Hi, I’m Accountant, your friendly neighbourhood Inexperience-Challenged player, or IC. This means that I have a few games under my belt, so I know the ins and outs of mafia and can show you the ropes. For those of you who hate reading long rants, or have read a similar post already, check out the link:
A Beginner’s Guide to Being Awesome At Mafia
Anyway, as the IC, it’s my job to teach you theory concepts, which means I will never lie about theory questions. When I answer those questions, I will be typing in this color (red), so you know I’m wearing my IC hat and not my <insert alignment here> hat.
Before we start the game proper, I’d like to cover a few key concepts.
Hammering, Lynching and L-1
When the number of votes on a player exceeds half the number of players for that game, that player is lynched
instantly
and the Day ends. For example, we have 9 players. If that means the hammer is 5, so if there were to be 5 votes on someone, that player would be lynched. Do not recklessly hammer, especially early in the game, or you’ll risk accidentally lynching town members and cutting short discussion time.
The concept of L-X is used to indicate how many votes a player is to hammer. L-1 means 1 vote to hammer, L-2 means 2 votes to hammer and so forth. So for this game, if someone were to get 4 votes, they would be at L-1. When you place the vote that puts someone at L-1(for example, if someone has 3 votes and you’re putting the 4th vote down, with a hammer of 5), you should usually announce it with a statement like “He’s at L-1”, so people don’t accidentally hammer. Even more importantly, it means that mafia can’t hammer a town member and then claim ignorance the next day.
If someone is at L-1 and you want to hammer him, you should usually state “intent to hammer”, which means “I want to lynch you”. When you do this, you can also ask for a role claim. That way, if the player is a power role being mislynched, he can claim before you place the hammering vote, and thus save himself.
LyLo
LyLo is the shortened form of a phrase which means “lynch or lose”. The simplest form of LyLo is 3 players, 2 of whom are vanilla townies and the last being a mafia goon. Then, it’s easy to see that if they do not lynch, the mafia goon will kill one of them at night, stalemating the lynch the next day, and killing the last town member on Night 2 – although the mod will usually recognize this and end the game early instead of dragging it out.
When town is in LyLo, it’s important not to carelessly vote like you would on any other day, because of the potential for a mafia coordinated hammer(a “quickhammer”, happening before anyone else can react). Let’s say we have LyLo with 3 Vanilla Townies and 2 Mafia Goons. One of the vanilla townie carelessly puts his vote on another VT. This allows the two mafia goons to instantly rush in and simultaneously vote that VT, bringing his vote count to 3 in a game of 5 players, which is a hammer and loss for the town.
It’s good practice to try to recognize LyLo situations when you see them, but in Newbie games a more experienced player will usually point out that it’s LyLo and caution people from recklessly voting. Learning how to deal with LyLo is a very important part of playing mafia, and it comes up more often than you might think.
RVS
We are currently in the RVS, or Random Voting Stage. As none of us has any idea who is mafia(well, except the mafia members themselves, but they’re hardly going to admit it), we’re mostly poking around and slinging votes like hot curry at a food fight, trying to provoke reactions, start a discussion and basically probe around to try and determine player’s alignments.
As it is the
Random
Voting Stage, it’s common for players to vote for very silly reasons, such as “your avatar is ugly” or “your username has too many numbers in it”. Don’t worry, they don’t have a grudge against you or anything. It’s just part of RVS. Without RVS, it would be a lot harder to get the game moving.
Conclusion
Thank you for joining this newbie game, and I hope that all of us will have fun playing, win or lose. If you have any questions at all, feel free to ask me. I’m an IC, so it’s my job to be active and respond to questions from newer players. I live in Singapore, which makes my timezone GMT+8, so don’t be surprised if I answer in the middle of the night or appear to be inactive at high noon(I’m probably sleeping).
Have fun and good luck!
- Accountant
Thank you, I pride myself on my flavoring. (Asian spice exclusively, in terms of delicious delicious ramen)
Consider it a privilege Neh he he he. 
