In post 1692, Yosarian2 wrote:I screwed up the quote tags in the last post; Mod, feel free to delete that one if you want.
In post 1682, Drixx wrote:
I feel like day one is a ton of speculation because I can't really ever objectively convince myself someone is scum, outside of the outliers where I can snag someone with a subtle gambit or someone slips hard or something.
Let me tell you a secret: almost nobody (who's being honest with themselves) is almost ever all that confident about their day 1 scum reads. There are exceptions, but they're rare.
Usually, on day 1, you're looking for something you can work with. Maybe someone makes a weak scum tell (which could be anything that scum are slightly more likely to do then town are). Maybe someone else is just less townie then you'd like to see. Or, if all else fails, I just make a list, figure out who is town, and then go after someone else.
Once you find something like that, you put together an attack against them and see how they react. Your main goal is to A: gather information, see how they react, see who attacks them and defends them, and B: move the town closer to lynching someone. Hopefully someone more likely then random to be scum, but really, even a random lynch day 1 is better then no lynch, and towns often do worse then average on day 1.
Or, alternately, if someone else makes an attack you like, use your vote to increase pressure there.
Basically, the thing is, if nothing happens in a day 1 scumgame, then nothing happens. If no one is attacked or no one feels any pressure, then no one has to do anything, and that makes it impossible to tell the difference between town and scum. But if you start doing things, then things start happening; put someone under pressure and their reactions become a lot more useful in analyzing them.
I approach the game like a logic puzzle and that's my biggest strength and weakness simultaneously. It's practically useless early, but if one takes good notes and is willing to put in the time to verify things ... it's super good at separating obvious town from the rest and then PoE from there to find the scum narrative slips.
That's a great tool, and I like to do it to, but to be a really good mafia player you have to have more then one tool in your toolbox, because like you say that one doesn't always work. Try out some other things, try out some other playstyles. You can always switch gears back later in the game, and if anything, you're likely to develop more information that way you can use later.
But what if they're in between? I already said that I thought giving someone one ability (so long as I can be fairly sure it's not super dangerous) at a time and seeing how they actually use it would help. But even then, clever scum who is being town read could use the powers leashed until the time is right to spring the trap. I don't think there's an excluded middle ground here. I think there's "That guy is town. I'm giving him stuff." and there's "That guy is scum, I'm pushing him to be lynched right freaking now" and then there's "I'm not sure".
Roleblocking a town power role usually hurts the town more then roleblocking a scum power role helps the town, in general. Stopping a single town action from a key town power role can really screw over the town. Scum power roles, on the other hand, are less likely to be game-changing events, just by the nature of the game.
its the definition of a policy lynch
Whoever this Mechanic is! ![:]](./images/smilies/icon_smiling.png "Cheerful Smile"){kind=icon}
