Don't rely on Tone (Gut can be fine)

[unwnd]

It's a bad habit and only an educated guess. They're good maybe early on but once you have something more to latch onto (such as a flip) you discard your tonereads immediately. They have a place in D1 maybe, but never any further. I see far too many players these days throwing out tells such 'soulread' or trying to decipher someone's alignment just based on the way they said something. This is next to impossible, because the action of tone can only be read inside your head. I'm not speaking to you, for all you know I could be really angry typing this. Maybe I'm happy.

Saying

I'm so happy to be playing mafia!!!

Could be a deliberate lie and completely sarcastic. This only makes things worse for you. Believe me, I'm not speaking from a position of purity. I've made the same mistake, many times. Well, you ask. What about if you toneread correctly? You guessed right. That's all it was, but next time you might interpret someone's tone incorrectly and that guess could lead to something worse. It just leaves no accountability for yourself or others. This is not to say that tone doesn't have a place in Mafia however. A bit of tone is great and understanding emotional behavior is very worthwhile. To assume everyone just plays purely on instinctual emotion however is bad, and trying to guess based on emotion where there is a lack of verbal or even physical cues is just going into the woods without a flashlight.

So what about gut? Gut is different.

Having a feeling

is different than

leading an argument based on feeling

. The former leaves yourself more accountable to determine whether or not that feeling is true. The latter is just assumptions. The game becomes very boring and also very difficult if it just turns into assumption-based arguments, because emotions change drastically. I think what would be best (see: what I think is best may not actually be) is using emotion as an indicator and then providing your own logic to it. Maybe you already do this and I'm preaching to the choir. That's fine, but part of me is skeptical as I find myself inbetween emotional arguments that lose sight of what the argument was really about the more it goes on. Maybe this feeds into my other *cough* thread but I digress, and even though I say 'dont rely on tone' I find myself very much doing the exact same thing, but hopefully we can all be a little better and I'll follow my own words if I write it down to stare at.

[MURDERCAT]

hey're good maybe early on but once you have something more to latch onto (such as a flip) you discard your tonereads immediately. They have a place in D1 maybe, but never any further.

This is exactly my opinion as well.

[Something_Smart]

I don't understand the thesis here. People might be lying about their emotions and therefore it's impossible to determine genuine tone from fake tone?

Tone is a tool like any other. You can do smart things with it, or you can do dumb things with it. It seems like you're suggesting that it's impossible to do smart things with it, which is a pretty strong claim.

[unwnd]

I don't understand the thesis here. People might be lying about their emotions and therefore it's impossible to determine genuine tone from fake tone?

Tone is a tool like any other. You can do smart things with it, or you can do dumb things with it. It seems like you're suggesting that it's impossible to do smart things with it, which is a pretty strong claim.

That was just an exaggerated example for effect. As for being unable to do smart things with it? Nah I don't feel that way, I just think presently the way people deal with tone is probably less practiced than other conventional means. It can't be the tool you rely upon because it's situational and takes a long time to get even halfway good at it. Even then, being good has varying results because again, you can't verbally hear someone, it's all interpretation.

When I was typing that, I did consider the idea of 'well, logical arguments are based on some form of interpretation as well', but I think they are easier to follow and grasp than just saying the equivalent of 'just trust me bro soulread'

[Krazy]

Tone is one of the most effective tools for a very specific category of players. Some people can make themselves post as either alignment, but you can tell they never are really enjoying the game as one alignment. I think tone reads for people who you haven't played with before will be close to rand in quality. But for a small class of players it can be important. The problem is that as soon as you make a tone based argument, the read is likely to be scuffed. Mostly because if they're town and you're wrong on a toneread, they're likely to get tilted. For that reason I'd use them sparingly since inaccurate tonereads can be disruprive to the gamestate and you can't be 100% with them.

[Infinity 324]

I'm not sure I've ever actually used tone in the way you're describing it here ("x sounds happy in this post, therefore they're mafia"), and the way I've used tone reads in the past ("x has a towny tone") hasn't been very effective, but I think reading emotion in mafia posts can be a very valuable scumhunting tool if you go a bit beyond that surface level. Even just having a large sample size of posts makes it a decent amount more reliable, and turns your "tone read" into a read of how a player is approaching the game, which can be very valuable. It's difficult for scum to keep up a false emotional state for long periods of time without looking stilted. (This seems to be the main place you disagree with me). It helps to see if someone's behavior fits the emotion you're reading (for example: whether someone is being proactive vs. reactive, taking initiative, being "solvy", or simply how much they're posting at any given time). You can also get a lot of mileage out of looking at when someone is

not

displaying emotions where you would expect them to (player knowledge helps here, but isn't necessary). For example, if player A makes an emotional post, player B who's known player a for a long time is more likely to not respond or respond more curtly than you'd expect if player B is scum, depending on context. (It helps to have a decent sample size of this type of thing happening). As a more general principle, it's difficult for scum to fake every little aspect of being town, so if there are a bunch of examples of scum not saying things where you'd expect town to say things, that's scum-indicative. I'm not sure how much of this was directly related to your point, but I think there are a lot of valuable scumhunting tools you can use which are at least adjacent to what you describe in the opening post. (Also, I consider a soulread to be a strong form of a gut read rather than a tone read, though maybe others see this differently).

[Infinity 324]

A bit of tone is great and understanding emotional behavior is very worthwhile. To assume everyone just plays purely on instinctual emotion however is bad, and trying to guess based on emotion where there is a lack of verbal or even physical cues is just going into the woods without a flashlight.

Ok I missed this part but some of what I'm saying should still be relevant. I do think reading the emotion in someone's posts over multiple day phases can be the sole basis for a read, but there should always be other information available so use that too.

[Krazy]

That's fine but I think at that point I'd usually call that a thought process read but at that point we might be disagreeing on semantics than substance

Or maybe even 'wim' / polarity

[Infinity 324]

Yeah, I think thought process and emotion are so intertwined for me that it's hard to pull them apart.

[Flavor Leaf]

i can fake my tone completely, so I agree

[Nero Cain]

I get tone scumread all the time. I'm not sure if it's ever been right. I'm not sure if that has more to do with the players pushing tone and not being able to "read" tone or if tone reads are just a bad thing in general.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I don't understand the thesis here. People might be lying about their emotions and therefore it's impossible to determine genuine tone from fake tone?

Tone is a tool like any other. You can do smart things with it, or you can do dumb things with it. It seems like you're suggesting that it's impossible to do smart things with it, which is a pretty strong claim.

It depends on the player. Some players can accurately be read by tone, others cannot but what I do agree with is that logic > gut but combining tone=gut with logic is always a good idea but always logic trumps everything else.

But I’ve seen plenty of players - myself included have a hit or miss - solely on gut or tone. I’d say: facts > logic > meta > gut > tone > conventional logic. Ignore that in most cases.

Like especially dumb things like “X is over reacting to the srs/votes on them”=100% NAI. Both town and scum can be equally survivalistic and not at all based on how they feel about their respective alignment. Basically, players who have a strong alignment preference mat be more survivalistic if the roll their alignment of choice. Townies often hate being miselimed and scum can act like they don’t care. Also players hate to be run up regardless of alignment, in general.

AtE: Is it backed up by actual logic and evidence? If so, probably town. Straight up AtE otoh, probably scum.

Townreads: the more of them the greater the odds that player is town. I really don’t know why that even gets sr tbh. I’ve seen very few games where scum had an excess of trs unless perhaps they were newb scum. Having too many trs usually ping town who hasn’t really figured this out yet.

Is someone actually trying to earnestly solve? It’s irrelevant if they come straight out of the gate with actual reads or not. Town can be just as easily lost, clueless and frustrated by it. That’s the ticket. If they don’t have reads, do they seem really bothered by it, then very likely town. If they genuinely don’t care= scum.

Play is your most accurate barometer. Does their play make more sense as town or scum? Are they doing anything to try to advance the game forward?

Giving reads, one of the best ways to tell alignment - especially trs. It doesn’t have to be an actual readslist but town instinctively wants to townblock. Scum in general hates to do this because it makes it harder to miselim.

Are they doubling down making excuses for obvious bad play rather than feel frustrated with themselves? Town gets upset with themselves for having bad reads etc. Scum doubles down.

Logical progression. Are X’s reads - in general - make sense? Scum’s reads usually don’t.

Finally mood. Town is on general happy to be town, so players who seem rather sullen can possibly be a sign they got a red role pm, unless they have other reasons for it.

Transparency: Is that player not trying to engage or be friendly? Being engaging is often a towntell. Humour is often another possible towntell. Town is in general more relaxed so they will probably joke more. It’s usually harder for scum to do this because they need to be a lot more careful.

Going to bat for your trs. Sure scum can also do this to get tr cred but that happens a lot less often than people think. While there can be exceptions, it’s town way more often than not who does this. If there’s no real scum agenda in doing so, it’s probably the case. Scum rarely go to bat for their trs unless it serves some kind of agenda. So accusing someone of whiteknighting soley to get towncred rarely happens. If there’s no obvious agenda to doing it, very likely town.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I get tone scumread all the time. I'm not sure if it's ever been right. I'm not sure if that has more to do with the players pushing tone and not being able to "read" tone or if tone reads are just a bad thing in general.

Many players are bad at it. This tends to improve with familarity. Every player has a range and depending on the game, alignment, role, playerlist etc. players will play somewhere along that spectrum.

You deathtunnel a lot as town and deathtunneling tends to get sr. I have often been guilty of that myself.

I think having a really off tone is a pretty good alignment tell but good scum players may be able to fake that. Excessive self-consciousness is often not a good thing and scum is a lot more self-conscious in general. Basically most people are uncomfortable with lying which scum obviously have to do. Also in general pushing wagons without good reasons are more likely scum indicative if the player doing it doesn’t try to really reacess or re-evaluate when it makes sense to do so. Town doesn’t want to miselim, where as scum obviously does, so town won’t ignore good reasons why their read is incorrect but scum will be extremely resistant to changing their minds on srs. Town tends to do the opposite: more flexible on srs less on trs.

[skitter30]

i think that tonereads work on some players and don't on some other players

[Bell]

Half the time, when I'm talking about tone reading players I'm mostly bullshitting to see if scum get nervous for guessing if someone is town correctly or not.
Or if a player laughs at me for tone reading them wrong because they're scum, actually.

Some players also respond really well to being town read or being believed based on their emotions and start behaving differently in a way I find somewhat difficult to fake. Though, that's anecdotal.

[chennisden]

anyone who claims to be happy playing mafia is lying, ergo toneread them as scum, ez win

[kuribo]

Lying about emotion, especially anger happens so infrequently that what really pisses me off is when people accuse my anger of being fake.

I've lynched scum for trying to paint small nothings by me as some sort of "fake rage scum theater." And I don't just mean when I'm pissed off: I've had scum in each of my town games over the last two years accuse me of rage just because I used the words shit or fuck.

This has become such a reliable scumtell for me that 80% of the time it's happened, it was scum making the accusation.

So to recap: accusing me of "fake rage" just pisses me off even more and will cause me to scum read you in a death tunnel that you won't win.

Some players just have a lot of low-key hostility bubbling under the surface. Don't mistake that for rage. And I say that as one of the players on this site who reads emotion better than most. With a great degree of accuracy, I can generally read someone's rage posts and tell you if they're coming from town or scum. Driving people to that point was one of the core premises of my gameplay back in the day. I can also tell very easily if a player is genuinely mad or just faking it.

And lemme tell you the honest truth: 9 times out of ten, they aren't faking. Fake rage as scum theater just does not happen they often for three reasons: 1. Mafia is a genuinely emotional game. 2. Credibly fake raging is extremely hard. And 3. Site meta has shifted to the point where idiots think all rage is fake anyway and scum read it. Raging isn't seen as town: it's seen as scummy or neutral at best, and therefore "fake raging" as scum theater to look town is pointless.

While we're on the subject of scum theater, it doesn't happen nearly as often as it's accused either. Interactions are frequently genuine. By day two or three, I've frequently been able to group people as scum or town based on their interactions. (Ie, if X is scum, so is Y, but Y can be scum either way, at least one scum among A, B, C) I've actually been shocked at my own accuracy when breaking it down like that. These are not voodoo, I've simply learned to understand interactions.

Learn to read emotions.

Learn to read interactions.

Stop assuming you are the center of the world and that every pissed off player is faking it to get over on you. Stop trying to accuse people of raging when they aren't. This is shit-tier play.

Thank you for coming to my Teddy talk.

[kuribo]

It doesn’t have to be an actual readslist but town instinctively wants to townblock. Scum in general hates to do this because it makes it harder to miselim.

I disagree with that.

I've always played town as someone who doesn't trust anyone that isn't a head of my hydra, sharing a Mason PT with me, or dead. The vast majority of players attempting to form public townblocs will always be given an eye of suspicion, even if I don't vocalize it. I've seen too many games lost because someone townbloc'd scum and refused to eliminate them in late game. Trust your own reads, not who's trying to buddy you. My town game is brash but lonely, summarized by the stone cold Steve Austin quote "DTA YOU STUPID PIECE OF TRASH DONT NEVER TRUST NOBODY!"

As scum I prefer to slide into buddying stronger players so they can townread me. My town game is emotionally charged and brazen. (Excepting if I'm busy or suffering my occasional depression) My scum game is insidious and deep.

[Krazy]

Kuribo has a scummy tone, VOTE: kuribo

[kuribo]

Kuribo has a scummy tone, VOTE: kuribo

good luck with that, i haven't been mis-elim'd in nine years.

[Shirou]

i think that tonereads work on some players and don't on some other players

anyone who claims to be happy playing mafia is lying, ergo toneread them as scum, ez win

[Krazy]

Well that pattern will continue because this wagon isn't a miselim

[Amélie]

I agree with this though I sometimes judge by tone myself.

[Noraa]

I feel like this thread is directed at me but soul reads are not at all based on one post and the tone in one post. For me soul reads are full on vibes that the person is giving off.

[unwnd]

Not directed at anyone

It was almost a self-reminder