On Self-Appraisal (How To Become Great)

[mastina]

mastina articles (both 4-5 years out of date):
Mafia As A Social Game: Argument About Charisma
On Balancing Logic And Charisma

For the record--I have been, slowly, trying to revamp my older articles to be...well, less shitty, and have further reflections and refinement. Those are two I haven't gotten around to quite yet, unfortunately, but they are on the to-do list.

One mafia article I've been working on is actually one which works in tandem with articles about charisma, though--
I am working on writing an article (probably short enough that it'll be in the academy rather than a devoted thread) behind my philosophy of "Push Hard".

This has been my playstyle ever since switching to my mastina account and is the main difference between my play from my mastin2 days. A preview of the article which works as a bit of a fairly succinct summary--as long as you possess the ability to reevaluate, the best way to generate useful content is to push players hard. Most of what you push will be wrong, but by having made the push, it is easier to expose what is right.

[mastina]

I disagree about pushing hard. That's the last thing mafia in general needs, and let alone mafiascum. You have to understand that every action has an advantage and a disadvantage. Pushing people can ilicit genuine reactions, but it creates a ton of negative things for the game state as well.

Pushing hard probably doesn't meant to me what it means to you then.

Asking questions can be a hard push, if those questions have follow-through and purpose/intent behind them, where they are meant to lead somewhere and are clearly being used to either raise or build up to a point of some kind. Pointing out inconsistencies and explaining your viewpoint can count as a strong push if you put enough time, effort, and posts into showing, "this is what I see; seeing that makes me think this".

The idea isn't to shout "PLAYER IS SCUM" 100 times over and over again, though that can be

part

of an effective hard push. (Part, not all.) The idea is to get a high level of engagement and dialogs started with multiple players--as many as you can handle interacting with. (Preferably all.)

Pushing doesn't have to be pushing scum, either; you can push that a player is town/a mislynch just as much as you can push that a player is scum/who you should be lynching. The theory behind it is that the more you push, the more useful information is generated...provided that key factor of the ability to back up, reassess, and then from the reevaluation, form reads. If the answer to "Is X actually scum like I have said?" "Actually? Yes.", then highlight why with a case; if the answer comes out as 'no', then explain your change/shift in read and push elsewhere if you are satisfied, more or less.

[mastina]

As an example which Mathdino was annoyed with--an example of a hard push from me would be when I quote a player asking some innocuous question about another player...and then I ask a question of my own, along the lines of, "And what, do you suppose, that actually means?" (Pretty much those words exactly.)

This is intended to serve both as an engagement with the player who asked the question, and a push on the player they asked the question to. String a bunch of those together on a single player, and I have essentially made a makeshift case--
"Playername did this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. When you add all of those up, what alignment do you think is more likely for playername?"

As I said--the pushes are disproportionately likely to be wrong, but the idea goes, more or less, that it is not a sin to be wrong in a push, so you shouldn't be afraid of making a wrong push. Especially if what was generated from the push proves more useful than the actual push itself. Someone actually being able to demonstrate a reasonable position on Playername in response to the case, for instance, can give you a better read on said someone.

This is also why I find it easier to play on later days; on later days, the fruits of those laborious pushes now have ripened with actual hard information.

Pushes don't need to be long (that's just my natural verbosity, I'm never going to be succinct); pushes don't need to involve spamfests; pushes don't need to be wall wars; pushes

certainly

don't need to be condescending (that's just a very bad trait I've picked up which is one of my largest weaknesses). They can be little things, added up over time, but given with gusto.

(Small caveat tho--this strategy tends to work best when you're not scumreading literally half the game. If you push everyone, then no push stands out. You need to pick and choose your pushes, and push the players you think most need to be pushed.)

[mastina]

I just play. For fun. Cuz it's a game. I honestly don't care a lot about statistics and such. They'd only change over time.

I mean. The two aren't mutually exclusive. I play for fun, too, but I do care about statistics and I do try actively to improve my play. (The key word of course being "try". )

[mastina]

Mafia is fun???

I can't think of any other reason why I could still let myself suffer through it.

[mastina]

Maria, Alisae, Mastina, NSG, and RC are all examples of (different levels of) good by current site standard players and I've seen hard pushing horrible reads in multiple games. Everyone has off games.

I actually push players expecting to be wrong, for what it's worth--I just think that the information gained from a wrong push is better than whatever is gained from not making the wrong push. (This doesn't mean I don't believe the push. I do! I'd never push something I don't believe. It's just that my self-expectation is that my belief will be wrong. I just don't think the game works if you always assume you're wrong. I expect to be wrong, but assume I'm right; the two aren't synonymous.) Thus my Push Hard philosophy.

Also I'd argue that I'm not good. I'm average, for exactly that reason; I do in fact have off games and even when I have games where I nail like three scum I have faults keeping me from having done perfectly.