Oh, I definitely agree something is amiss here. Obviously all my comments here are in the general and reflect nothing on Little Angels or my part in it - I'll keep references as superficial and non-game-relevant as possible.

I think a core issue we'll need to consider is the expectations of players as to how fast a game should run. I know I'm at the "rabid" end of the scale, and would happily see games which have several new posts an hour, while other players only get a chance to post three or four times a week. Any pace is fine if everyone is on the same page but the problems obviously come when you have a wide variation of expectations between players. I think aiming to post about 3-4 times a week is a good rate for a game to keep moving, but personally like a faster game.

Another issue appears to be one of active participation, something I've been noticing for a long time now - it seems to me we get long tracts of post ping-pong involving only a handful of the players while other, active, players remain silent. While it's understandable to sit and watch while the game appears to unfold before you, I think this has a really negative effect on the game as a whole. The people talking generally aren't on some revelatory journey, and so the game gets into a vicious cycle of the silent players waiting for the vocal ones to pull the rabbit out of the hat, and the vocal players getting increasingly frustrated as no overall consensus can be reached from the minority who are talking.

As I say, I find this understandable - Mafia is an uncertain game and there's a well-established trend of clinging to firm facts when possible, and dragging heels when not. I think we need to break this mentality, though, be prepared to take more risks and depend less on "silver bullets" from role-claims and cop results that may not even exist. Another idea might be to, as a forum, consciously adopt a major lurker-hate mentality and just uproot anyone who is staying too quiet for everyone else's liking - this very attitude is likely to improve things simply by being a constant threat.

The bigger issue may just be a lack of players though, which I think is what Daegul is getting at. It's pretty clear that we only have a skeleton crew of mafia players on this site, and we all have real lives. What stands out is that when someone needs "out" of the mafia scene for whatever reason, there really isn't a queue of people waiting to replace them anymore. This is always going to cause problems, no matter how active and involved our games get... so maybe we can get some more people interested? A recruitment drive could help us out here - more players like our most recent crop is only going to be a good thing for Scene as a whole.

For what it's worth, Mafia: The Musical will have hard deadlines established from the start (gotta stick to that choreography, don't you know); I haven't made a firm decision on exactly how long they should be or how they should be timed yet, but what I'm currently considering is 17-RL-day days (starting on a Tuesday, ending on a Thursday) and 4-RL-day nights (Friday through Monday) to start, probably cutting the days down to 10-RL-days starting on day 4 or so.

I am, of course, open to suggestions, as long as there's still time to discuss it before people sign up

Enthusiasm seems really low at the moment.

In trying to replace Carmine + Feloris in CoD, I think I contacted everyone who's been around lately, including recently dead players in Angels and Circus. No takers. Most didn't even reply, not even a "Too Busy" or a "Cant be fucked".

La Paloma:

Enthusiasm seems really low at the moment.

In trying to replace Carmine + Feloris in CoD, I think I contacted everyone who's been around lately, including recently dead players in Angels and Circus. No takers. Most didn't even reply, not even a "Too Busy" or a "Cant be fucked".

Whereas I got told Fuck off. You know who killed you. Sob.

Bah, you just hate me.

Okay, perhaps we can pick this up again, now that the two games we had have ended. Even if we get more players, can we do something to keep games more alive?

I remember with great fondness Feloris' "Coffee in Space" game - which limited Days to 1 realtime weak and Nights to 2 realtime days. With assorted in-game penalties for exceeding those limits.

It's an artificial, coercive mechanism, but maybe a few games run under similar terms would get folks back into the habit of making more focused, time-managed posts?

I toyed for a while with roles designed with time limits. Or similar conditions that needed to be met in order to use their night activity.

One such (from my discarded "Alice" game) was the White Rabbit, a guaranteed Sane Cop but only if the Day was resolved within a set time limit.

Or, taking another approach (from my discarded "heaven" game), a role who could steal the votes from players who hadn't posted for 5 realtime days.

I remember reading over on Mafiascum of an antitown role who could daykill players who hadn't posted for a while.

Similar solutions could be devised no doubt.

Mafia is a team game and penalising the team (which is the only thing you can penalise) because some people don't want to play as much as others won't work. Also due to the numbers involved it will always hurt the town more.
It's a shame that small games don't work too well (less chance for mistakes).

Maybe we need some clever rules that give people something to talk about on day 1. If we can come up with a setting / role setup that makes day 1 interesting it might not run out of steam as it always does, I think this dragging on of day 1 puts people off checking the site at all (and even replying so they don't make a mistake) and is the best place to start tweaking things to improve the games. I have no ideas on what could be done :/

Yep, I agree with that.

It's a vicious cycle. Games take a long time to run so people want to survive in them, so they don't stick their necks out, so the games are dull, and people drop out, and the games take even longer to run. People should be more gutsy and ballsy, because it'll make for more exciting games. Not necessarily play stupidly, but throw in more random gambits and talking points and tolerate them happening for potentially pro-town reasons. This is what annoyed me in Little Angels - people seemed wholly unwilling to accept I might be adding a little confusion for the good of the game and the town (or at least, were ready to leap on the first obvious target), so it backfired and reinforced a culture of taking no risks.

If that happens... games will be more interesting, which will lead to quicker games, which will lead to people being more willing to take a gamble in any given game, which will lead to more interesting games. All of which will lead to less dropping out.