crunkus wrote:Playing this game well is easy. You just need to focus on the following short list of things:
1. Identifying moments of townie sincerity.
2. Identifying moments of legitimate scummy insincerity (harder).
3. Communicating your process openly for your fellow teammates to better assess you correctly and therefore reduce the scope of their possible incorrect assessments.
4. Producing situations where moments of sincerity or insincerity bubble out either by design or indirectly.
5. Being persuasive enough to affect the flow of the game in a manner that's best for your team.
6. Encouraging others on your team to do all of these things more effectively.
7. Reviewing the words of revealed scum to look for aberrant patterns of interaction not easily explained another way, individual interactions involving that player which in retrospect seem decidedly odd that may have escaped notice the first time around, and may have escaped notice.
8. Identifying reactions to certain situations that deviate from any reasonably expected townie approach to the same information.
9. Noticing who is doing what and who is not doing what and who is possibly putting more effort into appearing to do what while not really accomplishing what they'd otherwise probably be doing if they weren't scum.
10. Not losing your shit.
11. Identifying when you need to take a step back from a firm position you have, look at how that position may be affecting the way you view other points of data, and taking a comparative and honest look at the other possibilities.
12. Comment on as many different trains of thought as possible and encourage the same from others. Then go beyond commenting, and encourage productive discussion on as many trains of thought as possible.
13. Go back and re-read.
14. Summon additional hours in the day through dark magicks.
15. If you're scum, try to forget that you are scum and that you know what you know whenever possible, unless it is important that you don't...and you're good enough to execute properly. Then attempt to win the game for the town. If you were town, you'd probably botch it up anyway.
16. Go back and look at the voting record and think in terms of moments and what tactical voting might look like or whether it would even be required in that situation. Don't accept common wisdom. Most common wisdom and thinking associated with voting is manure. Manure can be very useful in the right applications, but it stinks and is not something you want outside the correct context.
18. Never assume you cannot be understood. This is the first step toward not being understood. I don't care if you tried already and it didn't appear to make a dent. What do you know about that person's dents? What you've read in thread? Most of it is pointless blather. Keep trying, and try a different way. Maybe they are scum. I don't care. Don't give up, don't feed me that "the town is better off without me" tripe. The town is not better off without you. The town is better off resolving your drama...so resolve it.
19. Read your own posts once in a while several days after you wrote them. Bring a swear jar. You'll be needing it. We're all terrible at this and there's nothing like a bit of temporal distance to give you a big slice of how much. It's good to remember from time to time when you are trying to pick through who is opportunistically trying to get you killed and who may generally have no clue what you were actually trying to communicate.
20. Just because someone is presenting you as saying something you didn't does not mean they are purposely misrepresenting you. See #19. Clarify with more patience than anyone has a right to have.
22. Look for people trying to make a silk purse out of something you suspect from previous experience they know is a sow's ear. Scum love over-justifying what stated fairly and simply is just terrible reasoning.
23. Resist the urge to point out scummy behaviour right away. Give them rope. Caught a contradiction? You aren't in the slightest bit suspicious. Seek clarification and offer positive feedback. Let it crystallize. Then keep in mind that you are probably wrong about this. Also, don't take too long.
24. Don't lie to your teammates, excepting rule 24 and a half.
25. Put thought into your night orders. As GM one thing is clear...a lot of people treat most night orders as after thoughts. As a player who is always town, I notice a lot of people are made to look worse than they need to be the next day because they didn't put much thought into their night orders. Think about all the variables that might be involved in your decision. You likely have days to think about it. It's okay to send the GM a message saying..."thinking, will respond probably tomorrow".