Newbie Mafia Questions

[Skoffin]

Since there have been a lot of questions lately, here is a thread for all your general mafia related questions regarding meanings of terms/acronyms, concepts etc.
Do not ask anything specifically about an ongoing game as per the standard mafia rules.

[Sirius Kase]

Good idea. We seem to have a lot of newbies swimming around lately.

I don't know much about roles. I've been reading on another website where it says Doctors cannot protect themselves. No such limitation is mentioned on the first post of the Mafia and You thread here. So I guess that means to take what I read on other websites with a glass of salt water.

Another mentioned townies visiting each other at night. But not why. Sounded like an opportunity for something.

To get to the point, I'd like to see an outline of a typical day. It wouldn't need much detail, certainly not much about strategy. But a heads up on the fact that days and nights are much longer than in the real world, and other things about the structure of a normal game that a newbie wouldn't know to ask.

All the stickies are kinda old. Maybe things don't change much, but maybe they do. I'm sure the same questions pop up with every batch of newbies.

[aage]

A game day in forum mafia typically lasts for at least a week real-time. This is due to the timezones people play in, and the fact that discussion takes longer to get somewhere fruitful. Players often spar with each other over the course of several real-time days, you've seen this in the game that's running now, and sentiments about who to lynch can change over the course of a game day. Sometimes it's fairly obvious, eg. a confirmed cop says they discovered a mafia member during the night will lead to a fairly quick lynch. When there is no known information, game days tend to be long and drawn out because the daytime discussion is beneficial to town. Townies want this because discussion helps them win, and scum will (pretend to) want this because they want to appear town-aligned.

Regarding roles, in my experience anything can happen. Mods may use a standard array (for instance: a cop, a doc, 5 vanilla townies and 2 mafia) or design their own role that has never been used before (look at the CYOC games for examples of this).
Regarding townies visiting each other at night, it probably refers to them using their role. A tracker or a watcher is able to see the movements of other players during the night to a certain degree. For instance, if a doctor uses their power on another player, that is considered "visiting".

[Sirius Kase]

Thank you aage. This is helpful.

The game we are in wasn't advertised as a newbie game, or a training game, and I don't enjoy cluttering up the game thread with questions, even if I'm told it's okay. I just don't like doing it. I don't mind learning from my mistakes, but I'll be quite disappointed to die because of a preventable error. But, I accept that that's my problem.

I'm glad I found the discussion threads, this one and the older ones, and I would hope for us to figure out a way to use them without violating the rules. Asking questions might be risky. It might be better to send newbies to these threads right after they sign up, before they have any beans to spill. Then have a FAQ and a list of acronyms. Most websites do talk about the time phases, but it never occurred to me that a day could last so long. Maybe we need a game set on another planet? Okay, that can be a question in a FAQ, "How long are typical days?". That way even people like me who wouldn't think to ask would know. Then, invite people to come back later and add stuff after the game is over.

Just thoughts, I'm willing to help. I've found mafiascum.net and other resources. Maybe a list of online resources would be good.

[jfm10]

Feedback on how i should have handled my situation in "into the deep"would be greatly appreciated.Also is there a way to introduce a vigilante into a game safely where townies don't fear him?

[Ragian]

First of all, a town vig is an immensely powerful and appreciated town role, so you would have no issues being feared had you just claimed town vig.

Main pointers about your play in my opinion (beware that some less diplomatic people might phrase this harsher - don't mind that):
- Don't claim anything when not put to L-2 (it's a rookie mistake where one think one is helping; it doesn't in the long run)
- If put at L-2 and you have a town role, don't lie. Loads of people adhere to a LAL policy (lynch all liars). Lying is for scum.
- Thirdly, should you find yourself in a pickle where you have lied (whether reasonable or not), don't change story.

I hope that makes sense and is at least a bit helpful, mate.

Now, how did you come up with the Seraph Knight thing?

[jfm10]

First of all, a town vig is an immensely powerful and appreciated town role, so you would have no issues being feared had you just claimed town vig.

Main pointers about your play in my opinion (beware that some less diplomatic people might phrase this harsher - don't mind that):
- Don't claim anything when not put to L-2 (it's a rookie mistake where one think one is helping; it doesn't in the long run)
- If put at L-2 and you have a town role, don't lie. Loads of people adhere to a LAL policy (lynch all liars). Lying is for scum.
- Thirdly, should you find yourself in a pickle where you have lied (whether reasonable or not), don't change story.

I hope that makes sense and is at least a bit helpful, mate.

Now, how did you come up with the Seraph Knight thing?

complete accident,after i said i could" prevent all attacks on my target"someone posted a link to roles and while browsing the Seraph Knight popped out and it was close.I just got to creative. sorry after i said self target myself.

[Ragian]

Basically, it seemed as if you panicked, and usually that's what scum does

Next time, don't claim early, don't panic, don't lie

[Skoffin]

First of all, a town vig is an immensely powerful and appreciated town role, so you would have no issues being feared had you just claimed town vig.

Main pointers about your play in my opinion (beware that some less diplomatic people might phrase this harsher - don't mind that):

My spider senses are tingling.

[aage]

- Don't claim anything when not put to L-2 (it's a rookie mistake where one think one is helping; it doesn't in the long run)
- If put at L-2 and you have a town role, don't lie. Loads of people adhere to a LAL policy (lynch all liars). Lying is for scum.

I wanna add a note to this.

L-2 is not a magic number.

It's usually pretty easy to see which way the wind is blowing, especially when votes start piling on and people are accusing you of scumminess. You can almost always tell whether you're about to get lynched, and when that happens you will need to give the town a reason not to lynch you. You can do this by trying to refute or counter their arguments, but this doesn't always work out the way you want it to, and then you'll have to claim. This could be at L-2, but it could also be at L-1, L-3, L-4, etc.. There is no magic number that must be reached before claiming, and there is no magic number at which point you must always claim if you think you can defend against the accusations without claiming. L-2 is a good guideline, but when there are 16 players in the game, you might as well claim at L-3 because the difference is marginal, and when there are 5 players left you probably shouldn't claim at L-2 (aka 1 (one) vote) outside of a mass claim.



Now about the roleclaiming and lying.

I may have had harsh words about this in the thread, but I hate it when town players knowingly deceive the town. Ragian is absolutely correct here that as a town role, you should not lie about your role. Even when your role is hard to believe or unlikely, you should not lie. Small disclaimer that sometimes a town player lies about their role to "play the scum", eg. claiming to be cop when you're actually bulletproof town, but it requires a great deal of skill to do this effectively and without hurting the other town players. I don't even remember the last time I did it, and I could probably count the total on one hand. As a rule of thumb you should never lie as town. There are several reasons for this.

- The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. I'm not saying we should all become communists, but whether you're town or mafia, this is a team game. Let's say you are a vanilla towny, but claim to be the cop. This is great for you, because now the doc is likely to protect you at night, but terrible for town as a whole because now the mafia might kill the real cop. The chances of town (meaning yourself as well) winning the game have just dropped dramatically. Being selfish (or vindictive) is bad in mafia, and people will hate you (and probably kill you).

- When you distill a game of mafia to its essence, the town is trying to solve a puzzle (i.e. who is town and who is scum) while the scum is trying to stop town from solving that puzzle. When you as town roleclaim or are forced to roleclaim, your goal is to help the town solve that puzzle, not to hinder them. Town basically only has access to public information, and only scum has access to secret information and only they know which information is false (namely, their fake claims). One of your goals as a townie, per the rule outlined above, is to provide the town with as much valuable information as possible to help them solve the puzzle. This doesn't mean you should claim your role right away - this usually helps the mafia set up good night actions and fake claims - but it does mean that if you are forced to claim, you should tell the truth. This goes even further when you think your claim won't save your life. When you're dead, you cannot help the town any further. If you are dishonest about your role or any night actions you performed during the game, you will not be able to stop the town from assuming you told them the truth, and town (which also means you) can lose the game because you misinformed your teammates.

- If the town believes you, or at least if they believe you to be a town aligned player, they will consider your role in their own night action decisions. Let's say you falsely claim to be a doctor. Now people are going to believe that you can protect another important role, and roleclaiming will be less dangerous for powerful town roles because you're supposedly there to protect them. Other protective roles will try to save you, if there are any, from the inevitable night kill that is coming your way.

- Scum are liars. This is pretty straightforward - scum can't claim that they're scum, so they must lie. Like Ragian says, the original reasoning is often flipped on its head - scum are liars, therefore liars are scum - for reasons outlined above. Moreover, the way we usually catch scum is by figuring out if someone is lying. Therefore, if you are caught lying, people will think you are scum.

I actually put a lot more time into this than I thought I would. I hope it helps.

[Metsfanmax]

Can you people please stop discussing an active game you are in, outside of the game thread?

[Ragian]

Good points. Both of you.

[aage]

Can you people please stop discussing an active game you are in, outside of the game thread?

That's fair, apologies. I tried to speak in as general terms as possible in my post. We can pick up the conversation again when the game has ended.

[Sirius Kase]

That's a shame. I thought critiquing the gameplay of a dead player was beneficial to people who still have a lot to learn. I also don't see how it hurts anyone. But, not my decision.

I do have a question that might be okay. When the game is over, who wins? Everyone who is still alive, or the entire team, town or scum, including people who have died? This matters because sacrifice is a more attractive tactic if the sacrificed player get credit for a win.

Also we need to have a compendium of so-called "known" stuff. I got a really rude awakening this morning in the main thread and may have reacted too strongly. If someone is going to say a role is "known", that's hurts. I'm trying to do my homework. At the very least, go and immediately add this "known role" to the list of known stuff before saying it's known. It only takes a few minutes and it's a way of creating a database that will probably help people in the future. I look for FAQS and wikis and use them if I find them. In fact, I prefer looking things up before I need to know. Unless having newbies blundering around in the dark improves the game experience for someone, then I'm willing to pay my dues.

[dakky21]

About winning: each game has its own rules which are mentioned in the first post. Sometimes a group win even with the dead members, sometime only alive wins... it depends on the setup.

About roles: each game can have it own roles and there could be some less standard or even not existent roles in play and that should be mentioned in the first post as well. For example Streaker and me discussed the Angels vs Deamons game, where you would have both God and Devil as unlynchable and unkillable by any means with day kills and night recruitment. Never ran it though...

[Sirius Kase]

+ 500 Credits :- For anyone surviving on the Winning Team

Thanks, that's it.