Mafiascum.net

In an online game I played at one point, I was a vanilla townie (no special role), which is something I find dull. To mix things up a bit I decided to forget that and pretend that I was a special robot secret character and proceeded to have a lot of fun with that posting robot noises and whatnot. One of the powers I claimed I had was a 50% chance of surviving a mafia kill.

Now with the group of people I normally play with, this kind of craziness is status quo. No one questioned the veracity of my role-claim and I lived to the end of the game.

This got me wondering though... Is it ever to the town's advantage for a townie to claim to have a power/role that he doesn't? Especially if a vanilla townie claims he is bulletproof when he is not? Wouldn't that just give the mafia better odds to kill the remaining special townie roles?

I can only think of one altruistic case where it might benefit the town. A vanilla townie claims some minor role, precipitating the mafia to kill him during the night. This would make the townie special roles more safe if the mafia is gunning for a plain old guy.

However, this is only good if you play with role-reveal.


Ok. I feel like I've rambled enough. But I'd like to hear people's opinions/experiences about vanilla townies making false role-claims.

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Some of the following may possibly be relevant to the discussion:

At school, we usually play mafia with 10-12 people, face to face. We find the game too easy when roles/alignment are revealed after death, so there's none of that. We compensate a little for this by giving the town an extra info-gaining role or two (but usually no cops because having the game revolve around who the cop is is lame).

Lynch All Liars .

Lying about your role rarely turns out ok. You can sometimes lie about some of the details of your role though. I remember a game where I was a multishot vig and had just shot DP last night (who was protown of course). I claimed to be oneshot only to have a surprise in store in the endgame. That sort of worked as in the 5player last night the 2 remaining scum killed each other while I shot yet another townie (note to self: do not use vig ability ever again).

I've done it to try and lure the mafia's kill away from a more powerful townie role. didn't make any difference in the game, though. We won on the next lynch.

I've seen it happen. Especially a doctor pretending to be able to protect himself when in fact he couldn't. And I've also seen someone fake a psychologist claim to out a serial killer.

Sometimes it works, but you need to be really careful if you lie as pro-town. If the rest of the town finds out, it spells almost certain death.

Ditto MGM's last paragraph. Even if you believe in the policy "Lynch all liars", that doesn't necessarily imply "Never never never lie if you're pro-town." It just means that you should only lie if you think there's a tangible gain to doing so, and that the gain outweighs the negative of being caught lying (and subsequently lynched).

Another complicating factor is that even if you're pro-town, your goals as an individual may not coincide with the goals of the town, so the two following questions:

Telamon wrote:Is it ever to the town's advantage for a townie to claim to have a power/role that he doesn't?

Telamon could have wrote:Is it ever to a townie's advantage to claim to have a power/role that he doesn't?

have very different answers. Really, I think the second is a more poignant question...players should make their decisions based on goals, not those of the town.

Cam

I love faking pretend roles when I'm a townie, particularly in chat games.

One one occasion I was just a plain townie with the role name of Garfield the Cat, so I pretended to have a role restriction where I could only meow, purr, or hiss.

Rarely, RARELY is it a good idea to straight out claim a false role when you are pro-town. Not fully claiming your role can be different The problem is that if you claim something broken, you'll get lynched and might draw fire...

In a totally made up scenario, imagaine this:
4 left alive, probably 1 townie. Player A and B are both restricted docs. If A claims to be a full doc and B realizes that it would be BROKEN to have one full doc, he might reveal.. get A lynched and then clearly B would be the last lynch. Mafia wins a nearly lost game.

*shrug* easy to make up scenarios though. But it's so rarely in the towns favor to lie that I say- Lynch all liars.

-JEEP

I usually don't lie about my role. I guess under certain circumstances I might but none are coming to mind. You and your friends play mafia at school Talemon? I wish I went to that school...

I fake claimed vig to threaten lurkers into speaking up. Unfortunately, they didn't speak up. The mafia killed me the next night. I was a townie.

Fake claiming vig seems extremely dangerous to me. If there is a real vig he'll waste his kill on you.

And the real docs might waste protection on you that should go to the real power roles. Fake claiming vig isn't a good idea in my opinion.

jeep wrote: *shrug* easy to make up scenarios though. But it's so rarely in the towns favor to lie that I say- Lynch all liars.
-JEEP

But I think that even if you take this stance, that doesn't necessarily imply that you shouldn't lie as town. Again, I think the distinction between the two stances is the difference between the two questions "Is it good for the town if a townie lies about his role?" and "Is it good for the townie if he/she lies about his role?" Your argument, and the generic "lynch all liars" stance, gives at least one viewpoint toward answering the first question.

As I mentioned above, however, I think the second question is more to the point, since it addresses what a player do in a given situation (which is to play according to his/her own best interests), and gives a different answer. For example, it may be advantageous for a townie to lie to make himself more appealing to be recuited by a cult, say in a game where it looks likely that said cult will win. This is obviously an instance where the townie's best interests and the town's best interests do not coincide.

Cam

(shrug) There are a lot of situations where it works for a townie role to lie. One that I thought was a good idea was Baby Jesus lying in Gaian mini mafia. He was Gaia, but claimed another role he could confirm very early on, probably because he wanted to try to see if he could get a scum to fake a Gaia claim. It didn't work, but it could have and it also didn't harm the town at all.

I once read a [new set-up] newbie in which the town had 2 chances to lynch the 1 remaining scum to win. MeMe was the doc and claimed townie at the start of day 2. I assume her plan was to entice the scum to claim doc. She would have counterclaimed, the town would have lynched both and won. [As it happened the scum claimed townie.]

I thought this interesting because (I assume) MeMe factored in the "lynch all liars" strategy. She might even have said: "lynch me and then when I'm dead you will know that X is scum".

In Talk show hot mafia i had the power to send a quote to the mod and they would tell me wether it was true or not. I sent the role claim of Baby J. I got false and could have revealed my info but i didn't. I was killed during the next night and when Baby J died i found out that he was the doc. If had revealed then i guess i could have got the doc lynched so i would say lying is not usally recomended, however it can be used to avoid a night kill but make sure the lie doesn't come back to haunt you in later game

LOL - already 2 examples of me lying about my role when I'm pro-town in this thread. I claimed cop with a guilty investigation once as a townie too

BabyJesus wrote:LOL - already 2 examples of me lying about my role when I'm pro-town in this thread. I claimed cop with a guilty investigation once as a townie too

You lied about your role in Peacecity, too; you claimed your "block all mafia abilites" ability was one-shot, and you could actually use it every other night.

In fact...have you ever actually told the truth about your role?

Yosarian2 wrote:

BabyJesus wrote:LOL - already 2 examples of me lying about my role when I'm pro-town in this thread. I claimed cop with a guilty investigation once as a townie too

You lied about your role in Peacecity, too; you claimed your "block all mafia abilites" ability was one-shot, and you could actually use it every other night.

In fact...have you ever actually told the truth about your role?

Yea, there was the time I claimed to be a vig with mason ties to the seer in Bizarre. Of course, I was lynched for that one, so I learned my lesson....

I think the best way for vanilla townie to prevent their own lynch is to claim doctor. Discuss.

In post 19, reinoe wrote:I think the best way for vanilla townie to prevent their own lynch is to claim doctor. Discuss.

I would think if most games actually do have a doctor then this kind of move is going to result in an outed doctor and your lynch, and probably get you blacklisted by many of the players in the game.

please dont troll, ty

This necroposting is getting out of hand.

In post 19, reinoe wrote:I think the best way for vanilla townie to

prevent their own

get

lynch

ed

is to claim doctor. Discuss.

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=44815

FTFY.

In post 23, Cheery Dog wrote:

In post 19, reinoe wrote:I think the best way for vanilla townie to

prevent their own

get

lynch

ed

is to claim doctor. Discuss.

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=44815

FTFY.