Mafia CLVI: Charity Mafia: -- Pure of Heart Win!

[sjg11]

One last thing:

Fuddin: We've had some trouble with new players doing very little because they feel unqualified to make decisions in the game. Your participation is as valuable as anyone else's, and mistakes are often the easiest way to learn (and you'd be surprised how little the town will scumread you for mistakes). I'm assuming you're town here, because if you're mafia, you have someone to lean on if you need it.

The worst thing you can do is sit back and watch. It gives us nothing to go on, and will only cripple us if you're town, or leave the town one fewer person to screw with them if you're mafia. There's also a decent chance of you getting taken out by a vig if you aren't posting much. So, that being said, jump in with both feet, and don't be afraid to ask questions, no one here bites (except Sjg11 ).

I'd echo this Fuddin.

Genuinely though, if you have any questions about the game/don't understand what somebody's talking about then please just ask. We're all more than willing to answer questions to help a new player.

Also, don't be scared to throw your thought process and ideas out there. If you do this it makes the game a lot easier for your team and is infinitely preferable to lurking.

And I don't bite. Much.

[sjg11]

Another thought...

If we have an inactive, it may be worth someone else volunteering to target an inactive during Night One. This may allow the investigative roles at our disposal to target someone who we have less information about and potentially learn something useful as a result.

Just an idea to potentially make our investigative roles a little bit more useful than they would be through random targeting.

[Fuddin]

Hi everyone! This is my first post in any forum Mafia game ever! I'm eager to help the town!
Okay, @Condude1
1) What exactly do you mean by are the roles alignment-relevant?
2) Why should we not reveal anti-town roles?

@sjg11
I agree with the idea that if we all revealed whom we were going to target, the Mafia could use that information to screw up the town. I also like the idea with the someone volunteering to target the person with the second most lynch votes and then having all vigilantes (if there are any) target the volunteer and then seeing whatever happens to the player with the second most lynch votes. I can be the volunteer to target whomever has the second most votes.

A possibly stupid question: can someone target themself?

I think after the first night, once we see whats happened, we'll have a lot more information to use. At present, we don't even know what roles exist. (Well, except for our own).

[Happymeal]

Besides potentially killing inactives, I think we need to keep any possible vigilantes under control. It's not really their fault they may have been put into this scenario, but I'd like to, in particular, control the vigilante from random night shooting. I mean that in the sense we need to stop him from killing town members at night and I think we can easily solve this problem by doing one of two things:

1. utilize, if we have one, a doctor to protect his target at night. The benefit in this is that the doctor probably won't need to reveal. The disadvantage is that we don't have a doctor to protect one of our own randomly though, to be completely fair, it's gonna be a complete shit show so the likelihood of a planned save is decreased while being able to interpret the data easily may not exist within this game (I'll comment more on this later)

2. Utilize, if we have one, the blocker to stop the vigilante's actions every night. The disadvantage is that it's probably necessary for a blocker to reveal. In most games I've played blocker, when there are roles, is a less common than all the major roles so I can't say I'm particularly confident in our chances on this one. The advantage is still having a doctor save being possible.

Also, I think we should have everyone reveal who they are targeting every night. We need someone to keep track of this. This allows people who save others and use their abilities to benefit the town to be more able to actually use their abilities correctly.

[condude1]

Just trying to think about how we can have some sort of organisation/at least some form of respectable mechanical discussion and debate...

How about we have one player who volunteers to target someone who the town wants to investigate and which all potential town investigative roles can target?

So, for example, we have one, and only one player, stating in thread that they will target the player who gains the second most lynch votes in the thread. All vigilante roles can target that player to attempt to minimise the impact of any potential vigilantes in the game?

I'm suggesting this because I think that gaining some level of certainty with regards to targets could be incredibly useful to us.

Another suggestion is that everyone reveals who they're going to target in the thread before they do so. I... just think that that's too open to manipulation for the Mafia. Moreover... I kind of want to gain the data from how people decide who they're going to select every night.

If we follow my plan/vague idea of a plan, then my suggestion would be that any vig roles target that player. Investigative roles can do what they like. Doctor roles should remain unpredictable but should strongly consider targeting our daily vig sacrifice. No, wait, avoid doing so during Night One so that we can see if there are any actual vigilantes in the game during Night One and can then react accordingly on Day Two coming up with a new tactic.

So, in conclusion this is my plan:
One player volunteers to target the player with the second most lynch votes in the thread.
All vigilante roles target that player so the player with the second most lynch votes die tonight.
Doctors avoid protecting that player so that we can see if there are any vig roles in the game tonight.

There is still the possibility that Blockers screw things up by targeting a vig... but I think this is the best way for us to neuter any potential vigilante roles now before they become too dangerous.

The fact that vig roles were mentioned in the rules makes me worry about them and makes a desire to holster them my main concern today.

Not such a good idea IMO. Anything that involves organizing roles annoys me, and I can think of a lot of ways this can be manipulated. For example, I know a relatively common role is the transporter/busdriver, who switches two targets with each other. Mafia with control of a role like this can wreak havoc on a town organizing everything. OTOH, synergies are a possibility, and I can see an argument for it, but I'd be really careful before setting up an organization strategy like this.

The vig thing seems meh also. I really don't like having another kill proc every night. Again, a mafia picking up a transporter or doctor role, for example, wreaks absolute hell with that plan.

[condude1]

Another thought...

If we have an inactive, it may be worth someone else volunteering to target an inactive during Night One. This may allow the investigative roles at our disposal to target someone who we have less information about and potentially learn something useful as a result.

Just an idea to potentially make our investigative roles a little bit more useful than they would be through random targeting.

This is not a bad idea, and a good place to use vigs.

[Fuddin]

@Happymeal
I like the idea of a blocker or doctor minimizing the damage down by any vigilantes.
However, I don't think we should reveal whom we're going to target, because then, the mafia have full control of the process and can potentially save their own/kill the town since they know what everyone else is doing.

[sjg11]

On phone so quickly replying to Fuddin and then signing off for the night (I'm English for those who don't know).

Alignment relevant means whether something is tied to whether someone is town or Mafia.

For example, if someone's a Doctor (can prevent a night kill in a normal game) then, in a normal game that would mean that they are town. In this game it looks like being a Doctor does not necessarily mean you're town because of how the roles work.

[condude1]

Hi everyone! This is my first post in any forum Mafia game ever! I'm eager to help the town!
Okay, @Condude1
1) What exactly do you mean by are the roles alignment-relevant?
2) Why should we not reveal anti-town roles?

Hey Fuddin! Glad to see you join us so quickly!

1) Some games have roles that are assigned to certain alignments (i.e. Doctor is town, blocker is mafia...) Other games have a bunch of roles that are randomly assigned after alignments are determined. The first method of assignment is very pro-town, and lends well to mass-reveals, or at least partial reveals.
2) Say 4 of the 9 roles are anti-town (this is probably worst-case). 1 of them goes to the mafia, one to the town. The mafia, rather than having a pool of 7 players to shoot for a cop or doctor or similar roles, has a pool of 4 players to aim for the same players, meaning we're more likely to lose town-positive roles.

A simpler way of thinking about it is like this: If we reveal anti-town roles, we are, by omission, revealing which roles are pro-town. This gives the mafia a roadmap of who to kill at night.

[Happymeal]

@Happymeal
I like the idea of a blocker or doctor minimizing the damage down by any vigilantes.
However, I don't think we should reveal whom we're going to target, because then, the mafia have full control of the process and can potentially save their own/kill the town since they know what everyone else is doing.

That's a fair point though I don't know what reveal who we target necessarily changes how the mafia act. So long as they aren't aware of the roles, they shouldn't know for ex. "avoid killing x because x is doctor". No one has to reveal anything besides who they target. What possibly could be in the mafia's arsenal that could help them take control of a scenario like that?