Hi I just wanted to say thanks for hosting tropius and sorry for subbing out (if it makes anyone feel any better i'm currently in the process of failing 2 out of 3 classes so ?)
but this isn't about me, I just wanted to say a few words about the hosting. I know that some mistakes were made but really in the long run hosting is a learning process. I think you made some interesting design choices tropius and that the hard part of hosting is getting the design of the game right, which I think you did a decent job of (seems to me the vampire design was not so bad when you get the full picture of it)! Accidentally calling deadline early is an easily fixable mistake, you just have to be more careful for the future, and it's really nbd.
The actual mechanics of hosting are something that come with time. I think you have to be patient enough to get things right and I think if there's one piece of advice I have for you it's that I think you can do a better job of making things more clear for the players. Regardless of what sort of setup you have, it won't matter if the players don't know what's happening. You can do this in any way you like, but I think that doing things like bolding the players who died and their alignment (small stuff like that) goes a long way in ensuring that your players can follow the game. And it makes your job easier since you won't be hounded with questions that to you should be really obvious. I hope this game hasn't discouraged you from hosting further in the future!
Anyways, I actually don't think the neighborhood idea is very good in practice. It seems fun/interesting on paper (my version if anyone cares:
http://ww.smogon.com/forums/threads...-win-congrats-eo-lightwolf-and-rssp1.3550983/) but the problem is that it makes things way too convoluted and confusing when I think people really just want to play the game (or shout at each other. both maybe). I wonder if something like this would work on a dedicated mafia website a la mafiascum (or mafia universe? they seem pretty into it there??). for smogon though it just seems like a lot of work for something that doesn't really add too much to the game in the long run. Unnecessary complexity is usually not great for games.
ggs every1