Mini Normal 2334: trees (Day 5)

[tris]

VC 1.01

Grovyle in a Fedora (2):

DrippingGoofball 10, SaltiestCactus23 23

RationalMadman (1):

DrNickRiviera 7

DrNickRiviera (1):

Grovyle in a Fedora 8

Hu Tao (1):

KayJayQueue 13

Not Voting:

Elements, RationalMadman, Hu Tao, Thomith, camelCasedSnivy, Dannflor, awesomeming327, Gibdo

With 13 alive it takes 7 to eliminate.

Deadline:

(expired on 2024-04-17 20:15:00)

[SaltiestCactus23]

Anyways quick ice breaker time since the only person I've played with before is camelcasedsnivy

How familiar is everyone with the other players in the game?

What would you say your playstyle as town/scum is like?

[SaltiestCactus23]

expecting the two of us to lead town to another perfect win ccs

[Thomith]

VOTE: Rationalmadman

The name is already contradictory, just like medical license!

I don't really understand why people do this early in DP1s unless they will gang as 3 out of the 13 here at least. It is junk activity and can hurt Town a lot more than help.

I am replying to you as you chose me, yes, however this is a habit many develop in Mafia and especially in a setup with 13, which is not 'mini' in a real sense, all these equate to is hellos aimed at people to achieve nothing.

My username can refer to different contexts of rationality and madness but in Mafiascum context it refers to that I calculate a lot but seem crazy to others I am sure. It isn't a contradiction.

I agree that RVS votes don't usually mean a whole lot, but I don't think they necessarily hurt town.

The whole stage is honestly the same thing as you are suggesting, generating conversations until people start saying things that are substantial, allowing us to progress the phase of the game into something more meaningful.

I remember when I played before there was the whole RVS/RQS argument, and I did always prefer RQS, but it seems like the site seems to have settled more on RVS at this point.

[Thomith]

Anyways quick ice breaker time since the only person I've played with before is camelcasedsnivy

How familiar is everyone with the other players in the game?

What would you say your playstyle as town/scum is like?

I've played with Elements, Hu Tao, Kay, cCS, Dann (he is who made the quote in my sig ) and ming before.
I think I've played the most games with Hu Tao, with 5 completed games.

As town I tend to question people a lot to gauge their reactions, try to understand people's mindsets and figure out if I think this mindset is more likely from town!them or scum!them.
I tend to be a more PoE player, attempting to figure out who I think is town and work backwards, rather than figuring out who I necessarily suspect right away.

As scum, I tend to try and play similarly to how town!me played in previous games with people I recognise on the playerlist.
If there was something in a previous game that made somebody on the playerlist think I was probably town, I try to replicate it (this has gotten me caught before, so maybe it's not the best thing - somebody alt slipped, and knowing I played like a VI in a previous game I played, my tone shifted to being more erratic than how calculated I was before that, and I got executed because the shift in play was not subtle at all)

[Thomith]

What I'd do instead is say we keep talking and gang on people as 3 to 4 to pressure them. It can be me, it can be others. Nobody should react until 3 to 4 votes are on them in a setup this big, not on DP1.

Pressure is from votes to eliminate fundamentally (or night actions, sure).

All other pressure is an illusion.

Idk how the right way to talk is but voting and saying silly stuff only benefits scum, not town. Always.

Regarding the bolded, to confirm, do you believe that there is no other way to apply pressure other than voting?

[Thomith]

expecting the two of us to lead town to another perfect win ccs

Hmm.

Probably a joke, but I'm not too sure how much I'm liking this post.

[Dannflor]

VOTE: gibdo

give the newbies a warm welcome

[Dannflor]

expecting the two of us to lead town to another perfect win ccs

Hmm.

Probably a joke, but I'm not too sure how much I'm liking this post.

why

[Elements]

VOTE: elements
I'm out all day so I expect readable content when I return

[RationalMadman]

What I'd do instead is say we keep talking and gang on people as 3 to 4 to pressure them. It can be me, it can be others. Nobody should react until 3 to 4 votes are on them in a setup this big, not on DP1.

Pressure is from votes to eliminate fundamentally (or night actions, sure).

All other pressure is an illusion.

Idk how the right way to talk is but voting and saying silly stuff only benefits scum, not town. Always.

Regarding the bolded, to confirm, do you believe that there is no other way to apply pressure other than voting?

Warning, a ranty monologue is coming, I'm also trying to word it in ways relevant to this specific setup that's why I'm making a big deal out of seemingly nothing, just to fully clarify my mentality here.

Excluding night actions or guntype powers, everything else is veiled threats and pressure related to votes. I don't need to vote you and you don't need to vote me to know that's the underlying threat if you're Town without the power to do more to me in the night period, either way that's a threat of wasting Town power on me.

In essence the Town in all mafia games is meant to operate as the Mafia do and terrify, rattle and thus force slips and unrest from the 'Scum' (usually the Mafia but thirdparty too). This is why the name is very correct in its name rather than focusing on the 'town' or 'village' it focuses on the scum as it's all about them.

The only advantage the Mafia has is it knows more initially, the Town has more members and often with potent power roles at play. This is why low pressure, chill-vibe games favour scum and why people who play Mafia casually and not to tryhard can't properly force tells, slips etc and then can't get the reads. What you're asking me is obvious; can I pressure you with asking questions and making you squirm, yes I can and you can totally do that to me if others join you voting me or threatening to. It's that threat, the threat of the elimination (formerly another word in Mafia) that is the underlying pressure.

Eventually if everyone is made to squirm, the game of Mafia is at the highest skill level whereas if barely anyone or only random people are squirming, it's either a setup balance issue or it's a playstyle issue. This is also why I avoid 'all vanilla' type games and prefer PRs. This is not a soft of any kind, I am stating it to explain something, to me we should shut up VTNE (vote to not eliminate) and let the PRs flow. That's not an absolute for all mafia games, there are setups and situations where that's stupid to suggest but in my opinion all the chit-chat that's going to proceed is going to do is either force outs or end up with us voting off a vanilla (because no mafia is going to claim vanilla when threatened with elimination DP1, other than as reverse psychology to say they'd never do that among people who'd believe that). So all DP1 random votes really do is create unnecessary pressure for the sake of 'activity' that does way more to help scum analyse PRs than the other way around, this is truer in a setup as big as 13 than it would be in a smaller situation just because smaller leads to instant pressure anyway. This is 'mini' but 13 people means each of the Town has to read 12 others, that's not some tiny differentiation. Meanwhile if we presume the ratio is 3:10, since at worst it's 4:9 (though this probably means underpowered mafia roles), the Scum need only to mentally juggle around what 10 other players think while the Town on top of reading others needs to ensure they're Towntelling to 9 others that they don't even know who the 9 are during DP1 for sure (excluding very special roles where you know 1 other Town member but I'm talking normal mini game roles and what to assume right?)

[RationalMadman]

This is why the name is very correct in its name

the game*

[Dannflor]

so i dont understand why you aren’t voting somewhere Rational

[KayJayQueue]

Is there a tl:dr, asking for a friend (the friend is Hu Tao)

[RationalMadman]

so i dont understand why you aren’t voting somewhere Rational

okay is this how to VTNE in this:

VOTE: No one Or is there no way to do this

[RationalMadman]

let PRs do things, let mafia play in the dark guessing who to use their powers on, the gamble is Town gains more than Mafia does from the blind NP1 shots in the dark than any extended period DP1. It's true we may end up voting off mafia but at what cost of leaking reads based on who did or didn't say what?

Leak nothing, let DP2 reports and claims dictate how things flow. If a strong PR dies NP1 that's bad luck and frankly DP1 random bandwagons are as much luck too but reveal more to mafia regarding how others respond.

[RationalMadman]

In this type of situation and setup I am certain a fast, no-talk instant rush to NP is optimal. If PR dies, it dies. There's nearly nothing to gain from avoiding that bad luck outcome by forcing luck based bandwagons.

[RationalMadman]

VOTE: No Elimination

[RationalMadman]

Let DP2 be medium pressure and DP3 be high pressure. We don't need any nonsense DP1 leaking anything to Mafia. That's my belief. It's antitown pressure whereas revolving it around PRs DP2 and DP3 is where we really crack setups and have useful info of some kind to watch people respond to and bounce reads off of.

[RationalMadman]

so i dont understand why you aren’t voting somewhere Rational

By the way this response, the tone of it and way it's said is extremely Towny. If I die NP2, trust this user to the end of the game. It's the laziness in the grammar too, everything about it screams honest Town reaction to what was read (the user skimread and ignored me saying I think we don't need the pressure DP1).

[RationalMadman]

" If I die NP2" isn't a typo btw.

I don't think I'm dying NP1. I have a theory I'll be framed at first. We will see.

[Elements]

VOTE: Madman

[RationalMadman]

Is there a tl:dr, asking for a friend (the friend is Hu Tao)

I can skip what I said about Mafia pressure in general and say one thing about this DP and situation:

We have 12 other people than ourselves as Town. Scum probably at ratiod 3:10 (4:9 requires an underpowered mafia and this is a 'Normal mini' setup so in all regards we can assume the 3:10 ratio unless there's a thirdparty at play).

As Town, all of the 9 other Townies than me are operating trying to appear as Towny as possible to others, masking what they do and say but also trying hard to read 12 others and interrogate and force reactions (or they're just random posting silly hellos etc I'm not saying it to be mean but to clarify it's junk activity often dubbed 'fluff' or 'filler' perhaps).

The 9 others are all operating in a way that may well seem scummy at first, though I had a towntell from one player who replied to me so far, I think that's not a good bet to be what happens often during this DP. Meanwhile, the scum are only worried about appearing Towny and watching what they say, they will be primarily concerned with reading PR vs vanilla dynamics in how people operate. That type of leaking and telling is far more likely to become obvious the more we have happening during the DP.

Either we all out instantly and try to crack the balance and whatever else or we hide it and vote no elimination. If we vote scum they'll force a PR CC or end up appearing unCC'd PR by picking, by luck, the type of PR that isn't directly had by another (for instance tracker and watcher cancel out balance-wise while cop and the other wouldn't necessarily, you get the idea). Either way it's a disaster where at best we voted off a vanilla or forced a PR to CC and happened to vote the fake one in the CC.

[RationalMadman]

Scum need only to crack out of 10 (most likely) while the rest of us are cracking out of 12, they also know more in terms of their own roles. It's just not a smart idea. This is a totally closed setup, how are we to even determine if claims are real or not? The best hope is the one voted claims vanilla and goes down easy. That's still not beneficial to Town at all as that's probably a real claim.

[Elements]

As Town, all of the 9 other Townies than me are operating trying to appear as Towny as possible to others

This is never true