Mafia - Borderlands!

[The Silver Shroud]

Normally mafia games start with a night phase - meaning someone turns up dead and doesn't even get to play. One of the reasons why the shift to day phase starts occurred.

 

[Noodle]

Noodle was lynched, for all intent and purpose, because he was an absentee player.

I don't disagree that from your perspective I seemed absent, but I'm confident that those who have played with me over the last . . what, decade? would have found my level of activity uncharacteristically high last game.

 

[The Silver Shroud]

I was in favor of lynching SS from the outset of the game and later others joined in. Noodle was lynched, for all intent and purpose, because he was an absentee player. Diablo lasted the longest by playing a good social game and not making waves. I see no great strategy that led to the ouster of the 2 scum that were lynched and I certainly see no brilliant sleuthing involved in the many town that were ultimately (falsely) accused and lynched. I see a great deal of talk about the proper sway to play the game--but I've never seen how said strategy actually resulted in the outcome they were seeking. As all we are is avatars and typed text, nobody has any reason to trust anything that anyone else has to say--unless it is verified through a special role (i.e., my airstrike on Coju)--and that only verifies it to the person with the power. Maybe I havent played enough, but I've never been involved in a game where the town won in any other way than plain old dumb luck.

That's tunneling Scott. While I did end up being mafia this game, don't let situations like that cloud your judgement. Meaning that oftentimes, arguments between two players end up being TvT and the real mafia use that to their advantage.

There isn't always some strategy be it great or small that leads to a scum lynch. Sometimes it's catching scum in a lie, which scum need to do more often to win. I'm my case it was a half truth. I was the town tracker (true), I did investigate Noodle and got back a result that he went nowhere the night I got converted (true) I said I investigated Noammr the second night (false) I carried out the mafia NK for...reasons. coju caught me in that lie because he tracked me and Noammr turned up dead.

Now consider this: the game played different. I track Noodle N1, get a "does not go anywhere" response. I'm this scenario, I do not get converted. Noammr does not die that night because it wasn't me pushing his NK for the mafia.

Game goes on. I think Noodle is town (again because I got a goes nowhere read), the lynch on Noodle likely does not happen the same way or not at all.

Next night I target Noammr and see he visits someone (cop action) let's say D2DC. D2DC does not turn up dead so based on my read, I know he's town. But I think Noodle is too.

Noammr cops Noodle and gets a guilty/mafia read.

We hit endgame.

How does it turn out between me, Noodle d2dc and noodle?

 

[Caluin Graye]

I don't disagree that from your perspective I seemed absent, but I'm confident that those who have played with me over the last . . what, decade? would have found my level of activity uncharacteristically high last game.

I did remark at one point that while Rabble-Rouser was obviously too powerful, you were the best of any person to have gotten it assigned.

 

[Prestige7]

That's tunneling Scott. While I did end up being mafia this game, don't let situations like that cloud your judgement. Meaning that oftentimes, arguments between two players end up being TvT and the real mafia use that to their advantage.

There isn't always some strategy be it great or small that leads to a scum lynch. Sometimes it's catching scum in a lie, which scum need to do more often to win. I'm my case it was a half truth. I was the town tracker (true), I did investigate Noodle and got back a result that he went nowhere the night I got converted (true) I said I investigated Noammr the second night (false) I carried out the mafia NK for...reasons. coju caught me in that lie because he tracked me and Noammr turned up dead.

Now consider this: the game played different. I track Noodle N1, get a "does not go anywhere" response. I'm this scenario, I do not get converted. Noammr does not die that night because it wasn't me pushing his NK for the mafia.

Game goes on. I think Noodle is town (again because I got a goes nowhere read), the lynch on Noodle likely does not happen the same way or not at all.

Next night I target Noammr and see he visits someone (cop action) let's say D2DC. D2DC does not turn up dead so based on my read, I know he's town. But I think Noodle is too.

Noammr cops Noodle and gets a guilty/mafia read.

We hit endgame.

How does it turn out between me, Noodle d2dc and noodle?

I don't understand "tracking" at all. If I was tracked, would I even know it, or is just just a narrative that the moderator creates to move the story forward?

 

[Noodle]

You would not know you had been tracked. During the night phase, the tracker contacts the moderator and identifies the target. He then hears back what the target did that night, such as nothing, or visited so-and-so. No alignments are given (but can generally be deduced), and the target has no idea they were targeted.

 

[thefranklin]

I was in favor of lynching SS from the outset of the game and later others joined in. Noodle was lynched, for all intent and purpose, because he was an absentee player. Diablo lasted the longest by playing a good social game and not making waves. I see no great strategy that led to the ouster of the 2 scum that were lynched and I certainly see no brilliant sleuthing involved in the many town that were ultimately (falsely) accused and lynched. I see a great deal of talk about the proper sway to play the game--but I've never seen how said strategy actually resulted in the outcome they were seeking. As all we are is avatars and typed text, nobody has any reason to trust anything that anyone else has to say--unless it is verified through a special role (i.e., my airstrike on Coju)--and that only verifies it to the person with the power. Maybe I havent played enough, but I've never been involved in a game where the town won in any other way than plain old dumb luck.

Well ** too

 

[coju]

I didn't know who to vote for. All I know is I didn't trust either one of them. I especially didn't trust some homing missile device that SB came up with... Only targets hyperion.. How would a missile know that!? I thought maybe the cop claim was because he killed the cop and knew no one else would claim. After d2idc voted for both of us, I figured he was town just trying to get the last votes in. (I think that was him...) To me, that confirmed that he was town. SB saying, "does that mean we win" made me think maybe he knew who the last vote should be for for his team to win (only mafia would know they needed to kill a town to win). I also thought SB was scum from the get-go because of the way he and SS interacted. But, then, maybe it was because they are irl friends.

Anywho.

It was a really fun game to play. Good seeing all you faces again!

May the Lord bless you all!

 

[The Silver Shroud]

Can anyone guess why I tracked Noodle first night?

 

[Noodle]

my sheer animal magnetism?

 

[Prestige7]

I didn't know who to vote for. All I know is I didn't trust either one of them. I especially didn't trust some homing missile device that SB came up with... Only targets hyperion.. How would a missile know that!? I thought maybe the cop claim was because he killed the cop and knew no one else would claim. After d2idc voted for both of us, I figured he was town just trying to get the last votes in. (I think that was him...) To me, that confirmed that he was town. SB saying, "does that mean we win" made me think maybe he knew who the last vote should be for for his team to win (only mafia would know they needed to kill a town to win). I also thought SB was scum from the get-go because of the way he and SS interacted. But, then, maybe it was because they are irl friends.

Anywho.

It was a really fun game to play. Good seeing all you faces again!

May the Lord bless you all!

With respect to the missile attack. All I know was what was posted on the PM which told me my role.

When I posted "did we win" i did it because I thought we had locked Diablo. As such, I thought the game was over.

This is the first game that I participated in that SS was not the moderator. Or interaction was 100% genuine. I felt he was giving me a more difficult time in the game because of IRL--I thought he felt I was an easy target because I'm not a RPG player and had only 3 (short) games of mafia under my belt. I felt that if I didn't go right back at him I would have been taken out early.

 

[Prestige7]

Can anyone guess why I tracked Noodle first night?

Because he is a passive player and wouldn't give you much information through his posts.

 

[The Silver Shroud]

With respect to the missile attack. All I know was what was posted on the PM which told me my role.

When I posted "did we win" i did it because I thought we had locked Diablo. As such, I thought the game was over.

This is the first game that I participated in that SS was not the moderator. Or interaction was 100% genuine. I felt he was giving me a more difficult time in the game because of IRL--I thought he felt I was an easy target because I'm not a RPG player and had only 3 (short) games of mafia under my belt. I felt that if I didn't go right back at him I would have been taken out early.

There's no way you could have locked him, for that to happen he would have to vote himself. Which no scum will ever do, and (usually) no town will either.

Also about our back and forth. Common mafia tactic would have been for them to take one of us out after our back and forth (this is with me being town too). Naturally that makes the other look bad. You lived because a) I know they would be looking at me. B) You did not a role with a night action to perform (yess I caught that).

@zemaj, you can PM your answer if you like.

 

[The Silver Shroud]

Because he is a passive player and wouldn't give you much information through his posts.

Bzzt. Incorrrect.

 

[thefranklin]

Scott, I highly disagree with your post saying this game was a crapshoot.

Noodle was not lynched because he lurked around. (although he does that a lot, and I for one will lynch him instead of others of equal scumminess due to his playstyle, but that wasnt the case here).

You did absolutely nothing this game in an attempt to find scum. So while I can see Coju's vote, there was a major thing you did that painted you as town.

Right before the missile attack, you made a comment about not being able to wait until the next update. Then the missile attack happened. While your post looked like useless spam at the time, when it came claim time it was huge for the town to have that information. No scum would breadcrumb an action ahead of time that would kill someone in the daytime.

Of course, no one noticed it. The mafia this game eliminated people in order of experience, and it worked well for them. The last few town didn't care or couldn't reread people's posts after new information was gathered. When someone flips scum, it is important to go back and look at their interactions (or lack of interactions) with others. Most of the time that is all you have to go over. Did anyone go back and look at the sequence of actions that occurred before SS lynch? Of course not. That is what determined Noodle scum and Ewak town. Most games aren't that obvious though.

 

[The Silver Shroud]

Also i put together a list of "priority" as far as who to NK.

I'll copy and paste from the mafia thread:

Ok the way I see it, if none of us votes, Scott, Mrewok, Franklin, Coju and IronArrow all have to agree on the same person when voting or it's a no lynch. Let's all sit back and watch what they do. If they seem to be voting for Coju, we will discuss who of us and how and when to jump on coju's train. If it's anyone else (not the three of us) we vote somewhere in the middle and let them lock.

In my opinion, threat wise from top (most threat) to bottom (least threat), they are:

Coju
Franklin
Scott
Ewok
Ironarrow

Coju and Franklin are hight thread simply cause of play experience.

Then earlier:

Unless someone obviously claims a Power Role, our priority of NK's should be:

1. Bad Ash (if Noodle wishes) or zemaj
2. The other from above
3. Coju
4. Noammr
5. The Franklin
6. Scott
7. Mrewak
8. Iron arrow

Pretty much the last 3 in any order and the middle ones (3,4,5) in any order.

Thoughts?

 

[The Silver Shroud]

Also there's a reason why D2DC did so well, in part, that was because of me. I knew this was his second game and hs first as scum, so I gave him some help by was of a post from mafiascum.net, this:

[highlight]Credit goes to GreyIce of Mafiascum.net[/highlight]

Something else I want to put out there before the game goes too far. I would even PM it to keep it out of other players eyes, but that's a no no.

So here's a bit of information posted by one of the IC players on mafiascum.net...IC's are a teaching position for new player games and I think the info posted will be of help in general:

Im going to leave the formatting tags in as it's too much hassle to remove them all, but it's a good read.

So IC post, yay! I'm your "Inexperienced Challenged" which is a cutsey way of saying I've been playing for a while. Join date isn't particularly indicative of skill, but it is indicative of experience!

Many of you will have either not played mafia, or played it on other sites. It's pretty obvious how the game works (we lynch one person each day, the bad guys kill one person each night) but here's a few unique terms and things to MS:

"Scum" - The bad guys. This term evolved as a unifier for Werewolf/Mafia as the bad guys in the game, and has grown to incorporate every anti-town role (serial killers, arsonists, cults, lynchers, anyone who wants townies to die as part of their win condition). It's not meant as a value judgment here - it's practically a neutral term. I apologize if it's offensive, but it's as much a part of site culture as the term "lynch" (which can also be offensive) and it's not going anywhere.

RQS - Random Question Stage. This was an early form of the answer of "how to start the game", and it was asking people random questions, like "do you watch wrestling" and "how old are you". This had two serious drawbacks. First, the answers were quite canned after a while, and often had no relevant information to the mafia game. And second, RQS would spawn side conversations that had nothing to do with mafia, and thus would create "noise" that interfered with playing the game.

RVS - Random Voting Stage. This cuts to the chase. We're here to decide who to lynch today. So vote people for semi-meaningless reasons, because Really, it's a thing. We suck hard at randomness. So all those "random" votes really aren't, and there's alignment relevant information within them. That can then be used to kick off the game.

Lurking - to read the game without posting. Usually considered scummy, as it is a strong scum tactic to "stay off the radar". It's hard to read people who don't post.

Gameplay tactics:

Town have the following goals:
- Find scum
- Work with other town players to get scum lynched
- Avoid being lynched

This is the general order of priority. Finding scum is your highest priority. If you can't find scum, you can't win. Goal number two is working with other players to get scum lynched. No one player can EVER lynch scum on their own, it always requires at least two. Other people have to listen to you! So you need to get other people on your side.

[area]Scum Tactic Finding townies who are wrong and agreeing with them can be very powerful. Done well you can get a lynch on town and then leave them taking the heat the next day. At worst everyone will agree it's a "good lynch" and not consider your vote. Be careful, you don't want to be seen as agreeing with every wagon, but done judiciously "oh that makes sense" can be a really strong position post.[/area]

Finally, you want to appear town. This is of tertiary importance, but if every townie did it perfectly we'd win every game. Don't put too much effort into it, but do work with others enough they can town read you. Explain your thoughts. You don't have to answer endless questions, but at least talk to others about what you're doing.

Scum have the following goals:

- Survive the day phase
- Have your partners survive the day phase
- Be set up to survive later day phases

This really is the entire goal. Town wants exactly two people lynched, but you will settle for anyone town (and at worst, even ANYONE who isn't you, your partner included). If you never get lynched you win. That's your goal. Blend in, act like townies, be town enough to avoid the wagon. This can very much be an exercise of "not being the slowest" - if the lynch is a bear you just have to always beat out the slowest runner - and you have a friend to give someone a push. You're in this with your buddy, and it's a vast hostile world, but you have a lot of information the town doesn't.

Night kills are for finding power roles, and killing townies who you don't think are lynchable in the long run. It's how you make your long-term plans. If each day is an exercise in not being the slowest, then each night is an effort to shoot the fastest, the best bear wrangler, the person who is the biggest threat to you. Oh and if you think someone has a power role they need to die.

[area]Town hint: If you are a "vanilla townie" then you are well suited for a strong leadership role or a role as a trusted adviser to important people. You want to be that super fast person who the scum shoot, because your power roles are stronger in night play. Getting shot by scum is a compliment - it means they looked at the player list and said "this player is one we find scary and strong, our chances to win drop if they're alive". They will shoot someone, and if it's you then you've done well.[/area]

So that's basically the game. Town want to hunt down scum and lynch them. Scum want to avoid being lynched at all costs, and use the night kill to help shape this.

One quick strategy note:

Lynch All Liars - a common strategy here. Lying is anti-town, and there are vanishingly few town motives to lie. On the other hand scum lie every time they post. In general, every player caught in a direct lie should be lynched outright, even if the lie seems minor. Town players, please don't lie.

Common fallacies from other sites:

No Lynch: "How can we kill someone if we don't have concrete information?" I've heard this question a lot. The answer is "very easily!" We're a paranoid lynch mob, after all. But the better question is "why would we kill someone without concrete information?" The answer is simple. Preserving townie lives is an illusion. First, scum will kill one person each night, so townies will die regardless. Second, the only way we can win is by lynching players. The more players we lynch, the better the town's chances of winning. Giving up a lynch is giving up a chance to win. There's some times where it's appropriate, but they're extremely rare.

Notably, if you look at the section above, avoiding the lynch is the scum's primary motivation. By not lynching you've guaranteed you're not lynching scum.

I need a tell! - Scum tells are like poker tells. They're not really "he tugs his ear" or "she adjusts her glasses" but more like moves made for a reason. Townies want to find and lynch scum, and know only their own alignment. Scum have to fake all arguments to lynch townies, only have one other player they want to live (in this game) and know everyone's alignments. This makes people play differently.

Is this game just psychological mumbo-jumbo? Yes, in a sense. This is applied psychology, and psychology is a soft science indeed. Everything is a generalization, even if it's a very good one, and you have to figure out how it applies to specific people here. You will also discover many, many psychological ticks you suffer from yourself - confirmation bias, just world theorem, exploitable sympathy, etc. Scum are basically playing the role of con artists, and every time you fall for it you've been conned.

 

[D2DC]

Noodle was not lynched because he lurked around. (although he does that a lot, and I for one will lynch him instead of others of equal scumminess due to his playstyle, but that wasnt the case here).

Yea, I was SUPER nervous with the SS vote. I figure that was Noodles downfall. 3 votes already on SS, and SS + a very hasty vote from Noodle on Ewak. SS wanted me to jump on that vote also. That looked waaay too obvious to me. I didn't want to jump on unless I knew it would lock.

 

[Prestige7]

You did absolutely nothing this game in an attempt to find scum. So while I can see Coju's vote, there was a major thing you did that painted you as town.

Don't know what your definition of "absolutely nothing" means but I would beg to differ. At a minimum, I made numerous arguments as to why I thought SS was mafia. As he was the first mafia lynched, and was eliminated in the first half of the game, I will take some credit for that. Further, I shot the scrambler at Coju. I did that because I felt that he was scum. When he survived I realized that my belief was misguided and tried to work with him--the only player I could trust--to sniff out the other scum. Between his tracking and my 100% confidence that he was innocent should have been enough to win.

 

[D2DC]

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Could someone please read and illustrate for me? I prefer visual aids.