Confusion, disorder, can they have a pro town effect?

[Vampirate]

Is it possible that a town player that creates confusion and disorder in the game on purpose to be positively contributing to his/her town win condition?

[zMuffinMan]

yes

but not by doing that

[mastin2]

Possible, yes.
Recommended,

hell

no. You're 90% likely to screw this up, so don't even try.

[Espeonage]

thread noted for posting later.

[VysePresident]

Deliberately causing confusion and chaos tends to be deliberately counterproductive.

However, having a player who tears through the early game can be useful, particularly with my style, where I like to hang back in the early game and pick up the pieces that get left behind.

[T S O]

nope

[Espeonage]

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=60585

I would call my application of stupid shit in this game (Day 4) confusion inducing. The difference here is that I had an IC claim to fall back on which means that if everything went nuts there was a get out option that would reset everything. However it all went well, we caught a scum out of nowhere and while we didn't win we did get rid of all the scum players which was awesome.

This is a very rare case, it required the use of an IC claim to perform very balls deep reaction test. I would not advocate trying to do something like this unless there is a foolproof way of bailing out.

[Kublai Khan]

What esp said.

[callforjudgement]

Isn't this the strategy most frequently adopted in Assassins in the Palace? That said, that game has an informed majority (which are its "town"), and thus isn't Mafia.

Or a better way to look at it is, I guess: the town have less information than the Mafia, so it's hard to see how making information harder to obtain is a pro-Town thing to do. The only situation I can think of is when the town badly need to protect a power role, more so than they need to catch scum, and people don't normally make setups like that.

[T S O]

Okay, yeah, Assassins in the Palace is the exception to the rule.

[zMuffinMan]

"reaction tests" are dumb

everyone who does them has one or two games they can point to and say they're worthwhile when in reality (a) most of the time they probably learn nothing or misinterpret what they apparently learn, and (b) you could probably learn the same thing from reading the game and using your head

if someone makes their alignment obvious via a "reaction test", barring fringe cases where someone

actually

claims scum, they've probably made their alignment obvious with the rest of their posts anyway

[mastin2]

I would not advocate trying to do something like this unless there is a foolproof way of bailing out.

Caution:
What you think is a foolproof way of bailing out is not necessarily actually foolproof. IC's basically the only one.

Yes, I speak from a bundleload of experience. As someone who loves abusing claims for all their worth by softclaiming conftown, "all will be made clear soon!", and the like, and being met with a bunch of and and even plus BUNDLELOADS of reactions to my claims and then the reality after it's revealed.

[Espeonage]

^ p much

[callforjudgement]

Friendly Neighbour is also basically foolproof, if you've used it on a couple of people who are both still alive. (In the case that you only aimed it at one person, I can imagine roleblocker shenanignans messing you up.)

That said, the "do a bunch of stupid things as Innocent Child and then claim to save yourself" strategy does seem to be quite commonly used, and it perhaps isn't the worst of ideas. (Note: do

not

do a bunch of stupid things as VT in the hope that scum will assume you're an Innocent Child. I can't imagine that would end well at all.)

[kuribo]

Most fun I ever had as town was a game where I was a tree stump. I spent the entire game before my death doing nothing but claiming increasingly unlikely roles and begging for death

When scum killed me and I returned as invincible confirmed town, it was even better

[ZZZX]

I remember a setup which scum need to pick up info from town where optimal play was to even randomly lynch day1 if we have to so we dont give info. But people didn't listen. Literally made the thread so confusingly unreadable. Quoted every post that tow. Can get Info fro. And won it. But generally confusion is only good if the town are reaaaly active