On the reliability of scumreads Day 1

[MathBlade]

Mafia is a game of social deduction of incomplete information.

I play it to become better at said social deduction. On other sites I curbstomp but not here. It’s kinda weird.

If you’re wanting complete information as town then you’re no longer deducing. It’s one of the reasons I love vanilla games.

Day one scum give away a lot because they don’t know the board. Games with an N0 peek for the cop have a set strategy especially on MU and other sites and then it’s more going through the motions than mafia.

[MathBlade]

Cop Head Start is a known mechanic (i.e. N0 with actions but without kills; it's called "Cop Head Start" as investigatives tend to be the only roles that can perform useful actions then). However, it's not used that commonly over here.

If you want to give a player a "N0 innocent", you can use an Informed Townie. We interpret that as being a different role from a Cop (although a player could be both).

Note that there is information you can go on. For example, sometimes players will claim at L-1. Before claims (or in a symmetrical/all-vanilla game), you have at least two other sources of information: scum already know who the scum are (thus you can sometimes pick up on a player's lack of curiosity), and scum will typically be trying to prevent their buddies being the D1 lynch (they may give up doing so at some point if it looks like they're doomed, a transition that's also possible to pick up on). Note that it's often hard to make use of this information

on

D1 – thus it's more commonly used later in the game – but that doesn't mean that it's impossible.

This information gets used. Just not by the cop.

Standard operating procedure is cop leaves crumb of their N0 peek. When they die that person is confirmed town. Confirmed town leads next day and then dies. It’s all pretty rote.