Modding Best Practices: One Player's View

[Green Crayons]

1) Vote Counts

It doesn't really matter to me if a mod edits the first post of each page to put in their vote count or if they do it in a separate post altogether. The OCD neat freak in me would prefer it to be a separate post, but that's just because it looks more clean. I don't think this conversation really has any bearing on the game itself/quality of the moderator and ultimately just boils down to personal preference.

That said, the best vote count I've seen produced in recent times was from (I think) charter, though it may have been SensFan, who managed to not only post a thorough and detailed (and accurate) vote count as its own post, but nine times out of ten he made it the first post of each page (and when it wasn't the first it was generally one of the first five posts). Now that's dedication, and was much appreciated for a variety of reasons.

2) Role/faction/name reveals

Outside of specific game setups (or a newbie game run by a newbie mod on a third party site), I haven't come across a mod who doesn't do a full exposure upon a player's death. And for good reason.

3) Confirm when a night action is recieved

I disagree with this point. A mod should state in the opening rules that, unless otherwise notified, all actions should be considered received. For two reasons. First: To have the mod tell each player/faction with a night choice that they received their nightly PM is burdensome on the moderator, not to mention insulting. The mod wanted to run the game in the first place - assuming that they looked over your night PM and rushed into the day phase without accounting for all night activity (or lack thereof) is to say that they're sloppy or potentially biased (against a player/side/whatever). Second: Giving a player a line or phrase that might hint as to why their night action did or did not occur (e.g. "No result available/received" to a cop) would be giving the player something to work off of in terms of determining other roles in the game when they shouldn't be privy to such knowledge. Even if the phrase is as generic as possible, the player might make incorrect assumptions and base his play off of it, and thus the mod has affected the game in such a way that was unintended, unnecessary and inapropriate.

4) Deadline info

I agree with Adel.

5) Prods

I agree with Fenchurch and Adel.

[Green Crayons]

Because maybe a player will flake during a night round/right at the end of a day? If that player does not have a night choice, the mod would have no clue and it wouldn't be until a little while into the following day that the mod would notice that player's absence. An observant player could easily connect the dots.