Info from previous games

[Cadmium]

Also, a general mafia question, is it allowed to search a players previous posts?
Right now im doing so on Prizm to see if he has ever done such a thing before, but i can see this beeing discouraged as you will be getting information from outside of the game thread.

After reading this post in Mini 69, I thought it would be interesting to start this thread. So what do you think? Is it okay to use info taken from outside the game?

Personally, I think it's fine. It's something you do automatically when playing with people who's style you already (think you) know. Plus, the mafia can also use this when someone on the town's side does something which (s)he normally wouldn't do. It's part of the game IMHO.

[Dasquian]

It's not just part of the game, it

is

the game IMO. How a mafia game pans out depends greatly on the metagame - tactics employed in previous games are reused, modified, bluffed with and referred to all the time in current games, and as a tactic or gambit becomes popular, the game will shift to put greater importance on it.

People's changing play-styles go hand in hand with this. Being a good Mafia player isn't just about winning in the context of the game you're in, it's also being able to win despite how the last 10 games went for you. Night one kills and the subsequent discussion tie into this as well, since the established "good players" make good targets for the mafia.

So yeah, I think info from outside the game is definitely OK (obviously as long as you're not breaking the rules about talking about the games you're in). If you know how someone plays and how they react to certain situations, you should definitely use that knowledge. And, conversely, expect it to be used against you.

[Cadmium]

Looking at the results so far (all but me voting for the first option), I feel like I should explain why I voted "Sure, when you think it'll help the side your on."

You have to be careful when pointing in someone's direction saying (s)he's behaving differently. It doesn't automatically have to mean this person's anti-town. For example, a lot of players are more in the background when they have an important role (e.g. cop, doc). So you could also bring someone usefull in danger when using this logic.

[Dasquian]

Yeah, that's definitely true. You don't want to out people who are behaving coppishly I voted for the first option because I counted silently working out who your fellow townspeople were by playing style as "using information from outside the game" too.

I read that second option though as keeping quiet when your mafia buddy is acting differently, which I don't think you should do if keeping quiet in turn marks

you

out as acting differently by not picking up on the mafia dude.

[mathcam]

I read that second option though as keeping quiet when your mafia buddy is acting differently, which I don't think you should do if keeping quiet in turn marks you out as acting differently by not picking up on the mafia dude

Well, in that case, it wouldn't be helping the side your on, so you wouldn't do it according to the second option. But really, few enough people put this much thought into the games that they're in that I would be very surprised if someone were accused of being on a team with someone

because

they didn't mention that the other person was acting funny. Only one person can be the first to notice it in each case.

Cam

[CaptainBlicero]

Yeah, I don't understand the difference between poll option #1 and poll option #2. I don't think it's a good idea to do anything that doesn't help your team, so "using meta-game info constantly", and "using meta-game info whenever it will help your team", are to me, the exact same thing.

[cuban smoker]

I love this part of the game. Blind games piss me off, I've decided. Each of you becomes a person in my mind, and I play from there.

[mathcam]

Blind games piss me off

Yeah, me too!

Each of you becomes a person in my mind, and I play from there.

That's why the thread with all our pictures in it was so freaky...I had totally different pictures for all of you.

Cam

[rite]

You MUST be able to use old games, if only to keep the game fair-- a newbie is at a serious disadvantage, because he/she doesn't know the other players.

[Dasquian]

That works two ways though - nobody knows how the newbie's going to play, and he/she can get away with a lot more than they might later once their playing style has been made clear

[mathcam]

Electra was a good example of this. Time Travel Mafia was her first game on the site and we were co-mafita together. In PMs, she made very astute points about how it might be best to proceed, whereas her posts in the thread were like "How do I vote?" and "Ooo..mafia...sounds like fun..." and "Hee hee! I'm a girl!" She didn't get a vote on her for two full days.

But now we all know she's evil every time.

Cam

[Stewie]

i think that this wouldn't be a good idea, simply because it might take some of the fun of the game. It's fun to try to guess what someone might think like without knowing much about that person. However, when we are in the board for a long time, we just get used to each other, and if there's something you can do to help your side, you will be tempted, and you will do it.

[PolarBoy]

I don't see how one can not use metagame info to some degree except in blind games. We all know each-other to some degree, so whether we try to or not, we're gonna notice some of the things that happen "out of character".

[Wacky]

In chess, an old school of thought was to play the board, i.e use only information about the board. This was okay, nice and all, but chess is a game between PLAYERS, and the players are a necessary part of the game. You aren't playing some chessboard, you are playing some person. So that's the school of thought today.

EDIT: Got interrupted, here's the rest. I believe that this applies to mafia as well, but there are limits. e.g. if someone used their mod powers to find Electra's IP and found out who she was on MTGnews (I'm not sure about the chronology, but consider it a hypothetical) [edit2: you would need mod powers there as well...*], then that person would KNOW that she was playing dumb and probably scum. That places people without IP tracing abilities at a disadvantage.

Speaking of which, isn't it possible to find Deep Red this way?

*I suppose you could use IP tracking sites to find what country Electra was from and made the connection.

[Dragon Phoenix]

Even in chess, meta-games can go on. There is an example of two grandmasters, one thinking an hour to put a knight where it could be taken by a apawn, and the other replying quickly by not taking it. Afterwards he explained, if XXX thinks so long and then puts a knight where I can take it, I assume he knows what he's doing. A similar reasoning made a grandmaster miss a mate in two against a strong opponent. He said: well, against YYYY you don't go looking for a mate in two.

I voted [a], of course.

[Thoth]

I think this definitively is part of the game. I've even recently started with a Metagame spreadsheet were I'm marking down all kinds of info about the players that I notice. Its growing only slowly as I've just started and prefer to use info from games I'm in myself. You do get interesting things like a player that started game A and C with

random vote:xxxx

and game B without a random vote where he happened to be town in A and C and Mafia in B. If we start in a new game together I'll certainly watch his first post .
I also once went through all the minis on the old site to watch for some statistical evidence about first votes. I noticed that in several games I read the player that made the first post with a vote was scum. After 20 minis the stats looked promising with 60% of those being scum. After 35 it was back around the expected percentage though, so there was no correlation.

[mathcam]

Good point, DP. Perhaps an even more directly applicable example is that each individual grandmaster has their strengths and weaknesses and play particular openings more frequently than others. I guarantee you that every time there's a grandmaster game occuring, each side is well-versed with the strengths, weaknesses, and opening choices of his/her opponent.

Cam