Raskolnikov wrote:I do wonder if it's swingy, especially if scum were to hit vt's early on rather than masons; they shouldn't expect masons day/night 1 anyways. Hitting vt either night 1 or night 2 still ends up on day 3 with 3 scum 3 mason 3 town, which for what's supposed to be nearly the best case scenario for scum (2 mislynches) still doesn't look that good with the 3 conf towns.
The reason for this is a combination of two factors: math, and typical mason play.
Starting with typical mason play, masons usually end up exposing themselves early. They're almost never lynched, yes, but often, they are seen as scummy, especially a 3-man masonry, where their mutual defense of one another looks awfully a lot like a 3-man scumteam. (Dwlee99, upon becoming a mason, even said this is what he
thought
was the case! He thought the masons were scum together.) This causes masons to be run up and forced to claim often. Sometimes, all the masonry will claim, sometimes just the one mason being run up, but regardless of which, associatives mean that once one mason is outed, it's fairly easy to find the other mason(s).
Then, you get into the math. Assume a mislynch each day: this gives the mafia 3 chances per phase to hit a PR: the lynch, the nightkill,
and
the Neapolitan. So the math goes like this: going into N1, there would be 9/12 players the scum do not know. Between the nightkill and their investigation, that's 7/11 by daybreak. Assuming no overlap, with a second mislynch, you get 7/10 unknown going into N2, which becomes 5/9 by D3. In short, when the mafia's nightkill (which should be aimed at PRs) is combined with the mafia neapolitan (which should be aimed at PRs), the mafia can identify half the town as being either a PR or not a PR by D3...and this is from the math alone. When overlayed with the above (i.e. masons tend to be obvious by associatives), the mafia had every chance to catch the masons.
What's more, if in 7p lylo all three masons were alive, would you believe them claiming masons in lylo? Most likely, you would assume they were being bold scum going for an all-or-nothing lylo win. Plus, if the mafia had failed to catch the masons by that point, the town probably deserves the win anyway.
This is why the mafia underestimating the necessity of their Neapolitan and letting it be lynched D1 was so costly: the setup was balanced around the Neapolitan investigating, so without that capacity, they were greatly hindered, making it deceptively town-sided. There's also how the Neapolitan was supposed to claim: Neapolitans are not a common role, so it's not something mafia would think to fakeclaim. (It'd be akin to fakeclaiming Gunsmith: most mafia simply claim cop, like KainTepes did.) Neapolitans are also not a common scum role, because they're mostly used for the town as a cop-lite: getting clear innocent results on vanilla townies, but guilty results on all mafia and on any PR. So the idea was that the Neapolitan could claim, and then not be lynched, because it was a believable role to have in the setup.
When you add in daychat, which the mafia did not utilize very much, they had plenty of theoretical power in the setup. It simply never materialized.
