May 6 2008, 01:33 AM, said in mrxak's GTW Commandments:

SIB subscribes to a slightly different Bible than the rest of us, mrxak.

Burn the heretic?

May the Flames of wrath fall upon your head and smite you down to mere ashes! Then may Hector come and eat whats lets. Glory to the merciful benefactor Hector!

I wish to append the following rule:

Once players are dead, they are dead. No reincarnation.

@prophile, on May 11 2008, 06:00 PM, said in mrxak's GTW Commandments:

I wish to append the following rule:

Once players are dead, they are dead. No reincarnation.

I don't agree with this rule. I thought my role as Dr. Frankenstein in mrxak's game was quite fun and well balanced.

Of the new abilities I tried in that game, that one I rather liked, and felt it was balanced. It only worked once every two rounds, and the person who brought people back to life could easily enough bring people back that were terrorists too, they did not know. Additionally, it only worked to bring somebody back to life once, after that, it would not work on that person again. Think of it as a retroactive SDI that only works every other round.

I prefer the rule, once players are dead, they shouldn't post ;).

I like resurrection but for my first host I was planning on only IA SDI(lynch) and SDI(nightkill). I think I had one more thing but I can't find my plans for it at the moment. I was also thinking of another thing but it might be overpowered. I would like an experience opinion on this. How about a Stasis Field? The person gets hit and cannot be voted for or vote and cannot be nightkilled. This would be announced and possibly who used it would be announced. The person could use it unlimitedly but only say every two turns and once they used it on themselves it would be destroyed? Do you think this would be fun and still rather fair. I only ask that you wait till I get to use it when I host if you would like to integrate it.

I would say that would violate both the second and third commandments.

IA, SDI and Vigilante are all tried and tested specials. Anything else, be careful about.

No they wouldn't be invincible because they could use it on themselves once but then it would be useless. And how bout they cant use it on the same person twice in a row.

@mrxak, on May 11 2008, 10:06 PM, said in mrxak's GTW Commandments:

Of the new abilities I tried in that game, that one I rather liked, and felt it was balanced. It only worked once every two rounds, and the person who brought people back to life could easily enough bring people back that were terrorists too, they did not know. Additionally, it only worked to bring somebody back to life once, after that, it would not work on that person again. Think of it as a retroactive SDI that only works every other round.

I prefer the rule, once players are dead, they shouldn't post ;).

I would have like to have seen how my resurrection power would have worked, if my game hadn't been...well, the victim of a terrorist attack.
The person who was resurrected would only stay alive a limited number of rounds (though nobody knew that except for the person who was able to resurrect them). I think it might have made things interesting.

I'm wondering what you thought of the way I handled powers in my game, mrxak. Almost everyone had one but they were almost all one-shot (which actually resulted in almost none of them being used, so in essence very little changed).

I don't like oneshot powers. Since the game can be quite unpredictable it discourages people from using the powers when they see an opportunity because they want to wait and try to preserve their own lives if possible.

The vigilante is a one-shot power which is very often used and is well-balanced. See the TWGs on the Introversion forums (which generally have 50 odd players) for instance.