Disinformation to Scum

[Garmr]

So I had a couple of games where mafia was given Disinformation due to their roles, so that got me thinking is Disinformation to scum bad. I always had this premise that mafia were supposed to hold a majority of the cards when it came to knowledge and when you give them a false one it can really hurts scum players in ways that it shouldn't. It forces them to do sub optimal kills,votes ect. This site is already very hard on scum players in it's set ups that it sucks all the fun out of landing scum (never used to be this way.) but this new way of limiting scum that I seen popping up is even worse (happened in a town game of mine as well where scum had to deal with 3 masons and misinformation which hit them hard),


My personal opinion is any disinformation should be considered bastard/not allowed in normals.

[Amrun]

How is masons existing disinformation to scum?

[Garmr]

How is masons existing disinformation to scum?

Oh I should explain it better. They had two role 1-strong arm (the misinformation role) and one ninja(disinformation number 2). Since neither a watcher like role or doc role existed.

[Xtoxm]

My personal opinion is any disinformation should be considered bastard/not allowed in normals.

support
normals have become really townsided, not fun to play as either side

[popsofctown]

What if
You just always told scum the whole setup night zero

[Creature]

What if
You just always told scum the whole setup night zero

Also tell scum who were attributed each role

[Ankamius]

My personal opinion is any disinformation should be considered bastard/not allowed in normals.

support
normals have become really townsided, not fun to play as either side

[Ramcius]

Using dummy roles to force people to be paranoid in future games is a dick move - giving 3x 1-shot visitors disguised as a strong PRs to hide setup is an overkill, why can't you just give 3x 1-shot visitors or just make them goons, if your goal is not to give scum info in current game?

[popsofctown]

your goal is to be modding in the normal queue but still feel like a snowflake

[Garmr]

I think mods who use this set up willing, think they are being creative and hip when it just hurts the motivation of the players in the set up. I haven't seen one player actually enjoy when disinformation is used.

[gobbledygook]

I think disinformation has its place in larger games.

[gobbledygook]

I don’t think towns are winning games disproportionately compared to scum.

[Alisae]

Yeah the 1-shot strongman and 1-shot ninja really do not have a place in this setup and generally my thoughts on making setups is that mostly everything should have a purpose

[Flavor Leaf]

There was also a game with like 4-5 Macho roles, both on scum and town, and no doctor.

[RadiantCowbells]

there was also a game with 3 scum strongmen and no protectives

[Alisae]

there was also a game with 3 scum strongmen and no protectives

wasn't the purpose of this to make the rolecop guilty scum

[AaronFrost]

How is masons existing disinformation to scum?

Oh I should explain it better. They had two role 1-strong arm (the misinformation role) and one ninja(disinformation number 2). Since neither a watcher like role or doc role existed.

Oh hey I modded this game.

I think the strongman/ninja existed to work with the PT cop's complex modifier but it is a weird choice to include those roles without protectives or motion roles respectively. I didn't design the setup, but if I did I'd have probably just made them visitors since it's technically a PR, albeit a useless one, thus would be detected by the PT cop.

I thought the setup was fine otherwise although the reviewers said it was townsided and I'd have to agree with that.

[Amrun]

I think disinformation has its place in larger games.

I don’t think towns are winning games disproportionately compared to scum.

This

[Firefly7]

I always had this premise that mafia were supposed to hold a majority of the cards when it came to knowledge and when you give them a false one it can really hurts scum players in ways that it shouldn't.

The basic premise of mafia has always been Informed minority and Uninformed majority. However, this is largely to create social tells with alignments and not necessarily extra knowledge of roles.

Giving scum misleading roles shouldnt be entirely frowned upon or considered bastard, it's just another tool for balancing. That being said, the majority of info received should be correct. It serves to nerf the scum's ability to know the setup from their own team, not to entirely mislead them. Maybe in a somewhat scumsided large game with several mafia roles, one can be a role meant to provide ambiguity.

That being said, bad uses of this can certainly be considered bastard. The definition of bastard to me is something where by simply existing, it can cause paranoia, even in games where it doesn't exist. Where a case could be made for it to be said pre-game whether or not it exists. And those are true here.

[mastina]

The problem with giving scum roles that perfectly correspond to the town's roles is that the mafia are the informed minority who have a nightkill--if they have perfect information and perfect roles, then they can use this information to correctly setup spec, and then from this correct information, narrow down on the town's PRs to eliminate them and craft plausible fakeclaims if need be, claims that they know fit into the setup. If scum have a counter to every town role, then the town basically have no roles.

And every claim the town makes--even VT ones--just narrows it down even further for the scum.

The problem with giving scum roles that serve no point is that they are basically just Named Townies for the mafiates, but they have no reasonable expectation to this fact--if a mafia were to be a Night-80 gunsmith, they would know that their role is precisely that, a Named Townie for the scumteam, and this would be equivalent to a town role who similarly knows that they are a Named Townie who serves little purpose other than being an extra non-VT.

But a strongman in a game where no town roles interact with it and such, is not this.
If a game has three mafia strongmen, the mafia can reasonably deduce, "oh hey this game has some sort of gimmick to it--what could it be?" (They can probably infer, "this game doesn't have town protectives" and probably infer, "a town rolecop is probably an investigative".)
But if the mafia roles have zero interaction with the town...

Ideally you give a balance between the two--the mafia SHOULD have more information than the town, because they're the informed minority, but their information should still be imperfect. The presence of a mafia doctor need not imply the presence of a town gunsmith/vig for instance, but it should still serve to give them some form of utility beyond that. (For instance, giving them a hint that "this game contains limited to no town protectives", as something that a mafia doctor with no town gunsmith/vig, could reasonably deduce--something not definitive, but something which they can deduce with time.)

Ideally, the mafia don't have a perfect roadmap to the setup where they know precisely what the setup is on D1, but they can still make good educated guesses as to what sort of town they are up against from their information. Three goons = "town is probably lighter on power", as an example.

The mafia shouldn't be given all the answers, but the mafia also shouldn't be flying completely and totally blind and punished for using what information they have at their disposal.