How do you take notes?

[Ankamius]

I'm curious how people take and organize their notes in mafia games, since this isn't a topic that usually comes up.

As a slightly broader question, I'm interested in knowing how people organize their own thoughts in general, regardless of how you do so (whether written down or otherwise).

[insomnia]

ego

[Auro]

I'd like to know as well.
I never organize my thoughts :$

[insomnia]

I think good version is noting early RVS interactions and weird looking thoughts, fish out what seems suspicious but don't put much stock into it, wait for a later day and based on late game play, compare the strength of the evidence with the initial feels you got from RVS because wolves are most likely to out themselves at RVS and EoD. If the feels clash, try and look at them from a "town!them" perspective.

Wolves have a mentality where they need to stand out from the others. Look for who is looking to appear cool without having a goal in mind to start conversation, but rather to avoid it while also looking good. I have an insane rate of catching scum off their first posts because wolves aren't taking it really seriously, when they should. The mentality is what counts. Town looks to engage in discussion and interact, scum want to open up strongly while avoiding discussion at all costs. It's more of a feel thing, but it can be something.

Other than that, I think good notes are only things that equate to thoughts and pushes of players, not feels that you randomly have, especially if you can't associate a scum motive / anti-town mentality behind them - the exception being the above mentioned.

I don't take notes but I reckon this is what would be good practice, idk. Also, note who flipped town players that died to nk were pushing and take notes on how players engaged them. Most notes should contain pro-town / scum interactions. That's the easiest way to clear town players, off interactions.

Most notes should reflect behaviour / thoughts / actions at EoD and interactions from players with flipped town players that died to NKs. Never go on pre-flip associations, because the simple flip of one person being town will make you not focus on the other person anymore, even though they could still technically be scum. Take notes on that only after you have flips.

I just like it a lot more to question everyone and whenever I find something worthy of staying on, I tunnel for a bit. If it works, it works

hope this helped somewhat

[Ramcius]

Hm, I'll share some of my thoughts on the matter

Don't overthink. You don't need full readlist on every slot D1, just focus on few slots for town/scum that you feel strongest. You can pretty much ignore really strong players early on too - they often die early on as town, or do something really towny anyway to worry about them. If neither happens, you'll have better chances to lynch them late game anyway, it's tough to lynch strong players early.

It's not your reads that matter, but how well you can convince everyone else to follow you. Instead of trying to read as many people as you can, look for strong convincing arguments to go with your core reads.

[popsofctown]

I usually don't take notes, but I'm curious why saying that you have a notes PT is banned in some people's rulesets.

[Ankamius]

I usually don't take notes, but I'm curious why saying that you have a notes PT is banned in some people's rulesets.

it can be abused to get reads that are outside the scope of the game itself

namely if you are somebody who commonly has private PTs outside of the game, other players can pressure you to go into your past notes to help read you, which is against the spirit of the game

[popsofctown]

I don't understand, like, "can you go into your notes and find whether you were townreading or scumreading popsofctown on early day 1, because I think I know which one it would be if you were town"? I don't really get why that person wouldn't have asked that mid-day 1 because solving the game earlier rather than later seems better so I'm just kind of lost, it may be as someone who's not very inclined to take notes rather than splatter across the thread I'm missing some puzzle pieces.

[popsofctown]

I agree with banning the quoting or C/P of notes btw, that's different

[Ankamius]

I don't understand, like, "can you go into your notes and find whether you were townreading or scumreading popsofctown on early day 1, because I think I know which one it would be if you were town"? I don't really get why that person wouldn't have asked that mid-day 1 because solving the game earlier rather than later seems better so I'm just kind of lost, it may be as someone who's not very inclined to take notes rather than splatter across the thread I'm missing some puzzle pieces.

I agree with banning the quoting or C/P of notes btw, that's different

I mean pressure like asking them to paraphrase everything they've posted in their private PT

[Ircher]

I agree with banning the quoting or C/P of notes btw, that's different

I think banning the copying/pasting of notes is going too far. I don't see how that is an issue.

[popsofctown]

That's gross
I see how that seems too strong
I just kind of presumed some kind of sportsmanship I guess lol

[popsofctown]

Copying pasting notes without representing that you copy pasted is ok, it's when you're like "I'm v/LA but let me paste in a truckload of effort I put into d2 cause i was efforting town" that seems bad

[mastina]

I used to mae QTs for every game I was in, which I treated as basically being as if I was in a hydra with someone (or a masonry, or a neighborhood I thought of as a masonry).

I stopped doing so shortly before we introduced pts.

Now, I usually don't make topics, but were I to, it'd be a scattered notepad of things that I want to put in the thread, but have yet to properly organize.


I think that the former was much better than the latter for the record. The former allowed me to air out the difference between paranoia thoughts and justified thoughts of something not adding up, while still allowing me to keep a consistent image publicly.

Where I'd only reveal my doubts if I was sure they weren't paranoia, more or less.

[Ranmaru]

I remember when you did that in one of my first mafia games, Mastina. Anyway, I use two monitors. It helps a lot with mafia note taking. I use notepad++ and use always on top. Then I just read the thread page by page and note down what I find odd or suspicious.

[Equinox]

I kept a text file for each game regardless of my role PM with stream-of-consciousness notes, as well as a tiered player list with flips. I did not move players once they flipped; if a town read flipped scum, then I kept them in the town section so I could keep track of how accurate I was and if any chain reads were affected (e.g., based on interactions between popsofctown and Ranmaru, popsofctown is scum if Ranmaru flips town). What was most useful was the action of taking notes, as that meant I had to actively process the information instead of passively reading posts. After that, having my thoughts written down was helpful as sometimes I would notice something minor (e.g., this post that Ircher made sounds kind of weird but not sure why) but not have enough information to do much with it until later whenever I reviewed my notes. The tiered player lists were useful to produce on demand, but getting to that point meant I was doing poorly in the game. These notes were great to have in late game when re-reading the game thread was onerous.

In hindsight, maybe the most useful part of all was the ability to say absolutely unkind things about people in private to vent my frustrations before drafting something much more civil in the game. Good thing I don't play anymore.

[Alisae]

ISO maps are teh best way to take notes tbh

[Firebringer]

I draw them in the sand.

[gobbledygook]

People take notes and think about the games they’re playing?

[Alisae]

People take notes and think about the games they’re playing?

sometimes if I feel like putting in the effort to fill out a map, yes

[gobbledygook]

What is an iso map?

[Alisae]

What is an iso map?

Its a form of taking notes that Plotinus does!
in a notes PT, you would have something along the lines of this

The Living
Name	Claim/crumbs	Scum?	Townreading	Scumreading	#
Alisae	Unclaimed	purdy sure I am a townie
Gamma	Unclaimed	Always dood
GL	Unclaimed	Nah dood		Numbers	135
Mollie	Unclaimed	?
single	Unclaimed	obvtown
ceejay	Unclaimed	?		GL	134
NotAJumbleOfNumbers	Unclaimed	?
The Dead
Name	Role	Cause of Death	Died Townreading	Died Scumreading	#
Suka	VT	D1 Lynch	Literally nothing here	Single?	132
NM	VT	N1 shot	Nothing here	or here	133

and then in thread you post a map of all of the interactions a slot had
viewtopic.php?p=10639003#p10639003
viewtopic.php?f=56&t=72144&user_select[]=30017 you mind find some better ones in this ISO, tho its pretty big

[gobbledygook]

That seems like so much effort. I much prefer my way of reading a game, forgetting all information, and then getting carried.

[Alisae]

That seems like so much effort. I much prefer my way of reading a game, forgetting all information, and then getting carried.

[Ankamius]

That's my strategy too

I just want to learn how to step up my game better