Advice for Newbies

[Ircher]

While I intend for this thread to be geared to newer and inexperienced players, it's possible some of it can apply to experienced players as well. I intend for this to be a resource for both newer and older players who would like to improve their play. In addition, it's been a while since we have had a thread like this, and since mafia shifts over time, it's good to get a fresh perspective on it.

What would you consider to be one of the most important and fundamental piece of advice that you would like to impart to newer players and that will serve them well through the rest of their mafia careers? Your advice can be geared towards a particular alignment, or it can be general advice.

My advice would be along the following lines:

The game of mafia, while it has clearly delineated sides, is not at its a core a black and white game. Every action that occurs in a game is motivated by a wide variety of factors. Some of those factors may include one's alignment, but the vast majority are totally unrelated to a player's alignment. One of the key skills to master is deciding whether a post and an associated action is town-indicative, scum-indicative, or not alignment-indicative at all. In the vast majority of cases, it's the third one. Just because you offer one explanation for a set of actions a player makes doesn't mean alternative explanations cannot exist. Nor is your explanation always the correct one. Always keep an open mind, and try to see things from both a town and a scum perspective. You will often find that things you would instinctively think must be done by scum (or by town) often have credible uses for the opposite alignment that may apply to the game at hand.