Mini 1755: Game Over

[droog]

If you want to policy ignore my reads no matter how correct they are because of the person they're coming from I can't stop you.

nobody knows youre correct at the time

[Ircher]

^ Exactly

[RadiantCowbells]

#Golden Lynch

Then work with me instead of being a stubborn ass and saying shit like 'UTL HAD HER WAGON!'

[RadiantCowbells]

You gave no case on Golden either, and yous houldn't forget that.

[Ircher]

I was mostly sheeping Axle's

[AxleGreaser]

this game killed my mafia thing that I had.

I haven't been able to properly invest myself in a mafia game to the same extent since this one I'm so mad about what happened.

*shrug*

Really, turn about would be fair play then?

meaning link added.

Not sure what you mean.

Whenever i get around to playing mafia again. It may be a while before I have a large enough slab of time and

desire

.

The problem with lack of

desire

is part caused by the thought of playing game where people play game a based around....
"nyah, everybody do what I say or I wont play any more, I will sit with my vote locked here till doomsday, because i want a pony"
"nyah every body do(vote) what i say because i say."
"Youre a dumbass" << posts about the person not the play.
"Not tellin" , "just Not tellin", and yeah there is time and pace and and sometimes you make space and keep stuff to yourself
...

The list gets longer, but the tldr, would be things I would have expected if Played this game when i was in primary school.
And yes emotional blackmail and social engineering is a thing. And i am pretty sure there could be some found in how I play.
Either that or
Tldr: just people that dont get this

Speaking about heroes in Mafia. There are no heroes in Mafia. There is only good and poor teamplay. And fakeclaiming as town is more often poor teamplay than not (so exceptions do not break this general rule).

A few of my favorite things.

Spoiler: mafia related ones

so there have been a bunch of threads about fakeclaiming, and i've mostly been in the "moderate" camp that said town should usually tell the truth except a few circumstances.

i'm not anymore. now i think town should just always tell the truth. period.

the idea behind this is simple. when it comes to roleclaiming, scum HAVE to lie. even if they end up claiming vt. they don't actually have a town role pm so they have to make one up. town don't have the same problem. they actually HAVE a town role pm so they don't need to make one up. does that sound overly simplistic? i don't think it is. i think people underestimate the utility of being able to remove yourself from the lynchpool with a good claim OR the power to ferret out fakeclaiming scum. when you lie as town, you nullify those. you add to the confusion that's ALREADY inherent in an UNINFORMED situation. you keep yourself firmly in the lynch pool because you look really sketchy and the rest of the town isn't going to be able to parse your exact motivation. but most destructively, you contribute to creating a site meta where it's OK for town to fakeclaim. and that's just... awful.

now, i thought of a few counterarguments that people will undoubtedly pull out:

"i fakeclaim all the time. then whoever calls me on fakeclaiming must be scum so i vote them."

yeah, that's wonderful.

please stay away from me.

"but this one time i fakeclaimed as town on this super dooper cool awesome gambit. i totally rocked the game and won after i got finished wrestling a bear and sticking a sparkler up my ass at the same time."

ok... first off, i really don't believe you OR i don't care enough to actually read the troll game you're going to link me to and tell you why you either lucked out or didn't really help town win.

second, i don't give two shits about whatever isolated incident you want to brag about. i've been here a while and here's how i've seen fakeclaiming go: crap, stinky crap stew, cauldron full of boiling feces

you know what the common thread of all those are? they're well intentioned gambits trying to do something heroic and they did a LOT of damage. to town.

"but i have to claim X role in order to draw the nightkill or avoid the nightkill..."

let me stop you right there.

your second guessing who scum are going to nk is no way to do things, because ultimately it's impossible to reliably "draw" or "avoid" the nightkill. that's because the scum kill is based on a confluence of SO many factors... pr's, reads, leadership, hell sometimes i see scum kill people they just flat out don't like.

just do your best while you're still alive and afterwards you can hold your head up high knowing you did your best.

"but...but...but i HAVE to fakeclaim because otherwise those other idiots are going to lose the game..."

...and we arrive at what i think is the true center of why town fakeclaim. there's always at least a little bit of an component of narcissism in fakeclaiming town. the underlying philosophy is: you can't tell the rest of the town the truth because those other morons who are beneath you can't be trusted with the truth and you're their only true savior.

and my answer is: get over yourself.

mafia is a team game. as either alignment, you HAVE to rely on your teammates. this is true ESPECIALLY as town. you're not the lone badass that's going to singlehandedly win the game. that doesn't even exist. 99.999% of town wins are through TEAM effort and there's nothing that disrupts that more than misinformation. scum already supply enough of that, you don't need to help them.

tl:dr
don't fakeclaiming as town.

for realz.

What I like about this one was it was written before this game but was prophetic. The fake claim is not what got UTL lynched, it did not have to be done get the lynch, that is just an adhoc post facto rationalization, that massages reality to fit the radiant cowbell image....

Best way to draw a nightkill is to drop a subtle "PR slip," or simple being vocal and right. I prefer the latter.

The only time that fakeclaiming as town is acceptable is a very specific situation with the 'gambit' being "gain or null" with no risk to follow. Even then, there are usually an alternative solution that is easier to pull.

One shouldn't fakeclaim as town for survival. One shouldn't fakeclaim as town for persuasion advantage. One shouldn't fakeclaim to keep up with one's meta. (Forcing a negative action upon self just to keep up with one's meta is stupid from the beginning and is a very good indication that one should change his playstyle.) The only time when fakeclaiming as town is even acceptable is (1) You know damn well about what you're doing. (2) There is absolutely no way that lying will backfire in any way. (3) It gains a high advantage if succeeds. Most people fails at (1). (2) is an extremely rare situation. (3) is also an extremely rare situation and there are usually better and more simple alternatives.

fakeclaiming as town is about the equivalent of pulling down your pants and taking a dump on the board while playing a board game.

it might not be the worst thing anyone can do but it's still inconsiderate and annoying.

I love you.

What about underclaiming your results?
Like saying youre a weaker version of your role to try and get maximal value out of it?

i.e., claiming "2-shot Informed Tracker" as a full gunsmith and mindfucking me cos I didn't stop to realize you had a role that would have allowed you to get another inno? yes

claiming a tracker guilty when you have a cop guilty is one I also used to hear about a lot but I hardly ever see it done now

I am against taking dump on the board while playing board game with people. You should just piss in their pocket instead. /s

So far I am happy with the company I am keeping.

Rarely, RARELY is it a good idea to straight out claim a false role when you are pro-town. Not fully claiming your role can be different The problem is that if you claim something broken, you'll get lynched and might draw fire...

In a totally made up scenario, imagaine this:
4 left alive, probably 1 townie. Player A and B are both restricted docs. If A claims to be a full doc and B realizes that it would be BROKEN to have one full doc, he might reveal.. get A lynched and then clearly B would be the last lynch. Mafia wins a nearly lost game.

*shrug* easy to make up scenarios though. But it's so rarely in the towns favor to lie that I say- Lynch all liars.

-JEEP

and this is gift that just keeps on giving

Like, I cannot stress how bad that logic is. "If I make an impossible claim, only scum will vote me."

No. If you make an impossible claim, you should be burned at the stake by all righteous townies and if anything, scum won't even have to push your wagon

I find fake claims to be funny, i have seemingly reached a point where people disregard my claims altogether cus i have been known to soft fakes as a VT with the intent to die

This is probably a very bad thing and should hurt your chance to win as both alignments as town should never listen to you. As a town PR, it gets yourself lynched and significantly hurts town win chances. As scum it makes it impossible to get out of a lynch with a claim. Any plan that's results discredit you in your meta to the extent where the game should ignore you is essentially playing against your win condition.

In all town should exceedingly rarely (rarely is not every other game) fakeclaim, even if you are forced to claim VT as VT early, you can at times get out of it. Scum should have a few fakeclaims they have laid out throughout the game, then just pick the best one to suit your situation and what the setup is trending towards (if even using it).

Lying means adding more confusion to the game and therefore harming the investigation / analysis. Unless you have a

really good

reason to lie, then generally the costs outweigh the benefits.

the guy who just joined today has more sense than the op...

and the reason for that is he started here.

Speaking about heroes in Mafia. There are no heroes in Mafia. There is only good and poor teamplay. And fakeclaiming as town is more often poor teamplay than not (so exceptions do not break this general rule).

And if that is the only thing you do, start there, quite lot of the rest just follows as direct application.
As town you dont known who your team mates really are....
But with skill and application you can work with them, by helping with what they need to play the game....

or you can drop your pants and take dump on the board.

Spoiler: This not too bad either

I'd like to discuss self-voting. I've been having this thought brewing in me for a while now, and a while back I even put it up on my wiki, and now I really think I'd like to try to sell it to the community at large. My thesis is as follows;

Barring *very specific setup or role interactions* there is literally NEVER a time when a town player should self vote.

A self vote as a joke is a dumb joke.
A self vote as a rage quit shows poor play and whiny inability to deal with the situation you're in or to simply request replacement.
A self vote as a strategy...well, that requires very specific role/setup interactions, but doing it as a "test" of how people react to it is only likely to "test" who finds it a dumb move. Whoop-dee-doo.

As scum there are plenty of reasons to self vote.
Denies town planning time in a self hammer situation.
Hurts VCA.
Induces wifom due to AtE gak. (how many times have you seen someone town read someone else for a self vote? I know I see it a fair shake)

Oh, wow, look at that, it's almost like self-voting aids scum and hurts town. Shock.
So why the hell do any town players EVER allow themselves to self-vote? You're voting a confirmed town at that stage - that is playing against your wincon, quite frankly. Honestly, if I think i could get away with it I'd petition the board to make that a universally accepted rule that, as town, a self vote is playing against wincon and is thus bannable. That's about how much I'm offended by it when any town player does it.

And the benefits for scum? Literally half of them are only there because derp town chooses to self vote as a rage quit type option or as their only answer to a wagon/case.

I used self-voting as scum early in my career to get town read or to dismantle wagons on me. Recently, as an alt account, I used it again, and it worked beautifully. Everyone was all like 'oh dear, look at that poor frustrated town, unvote!' and I skunked a win for my scum team. Why should I be allowed to get away with that? Why should town need to try to sort out whether someone is a derp town or a vile scum just due to a single vote?

I am really making this as a rallying cry.
I want self-votes to become the purview of only scum - and thus crush them as a scum tool barring self-hammers.
All it takes is for people to stop self-voting and also to stop treating a self vote as anything but null, and eventually as a scum tell as we weed it out.
The only reason I can personally think of for people to keep self voting as town is to defend the tool for their scum game - and I don't need you bolstering your weak scum play by tanking your town games. Just leave the crutch behind, you'll become a stronger player as both alignments.

I'd love to hear praise for my brilliance
Or, reasoning for why a self-vote is a valid town tool *outside* of specific setup/role interactions.

Example posts of good/bad uses of self-voting might also be useful, to show how you have experienced/practiced them.
All of mine would be me as scum using them to avoid a lynch...which supports my thesis as far as I can tell.

I'm not saying you in particular have to get your reads from self-votes, but you are asking other people to stop townreading townish self-votes because of your principles, which is dumb

Honestly, I don't care if people want to get reads off it anyway - but I think we should be able to relegate it to a point where the only read is a scum one. As said, there is no town benefit for it. At that point, town should just not do it - and that should then clear the way to only see it as a scumtell (which means scum would stop doing it too). It should be able to be seen as only a scumtell, i understand that it's not, and I don't see it that way myself right now - but it boggles me that you need to bother 'reading' something that is blatantly a pro-scum move.

As a serious response to this, I consider self-voting a trait of bad players. They do a Smurfton of dumb stuff and stopping to self-vote wouldn't elevate their play to bearable levels.

I personally think there is a difference between a player who chooses to be bad, and a player who doesn't realize he is being bad.
I see a lot of Newbies bandying about the idea of self-voting to "help" the town. I always explain to them why it doesn't.
If players were at least aware that what they were doing was a bad play I do think it would clean up a substantial percentage of the self-votes. Also, i have had conversations with players who have multiple years of experience on site who argue that a self-vote has purpose. I do think a greater site awareness of how bad the move is might help them re-examine the stance. Or at least come up with a valid justification.

Vengeful self-hammering to take shot?

Kanye kind of stole my thunder on this - but, yes, if you're vengeful you should probably still allow your lynch to go through normally to allow better VCA. If you're going to be lynched you will be without a self-hammer, and will still get your shot.

I might buy it for a Supersaint who is convinced a town is about to hammer him - that might be a valid call as a time to self-hammer.
But, frankly, the best option at that point is to claim and try to convince town to at least force a scummy player to place the hammer. Or, to prevent your lynch altogether, since you're town.

Self hammer for town cred.

I've seen this often enough that the joke pains my soul

The problem with it is I think most townies self-voting are reacting emotionally to things that pissed them off/upset them and it's hard to eradicate that by telling them self-voting is bad or ignoring a meltdown when it's happening.

I can somewhat agree with this - my counter is this;

'Grow up and use replace out'

Because if you're emotional to the point you can't deal with the game anymore - you should probably stop playing the game.
And the only reason to choose a self-vote over a replace out is if;
1. You have ulterior motives (are scum).
2. You're intentionally trying to ruin other people's fun as 'punishment' for ruining yours (are a jerk)

I don't find either option too wonderful, but I have seen emotional replace outs, so I know people are capable of that. When they self vote they're basically trying to ruin other people's fun, and while, yeah, that might be a thing, I don't see it as a roadblock to be aware that it is still bad play and bad sportsmanship at that point - at least that's how I take it. I would like to think we can train people to have rage replace outs as opposed to rage self-votes. It should be healthier for people's sanity *and* for the quality of the game.

[AxleGreaser]

#Golden Lynch

Then work with me instead of being a stubborn ass and saying shit like 'UTL HAD HER WAGON!'

Then work with other people by explaining why you think what you do....

That was what I was asking pisskop to do, when he spat the dummy and hammered the day out.

I cant get my lynch so I will fake claim red check.... is not

Then work with me instead of being a stubborn ass ...

its the stubborn ass bit.

That you didnt even know you had got your lynch to L-1....

[AxleGreaser]

I was mostly sheeping Axle's

probably because they looked like they made sense because i explained them.

[AxleGreaser]

Spoiler: one more favorite thing that I forgot to include

[Ircher]

@Axle & @RC
Mina wrote a wiki article on

****______NOT FAKECLAIMING GUILTIES______****

http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?tit ... ts_as_Town

[AxleGreaser]

Oh look more company I like to be keeping.

[Boonskiies]

Why not just stick to the plan, guy? Haha....Ircher was confirmed town pretty much, too.

[Boonskiies]

When RC died after Axle blowing up at it, and in fact, as scum would have an epic musky much on either myself or RC, as the scum duo of the two of us was coming about. Ircher obviously was roleblocked, which I made sure to state multiple times. :/

[Boonskiies]

And Heat was epic sheeping me, and seemingly was going to go along with the plan.

[Ircher]

Yeah, srry Boon, I didn't see the connection

[AxleGreaser]

Why not just stick to the plan, guy? Haha....Ircher was confirmed town pretty much, too.

So please explain what the plan was when you did this...
be careful to only use what you knew at the time.

Not the plan when you later found out RC was the RB. What was the plan in bringing up the whole FN bit.

Do note that if scum tried, and worked at like i did overnight they could have become certain that you were in fact the FN.
When they shot RC, I kinda expected they had guessed RC was PR too due to having the gumption to fake claim, but I knew (or think I do) that RC will pull that as any alignment with or without a role.

However for RC to be so hard fishing for the PRs earlier meant he likely knew where all the PRs were.
So if you were the FN he was seemingly some other role, who went fishing for what he thought was scum feeling out for fake claim.
(ALLLL the PR stuff was bad from that respect, the best way not to leak PR tells is to play as if you are actually a VT.)

You had all sorts of crumbs and tells during the day for scum to sort it out once, you raised the idea.
It was a fake claim. It was not one of the specific exceptions, it was bad. It was relatively transparent.
I have seen the scum QT, and yes at some point in time they had indeed believed various claims and not seen through them.

Your damn lucky i wasnt scum or Id have shot you both... Oh wait scum did that anyways.

Regarding RC's RB. Please show me evidence that RC doesn't regularly flap read around like the wind and change their reads and night actions willy nilly.


So yours was a good fake claim gambit?
I am sure Mina will update her advice accordingly.

[Ircher]

Updated my sig to include this game. Thanks for modding, Dier. And, I was enjoying it the entire time!

[RadiantCowbells]

So yours was a good fake claim gambit?
I am sure Mina will update her advice accordingly.

Fakeclaiming is a desperation move and my situation was desperate there.

[AxleGreaser]

So yours was a good fake claim gambit?
I am sure Mina will update her advice accordingly.

Fakeclaiming is a desperation move and my situation was desperate there.

You were so desperate that while doing it you claimed you were not doing that but reaction testing Ircher. 1723
Claimed that in your opinion what you had done had no utility in getting UTL lynched as no one but Ircher would believe it. 1739
You were so desperate to get UTL lynched that you had not done the initial step of knowing how many people were actually currently voting UTL
So you had failed to notice you had put UTL at L-1? 1740

You do understand that the people who will read this play mafia, and can see through transparent made up stuff?

[RadiantCowbells]

If you could understand what I was thinking when I was doing the things I did, you wouldn't have been wrong on every single one of your reads.

[AxleGreaser]

If you could understand what I was thinking when I was doing the things I did, you wouldn't have been wrong on every single one of your reads.

people might understand what you were thinking if you explained it.

It gets very hard to understand what you were thinking when it is so self contradictory even now that virtually some of it must be lies.

You were and were not trying to get UTL lynched, and have literally claimed both.
You were desperate to get someone lynched but didn't happen to for instance know what the actual vote count was.

I was indeed wrong on my reads after about that point.

I am not sure how understanding whatever it is that would mean you both did and did not fake red check to UTL lynched will help that.

[AxleGreaser]

*to get UTL Lynched

[AxleGreaser]

I think I am going to go on with trying learn how to play from the people i quoted above. (few posts back)

Thanks all the same for your concern.

[RadiantCowbells]

If you could understand what I was thinking when I was doing the things I did, you wouldn't have been wrong on every single one of your reads.

people might understand what you were thinking if you explained it.

It gets very hard to understand what you were thinking when it is so self contradictory even now that virtually some of it must be lies.

You were and were not trying to get UTL lynched, and have literally claimed both.
You were desperate to get someone lynched but didn't happen to for instance know what the actual vote count was.

I was indeed wrong on my reads after about that point.

I am not sure how understanding whatever it is that would mean you both did and did not fake red check to UTL lynched will help that.

I wasn't trying to get her lynched IMMEDIATELY.

I wanted to see how Ircher would react to the claim.

[AxleGreaser]

claim

I gave a major explanation during the game about why Massive was scum.

facts (think I got eveything.)

That 'come after me tomorrow' was so calculated and flat.

Me no likey.

When Pk made his reasonless switch

I think that Massive's hammer was calculatedly abrasive to look like it came from town while it was concealing a scum drive to protect his partner from being wagoned.