So You Want to be a Mastermind...

[King V]

A lot of people seem to want to host a game on MMG after playing one. However, this process is not as easy as it seems. Creating a successful game takes a lot of work and effort on the mastermind's part, not just with hosting but with creating the game itself.

As the mastermind who has hosted the most games on MMG, I will break down the process for all of you.

The Pregame - Before Your Season Starts

In order to host a season, you need to have an idea for the game you want to mastermind. A lot of new players have an idea that seems cool, or seems like it might work out well in an MMG game. This is a good starting point, but it's still far from enough to create an actual game. After you have your initial idea, there are a series of steps you need to go through in no particular order.


1. Mapmaking - Before murders, before plot, before the players even sign up, your game must have a map. If you look at past seasons in the season archives, you can see that every season has a map made from 40 to 100 room threads. Each of these threads has its own unique description and room links. Take a good look at all of these threads, because you're going to have to create a whole set of them from scratch. Writing room descriptions, creating room threads, and linking them is probably the most time consuming part about the pregame process. This is not something that can simply be described, it has to be experienced firsthand for you to truly know the pain and agony of creating a map from scratch. But to give you a general idea, for a season with around 80 rooms, it would take about 1-3 hours just creating and linking the room threads. Not even writing the descriptions in them, just linking the rooms. Of course, this will depend on the complexity of the map, but normally it will take quite a bit of time linking the rooms, possibly even several days for large maps such as the one in Mafia Code: M.


2. The Plot - Every season needs a mystery component to them, that's why they are murder mystery games after all. All of the written documents, hints, and clues that you want the players to find and understand must be prepared before the game starts. Usually how I work out the plot is like this: I first have a general outline of how the plot works, then while I create my map I place the plot documents (plot document refers to any sort of clue that relates to the plot) in certain rooms I feel are appropriate for them, finally after my map is complete I look through the plot for weak points I feel are underrepresented by the documents and add documents accordingly (I never subtract documents because I feel I make things too difficult by default, but subtracting documents may be necessary if you feel the game is too easy). Some other masterminds prefer to create all of the plot documents beforehand, then place them on the map when the map has been completed. Or just have a separate document in itself for plot. Regardless, you must have your own plot documents and whole plotline written up and ready to go by the time the game begins.


3. Puzzles, Powers, and Extra Effects - This is probably the most fun part about the pregame process, creating puzzles and special abilities for the players to interact with. Special abilities and puzzles don't require much effort on the mastermind's part, even if creating puzzles is not your forte. The thing to be careful about when creating them is, making sure that the game's balance is not disrupted. There have been a few games where power inbalance is a huge issue, and some players having an unfair advantage over others has caused the games to end badly. Puzzles that affect the game's progression can also lead to unbalance if they are placed at the wrong times. For example, a puzzle that unlocks the 4th floor of a game that can be solved from the 2nd floor can also be gamebreaking. Placing the puzzle there because you thought nobody would be able to solve it until they got the hint from the 3rd floor is not always a guarantee. This is especially true when the game map goes 2 ways (down into the basement and up into upper floors). Although these are usually things that come easier with more experience, you should still keep them in mind.

Mastermind'ing - Hosting the Season

After you have everything prepared and are ready to begin your season, there are a few things you should watch out for and some things you might want to mentally prepare for (such as the infamous 'pm spam' that all masterminds experience at some point).


1. When You Should Host - Since mastermind availability may shift due to various real-life reasons, there is a thread that goes up after every season to determine the next season to be hosted. When your season is listed on the thread and has a priority number, you may post and try to have your season be next on the list. After this, you should make a thread with your season's start date and time, along with what your general hosting times will be. You should try to keep to your hosting schedule as much as possible, usually players will be understanding and won't consider it a big deal if a day is missed, or you're 1-2 hours late, but if you're consistently late or miss several days, it will be a problem. Another thing is applications, a lot of games have their applications up quite early because it's very easy to make them, but I highly recommend having a good portion of your season done (at least 50%) before creating an applications thread. This is because applications create hype, and you want your season to have a good amount of hype before it starts. You should also expect for quite a few players to apply when your season is in the upcoming seasons board (aka, right before the game starts), so if you need a lot of time processing applications from players, you should note that in your application thread.


2. Dealing with Players - When the game beings, here is what you should expect. Players will be asking you questions... LOTS of questions. This will usually result in your Skype being flooded with anywhere from 3-10 messages at once. Don't panic when this happens, just try and answer the questions as smoothly as possible. Players usually don't mind waiting a few minutes for the mastermind to respond. The key is to not make any mistakes and to try and get to all the players. Remember, when you aren't responding to someone it's as if the game is frozen for them.
Usually there will be 3 types of messages from players. Examinations, picking up items, or actions. Examinations are the easiest, simply tell the player what they observe, if anything at all. If the player examines something plot related, that's great, you have it prepared since you created all of the plot documents in advance. If the player examines something completely unrelated, you can either say they see nothing of note, or improvise something (i.e. if the player examines flowers you placed there for atmospheric effect, you can improvise and say the flowers are daisies and are bright yellow). Picking up items is probably the most difficult thing to deal with. This is because you need to do 3 things, you must edit the room description that the item is in to update the missing item, you must add that item to the player's inventory that you keep track of on a separate document, and then you must inform the player that they have taken said item. Actions are a little simpler. All you have to do is edit the room to reflect the action (i.e. if a player wants to write graffiti all over the walls, you just edit that into the room description).
Note that you will be dealing with these things throughout your game session, and throughout the entire game. This will probably require you to pay full attention to hosting the game at all times during your game session. Don't think that you'll have to time to do anything else when hosting your game, unless there aren't very many active players during your session.
Also note that your season may not have many active participants, or perhaps too many active participants. Drama between players or the mastermind may also occur. Do not let this get to you. If you, the mastermind, are affected, then everyone playing your season will also be affected whether they are involved or not. As the mastermind, you must be calm and continue to put in your best effort throughout the season, regardless of how the players behave.


3. Murders and Trials - Murders will work like most other actions, someone will just have "I want to kill X" as their intention. However, murders will impact the game much more than any other action, so you'll need to pay special attention to them. First, you need to review the aspects of the murder itself. First and foremost, is the murder possible? If the player who wants to murder has a plan to slit another player's throat, but isn't in possession of any sharp objects, the murder is obviously impossible. A more difficult situation is, can the victim defend themselves? If the players aren't evenly matched (1 has a gun, and the other has nothing) this won't be too much of an issue. However, if players are evenly matched, this may lead to a fight (to be discussed later). After a player is murdered, their body must be added to the room description, unless it is hidden by the murdering player or an accomplice. After this happens and all of the most obvious things are edited into room descriptions (blood trails, etc), then the body is ready to be found. After 3 people have examined the body (culprit included), investigation will being.
Before the investigation phase, I highly suggest taking a short break and going through the murder plan to find points where you can create evidence leading up to the culprit. Creating a balanced set of evidence is very important to the trial, because too much evidence is unfair to the culprit, while too little evidence is unfair to the investigators. Of course, this also depends on the murder plan. You shouldn't just leave a blood trail in a hallway after the culprit planned to wipe it off (unless the culprit doesn't have a sufficient means of wiping away the blood trail), taking the culprit's preparations into effect is also important. From this evidence, you must create a set of verbal bullets for people to find. After all of this is done, the easiest part is creating a murder report with a bit of information for the players, creating a trial discussion thread, sitting back and relaxing as the players point fingers while you get to take a break from masterminding and watch.


4. Fighting - This is a very specific part in the actions category of MMG games, but it's also something necessary, as there is no real other workable solution. Fighting occurs when 2 or more players have a dispute, or a culprit and victim are relatively evenly matched.
Fights are simple. Both players send you, the mastermind, an action, then you decide what happens based on how the players act. For example, player 1 decides to punch player 2 in the face, player 2 ducks and uses a low kick on player 1. The result would be that player 2 dodges player 1's punch and player 1 gets kicked. This is only the default system, you can create your own fighting system, but testing the system beforehand is quite important. Fighting may not even happen during your season, but it's best to be prepared when it does.

Epilogue - After the Season

Your season is finished. Whether it went well, went badly, or was just average, it's all over. The question you should be asking yourself now is, what next?

If you are planning to brave the storm and create another season, you should make a Season Feedback thread (or one of our admins may do it for you), and check out what some of the players have to say about the game. I always find feedback very helpful for what to improve the next time I create a game. You should also review your experience from the previous season to see how you can make the overall experience better next time. There may have been things that were not bad, per se, and didn't take away from the game, but weren't very impactful either, and could be improved in some ways. As always, try to keep an open mind and don't be afraid to change things.

If you aren't planning to host another season, keep these things in mind anyway for when the next game begins. They may give you some insight to how the mastermind does things, how they might be setting things up for you to find, and how to better give them feedback on their game.

And who knows? Maybe you'll be able to get some ideas from playing more games and come up with another season again yourself.