No-Eliminate D1: A bad move?

[Toon Fighter]

Hi, I've played mafia on other sites and forums, and in one of them the consensus seems to be that the best play D1 is to no-lynch and just wait for the night. I always try to shake up some discussion during that day, but, town and mafia both usually vote for a no-lynch, with the result of a wasted day, and everyone's time. My question is:

1) Why is No-lynch during D1 a bad move?
2) How do I convince a town that it is a bad move?
3) If the town's mentality doesn't change, how can I (as a player) take advantage of it?
4) If the town's mentality doesn't change, how can I (as a mod) take advantage of it/change the rules to modify the player's mentality/design the game around the fact that D1 will likely have a no-lynch?

I'd appreciate any answers. Thank you for your input!

[Zachrulez]

If the game starts with an odd number of players, no lynching takes away one of the town's mislynches prior to the scum getting the endgame win.

In a 9 player game with 2 scum, you lose upon mislynching for a third time. If you no lynch, you can only mislynch once. (And will lose upon the second mislynch.)

Getting more town controlled kills on the scum is going to give you a much better chance of winning than getting less. (You can probably even point to a higher scum win % on the relevant site.)

[Captain Corporal]

Let's take your classic newbie setup, as an example.
7 town
2 scum

Let's say that the town decide to NL D1, but lynch every day from then, and scum also kills every night.
Day 2: 6 town, 2 scum. (25% chance of hitting scum)
Day 3: 4 town, 2 scum. (33% chance of hitting scum)

Now let's say town lynch D1:
D2: 5 town, 2 scum. (28.5% chance of hitting scum)
Day 3: 3 town, 2 scum. (40% chance of hitting scum)

As you can see, the town have a greater chance of hitting scum if they lynch anyone D1. There's some rule about that, it's in the wiki somewhere.
This is just from a statistical PoV, but lynching D1 is almost always better.



Ninja'd >_> What Zach said.

[iamausername]

Lynching can kill scum.

Scum kills can't.

Less lynching = more scum kills.

[Captain Corporal]

This is what I'm talking about, but the opposite way around and not on D1.
The wiki link I was looking for: ...and they all lived happily ever after
Numbers, Part 1 is also relevant.

[Magua]

1) Why is No-lynch during D1 a bad move?
2) How do I convince a town that it is a bad move?
3) If the town's mentality doesn't change, how can I (as a player) take advantage of it?
4) If the town's mentality doesn't change, how can I (as a mod) take advantage of it/change the rules to modify the player's mentality/design the game around the fact that D1 will likely have a no-lynch?

For #1 and #2, IIAUN said it best -- if you don't lynch, you can't kill scum. You're just giving them free extra kills.

#3 is hard. Obviously taking advantage of it as scum is simple -- let them. If you're town, you probably simply can't take advantage of it, because it doesn't work to your advantage. If town is set on NL, you could try to run a policy lynch on a known lurker/non-contributor D1, but if they flip town, you may then become the lynch target D2.

#4 is easier. Depending upon what you want to accomplish, there are a number of ways you can alter the game rules:
- Start the game with an even number of players, so that the town doesn't lose a lynch by no-lynching (assuming one kill a Night).
- You could have a plurality lynch at deadline instead of a no lynch (person with the most votes dies). This won't work if the town actually votes for no lynch as opposed to simply not lynching anyone.
- You could have a Night-start game. Downside is that someone who wanted to play will probably die, but the upside is that investigative roles may have information that will spur the town to actually lynch someone.
- Since the biggest reason towns no lynch on D1 is "lack of information", give roles that can do things during the Day that generate information. Eg, a Day Vigilante (or, to be more forceful, 1 1-shot Day-1-Only Day Vigilante).
- Make it a known part of the setup that scum gain a reward if town no lynches (eg, "If there is a No Lynch, the Mafia gain an additional kill that Night" or similar.)

[Lost Butterfly]

I had that problem in an offsite forum - what happened was mods put in a 'Benefactor' who if there was a No Lynch Day 1 could pick a town player to kill, instead. It wasn't a very refined option but it did brute force the problem pretty well eventually.

[kuribo]

Basically, if you don't lynch day 1, you can't analyze the wagons on day 2.

IE, if scum gets lynched day 1, you can try to look at the wagon and figure out who was bussing / who was avoiding the wagon.
If town gets lynched day 1, you can try to figure out who was pushing it.

If you no-lynch Day 1, then the scum kills someone Night 1, and you still don't have wagons to analyze on Day 2.

[quadz08]

If there's a huge giant issue with this on site meta, then designs games for a Night 0, and start with that.

[Vi]

Hi, I've played mafia on other sites and forums, and in one of them the consensus seems to be that the best play D1 is to no-lynch and just wait for the night.

In my experience the reason for this is "the Cop will eventually save us, so the more we say now the more likely the Mafia are to find said Cop and kill them, so D3 or something we can actually start this game".

[Glork]

No lynch is a terrible, awful, horrible move D1. It is literally the only thing that is worse than self-hammering as town.

First of all, the lynch is the ONLY thing that is guaranteed to be in the hands of a town. Barring multiball/setup shenanigans, there are always more town than scum in an active game, and town players will have more votes than scum players. So as a whole, the town controls a lynch.

In contrast, night play generally favors scum. The scum get to nightkill. There are often foils to protown power roles (Mafia Roleblockers, Godfathers, etc.). Even protown abilities can wind up hurting the town (like when a vigilante shoots four protown players in four nights).

Giving up your lynches literally hands extra nightkills to the scums.

By extension, No Lynching on

Day One

means:
1) Your first night of actions is a series of completely blind actions. This is BAD. Playing a role correctly is a talent, and you give away your ability to play your role correctly for an ENTIRE Day/Night cycle.
2) Your D2 lynch will be uneducated. Yes, there will be results from a scum nightkill and possibly an investigative result. But unless the investigative result is claimed, nobody will know anything, so they're still playing blindly. A D2 lynch after a D1 No-Lynch is almost as random and inaccurate as a D1 lynch.
3) As mentioned before, you're handing a living player to the scums. A town should seek to use every advantage it possibly can, and going into D2 with no bandwagons and a dead protown player is just bad strategy.
4) If a moderator designs a setup for a Day Start, you should assume that the setup is balanced for a Day Start. While assuming moderator competence is not always safe (Blood Bowl Mafia, anyone?), it's a good baseline. Letting the game "start" with night unbalances the setup, and probably NOT in your favor.

[Staeg]

Well - if the numbers don't favor it, then give them the numbers. Make them think. If they don't listen, I'm not sure why are you still playing there. If the numbers do favor a nolynch (well, don't not favor it... or something), I guess that it's not THE worst idea, but you can try the other things mentioned in-thread.

[Shadoweh]

On another forum we kind of had this problem. It was more players were too lazy to move their votes? I tried a mechanic where our IRC dicebot would randomly lynch someone if there wasn't a majority. The town suggested letting the dicebot choose Day 1 because it always selects scum (and it did so ??? )

[Om of the Nom]

I thought it was common knowledge on there that Keine-tan is the best mafia player?

[Mastermind of Sin]

There are times when no-lynching is the correct option. It's generally not on Day 1. However, if I'm convinced the people with the highest wagons are all town, I'd rather see a no lynch than a town person fall. That's very situational, though, and very rarely am I that confident in a read.

[UberNinja]

I tend to think it's a bad idea because it gives scum a head start, plus even though you get information from the night kill flips, there's literally no chance of scum dying (unless it's a game with two scum factions).

Those should both be good enough reasons to lynch someone Day 1.

[callforjudgement]

The meta in some real-life games I played was for policy lynches based on stupid reasons day 1, which is nowhere near as bad as a no-lynch, but still quite bad. (We eventually fixed it by adding a jester to the setup for a while; people had learned how to play day 1 better by the time we removed it again.)

[Mr. Flay]

Basically, if you don't lynch day 1, you can't analyze the wagons on day 2.

IE, if scum gets lynched day 1, you can try to look at the wagon and figure out who was bussing / who was avoiding the wagon.
If town gets lynched day 1, you can try to figure out who was pushing it.

If you no-lynch Day 1, then the scum kills someone Night 1, and you still don't have wagons to analyze on Day 2.

This.

[Amrun]

There are times when no-lynching is the correct option. It's generally not on Day 1. However, if I'm convinced the people with the highest wagons are all town, I'd rather see a no lynch than a town person fall. That's very situational, though, and very rarely am I that confident in a read.

Even in that situation, showing everyone that you're right on Day 1 so they can re-orient their reads rather than revisit the same thing AGAIN is still much better.

[Magua]

Even if you think both the wagons on D1 are town, if you no lynch, chances are really, really, really, really, really high that they'll simply be the wagons again D2.

[hitogoroshi]

Even if you think both the wagons on D1 are town, if you no lynch, chances are really, really, really, really, really high that they'll simply be the wagons again D2.

As a corollary, this is why it is (very) occasionally the right move to deadline self-hammer as town.

[callforjudgement]

Although it's a better move to deadline hammer someone else, if there's any chance of doing so.

[Dillon90]

Jokerman-EXE caused a no-lynch, a bad move by any standard. Then he went and tried to spin it as a protown thing while at the same time saying it wasn't intentional.

[Leafsnail]

Thanks for the update

[hp [leaves]]

4) If the town's mentality doesn't change, how can I (as a mod) take advantage of it/change the rules to modify the player's mentality/design the game around the fact that D1 will likely have a no-lynch?

Well, Tarhalindur's Babylon 5 Mafia had a role that won and ended the game if any day ended in a No Lynch. Brutal; but there were never any no lynches after that point in any Tar game