Newbie Game

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A special administrative category, a Newbie Game is a 7 player game specifically designed for new players. Currently, all Newbie Games use the C9 setup.

Newbie Games are played in The Road to Rome forum. Records of old games can be found at Newbie Game/History, or by reading the games themselves in the forum.

Players

There is a centralized waiting list for both moderators and players. To join a Newbie Game, players should post in Newbie Game List ("/in" or "/in to play", for example). When the game is full, the players will be contacted by the game's moderator.

There are three basic "types" of players in a Newbie Game: New, semi-experienced (those with a completed game on MafiaScum), and "Inexperience-challenged". For a player to qualify as IC, the player must have been a member of mafiascum.net for at least three months and must have played in at least five completed games.

All players may be signed up for/playing in only one Newbie Game at a time, unless additional experienced players are needed to fill out games. They may sign up for another game as soon as they are killed or the game is completed. Semi-experienced players can also replace into another Newbie Game after their first on-site game finishes, if more are needed.

Moderators

As we aim to provide a good first experience for new players, moderators of Newbie Games are required to have successfully moderated at least two prior games before joining the list, and have a good overall record of moderation.

To join the waiting list, moderators should post in the Newbie Game List thread ("/in to mod", for example). When a new game fills up, the List Mod will inform the new moderator, and the moderator can then start the game.

Moderators of Newbie Games should be especially careful to do the following:

1. Role PMs should be as generic as possible. Feel free to use the roles as described in this thread. Especially remember not to name or distinguish the Vanilla Townie role PMs in any way, and you'll probably want to post all the PMs anyway in your first or second post. Outguessing the mod/name claims shouldn't have a place in Newbie Games.
2. Try to provide a Vote Count near the top of every page, so people know where things stand. If a lot of votes have changed in the course of a page, you may wish to do them even more often. Always provide a regular vote count during deadlines!
3. Give your IC players a chance to answer questions before you jump in, if possible. Mods run a risk of accidentally giving something away when they talk about the game (but some questions only you can answer, such as deadlines).
4. If a player doesn't pick up their role during confirmations, don't worry too much about it; go back to the first post of the Newbie Game Queue and pick the next unassigned player. Remember to post in thread when you replace/steal somebody, though!
5. Prod players by PM if they haven't posted for 3-4 days (unless they warn you ahead of time), and consider a deadline if they go a full calendar month without lynching. Sometimes it can become necessary to set a deadline sooner, if they're really stalling out/not posting for days in a row. Remember that deadlines in Lynch-or-Lose situations should not have a reduced number of votes to lynch, or Scum can win automatically.
6. Don't worry about not having a 'theme' or flavor; that's actually better for Newbie Games, so they stay as uncomplicated as possible.