Mafia Rule Updates Discussion Thread

[mastina]

Subject: Out-of-Game Influence

OUT OF GAME INFLUENCE

1. Invoking trust tells.
   
   Self-meta turns into a trust tell when there is an explicit or implicit statement that it would never be broken,
   or that it would only be broken extremely rarely
   . Important here, and a distinction from how we've handled things in the past, is that we are extending this to include cases where the person is not intentionally building up a trust tell, but is instead simply
   pointing out a pattern in their meta that they never intend to break
   . For example, the following may all constitute trust tells depending on context:
   • "I will always claim my real role."
   Context is very important here. If a relatively new player says that they've never fakeclaimed before, this is not a problem - however,
   if a player with many dozens of completed games points out the same thing and says that they never fakeclaim

   as a policy
   , then every game where they don't lie about this policy increases the credence of their claim. After a certain point, this becomes an unfair advantage because statistically, the more times in a row someone has told the truth about something, the more likely it is that they will always tell the truth about it.
   
   If you wish to refer to your own meta, as a rule of thumb, do not speak in absolutes. We obviously cannot (and do not want to) punish someone for
   having
   some of these policies (e.g., if you believe that it is never correct to bus as scum, or don't want to fake a guilty, we can't make you). In these cases,
   you simply cannot discuss behaviors like this in discussion of your own meta
   . If someone else brings up something that may qualify as a trust tell for you, you can say that you've never done the behavior in question, but
   you cannot say that you have a

   policy

   of never doing it
   . This is not a perfect solution, but we don't believe that a perfect solution exists.
   

   ---

   
   
2. Using or attempting to find loopholes in game/site rules that are technically within the rules but break the spirit of the rules.
   
   The rules that are in place are there to preserve game integrity as much as possible and provide an even playing field for all players.
   If someone finds a loophole in one of the rules that is still technically allowed but breaks the spirit of the rule
   , that can impact game integrity and provide an unfair advantage. Breaking the spirit of the rules is still breaking the rules, and will be treated as if the rule was broken even if it wasn't "technically" broken.
   

   ---

   
   
3. Exploiting or attempting to gain an in-game advantage by exploiting forum software.
   
   Similar to exploiting game/site rules, forum software is not meant to be used as an in-game tactic. Using any aspect of the forum software to attempt to prove or confirm yourself or your statements can also hold more weight than regular gameplay arguments and harm game integrity. This includes tactics such as:
   setting your online status to show your most recent login and not logging in for the entirety of the night phase to "prove" that you did not submit any night actions
   ; You are allowed to make statements about when you or other players were or were not online, as long as you do not attempt to use the forum software to prove it.

You might as well name these updates to the site policy "the mastina policy".

[mastina]

That said, I do in fact take issue with the trust tell part.

I don't fakeclaim as scum, and I say that every game, but that is not a policy I enforce because it is a policy--it is a policy I "enforce" because in literally every single game I play as scum, telling the truth is better than lying. Like, lying about my role would literally be playing against my wincon as scum; telling the truth about my role is genuinely me playing to my wincon.

This policy if I were to be punished for having it by the site rules would mean that you'd be requiring me to

literally gamethrow as scum

in order to not run afoul of it.

Sure, if a mod ran a game where I had a genuine need to fakeclaim (say that it's explicitly a role madness game with no VTs and I get an explicitly scum role that cannot be claimed as a town role), I would as scum lie about my role because in that scenario, truthfully claiming would be playing against my wincon.

But if a mod gives me a role that I can truthfully claim, then not claiming it is genuinely gamethrowing because the role as-is looks town enough to not be a scum role. (And if the role cannot be truthfully claimed, then it can be slightly modified. Roleblocker into Jailkeeper; turning a Disloyal scum role into a claim of being a Loyal town role. And if the role cannot be modified into a town role, then I can just claim VT.)

I say in every game that I do not fakeclaim as scum--but it's not because I refuse to. It's because it's genuinely gamethrowing for me to fakeclaim when the truth is literally my best weapon as scum.

Imo, trust tells typically are something that are, explicitly, designed to gain an advantage

as town

, while

at the detriment

to your scumgame.

If you are playing to your SCUM win condition, then it fundamentally cannot be a trust tell because it is fundamentally not to the detriment of your scumgame because it is not designed to gamethrow as scum to give an advantage to the town.

But this policy seems alarmingly like it is going to prevent me from playing to my scum wincon by stating that I don't fakeclaim.

[mastina]

That said, I do in fact take issue with the trust tell part.

I don't fakeclaim as scum, and I say that every game, but that is not a policy I enforce because it is a policy--it is a policy I "enforce" because in literally every single game I play as scum, telling the truth is better than lying. Like, lying about my role would literally be playing against my wincon as scum; telling the truth about my role is genuinely me playing to my wincon.

This policy if I were to be punished for having it by the site rules would mean that you'd be requiring me to

literally gamethrow as scum

in order to not run afoul of it.

Sure, if a mod ran a game where I had a genuine need to fakeclaim (say that it's explicitly a role madness game with no VTs and I get an explicitly scum role that cannot be claimed as a town role), I would as scum lie about my role because in that scenario, truthfully claiming would be playing against my wincon.

But if a mod gives me a role that I can truthfully claim, then not claiming it is genuinely gamethrowing because the role as-is looks town enough to not be a scum role. (And if the role cannot be truthfully claimed, then it can be slightly modified. Roleblocker into Jailkeeper; turning a Disloyal scum role into a claim of being a Loyal town role. And if the role cannot be modified into a town role, then I can just claim VT.)

I say in every game that I do not fakeclaim as scum--but it's not because I refuse to. It's because it's genuinely gamethrowing for me to fakeclaim when the truth is literally my best weapon as scum.

Imo, trust tells typically are something that are, explicitly, designed to gain an advantage

as town

, while

at the detriment

to your scumgame.

If you are playing to your SCUM win condition, then it fundamentally cannot be a trust tell because it is fundamentally not to the detriment of your scumgame because it is not designed to gamethrow as scum to give an advantage to the town.

But this policy seems alarmingly like it is going to prevent me from playing to my scum wincon by stating that I don't fakeclaim.

A perfect example of this is the recently completed subreddit uPick.

In that game, I pointed out that

in three years

, I'd never been active as scum before.
If I was town, then by the revised rules that'd be considered a trust tell.
Because it was pointing out a truthful thing about my play that has a long long history of having been true.

As town, in the last three years, I've been rather passionate and incredibly invested in my towngames;
As scum, in the last three years, I've had fuckall of anything done--but not because of any deliberate effort.
It's just that I was struggling in those scumgames and not struggling in those towngames. But it was still a very very very strong trend, lasting over the course of MULTIPLE years.

I

couldn't

effort as scum. It wasn't a choice to not effort. I literally tried, but failed, every single time as scum. I could no more effort as scum than I could be succinct. In that it was literally just...part of me. I fundamentally was unable to be efforting as scum. But could effort easily as town.

I pointed that out in subreddit uPick, in order to try and dissuade the town from eliminating me, by pointing out that trend.

...But instead of being town, I was in fact actually scum and that scumgame just so happened to be the first game in over three years where I broke the trend.

Would I be punished for pointing out a trend that was out of my control, even if in the current game it was breaking the trend?

And similarly, for not lying, the only lie I told about my role that game was a lie of omission. I left out the redirect aspect of my role but otherwise claimed it fully. This was, explicitly, playing to my win condition: hiding a scum aspect to my role, but claiming the town aspect of it in a game where

the mods literally said every role started as town

. The mods literally said in the signups for the game that every role was designed initially as town, then refined based on alignment. So me saying my town role aspect but leaving out the scum aspect was playing to my wincon, but it was still 100% truthful, maintaining my "never lie about my role as scum" policy, unless you count a lie by omission (which imo does not count as a true lie).

Trust telling is something that imo is done to gain an advantage specifically as one alignment, to the detriment of the other alignment.
E.g. "I always self-hammer as scum" would be to the detriment of scumgame to gain an advantage as town. (The classic trust tell.) Stating "I am town" in red text as town but not as scum as another.

But when the rules are punishing a

playstyle

which affects me

regardless of my alignment

, I feel like that's an issue.

If it is not to the detriment of one alignment, why should it be punished? If it is universal in how it impacts your games, omnipresent regardless of your alignment and you constantly point out "this could be broken any time", "it COULD be broken this game, but...", "it's not something I control, but it still happens", etc., and yet you are still playing to your wincon

in that game

by doing it and not playing to future games' wincons? That feels dangerously restrictive.

I don't fakeclaim as scum is a perfect example of that. I don't fakeclaim because I fucking suck at lying/bullshitting roles so when I have no need to fakeclaim (which is 99.99% of all my scumgames), I just don't. It

can

benefit both alignments. (Not fakeclaiming as scum->fakeclaimed as town->likely to be seen as town; Not fakeclaiming as scum->claim is likely truthful->not scum bullshitting in spite of still being scum.) But it's not designed to.

As the post said, if you believe that bussing was genuinely against your wincon, then saying such shouldn't be prohibited because it can still work to your favor as either alignment. (If a player who doesn't bus generally decides that, actually, in this game, it wasn't playing against wincon? Then bam, bingo, scum benefit.)

Basically, absolutes which aren't absolute but just hold true in 99.99% of games due to the situation applying in 99.99% of games are, imo, not trust tells.

Games are situational. Every single time, every single game, the situation is different. If 99/100 situations end up with the same optimal outcome, why is it a trust tell to point out the optimal action/outcome in those 99/100 times? If 99/100 situations end up with the same optimal outcome, why can't you point out the 99/100 in the 1/100 situation? It feels incredibly limiting in an unhealthy way.

[mastina]

mastina,
This is a formal warning regarding the following infractions:

• This post in (removed) which contains a trust tell. Speaking of your own meta in absolutes and implying that you have never/would never break that meta constitutes a trust tell - you are implying this holds true across all games which has an unfair element of truth to it outside the realm of the game. Again, trust tells can harm the game's integrity when a slot is able to use self-meta in a way that confirms something about the slot when it shouldn't be able to, providing an in-game advantage that slots without such tells would not be able to replicate. This is against the rules regardless of whether your statement is actually true in this game, and regardless of whether the alignment of your trust tell is the same as your current alignment. Trust tells are also further described in the announcement thread on OGI.

While both of the above types of out-of-game influence have been clarified in our recent announcement thread, trust tells have always constituted out-of-game influence and out-of-game influence has always been against the rules. Please note that any further infractions related to game integrity may lead to escalated action from the Listmod team, including restrictions on playing mafia. Feel free to reach out to a Listmod with any questions.

- the Listmod team

I stated why this is bullshit already but let me once again state why the rule is bullshit:

solution to never being accused of trust telling: have a scum meta of being absolutely willing to break any and all tells you might have exclusive to you as town, and to do anything as town.

I mean that IS my scumplay.

I SAY "I never fakeclaim as scum", but actually, I have. It's just so rare that it's easier and simpler to say "I never fakeclaim as scum" rather than "fakeclaiming would be against a scum wincon for me here, just like it would be against a scum wincon in 99% of my games because fakeclaiming as scum is almost always the wrong move as scum when a truthful claim is more likely to believed and unable to be caught as a lie".

The former is now considered a trusttell even though the latter is the more accurate version and would weirdly enough not be one. The former is shorthand for the latter but the mods are banning the former and yet not the latter.

I SAY "If I'm posting, I'm town; if I'm not posting, I'm scum", but actually, I've been quite active as scum. It's just that in the last three years, 99% of my active games have been town games and 75% of my inactive games have been scumgames.

I am willing to break any towntell I have as scum. And I do, when the situation calls for it. But the situation calls for it very rarely; it wouldn't be a towntell if it was optimal scumplay every single scumgame.

I think the new rule is a bad change.

To address mastina's never-fakeclaiming-as-scum tell specifically, and why we believe it is an example that's over the line: it is a tell with a long history across a huge number of games, that it is claimed will, at least in some sense, never be broken. It is very centralizing because it is brought up so frequently. It is typically framed (or we've seen it framed) as intentionally avoiding certain options, rather than an incidental observation about how you play the game. It is typically framed as "I will never do this". Ultimately, we've looked at examples of it happening and we believe that on net, over time, it is harmful to game integrity. Avoiding these aspects of it (i.e. not framing it in this way, essentially treating it as an incidental aspect of the way you play the game that has no guarantee of categorically being true) would significantly lower the negative impact on game integrity that we believe it has.

The reason this is bullshit is because in basically every game, fakeclaiming is genuinely against a scum wincon.

Don't believe me?

Well let's break down almost every scumgame I've ever played and why I didn't fakeclaim--or in a couple of rare cases, why I did.

The "why I did" is just as important here--it shows proof that I have in fact fakeclaimed before in spite of me saying "I don't fakeclaim as scum".
I believe this was a fakeclaim? Game was too long ago for me to remember but I believe it was not a real claim given I flipped Mafia Cop? (I'd need to figure out how to access the scum QT to tell for sure.) So in one of my very first scumgames, I

did

fakeclaim.

On the note of early scumplays, one of my very first scumgames onsite involved a fakeclaim of being a cop in a semi-open setup.

In this game I fakeclaimed cop as the last scum in my faction counterclaiming an actual cop. In the history of fakeclaims, this is pretty much the worst possible fakeclaim you could ever make. This was also a game that I double-bussed my scumteam...in multiball.

THIS WAS THE GAME THAT TAUGHT ME THE POLICY OF WHY FAKECLAIMING AS SCUM IS SO BAD

. When you make a fakeclaim

that

atrocious, you learn to

never do it again

.

Granted, after the cop flipped, I did end up truthfully claiming my real role of doctor, but only after the damage had been done from the botched fakeclaim.

That was augmented by this game, where my scumbuddy stole my safeclaim leaving me with no safeclaim, necessitating a fakeclaim from me--one which did not work. Because how could it? It was a fakeclaim. It wasn't what the mod provided me. I didn't have a mod-provided safeclaim because my scumbuddy who was already dead had used said safeclaim as their own. Without a fakeclaim of my own, I had to fake it and guess what?

Fakeclaiming didn't work

.

If fakeclaiming has a proven record of NOT WINNING ME SCUM GAMES, then why the fuck would I fakeclaim as scum?

In this game, I actually DID fakeclaim. This is

the

game I mention when I mention that I

have

fakeclaimed because it is the epitome of the one and only circumstance where fakeclaiming is the right choice: when it is necessary for you to live, you can make an educated guess, you can slot your role into the town roles without it being a scumclaim, there's a decent chance you do not get caught, and in the scenario where you do, you out a TPR for your scumteam to then kill.

For a fakeclaim to not be gamethrowing, it needs to hit all of those criteria. Why fakeclaim when you can live with a VT claim? A fakeclaim needs to have a purpose, where without it, you die. Why fakeclaim when you have no information? Fakeclaiming when there is danger of being caught is absolutely a terrible idea. Why fakeclaim when you have nothing you want to get out of the town from your claim? If you're not going to get a TPR to out themselves to take you down, and you go down without the TPR having done so, the fakeclaim was the wrong move.

It is the golden standard that every scumgame of mine would need to fit--

And literally every scumgame since then has

failed

to meet those criteria.

In this game, I was a Godfather. As a Godfather, you are

meant

to claim VT. You are meant to draw a Cop investigation, so you claim VT. You don't fakeclaim as a Godfather because you want to be playing in a way to bait a Cop investigation. So, the

optimal play

was to

not

fakeclaim. Literally would have been gamethrowing to have fakeclaimed.

In this game, there was a cop I believe with a guilty on me? (I don't remember exactly.) So I did fakeclaim there, counterclaiming the cop, as an example of me having fakeclaimed that I forgot about, this one done as a desperate one out of necessity where not fakeclaiming would have been gamethrowing. (Now obviously, didn't work out.) There was no way to avoid fakeclaiming, so fakeclaiming was genuinely playing to my win condition, so I did.

I only fakeclaim when doing so would be playing to my scum win condition.

At any other time, doing so would be against my wincon.

In this game, I did fakeclaim because I wasn't sure if trueclaiming or fakeclaiming was the right move. As it turns out?

Trueclaiming was the right move

. But I lost the 50/50 because I chose to fakeclaim and as a consequence, got outted as a confirmed liar.

The risk of being outed as a confirmed liar is one of the BIG fucking reasons I don't fakeclaim as scum.

If there is a risk of being outed as a liar as scum, then fakeclaiming is, as shown by the above game, genuinely playing against your win condition, when telling the truth would have won you the game (or at least done you more good).

In this game, I did 50/50. I claimed my real role, but lied about my target. This post summarizes my stance on not fakeclaiming as scum, and it was that game which further solidified why I do not.

In this game, I technically also fakeclaimed although I was inheriting the fakeclaim of my slot's predecessor (Titus had already claimed by the time I replaced in, just not publicly).

In this game, my role was one that I needed to be truthful about. Given that I was giving out inventions, it's something I

couldn't

lie about. It was literally IMPOSSIBLE for me to lie that game. I HAD to tell the truth; not telling the truth would have been gamethrowing. So, a lack of fakeclaiming as scum was playing to my wincon because telling the truth is genuinely the only thing I COULD do.

In this game, I claimed my mod-provided safeclaim. Now, granted. My mod-provided safeclaim was not quite my real role. But it was

moderator-provided

. When the MODERATOR provides a SAFEclaim, that means as scum it is SAFE to claim that role and have it not out you as scum. That means that there is no need to fakeclaim because the moderator provided a mod-given safeclaim. And it was a good safeclaim, too. Claiming anything else would have been gamethrowing.

In this game, I claimed my mod-provided safeclaim. It might've been slightly modified, I don't quite remember the details, I discussed it with a scumbuddy the entire night to make sure it was good enough, but it was still mod-provided as a safeclaim. It was not a fakeclaim. Because there is a tangible difference between 'safeclaim' and 'fakeclaim'. A

safe

claim is a moderator-provided claim given to scum that is safe to claim without it being a scumclaim. A

fake

claim is a scum-designed claim that the scum make on their own without (or with minimal) input from the mod. This was the former, not the latter, but the presence of a safeclaim invalidates the need for a fakeclaim.

In this game, I actually

did

fakeclaim, as a scum traitor...
...And for my troubles? My scumteam SHOT me for my fakeclaim. I did genuinely believe that, as a traitor, fakeclaiming was playing to the scum wincon, but you can clearly tell by how the game went why fakeclaiming did not work,

yet again

reinforcing my policy for why fakeclaiming is bad as scum.

In this game, half of my role I

couldn't

hide (using the double vote was public), and the other half of my role was advantageous to claim. Fakeclaiming would have been gamethrowing especially given the setup in that game so not fakeclaiming was the best move.

In this game, I realclaimed my role, and realclaimed the circumstances. The moderator genuinely

did

forget to send me my results at daystart (I have the PMs to prove it); every time I asked the mod questions, I told the truth about that in the thread (I have the PMs to prove it); every answer I got back from the mod was truthful and I have the PMs to prove it.

So telling the truth about all of that was playing to my wincon.

But I actually

did

tell a lie which counts as a fakeclaim of sorts. A Loyal Tracker targeted me the night before, so I lied about the results of my role to indicate that I was redirected--this was a necessity to prevent the guilty on me from being an actual guilty. It was a situation where I was telling

mostly

the truth, with a

necessary

lie. But the truth was NECESSARY for the lie to work. Without the truth, the lie would have been obviously a lie. So both telling the truth,

and

telling the lie, were necessary to be playing to my wincon. Purely telling the truth, or completely bullshitting, both would have been playing against my wincon; it was only the 98% truth with a 2% lie that made it work.

Which again adds fuel to the fire. Had I been fakeclaiming, that would not have worked. I

could not

have won that game without telling almost entirely the truth.

In this game, I needed to tell the truth about my role in order to ensure I was the D1 elimination. Pine (our scum mastermind) correctly deduced that my role was worthless to the scumteam (and thus, expendable), and the counterwagon to me was a far far far more useful scum role that we actually needed. So telling the truth rather than fakeclaiming was me playing to my wincon because the scum needed to sacc me in order to save the scum PR. Fakeclaiming would have been playing against my wincon because it'd have resulted in the far stronger scum PR being eliminated instead of me.

In this game, I couldn't fakeclaim because the game's mechanics were literally you having a past role of a past game. That meant I could only claim past town roles of mine. None of which would have fit for the game.

In this game, it was literally impossible for me to fakeclaim. My Hated status was something that needed to be claimed by necessity. And the only way to use my role was to use it publicly. I

couldn't

fakeclaim. I

couldn't

lie about my role--it was LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE. So there was no possible way for me to fakeclaim, forcing a truthful claim.

In this game, I claimed a modified version of the scum mechanic. It was both a realclaim, and a fakeclaim. I did as scum have something

similar

, but I actually DID lie. I claimed that I had empowered the slot that (unbeknownst to the town) was empowered by the dead-town. So this is another example of a game where I both did, and did not, fakeclaim. It was equal parts true, and not true. It was equal parts real, and bullshit. Genuinely 50/50 on each. And that was the correct move. A pure bullshit claim with zero truth to it would have not given me anything; a purely truthful claim would've been gamethrowing as skitter knew from mod info what the scum's mechanic was and we knew she did.

In this game, I claimed ascetic because I genuinely was afraid not doing so was a scumclaim. Realclaiming was something that I thought would be playing to my wincon there because if I didn't claim it, then I could be caught and made confscum. Now, granted. I left out the Informed part, because that was a pure scum info that I saw no reason to divulge. So you can say that I lied by omission, but that's about it. Not claiming ascetic was too much of a risk because if an action failed on me which had no reason to fail, then I'd have been screwed. After all, I knew there was a LOYAL NEIGHBORIZER (two actually) in the game. A loyal neighborizer targeting me would get a guilty result, and I needed to explain why the guilty would not be a guilty. Thus, I needed to claim the ascetic. Trueclaiming was, by the setup, made necessary. I COULD NOT have fakeclaimed there because fakeclaiming would have been against my scum wincon.

In this game, I had no reason to lie about my role and had incentive to tell the truth on everything, with the exception of saying I did not kill N1 (when I did), which I had incentive for thanks to my scumbuddy. My role was guaranteed to die at the end of D2, so all I had to do was survive through D1 after using my role, lie about not having done the kill, and let my scumbuddy claim a(n accurate) guilty on me.

In this game, I claimed my real role because there was no reason not to claim it. Doctor was my real role and is a town role. Why would I need to invent a fakeclaim when my realclaim is better than any fakeclaim could be?

In this game, there was genuinely nothing I could claim given what the town roles were. I was also a scum role

literally designed to die

. I was a scum role that was

designed

to be eliminated, in order to janitor my flip and to janitor the flip the following night. When you are a role

designed

to die, you're not

meant

to claim something that will let you live. And even should you choose to, when the town has the tools they had that game, there weren't a lot of options. What

was

I supposed to claim there? I had basically nothing. No mod safeclaim, no viable fakeclaim.

In this game, I was a Goon and the counterwagon to me was a scumbuddy; it was, explicitly, playing to my wincon to

not

fakeclaim because had I fakeclaimed, then our scum PR we wanted to live would have been eliminated on D1.

In this game, due to poor mod design, the only three PRs were basically masons. It was very very obvious that they were the only three PRs in the game from the game design and that there were no other PRs. All three were known, easily identified, proven, and un-CC'able (due to being the last scum alive, natch). Because of the setup and the circumstance, I

couldn't

fakeclaim that game because fakeclaiming would have been gamethrowing.

In this game, I fully believed that claiming my role truthfully was a town role. Scum never get to use Vigilantes so me being a scum Vigilante made me genuinely believe that claiming Vig was playing to my wincon. Lying I thought would be playing against my wincon.



So.

Why am I being punished for saying I don't fakeclaim as scum, when I have always had

damn fucking good reasons

for not having fakeclaimed as scum? (And, in fact,

have a proven record of fakeclaiming as scum

? Did the listmods not do their fucking research into my game history and not notice the games where my claimed role actually didn't match my assigned role?)

I genuinely have just laid out my entire scum history of notable games with claims, and the results speak for themselves.

Every time I fakeclaimed without meeting the standards by which a fakeclaim is optimal, it didn't work, because the fakeclaim was not optimal.
The times I fakeclaim which meet the standards to fakeclaim are incredibly rare.
Most fakeclaims are best supported by being more true than not, at least 50% true if not 75-95%. If a claim's 5% fake but 95% real it's more likely to be believed than a claim that's 95% fake but 5% real.

And most setups actually punish the scum for fakeclaiming and reward the scumteam for trueclaiming.

So the policy, and the rule, is bullshit.

I don't fakeclaim as scum not because of policy against fakeclaiming as scum, but because

fakeclaiming would be gamethrowing as scum

. And stating that, which is truthful, should NOT be against the rules. If it is against my wincon to fakeclaim as scum, then not being able to mention that is literally ridiculous.