The Syndicate

Sloonei wrote: ↑Sat Dec 05, 2020 2:19 am I would be happy to write these guidelines myself (with help from all of you guys, and the rest of the admins), and my intent in doing this would be to offer future players and hosts alike some more solid ground when designing, running, and playing games to avoid situations where players cross a line they didn't know existed, or hosts find that a player has broken their game and they are powerless to fix it. I just don't want to call these things site-wide rules, if that makes sense. Because, like I said before, something that I value both personally and in my capacity as an admin is that the Syndicate encourages hosts to be free and to experiment with game design. I do not want there to be a standardized way to play mafia on The Syndicate, and in general I am averse to trying to define things too uniformly. If we begin to dictate what is or is not allowed to be included in any and every game, then we may end up with a law code on our hands that is overbearing and convoluted, and that could stifle us.

But I am absolutely in favor of providing clearer guidelines for hosts: recommendations, clearer explanations of terminology, and general expectations of hosting and running a mafia game. So, for instance, taking Epi's Hosting Guidelines post as our basis, we could just add sections that identify and define certain issues that can arise when hosting.
Let's continue using "angleshooting" as our example. We can offer a definition of what that term means in the context of mafia, and we can provide a recommendation for how it might be handled by the host in games as well as an explanation for why it can be damaging to the integrity of the game. I'd even be willing to go so far as to offer a "recommended set of rules" for standard mafia games, and hosts would be free to either plug that set of rules into their own games or tweak it as they see fit, or ignore it completely if they want to get real wild. But I would want to continue to make clear the point that these would not be absolute rules that everyone must follow when they are hosting games here.

I personally have no issue with it being site-wide "rules" or not. I simply used that word in conjunction with "convention" or something like that to express this, of which you have worded much better than I could have. I have no qualms about there being no site-wide "rules" (other than the pre-existing rules/principles); a guideline is perfectly acceptable by me.

In both times that I've hosted (either on this site or my homesite), when I've made an error the number one thing I've wished for was guidelines/guides. I always wondered why there's guides to hostings games and what-not while guides on what to do if you acutally mess up, or how to avoid messing up, are exceedingly rare from what I could find and if they did exist then sometimes those details were vague.

I have always agreed with and been a fan the idea of significant host discretion when it comes to setups, but I always hated the faults that brought with it when they could be mitigated in some way. I appreciate that the entirety of the Syndicate has come to discuss something to make (what I believe to be) an overall correct step in the right direction*, and perhaps a positive legacy for the game that originally caused this discussion.

*This by no means implies that I think further steps should be taken. I am completely satisfied with this outcome, and don't think we will need to make any further changes in the future, foreseeable or not.

Also, for the record, it is impossible to have a consistent understanding of the definition of "Word A" ("Word A" of course referring to some behavior that is disallowed) within the rule-sets of games across all hosts without applying some site-wide rule or convention because the rules are being made by the hosts themselves. Unless you seriously expect the majority of hosts on The Syndicate to coordinate and work together on a single understanding of what constitutes "Word A", or what "Word A" refers to?

They (the hosts) don't know any better; that includes myself when I made the rules for my hosted game. The ambiguity that was generated by the policy around very large/significant host discretion in rules has almost certainly contributed in some manner or degree to these things:

1) My belief that the "typical rules" stated in the setup could unequivocally ban what others may consider to be "Angle shooting" (regardless if that definition of "Angle Shooting" is correct or not), in addition to my rule regarding the speculation of host action.

2) A player believing his actions did not constitute any infringement of my rules, while other players agreed and others disagreed.

These controversies lead to what I believe may have been avoidable circumstances if we presume my host error was unavoidable. Obviously, I could have done better as a host, but as games in general on The Syndicate as of late I suspect show, it is often shown that these hosts cannot be expected to generate the most concise or accurate rule-sets without inherent risk of miscommunication that is then amplified because what "Word A" means in "Host A's" game could mean something significantly different in "Host B's" game even if they use the same "Word A" since there is no site-wide understanding or rule to regulate the definition or meanings of "Word A". Or, "Host C" happens to believe "Word A" was already addressed by convention or rules and so they try to enforce against it when the facts for "Host C's" game say that rule regarding "Word A" never existed.

The risk of miscommunication, which is inherently a factor in unintentional rule violations and when hosts enforce rules that don't exist, can harm game integrity ("Game integrity" here is referring to a game where ideally a game is run without rule violations or host errors). Therefore, if we were to establish site-wide conventions, understandings, or rules, then there would be less risk of miscommunication.

Of course, one may be concerned about these "site-wide" rules constricting host creativity. If that is the case, then we can just specify that those rules may be overridden by a host; all they have to do is say that X rule regarding "Word A" doesn't apply for that game.

Epignosis wrote: ↑Fri Dec 04, 2020 8:42 pm Angle shooting is legal by definition. If you don't want a specific behavior, outlaw it in your game.

Well, wouldn't it be best to have a site rule or post here saying that (Other than here of course)?

Clearly some people are having issues with the definition of angle-shooting, wouldn't it be better if we established that definition?

Or will we have hosts like me who believe angle shooting is something different on this site?

I mean, I almost quite literally punished a player for the word usage of "Angleshot", which by your definition means it (the word usage) was legal in all cases and therefore it wasn't illegal to do. Otherwise it wouldn't be called angle shooting, since angle shooting is, in your view, inherently legal.

Epignosis wrote: ↑Fri Dec 04, 2020 8:07 pm It sounds to me like the hosts gave rules and issued warnings or modkills based on those rules. I don't understand your grievance.

Not to intrude on the conversation too much, but what I think @tutuu is saying is this (though please correct me if I am misrepresenting):

If we had site-wide rules or conventions that X behavior or word refers to X thing, then unintended rule breaking would happen less often.

As it stands, or what tutuu is trying to point out, is that she believes there is evidence from multiple games showing that players have did something they thought was legal or (as per your poker definition) angleshooting and therefore was okay to do when in actuality it was not okay or legal for them to do that. Or, as a separate issue, there are instances of games where the host presumes a game has a rule but in fact doesn't and yet attempts to or does enforce those rules as if those rules had actually existed.

Given that rules are constructed and given a framework on a per-host and per-game basis, trying to remember or be aware of these game rules can be often be confusing or conflicting. This is amplified when players come from different communities, which have their own expectations of games, rules, and/or definitions of certain behaviors (Ex: The disparity in the definition of "Angleshooting" in the mafia community, as demonstrated by her definition of it and yours).

Presuming the definition of game integrity, with regards to a game having game integrity, means "A game that runs to its completion without violation/incident regarding its rules", then a number of games here have had their game integrity harmed because of the ambiguity resulting from the policy of handing rule frameworks and responsibilities to hosts to a very significant degree. Or, on the other side of the coin, the hosts enforces or attempts to enforce rules that they believe had existed when those rules didn't and the game integrity is then harmed by the host.

That said, if we have certain behaviors that are quite commonly seen as something that is disallowed or should be disallowed, then if The Syndicate were to apply site-wide definitions or example of said behavior (or rules that are almost always exist), there should be less ambiguity to such behaviors or issues since these would be consistent across all games. This in turn should reduce the number of unintentional rule-breaks that would affect (using the above definition) game integrity, and may reduce the likelyhood of a host enforcing (or attempting to enforce) a rule that doesn't exist.

Hopefully the wording here isn't too confusing.

Epignosis wrote: ↑Fri Dec 04, 2020 7:38 pm lynch mistake AND two people violate a host rule

I would like to add two asterisks to this as the host of that game:

1) One of the violations is in debate; As the host of that game I do feel that they way I intended the game to go it was, but as to how I ran it and how I worded the rule it was possibly not. It, at the very least, was controversial (even if ignoring the severity of a response to it) for some players and said controversy in of itself proves the rule was not written well-enough for it to be a clear violation.

2) Both violations could have not happened if I had simply not committed the host error.

Hally wrote: ↑Fri Dec 04, 2020 1:45 pm all of that stuff is pretty standard and i was under the impression it already was the rules?

It is not, apparently. A lot of TS rule stuff is under the authority of host discretion, and I just ran a Rackets game with some parts of the rules being left as "you can expect typical rules" or something like that. Which is a bad recipe because the "typical rules" are established by what could be called as cultural convention here on The Syndicate rather than anything else.

This discussion originated in regards to me modkilling a player who

1) Didn't explicitly break the rules I set up, or any other rule on the site

2) Had a different understanding of the word "Angleshooting" than I did, and used the word "Angleshot"

We've already have had plenty of discussion in the mafia channel of the Syndicate discord about it, but now we're trying to discuss rules or something we can do to prevent something like that from happening again. Maybe something standardized will come to fruition.