Hmm, there's not really a lot I can think to write here.
Okay, the single thing which most commonly goes wrong with game admin is that the admin will get knocked out, and despite his or her best intentions stop following the game thread. This is only human. Therefore, if you get knocked out of the game, you
must pass on the admin password to one of the remaining players. Preferably it will be someone relatively active on the forum.
Okay, next, the most important thing is to find the admin options. From
www.llamaserver.net, click the name of the game you're admining, then click the "Admin options" link at the bottom of the page. From there I think it is fairly self-explanatory.
One option people don't seem to use very much is the "Change Message of the Day" option. This (which could perhaps use a better name - suggestions?) allows you to put a message on the game page for players to read. This might be useful to give players information about the game - upcoming delays for instance - or just to post a joke or a random comment.
One thing which is not obvious is how to set a player to AI. You shouldn't need to do this - the player should do it themselves - but sometimes players just disappear. Here's how to do it:
- "Admin options"->"Change a player's e-mail address", and then change it to the address of someone who can fairly look at the player's turn. Yourself if you're not in the game, or some trusted 3rd party otherwise (me, Gandalf, lch, DrPraetorius, Xietor, LazyPerfectionist, there's loads). We'll call this person Person A.
- Go back to the main page for your game and "Request turn resend"
- Person A will receive the absent player's turn, and should then set the player to AI and e-mail the resulting 2h file back to the server. Sorted!
That's all I can think of for now.
7th August 2008: Note that if you've been a game admin for a while, you should check your admin options again - you now have lots of powers you didn't use to have. There shouldn't be very much now that you can't do.