A topic I would like to raise to potential/experienced hosts is their player list size.
Designing the game around numbers is crucial. You must find a balance of villagers to mafia to neutrals (or multifaction) that offers each team about the same chance to win.
However how many people are in a game can vary, as there are lower limits but no real upper limits on how many villagers and mafians you can put in.
Now, the problem here is, SHOULD you?
I feel like hosts can get it into their heads their game is 'better' the bigger it is. The more people playing, the higher quality of a game you will get. Regardless of if they have 'read' the current Circus climate and seen if we are having an activity spike (such as after an Official) or a slump (during the school year, no real big events), hosts will shoot for the highest amount of players they can get.
This notion is faulty for several reasons:
1. You deplete your sub pool. If all of your prospective subs have joined the game in the first place, should someone who had been active suddenly have a circumstance that renders them unable to play need a sub, you will not have anyone to choose. Examples of this can be found in several games wherein hosts have to sub dead members of a team back on or outright state they have no further subs.
2. You include idlers. Some people (cough) are serial idlers who may or may not have any intention of actually participating. People who join a game out of addiction (Quagsires), obligation, or whatever their reason, because it has a big number of people needed, without intending to actually try for their team, are lowering the quality of the game, particularly for their teammates. There is a difference between not being a wallposter and malignant idling.
3. You get people who don't really have time to play seriously. An example of this is Chaos Mafia. Sam and I didn't sign up because we were going to be visiting and thus unable to put in any effort towards our team. Walrein promised us a twin role if we joined that wound up being on two different factions, COMPLETELY negating our desire to participate. The effort required to win together by being the last 2 people alive when we already knew we wouldn't have the time to play on the SAME team made the game an absolute waste to invest in. This kind of underhanded behavior to get +1/2 for your playerlist will only harm the quality of your game, whether an April Fools joke or not.
4. You decrease quality for people who will be invested. Needing 8 people for a mafia team and 2 of those joined reluctantly because you kept posting "need 6 more players!!" and have no time to participate puts more work on the active players. Those guys are either free fodder for a lynch when they fail to claim OR require the active players to write fakes for them, in addition to their own, and strategize on their own.
5. You can obligate badged/experienced users to play and devalue non-CM badges/pros. Again, if you keep posting/PM you need X more players, at some point those who have been around the block or are badged in CM will feel obligated to play. An example of this is Viva Pathfinder, a game I didn't sign up for at first because I KNEW I would have absolutely no time for it. It did not hit its intended player quota so I joined and was made a powerful wolf, when I had asked to either be a freelancer or the same team (meaning recruiter) with Sam. I idled the entire game and did absolutely nothing because I genuinely had no time to play, as a wolf. Pathfinder was a game I wish I had had time to invest into, but really shouldn't have joined, or felt I needed to, knowing I would be unable to do anything. There are a lot of great newbies and non-badged users in CM who will be active and invested in your game, even if a few of the badges are too busy to participate! Don't keep signups open for needlessly long because the mods haven't joined yet.
6. The game drags on. Paper Mario, a game with 30 players I believe, is on cycle 10 and there are 10 people alive. 1/3 of the game hasn't died on a cycle that very few games expand to. The Popcorn NOC could have an absolutely insane runtime with 20 players if every shot takes the maximum amount of time and it comes down to a final 3. Asking people to commit 2 months to your mafia game is a bit pushy, especially if you keep extending deadlines (because surprise, you have idlers not sending actions!). It can often be unreasonable to expect people to be able to invest for that long, or at least it gets stressful for those trying hard. Also, you'll need subs, because stuff may crop up 5 weeks down the road and the player thought the game would be over in 3.
7. You force low prio signups to play when they said low prio for a reason. If people are signing up saying "I can play if you NEED but put others in before me" they are saying that because they want your game to get off the ground, but they do not actually have time to give to it. Don't expand your playerlist to include them. Trim it down if you have 26/26, but 3 of those are "last resort" signups. They will be able to sub in later, which they have essentially said they would prefer to do.
8. You can get a shoddier assortment of roles. Whether you need 5 vanillas (a boring role especially in OCs) or you want to try too many experimental things that just don't work out, or would have been better with only half of them, if you make a player list of 36, you need 36 roles. And it can be hard to design 36 fun, interactive roles that are engaging, don't promote idling, and are balanced with each other.
9. The more actions, the more prone to errors and delays updates will be. Metagame Mafia had extremely lengthy update times to process over 60 players' actions and results and had NUMEROUS errors in said results. The quantity of these errors made some mafia players actually seem cleaner, due to also claiming an error. It is a lot more work for yourself and you have a lot more places to mess up results, priority, did that hook hit a safeguard, and so forth, the more actions and players you put in the game. Overloading things is not always the best idea, especially if you are a newer host who maybe hasn't found a spreadsheet layout or actions processing method that works best for you yet.
Something hosts can do to minimize player fatigue is simply not extend deadlines, even if there are a lot of missing actions. Those players can suffer the consequences of their actions instead of dragging a game out an extra day every night cycle for everyone else, until they learn to send their gd PM.
Your game can be great fun if it has less than 20 players. It does not need 40 and to be labeled a Big to be enjoyable. You do not need to have a sub pool of 0 to have a good game.
Sometimes long/big games can be really exciting and players get super invested. So there is definitely room for slower and larger games. However, you should keep in mind if one is STILL going on when you will be posting your signups. A lot of players don't like to commit to 2 slugfests at the same time. A shorter, quicker paced, small game may be within their effort wheelhouse at the time, or just be appreciated by those who died long ago in the long game.
If you are eager to design a game, whether your first or tenth, take a moment to check out recent games' playerlists, how many subs were needed, and how active those games were. If you sense a downward trend in activity, maybe shoot for an 18 player game instead of 25. If you get 22 signups, awesome, you have 4 eager subs! Instead of 3 begrudging players likely to have no time to play to get you to 25, and then no subs.
If you do want someone in particular to play or are struggling to meet a player quota that is hard to alter, DO NOT try and convince someone to join under false pretenses. You are only hampering the quality of your game if you get me to join, I say I have little time/don't make me a neutral, and you make me a wolf (as Sam did once in MP2). That role will not be played well, if the player doesn't have time to play it, and thought they were getting a nice stable village role they can mindlessly sheep with. Sometimes players only have the time to be a sheep in some game. Don't make them a critical role, knowing this. Or trick them into joining.
tl;dr don't feel forced to have the biggest playerlist possible and seek as many signups as you can get. This will usually just decrease the quality of your game and player enjoyment, plus remove necessary subs.
Designing the game around numbers is crucial. You must find a balance of villagers to mafia to neutrals (or multifaction) that offers each team about the same chance to win.
However how many people are in a game can vary, as there are lower limits but no real upper limits on how many villagers and mafians you can put in.
Now, the problem here is, SHOULD you?
I feel like hosts can get it into their heads their game is 'better' the bigger it is. The more people playing, the higher quality of a game you will get. Regardless of if they have 'read' the current Circus climate and seen if we are having an activity spike (such as after an Official) or a slump (during the school year, no real big events), hosts will shoot for the highest amount of players they can get.
This notion is faulty for several reasons:
1. You deplete your sub pool. If all of your prospective subs have joined the game in the first place, should someone who had been active suddenly have a circumstance that renders them unable to play need a sub, you will not have anyone to choose. Examples of this can be found in several games wherein hosts have to sub dead members of a team back on or outright state they have no further subs.
2. You include idlers. Some people (cough) are serial idlers who may or may not have any intention of actually participating. People who join a game out of addiction (Quagsires), obligation, or whatever their reason, because it has a big number of people needed, without intending to actually try for their team, are lowering the quality of the game, particularly for their teammates. There is a difference between not being a wallposter and malignant idling.
3. You get people who don't really have time to play seriously. An example of this is Chaos Mafia. Sam and I didn't sign up because we were going to be visiting and thus unable to put in any effort towards our team. Walrein promised us a twin role if we joined that wound up being on two different factions, COMPLETELY negating our desire to participate. The effort required to win together by being the last 2 people alive when we already knew we wouldn't have the time to play on the SAME team made the game an absolute waste to invest in. This kind of underhanded behavior to get +1/2 for your playerlist will only harm the quality of your game, whether an April Fools joke or not.
4. You decrease quality for people who will be invested. Needing 8 people for a mafia team and 2 of those joined reluctantly because you kept posting "need 6 more players!!" and have no time to participate puts more work on the active players. Those guys are either free fodder for a lynch when they fail to claim OR require the active players to write fakes for them, in addition to their own, and strategize on their own.
5. You can obligate badged/experienced users to play and devalue non-CM badges/pros. Again, if you keep posting/PM you need X more players, at some point those who have been around the block or are badged in CM will feel obligated to play. An example of this is Viva Pathfinder, a game I didn't sign up for at first because I KNEW I would have absolutely no time for it. It did not hit its intended player quota so I joined and was made a powerful wolf, when I had asked to either be a freelancer or the same team (meaning recruiter) with Sam. I idled the entire game and did absolutely nothing because I genuinely had no time to play, as a wolf. Pathfinder was a game I wish I had had time to invest into, but really shouldn't have joined, or felt I needed to, knowing I would be unable to do anything. There are a lot of great newbies and non-badged users in CM who will be active and invested in your game, even if a few of the badges are too busy to participate! Don't keep signups open for needlessly long because the mods haven't joined yet.
6. The game drags on. Paper Mario, a game with 30 players I believe, is on cycle 10 and there are 10 people alive. 1/3 of the game hasn't died on a cycle that very few games expand to. The Popcorn NOC could have an absolutely insane runtime with 20 players if every shot takes the maximum amount of time and it comes down to a final 3. Asking people to commit 2 months to your mafia game is a bit pushy, especially if you keep extending deadlines (because surprise, you have idlers not sending actions!). It can often be unreasonable to expect people to be able to invest for that long, or at least it gets stressful for those trying hard. Also, you'll need subs, because stuff may crop up 5 weeks down the road and the player thought the game would be over in 3.
7. You force low prio signups to play when they said low prio for a reason. If people are signing up saying "I can play if you NEED but put others in before me" they are saying that because they want your game to get off the ground, but they do not actually have time to give to it. Don't expand your playerlist to include them. Trim it down if you have 26/26, but 3 of those are "last resort" signups. They will be able to sub in later, which they have essentially said they would prefer to do.
8. You can get a shoddier assortment of roles. Whether you need 5 vanillas (a boring role especially in OCs) or you want to try too many experimental things that just don't work out, or would have been better with only half of them, if you make a player list of 36, you need 36 roles. And it can be hard to design 36 fun, interactive roles that are engaging, don't promote idling, and are balanced with each other.
9. The more actions, the more prone to errors and delays updates will be. Metagame Mafia had extremely lengthy update times to process over 60 players' actions and results and had NUMEROUS errors in said results. The quantity of these errors made some mafia players actually seem cleaner, due to also claiming an error. It is a lot more work for yourself and you have a lot more places to mess up results, priority, did that hook hit a safeguard, and so forth, the more actions and players you put in the game. Overloading things is not always the best idea, especially if you are a newer host who maybe hasn't found a spreadsheet layout or actions processing method that works best for you yet.
Something hosts can do to minimize player fatigue is simply not extend deadlines, even if there are a lot of missing actions. Those players can suffer the consequences of their actions instead of dragging a game out an extra day every night cycle for everyone else, until they learn to send their gd PM.
Your game can be great fun if it has less than 20 players. It does not need 40 and to be labeled a Big to be enjoyable. You do not need to have a sub pool of 0 to have a good game.
Sometimes long/big games can be really exciting and players get super invested. So there is definitely room for slower and larger games. However, you should keep in mind if one is STILL going on when you will be posting your signups. A lot of players don't like to commit to 2 slugfests at the same time. A shorter, quicker paced, small game may be within their effort wheelhouse at the time, or just be appreciated by those who died long ago in the long game.
If you are eager to design a game, whether your first or tenth, take a moment to check out recent games' playerlists, how many subs were needed, and how active those games were. If you sense a downward trend in activity, maybe shoot for an 18 player game instead of 25. If you get 22 signups, awesome, you have 4 eager subs! Instead of 3 begrudging players likely to have no time to play to get you to 25, and then no subs.
If you do want someone in particular to play or are struggling to meet a player quota that is hard to alter, DO NOT try and convince someone to join under false pretenses. You are only hampering the quality of your game if you get me to join, I say I have little time/don't make me a neutral, and you make me a wolf (as Sam did once in MP2). That role will not be played well, if the player doesn't have time to play it, and thought they were getting a nice stable village role they can mindlessly sheep with. Sometimes players only have the time to be a sheep in some game. Don't make them a critical role, knowing this. Or trick them into joining.
tl;dr don't feel forced to have the biggest playerlist possible and seek as many signups as you can get. This will usually just decrease the quality of your game and player enjoyment, plus remove necessary subs.
