No one is innocent in this world and anyone who says they are is obviously lying
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 7:42 am
by ironstove
VOTE: InnocentVillager
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 8:34 am
by Transcend
VOTE: karnos
Second newbie game together, this time we're both SE's.
However, you're getting lynched first this time
Also, hi I'm a Semi-Experienced (SE) player. I have a few on-site games and off-site games. So I'm quite seasoned in the game. I'm sure IV is willing to help any of you out if you need it but I'm always here too, I'd love to give a helping hand if needed.
Mafia is an aggressive game, and sometimes I tend to get over-aggressive sometimes even though it's just a game. I want to warn you in advance.
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 9:59 am
by ironstove
I'm new to this site, so this is my first game. I've played about a half-dozen or so games on other sites, though so I'm not completely newb.
I'll try my best to be helpful to the game
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 10:10 am
by Joushi
VOTE: Ironstove
What is dead may never die, and your name reminds me of the iron price.
nah but seriously,
ironstove wrote:VOTE: InnocentVillager
and
ironstove wrote:I'm new to this site, so this is my first game. I've played about a half-dozen or so games on other sites, though so I'm not completely newb.
I'll try my best to be helpful to the game
are both pretty small posts hours apart. YOU TRYNA SNEAK SOMETHIN' PAST US HUH?
Hello friends! Just a headsup, my sleep schedule + work schedule means I'll probably be posting at odd times, like 3-4am PST. I'll try and keep up with things on my phone, but since I prefer to make longer posts, I'm not likely to actually make them from my android.
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 10:14 am
by Joushi
VOTE: Vote Ironstove
Oh hey this site has a vote tag? That's cool. Still though, where's the hello in post 1?
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 10:40 am
by Skold
Hey Joushi and Ironstove. It'd be greatly appreciated if you could both get avatars quickly so that it is easier to distinguish your posts.
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 1:28 pm
by Transcend
Friendly reminder: Ironstove is two votes from being lynched. Be careful.
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 2:37 pm
by ironstove
I'm a VT!
I think it would be an appropriate start to a newbie game to accidentally kill a town by hammering in RVS XD
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 2:53 pm
by ironstove
I'll start with some questions! Feel free to answer if you'd like to get the game rolling:
1. How long have you guys been playing mafia?
I just started about 2 months ago, I was playing on a gaming forum and I liked the game enough to read wikis on setups and past games in mafiascum. Games played here are quite different from where I play in terms of setups and people being more aggressive, flaming, and activity (Days are usually 36-48 hours, nights 12 hours). I got the urge to register and try a game here to see how I fare in the slower environment.
2. In a 7v2 setup like this, what do you feel is the best approach to finding the scum?
I find that larger games where town outnumber mafia like this is much easier to mislynch on D1, so I don't give a lot of credence to scum reads on the first day. Once we have everyone post and gather information, we can go for a quick hammer and go into the next day to gather more information. Scum are much easier to fish out as the days go longer and we're in no danger of lylo occurring in the first 2 days, only after 2 mislynches would we be in lylo on D3, which I've found isn't as dire as it sounds because by that point it's very easy to spot who is scum.
3. Is your playstyle more engaged in posting or do you like to sit back and follow activity of others to get your reads? Do you have a different style when you play mafia or town or is it the same?
I would say I'm more of an engaged poster, I will take the time to go back and run ISOs on people every day, but it's not my bread and butter.
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 2:55 pm
by ironstove
Still waiting for the following players to make posts:
Soula
Enefpe no Time
innocentvillager (IC)
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 4:24 pm
by Soula
Hello Hello. I'm in Hawaii, so I might be posting at odd hours; just fyi and all that.
So the game started and someone is already close to being lynched on page 1? sheesh.
In post 14, Transcend wrote:Friendly reminder: Ironstove is two votes from being lynched. Be careful.
Really guys, it just started. What good reason is there to lynch Ironstove at this point? Karnos and Skold seem kind of suspicious voting off the bat like that, unless there's something about this that I'm not getting. That said, Karnos accusing someone of being scum without them even posting is really weird. Either they aren't thinking before they post or they are scum and made a little slip at the beginning. hmmm. I'll be paying attention to them.
In post 16, ironstove wrote:I'll start with some questions! Feel free to answer if you'd like to get the game rolling:
1. How long have you guys been playing mafia?
I played one on another forum, not really knowing what this was about. I did pretty bad, but found it interesting. Thought I would play here because they got really personal and angry over the game. Some people quit because they didn't like the atmosphere. I don't blame them. This should be a fun game, even if we're trying to find out who is lying. I hope it doesn't devolve into people feeling like they are being threatened or something, lol.
2. In a 7v2 setup like this, what do you feel is the best approach to finding the scum?
Honestly, I try to trust my intuition and look at the voting patterns. I'll try to understand a player from their perspective and see if everything they have been doing adds up to their modus operandi or if there are some strange inconsistencies. Some players are naturally inconsistent and some act scummy naturally. So someone who is consistently inconsistent is acting normally in my opinion. But that said, I prefer to get a feel for each player before going after people. But if that fails, I'll easily switch from popular targets to innocuous ones, since I know mafia will being trying to get town to go after each other, while also looking like a low-key helpful town. Well that's what I imagine anyway; I know that won't always be the case either. Just what I've seen in some games and the one I played.
3. Is your playstyle more engaged in posting or do you like to sit back and follow activity of others to get your reads? Do you have a different style when you play mafia or town or is it the same?
I need to get a feel for each player. I need to hear how they reason themselves when questioned and see how other people feel about them. I prefer not lynch until last minute, since that gives a lot more posts to work with and makes it easier for mafia to slip-up and leave some kind of trail in my opinion.
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 5:55 pm
by Joushi
Ayy so work is slow. Let's see if we can get a full post in!
I'm not sure how relevant it is, but I've started looking through some people's games history. Am I allowed to link these or no? I saw a discussion somewhere about referencing out of game stuff but I'm not sure where it is.
Well my old account is over 5 years old here, but it's also been like 5 years since I've last accessed it. I'm used to playing a lot of in-person, but there's a significant difference between playing in-person and forum mafia. The ability to directly quote people is crazy!
2. In a 7v2 setup like this, what do you feel is the best approach to finding the scum?
I've always specialized more heavily in games with lots of roles, I tend not to be as good in a game with a lot of vanilla roles, simply because it's harder (and often times less fun) for me to track threads in people's posts over the course of days than it is to track where people are pointing as to what they supposedly did last night. Other than my mother of course.
Keep track of how people think though, flip-flopping around can mean a lot of things depending on how they're doing it.
3. Is your playstyle more engaged in posting or do you like to sit back and follow activity of others to get your reads? Do you have a different style when you play mafia or town or is it the same?
When I get the time, I prefer to make longer posts simply because it's more interesting and I'd rather format them in ways that makes sense to me rather than do anything else, so often one or two larger posts a day with small bursts of small posts when a bunch of people happen to be on at the same time.
I feel like I try and play the same way, if anyone is familiar with the game The Resistance, I'll always vote no if I'm not on the mission regardless of my alignment. Personas persist between games, whether you want them to or not.
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 5:59 pm
by innocentvillager
IC Post
Hello friends! I am innocentvillager, your friendly neighborhood IC (Inexperience-Challenged). Basically what that means is that I am still first and foremost a player, but I am also here as a teaching role and am obligated to answer any theory/game mechanics questions truthfully regardless of my alignment. So if you have any questions about how the game works or the theory behind certain situations, feel free to direct those towards me! Other players that can help if you want a second opinion or when I'm not around are the 3 SE (Semi-Experienced) players in this game, who happen to be karnos, Skold, and Transcend. Unlike me, however, they are NOT bound by the rules to truthfully talk about theory/mechanics, so keep that in mind. Of course, as either alignment, I will be playing to my wincon. Read all about my guidelines for being a good IC for more information.
Okay! So below I am going to
regurgitate
explain some basic stuff everyone should know on this site! Feel free to ignore this if you have played here before, but if you are new, I highly recommend you at least take a skim! Thanks for playing with us, and I hope everyone has a great experience!
Spoiler: Lynching Mechanics
In Newbie games, a lynch is achieved if and only if at any point, one player has a simple majority of votes placed on them. For example, right now there are 9 players alive, so if at any point in time 5 people are voting for the same person (selfvoting is okay too, but rarely ever a good play), that player is automatically lynched. The last vote is what we call a "hammer", since after that lynch-achieving vote is placed no one may retract their vote, and everyone may talk until the mod comes to close the thread.
Do not hammer recklessly! The more productive discussion we can generate, the more we can analyze interactions to find scum, and hammering too early deprives us of that information. Before you hammer, it is good form to ALWAYS declare your intent to place the hammer vote using bold tags. At that point, you should also ask for a claim, so that we do not accidentally end up lynching a power role (PR).
Lylo, Mylo, L-X
The terms Lylo, Mylo, and L-X (X being a number, usually 1 or 2) exist to summarize the game state based on the majority lynch rule defined above.
LyLo
(Lynch or Lose) is a situation where town must lynch or lose the game (no lynching will lose too). In Newbie games, this is generally true when townies outnumbers mafia by exactly 1.
MyLo
(Mislynch and Lose) is a situation where if town mislynches (lynches a townie), they lose the game. A no lynch may be a good option here to eliminate the lynch pool by 1!
If a player is at
L-X,
that means they are X votes away from being lynched. The most significant L-X is "L-1". If you put someone at L-1, you MUST declare it in bold, since it is very possible that someone will accidentally miscount and hammer said person (and also gives scum an excuse to do so!). Please count carefully in order to make sure that you are not putting someone at L-1 without declaring it in thread.
Spoiler: Common Terms and Abbreviations
(Stolen from Dierfire who stole from Aeronaut)
Here's a quick list of terms you may see thrown around:
IC: Inexperience-Challenged player (that's me!)
SE: Semi-experienced challenged player. These are players with a good amount of experience on the site.
Scum: General term for non-town alignments, in the case of this game, the mafia players
L-#: The number of votes before a player is lynched. (Example, "innocentvillager is at L-4" means that I am 4 votes away from being lynched)
LYLO: Lynch (correctly) or lose. This means that the Town must lynch a Mafia player in that phase or the Mafia will win.
MYLO: Mislynch and lose. This means that if the Town lynches a Town player in that phase, the Mafia will win. This is different from LYLO in that lynching nobody at all does not lose the game.
BP: Bulletproof, a role that can get shot by the mafia once and not die.
Doc: Doctor, a role that can attempt to protect people from nightkills.
JK: Jailkeeper, a role that both protects and blocks its target.
Scummy: An adjective for any action (or player) more likely to come from or be mafia than town.
Meta: A player's past style of playing from completed games as a given role as compared to their current play.
PR: Power Role, any role that is not vanilla town or mafia goon.
OMGUS: (Oh my god you suck) is where a player essentially votes a player for voting them first. Considered not good play.
NK: Night Kill. The mafia's kill they get to use once a night.
PT: Private Topic: The hidden secret forum where the mafia may talk at all times during the game.
Crumb: A hidden message that can be revealed as needed or will be found after your death hinting on what you do with a power role, or that you are that role.
Claim: An outright claim of your role. Please note you may NOT post your role PM, you can only paraphrase it. DO NOT DO THIS UNTIL IT IS COMPLETELY NECESSARY. I will discuss claiming more later.
CC: Counter Claim. This is when someone claims a role that makes a previous role claim false, exposing the previous player as lying.
Hammer: The vote that brings somebody from L-1 to lynched. IT'S IMPORTANT TO DECLARE INTENT TO HAMMER BEFORE DOING IT!
Mislynch: When town mistakenly lynches a player who was town.
Spoiler: RVS
We are currently in the RVS (or Random Voting Stage) of the game. That means that we are throwing around random votes often backed by silly reasons to get discussion going, since we obviously don't have enough information at this point to figure out who is mafia! Eventually the game will break out of RVS phase and we will shift towards analyzing intentions, motivations, etc.
Spoiler: General Tips
There is a lot of theory and debate about good townplay and scumplay, so I won't go too deep into advice here. I really recommend reading the wiki for the first time if you haven't already, if you are interested in theory/good play! That said, there are definitely some overarching, general tips that you should follow.
If you are town:
Be proactive! This is the big, overarching tip for town players in my opinion. Mafia generally benefit from lack of discussion, so it is in your best interest to be a productive town player who is working hard to look for scum. Being proactive can imply many things: anything from posting a lot (avoid "fluff" or non-relevant posting, which induces apathy and is therefore antitown), to asking good questions, pushing cases with solid reasoning, rereading the thread to see if you are entrenched in confbias (or confirmation bias), using your vote to apply pressure, etc.
Play to your wincon to find scum. If you've found likely scum, lay out your reasoning to try and get other people to vote for them.
If you are scum:
There are a lot of ways you can play this one! Above anything else, you should do anything you would do as a town player, and do everything you would do as town to try and "scumhunt". The most important thing to keep in mind is that town doesn't really know what they're doing! Wagons are bound to form and dissolve on both scum and town for any game, but that doesn't mean the people on there are 100% certain at all! Don't freak out if you're getting wagoned, show that the cases are silly (which they often are, because townies are prone to confbias even when they happen to be correct) and proceed to look for scum.
Spoiler: Wiki Links
I highly recommend parsing through the wiki to see what you like. Some articles to get you started:
I think it would be an appropriate start to a newbie game to accidentally kill a town by hammering in RVS XD
ironstove, if this was a serious claim, it was very antitown. Don't clarify whether it was or not (best to give mafia as little information as possible), but please keep in mind for the future that in general, claiming when you don't have to or have no incentive to benefits mafia because they can get closer to figuring out who the PRs are. You had 3 votes but you were not at L-1 yet (and it is still RVS), so you were not in danger of getting lynched. I can go over this more if you have any questions!
Joushi wrote:Ayy so work is slow. Let's see if we can get a full post in!
I'm not sure how relevant it is, but I've started looking through some people's games history. Am I allowed to link these or no? I saw a discussion somewhere about referencing out of game stuff but I'm not sure where it is.
Feel free to quote or link
completed
games! If a game is
ONGOING
, however, please do not make any mention of it. It's site policy, but in a way also common sense
1. How long have you guys been playing mafia?
I've played in-person mafia a few times and prefer it to online mafia with the right group of people! However, in-person mafia requires a lot of people, which isn't always easy to organize (plus, you need to find the right people). That introduced to me to epicmafia a few years back, which is a chat based outlet for playing mafia. I was very active at that time, but don't play as much on there anymore. I like mafiascum a lot since the long days really make you think critically and carefully. I've been on site for 4+ years, but I took quite a few hiatuses in there, so I'm not actually as scary or experienced as I look! In fact, this is my first time ICing a game, and I hope I make a good impression of this site on all of you!
2. In a 7v2 setup like this, what do you feel is the best approach to finding the scum?
Once we advance out of RVS (usually happens when people start to accuse or put pressure on nitpicky things done in RVS), we should scumhunt as much naturally D1, D2. Natural scumhunting can include asking good questions, posting analyses, critically analyzing posts, watching where people place their votes, looking for insincere scumhunting/underlying motivations, etc. It is best to let the PRs do their jobs for most of the game and for them to stay hidden until they get some sort of a result. Every Newbie game has either a Cop, Jailkeeper, or a Tracker, who can receive very substantive results that help us in game during the night. We should ideally lynch every day we have an odd number of players in order to get the maximum amount of information possible, and we almost always want these lynches to happen in the second RL week (a day or two before the deadline is generally best). I can explain how the lynching procedure works more later as we crawl towards the end of Day 1.
3. Is your playstyle more engaged in posting or do you like to sit back and follow activity of others to get your reads? Do you have a different style when you play mafia or town or is it the same?
My playstyle varies a lot. Many times I am rather aggressive and weirdly proactive. Sometimes I am extremely lurky, mostly due to RL commitments. I tend to be aggressive/defensive as town and try to emulate that as scum, but it really depends on how I'm feeling. For example, this game I will be playing pretty differently from my normal games, since I am ICing and I am bound to certain criteria to set a good example for new players on this site
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 6:32 pm
by innocentvillager
In post 19, Joushi wrote:I'm not sure how relevant it is, but I've started looking through some people's games history. Am I allowed to link these or no? I saw a discussion somewhere about referencing out of game stuff but I'm not sure where it is.
Also, I am curious:
1) When did you start looking at peoples' game histories (like before the game started, during the game, right after it started)? I'm guessing you're referring to the players in this game?
2) What are you impressions from what you've seen from other people?
----
I have a townread on ironstove, a very slight townread on Joushi and Soula, and very minor gut scumread on karnos.
VOTE: karnos
Soula wrote:Really guys, it just started. What good reason is there to lynch Ironstove at this point? Karnos and Skold seem kind of suspicious voting off the bat like that, unless there's something about this that I'm not getting. That said, Karnos accusing someone of being scum without them even posting is really weird. Either they aren't thinking before they post or they are scum and made a little slip at the beginning. hmmm. I'll be paying attention to them.
Sorry for posting it a bit late, but I will direct you here to the "RVS" spoiler section of my IC Post. Ironstove is not actually in danger of being lynched, so long as every refrains from putting people at L-1. In its most basic form, RVS is where people vote, often for silly reasons, to try and kickstart the game. I don't think people who are voting for ironstove actually want him lynched (unless they're scum and ironstove is town, lol). It is still, of course, important to be careful in RVS so as to not accidentally lynch someone. That is why we should always
BOLD
whenever we put people at L-1 or intend to hammer. Ironstove was at L-2, so so far he is okay.
You can go ahead and make a vote too! If you see something even remotely scummy at this stage, cast a vote down, and let me know if you have any questions!
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 8:15 pm
by Transcend
ironstove is solid town, if he's mafia a big fat loss is something I endure this game.
With that said: Don't claim your role unless you're at L-1 (1 vote away from being lynched). Especially if the vote is in RVS. None of the 3 votes on you were legitimate votes and now scum have a better idea on who the PR's (power roles i.e. non vanilla townies) are.
Scum ALREADY have a significantly ENORMOUS higher amount of information than town does since they know everyone's alignment in this game. It's best to withhold as much information from the scumteam as possible (i.e. claims) or else that just makes their win a lot easier.