Charisma and Mafia

[VysePresident]

I don't think you need charisma to be a good player, I think you need it to be a great player though.

As town you can have good reads but you can only do so much if you can't get anyone to listen to you.

As scum you can town it up all you want but you may just end up getting lynched anyway if you can't push through enough mislynches.

Ideally you wouldn't need charisma as town would be approaching everything rationally.

As Town you need MORE charisma, in my experience. Scum can rely on each other and the massive influence that can come with having a person in your corner. As a Townie, you need to contend with both your paranoia and stupid impulses as well as those of all the other players. You can be dead on the money, but if nobody's listening, it doesn't matter. (Ideally your goal is to encourage Town to lynch Scum, and bait scum into bussing since I can't recall more than one time I lynched Scum without help from Scum. {And that was literally the hardest LyLo I've ever played, and I wasn't even the real hero there.}) It doesn't help that there isn't a hard and set way to nail scum, meaning it's hard for everyone to be perfectly rational.

I was pretty decent at figuring out scum from the get-go, all things considered, but could never get them lynched without PR results to my name. Some of this was a weak Town meta on the site I played on, but it didn't help that I was not very persuasive at all, even when I started to gain confidence.

I think my favorite was when my Day #1 scum list including 5 scum members out of 8 playing. (Large multi-ball game.) I think I misread 3-4 Townies as possible scum, and only lightly. (In at least one case, it was only on general principle.) Scum made up my Top #3 suspect list. It was probably the best numbers I've ever had in any game.

Not a single one got lynched. I was NK'd first day, and nobody figured it out until the PRs started rolling in. My Number #1 Suspect was NK'd by the other scum team because everyone was absolutely convinced he was Town.

Logic is only part of the battle, and sometimes it's the weaker part.

[Killthestory]

not really

[LicketyQuickety]

Vyse!!!!!!

Man I haven't seen you in ages! How's it going, man?

[VysePresident]

Vyse!!!!!!

Man I haven't seen you in ages! How's it going, man?

Lickety! Long time no see!

Barely been around. Been trying to manage IRL commitments and am finally in what I think is the last obstacle to college. (There's always something new, but I think I'm at the point where I can just bite the bullet.) Also personal life stuff being a bit odd. Not bad, but odd. Not sure what to call it.`How about yourself?

Might come back for real at some point, but I'm just lurking off and on MS at the moment. I miss Mafia quite a bit, and some of you nerds in particular, but just don't have the time I used to. I had not one, but two massive replace out sprees prior to my leaving, and frankly, that's not something I ever want to repeat.

I've played a little on a forum composed mostly of friends, since those games are relatively simple, but I suspect if I come back to MS that's going to bite me hard. (The meta is slowly getting better, and there are some good players. However, we still have some really bizarre plays get through that shouldn't have if people would pay a little more attention.)(I.e. A game I just modded where a Scum member was caught lying about their role - but every other player accepted a blatant misinterpretation of the rules.)

[Postie]

Yay Vyse! I'd love to play another game with you sometime.

[VysePresident]

Yay Vyse! I'd love to play another game with you sometime.

Aw, hey, I'm flattered people remember me fondly. XD

I'd love to play a game with you again too, so you can stab me in the back and break everyone's hearts all over again. >_<

I swear, I can see it looking back if I try, but you played us all so freaking hard. I would have guessed pretty much anyone else was scum before I even considered you.

[Postie]

Don't worry, IIRC I've been lynched in every single one of my scumgames since that one.

[Titus]

I actually disagree with repetition after a certain point. If you're entire townblock says no, unless you're a cop, it might be time to re-evaluate.

[LicketyQuickety]

Vyse!!!!!!

Man I haven't seen you in ages! How's it going, man?

Lickety! Long time no see!

Barely been around. Been trying to manage IRL commitments and am finally in what I think is the last obstacle to college. (There's always something new, but I think I'm at the point where I can just bite the bullet.) Also personal life stuff being a bit odd. Not bad, but odd. Not sure what to call it.`How about yourself?

Might come back for real at some point, but I'm just lurking off and on MS at the moment. I miss Mafia quite a bit, and some of you nerds in particular, but just don't have the time I used to. I had not one, but two massive replace out sprees prior to my leaving, and frankly, that's not something I ever want to repeat.

I've played a little on a forum composed mostly of friends, since those games are relatively simple, but I suspect if I come back to MS that's going to bite me hard. (The meta is slowly getting better, and there are some good players. However, we still have some really bizarre plays get through that shouldn't have if people would pay a little more attention.)(I.e. A game I just modded where a Scum member was caught lying about their role - but every other player accepted a blatant misinterpretation of the rules.)

Well, I hope you do come back for real sometime. I would love to hydra with you again, that was tons of fun. But I understand rl comes first, so you do what you gotta do.

With that said, I really hope to see you around

[nancy]

Confidence:
This is an obvious one, but people will gravitate to players who exude confidence, the key here I believe is that you should never FAKE confidence. That will cause you more problems because people will pick up on you faking it when you start showing cracks in your facade. You should be honest about what you are confident on and what you aren't, and yes that sometimes means people will not be swayed by your arguments, but people will believe you more when you say you are confident on something if you have a history of being upfront with people on what you are and aren't sure of. Lying about your confidence will only hurt you in the long term, it will lead to blind arrogance and people thinking you are full of it (which honestly you will be if you have been faking it).

This doesn't really work for me because I have basically zero confidence about anything so any time I appear to have confidence is it 99.9% faked. I dunno I think this is more like bravery, it's not being unafraid it's continuing despite the fear etc.

[Firebringer]

I wanted to make a post discussing the difference between arrogance and confidence, but I thought the topic was very common sense.
I may just post a video that explains the difference in a much better way than I can describe.

[nancy]

I mean I think it's a great point for people who actually have confidence I just don't think it really applies to me so much and probably anyone else who just doesn't know what confidence feels like.

[Firebringer]

I believe that almost everyone struggles with confidence issues in a game. A person who doesn't have confidence issues at one point in a game is pretty much delusional or a liar. You don't know everything. It might be best to talk about how to work through your lack of confidence than to just "fake it to convince others", and I am not saying you shouldn't tell yourself you are confident behind the screen. I am saying, you shouldn't be lying to other people until you can believably say "I am confident on what I am saying", if that means you told yourself 100 times "I know what I am saying, I know what I am doing" behind the scenes. Then thats fine. Its when you bring it into game and it reeks of something that it doesn't sound believable.

Confident people, know why they are confident. They can explain in great detail why they are right. They can take on any argument and any question thrown at them without needing to ignore it or shift the topic.

[nancy]

Agree with what you're saying but when you have no confidence to begin with you're forced to fake it in order to even be functional. Like I lack confidence (and this is not just a mafia thing but also a MeatWorld thing) to the point that if I have to make a decision about something of consequence I generally just get overwhelmed by anxiety and end up in tears if I don't literally force myself to not think about anything and just fake confidence and go through with whatever it is.

[zakk]

Pretty good post overall, Firebringer. I hate you less, now.

And I, too, basically skipped mastin's walls. Pro-tip, mastin: If your post makes me think "fuuuck that" before I even read it, then no amount of charisma in it is going to help. Especially if you're just telling us something we've already figured out. Which, with you... is often. Sorry, not sorry.

Wanna know what helps charisma?

1. Reading your audience - Adapt your message to 'em. Gotta know your crowd, fam~
2. Cutting to the chase - Know what you're going to say, and make it short and sweet.
3. Use numbered lists. People love lists. They're like crack cocaine. (Contrast to walls.)

[mastina]

And I, too, basically skipped mastin's walls. Pro-tip, mastin: If your post makes me think "fuuuck that" before I even read it, then no amount of charisma in it is going to help. Especially if you're just telling us something we've already figured out. Which, with you... is often. Sorry, not sorry.

Have you considered that when I'm actually trying to get people to listen, I don't actually wall?

And at this point you might wonder why I post so many walls if the above is true.
Think about it for a sec and you'll get it.

[Firebringer]

How exactly do you convince anyone of anything if nobody reads your posts?

[TheRealGin-N-Tonic]

How exactly do you convince anyone of anything if nobody reads your posts?

Honestly, the best way to adapt to mastina's playstyle, if you're trying to appeal to her, is to just

not

say you haven't read the walls. If I'm busy in life and dont have time to read all the walls, I will admit I'll skip them due to time constraints. The trick tho is to use her walls like they're an encyclopedia.

If at any point you need information about a specific thing, first go to the index book(mastina), find the book you need(ask her), and then you are able to go find the answer you are looking for in the exact book you need(the post number she gives you).

I will say, if you can't follow that system of asking mastina for the post where they brought up topic A and then reading topic A, then you never truly cared and that's sad to think someone doesn't even have a modicum of teamwork in their play style.

[Lil Uzi Vert]

mastina's easy to read.

[mastina]

How exactly do you convince anyone of anything if nobody reads your posts?

Think about it for a sec and you'll get it.

[Firebringer]

How exactly do you convince anyone of anything if nobody reads your posts?

Think about it for a sec and you'll get it.

Mastina you gave me a response to this before:

Edit:

When I asked mastina in a game before why she makes long posts when she knows people don't read them.

That implies I expect people to read my walls!

The secret is I expect people to ignore me.

That way, when I'm proven right I can be all smug about it and point out how they should have followed me!

[mastina]

You know a surprising amount of my posts are a mixture of things which are absolutely dead serious and absolutely meant as mockery (either of others or more commonly myself). I used to make it easy on people by marking every case of the latter with a ":P" but now I use those more sparingly.

[Gorkington]

the best way to be charismatic is to have a cool avatar i think.

[LicketyQuickety]

the best way to be charismatic is to have a cool avatar i think.

Jedi mind tricks don't work on me.

[Firebringer]

the best way to be charismatic is to have a cool avatar i think.

I don't think so