SF Mafia Info Dump & Resources

[Kay]

Your mental condition is a thing, Bizz. That's reasonable in my opinion.

[Percivalé]

Yeah, and that's when things can border on the 'personal' and I don't notice it too much here, but I just wanted to address this because it became a problem at another community where I play. There's this guy that really insults people because it evokes reactions and he thinks it's the best way to find scum, and I don't agree; keep personal attacks out of the game, at least for the most part. Whenever things get that way here, they generally don't last very long (at least, not like it does there), which is what I like.

I want to say it one more time: if I do sound irritated/angry, I'm probably just in an off-mood and will recover soon. Typically if I don't recover in 48 hours I will just ask for a replacement from now on because breakdowns in mafia games aren't pretty and aren't very fun, and I don't like ruining games for everyone.

[Percivalé]

Your mental condition is a thing, Bizz. That's reasonable in my opinion.

They actually got mad at me there because I subbed out so quickly, and I felt like a jerk. ):

[Percivalé]

Kay

something about the way you act when you get annoyed comes off as vaguely passive-aggressive

shooot

sorry if I sounded annoyed just now, did I? I'm not annoyed at all D:

[Prims]

Anxiety attacks are an understandable reason to replace out, but I wish you wouldn't randomly threaten to replace out in the middle of games unless you're actually sure you're going to go through with it and are requesting the sub in-thread. I think that's probably the cause of the passive-aggressiveness Kay is picking up on (though I have no idea where that quote of her's was pulled from).

Edited May 9, 2012 by Prims

[Paperblade]

ipchat

[Percivalé]

Anxiety attacks are an understandable reason to replace out, but I wish you wouldn't randomly threaten to replace out in the middle of games unless you're actually sure you're going to go through with it and are requesting the sub in-thread. I think that's probably the cause of the passive-aggressiveness Kay is picking up on (though I have no idea where that quote of her's was pulled from).  

it was from the chat.

also as of DM I don't do it anymore; when I subbed out there, I just sent a PM to the mod and left. I kind of wasn't thinking straight when I flipped my shit in Schoolgirl and I kinda hoped people would forget about that because I wasn't really being reasonable to begin with and I feel bad about it.

And a whenever I do that, I'm being self-deprecating more than anything. I'm not going to do it anymore though, which is what I was trying to say. I need to be able to control myself better when I'm stressed.

[Aleph]

Anxiety attacks fall under "personal emergencies". If it screws with RL, it'll bleed into a mafia game, and that's bad.

I played all of my first dozen or so mafia games during the greatest personal emergency I've been through.

[Excellen Browning]

I played all of my first dozen or so mafia games during the greatest personal emergency I've been through.

... high school?

[Grace]

Pro tips from the fairly new player:

Take Notes.

So, what I'm finding useful, is to have some sort of spreadsheet/notepad with the players/aliases and what their claimed roles are, what their alignment is (and what you suspect it might be). Leave notes on players so you can check for inconsistencies more easily, and it saves you having to re-read multiple times. Still re-read, it's useful.

Have a list of players from most town to most scummy. It helps you to scumhunt, quite a bit. Keep changing it, based on what information you get.

Playing as mafia

There's always the obvious "how to" mafia. I'm not gonna reiterate most of that.

What I want to share is that you should probably post in thread as though you only knew what from the thread (for NOC). Obviously, try not to frame your scumbuddies, but be reasonable (ie, don't do what I did in SG mafia, trying to keep scum!13th alive for information).

For OC, you can get away with a lot more from the outside, because you can say that someone else told you, etc. But you don't want to give away too much.

Agree or disagree, go ahead.

[Paperblade]

For OC, you can get away with a lot more from the outside, because you can say that someone else told you, etc. But you don't want to give away too much.

This is actually a pretty bad idea because if people are smart they will try to trace the information and should be wary of "Hey someone told me this we should act on it"

[Grace]

This is actually a pretty bad idea because if people are smart they will try to trace the information and should be wary of "Hey someone told me this we should act on it"

Sure. This works. I did say "don't give away too much", but this is still a valid point.

...sometimes, quick tips can be misleading. My apologies.

[Paperblade]

well, imo anything worth lying about would be something worth finding the source of

[Prims]

semi-related: do we have a guide about "how to know when and when not to give information in oc"

[Snike]

Obviously, try not to frame your scumbuddies, but be reasonable (ie, don't do what I did in SG mafia, trying to keep scum!13th alive for information).

I disagree a bit here, personally. Accusing your mates of being scum, if done well, can lead to being viewed as town-sided if they're rolled. The tactic is known as 'bussing', and it is not uncommon in this neck of the woods.

The brackets bring to mind another tip for being mafia: Talk to your mates. Poor communication can kill a mafia team, and if one member goes Lone Wolf, more likely then not, they're going to get themselves hung, which is never a good thing. Especially not when they have a power role like Stalker. So work with your allies and form an outline of a gameplan. Things will go much smoother that way.

[Paperblade]

I could write that

[Blitz]

I could write that

that would be very interesting

[Paperblade]

How to Talk in Private

I. Introduction

II. Town Leader

III. Not Town Leader

I. Introduction

In OC, information has a tendency to get centralized in certain individuals due to the fact that the town can talk with each other without the mafia knowing. As a result, the mafia has a more difficult time of killing people who are cleared/obvtown. This in turn means that a game being Outside Contact is *inherently an advantage to the town*. Since good hosts balance around this fact, this means that you should take advantage of OC.

A result of people being able to talk in private is that information about roles is likely to get to more people (whereas in NOC this only happens when everyone claims for no reason and results in a mafia win 9/10 times), which in turn means more abilities are used with the abilities of others in mind. As a result, OC is more like a logic puzzle to maximize the effectiveness of roles.

II. Town Leader

The best strategy for OC in general is called Town Leader, in which a member of the town is in some way cleared beyond reasonable doubt. Note that this usually means cleared via a cop as roles like Tracker do not guarantee alliance and clearing people via a roleclaim tends to be sketchy at best (see: Unicycle Mafia). After this, all players are expected to claim to that person and that person organizes night actions and lynches. The town leader adds other likely clears (such as the Cop that cleared him and other claims that are likely to actually exist such as Doctor. Obviously this varies from game and host).

However, this strategy is usually considered boring despite being extremely effective when played properly because if you are not a cleared townie or mafia you basically just sit around and send in actions and players have a tendency to zone out and stop paying attention even when they are getting ran into the ground by a mole. As a result, many hosts attempt to make town leaders more difficult to trust and/or easier to kill to up player participation and activity.

Town Leader has a tendency to make it easier for moles to get into a good position, as Town Leader fosters a mindset of a couple people going "Hey guys I am willing to lead because my role sux inspect me plz" which makes it easier for Godfathers to get inspected without looking fishy (whereas in NOC some people consider saying "Inspect me I will look good" a Godfather tell).

III. Not Town Leader

Note: Most of the examples in this part are going to be from Itemafia, because that's the only OC game I have played in that didn't have a Town Leader, and as a result I remember it best and can use a lot of examples from it. If anyone wants to use an example from, say, Touhou or some game that was played before I started, go ahead.

So, if we aren't going with that, what do we do? Well, the best thing to do is to try scumhunt and gather information by yourself. A lot of people on SF like to play the game like NOC and get everyone talking in the topic, but I don't think this is a good strategy. Too often, people get killed for inactivity and they are Town a good nine times out of ten (see Weapons in Itemafia and Necktie in Haphazard). That's not to say you should ignore these people, because that is a good way to lose (see: Touhou Mafia). Instead, you should use info roles on these people such as Tracker or Cop. Yes, it sucks, but that's what happens when people are idlers. Note that whichever faction has the idler being inspected is being hurt (town is wasting inspects to clear people who aren't participating anyway and scum is getting lynched).

Generally, in OC, I ask people question about whatever is relevant. Commonly, this is theorizing about setup. For example, in Itemafia, the main subject of discussion for most of the early game was "Who do you think was recruited?" Most people agreed that players perceived as the best would be recruited, which were *generally* Life, eclipse, and Paperblade. This later became relevant because Life said that he would definitely 100% recruit eclipse because he had never been mafia with her before... As it turned out, Life was in fact mafia and had recruited her.

It is possible to leak information and see where it spreads. This lets you learn who is talking to who and about what. For example, in Itemafia, I learned that Proto had told Life I was a Thief, which let me draw the conclusion that Proto was mafia (since I already believed Life was scum). Note that if you are going to lie about something with this, be careful what you lie about because it can backfire. Recently, this happened to Kevin in Touhou who fakeclaimed Doctor as town to see what certain people would do about it, only to get himself lynched because that person had already received a Doctor claim.

If you believe someone is scum, you have two ways of going about getting them killed. Either you can talk to your contacts in private and try to stir up a lynch that way (if you don't want to get singled out for whatever reason... for example you are a cop and don't want to be hooked/killed) or post your reasoning in the thread. This requires good judgement. For example if you are someone who most people consider untrustworthy for whatever reason, doing the latter might be a better idea because going public about things just feels less shady.

Also to repeat myself: I don't consider people who aren't contributing in the thread (even if they are posting but are posting nonsense) scummy. This is an OC game and there are other ways of contacting people. For example, in Brawl Mafia I only posted in the thread for three reasons:

1. Nonsense

2. Information I felt should be public (this was mostly stage stuff). And I'm pretty sure I talked too much in public there

I will write up more about how to be mafia in OC... later

Edited May 14, 2012 by Paperblade

[Prims]

three reasons:

1.

2.

[Paperblade]

I originally had 3 but merged 2 and 3 into one point

[Tables]

Pro tips from the fairly new player:

Take Notes.

This, about ten thousand times. But you should also make sure you don't make it a chore - above all else, you're playing a game. So you should be jotting things down as you think 'oh, that's interesting, might be fun to use that later'. Most of my play in mafia is working out how I could do something epic and what information I might need. I work out about 3 or 4 epic things to do every game (e.g. catching a ton of scum, surviving as lone mafia in a 10v1, etc.), and do one about every 10 games or so... but it would be even LESS often if I didn't have notes.

[Grace]

I disagree a bit here, personally. Accusing your mates of being scum, if done well, can lead to being viewed as town-sided if they're rolled. The tactic is known as 'bussing', and it is not uncommon in this neck of the woods.

Yeah, bussing can be good, but you really have to do it well. Like, not how I did it in Schoolgirl mafia. If I had done it at the start of the day (day 2, for reference), that probably would have worked (for example). The problem lies that it takes a lot of foresight and preparation. You can't show a lot of alignment with the player you are bussing, no matter when in the game. Otherwise, townies who re-read will probably catch onto it, and begin to think you might be being a bit hypocritical. Of course, you could play it off as being "because of new information", etc.

The brackets bring to mind another tip for being mafia: Talk to your mates. Poor communication can kill a mafia team, and if one member goes Lone Wolf, more likely then not, they're going to get themselves hung, which is never a good thing. Especially not when they have a power role like Stalker. So work with your allies and form an outline of a gameplan. Things will go much smoother that way.

Oh yes, this. No matter how many of you there are, you need each other to win. Being one down is such a huge disadvantage, and the earlier in the game, the worse the effect. You have the advantage of being able to plan, and sometimes your roles synergise, and you need to use them.

One loss for the minority hurts more than if there is one loss for the majority. (ie: one person comprises more of a minority then a majority)

[Percivalé]

please avoid ad hominems in your arguments

~-~

[Paperblade]

You're wrong because you're dumb

[Percivalé]

You're mafia because you're good at this game