Live Action Mafia

A game of sneakiness and paranoia
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2015 12:21 pm 
1. Be very, VERY, careful about leaking role information. Especially if people do end up doing the "post one of two roles" strategy, then even a tiny hint about your role could be enough to get you set-a-trapped. Additionally, don't let role information you know about others slip. Even something like, "I know an *insert role*" has been enough for mafia to set traps in the past. Usually I would give some advice to lie about your role, but I'm not sure what to do about the fact that lying could result in dead townies and extra kabooms now... If you do let your role slip to someone else, tell someone else who knows your role, so set a traps can be traced.
2. No secret lynch mobs. People have done this in the past, and it almost never works out. If you have enough people to get a lynch through, you have enough people that there is probably a mafia among you. Furthermore, secret lynch mobs mean that people who could easily prove their innocence (innocent child or gay knight) are needlessly lynched.
3. Don't value alibis with NP any more than an unconfirmed alibi. It is actually very trivial to get an NP to lie for you if you plan in advance. Previously, we had ranked NP alibis as being slightly more valuable than unconfirmed alibis, and thus had investigators investigate unconfirmed alibis first, which led to mafia being able to hide from investigations longer if they had their shit together. Alibis with a player, multiple players, or with an UNEXPECTED NP confirmation are still more valuable than unconfirmed alibis.

Role specific (Note: role-revealing means exact role revealing, not one-of-two possibilities revealing):
Investigator:
Investigate every day, and visit kill sites to find clues as soon as possible. Visit every kill site, even if you don't plan on immediately investigating a particular death. Tell your role to exactly one person, who will act as your proxy for reporting your results. Consider having them instead pretend to be investigator, and have them get another proxy (this is called double proxying). Don't let anyone dictate who you're investigating to you. In the past, mafia would often disproportionately influence discussion, and I think that it's better for investigators to decide for themselves what to do. That said, either investigate early, or have your proxy post your investigation target in advance, so that people don't double investigate the same people.

Conspiracy Theorist:
Keep a full conspiracy list every day. Use your own judgment; if there is a general strategy for conspiracy theorists, mafia can just do the opposite. You probably don't have any reason to role-reveal. NEVER tell people who is on your list; there is no town benefit, in pretty much any circumstance.

Innocent Child:
Yes, your power is about revealing your role. No, this does not mean you should randomly pick a person to reveal to or anything like that. You should definitely reveal if you are about to be lynched, and you should reveal to the first /gay knight/desperado who declares that they will die at the end of the day, so they can connect you with the other innocent children (who you reveal to). Innocent children aren't very dangerous alone, but they can be very powerful when there is a lot of them working together. Once you have an innocent child circle formed, consider finding a proxy and dictating the lynch votes. Also consider not letting major conscription targets have important jobs (possibly don't even let them know who all the innocent children are). Examples of major conscription targets are definitely anyone who has previously been conscripted, along with experienced players with experience being good mafia. Consider letting gay knights and prophets influence your innocent child circle, but have no more than one innocent child reveal to any of them, since those roles are fakeable (although faking them comes at a cost).

Note: One-of-two-possibilities revealing is slightly more dangerous, since mafia have an extra slaughter-the-weak charge that they can use for guesses.

Gay Knight:
Share information with your partner. Don't be overly paranoid that they will be conscripted, but consider it a possibility. However, if they are a new, inexperienced, or not very active player, it is very unlikely that they'll be conscripted. Reveal if you are about to be lynched, but otherwise reveal to no one except other innocence-based roles (innocent child, gay knight). Finding genies is actually a great plan, because both you and your partner can get powers, without really letting any new role information out.

Desperado:
Use your judgment for when to activate; while activating late is probably great for new/non-Randomite/not likely to be killed players, you may be one of those people who often dies early, and as such might want to activate earlier. Reveal yourself the evening before your death, and be the dictator of the lynch vote that night. Otherwise, keep quiet about your role. Except in weird circumstances (coughSpringGame2cough), you shouldn't tell people when you're activating.

Superhero:
Up for discussion

Vigilante:
Up for discussion

Vampire:
Up for discussion

Mafia/Rogue:
Kill people who can be traced back to you or when you have a bad alibi, or better yet, don't make any kills at all. Feel free to pm me if you need more advice on how to be a good mafia/rogue.


If anyone thinks my advice is incorrect or outdated, please say so.


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2015 1:14 pm 
Let people know about your suspicions, and keep track of them yourself. Last game I made a personal spreadsheet ranking suspicions of various players (though not including all players) from high sketch to super unsketch (with concrete reasons attached). 3/6 people in my high and moderate sketch ratings were mafia. 0/5 people in my moderate unsketch to super unsketch ratings were mafia. In a game from a long time ago, people in general would make these rankings and post them, and they were remarkably accurate. There have also been many past games where several townies were very suspicious of mafia, but they didn't voice these suspicions. Share these rankings publicly (though perhaps not the reasons) if you are about to be lynched or if you are about to die at the end of the day. If someone shared suspicions with you before they died, share them publicly. The opinions of people who have been killed by mafia are valuable; they're definitely not mafia opinions, and often, they've been killed for being right about them. Don't be afraid to lynch people on softer suspicions. Lynching, even mafia-influenced lynching, is much better than no-lynching (this is simulation confirmed).


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2015 3:19 pm 
Vigilante strategy discussion:

I think that in general, a vigilante should wait for a good target, rather than picking someone at random. If you're suspicious enough of someone that you could get a lynch against them, then you should probably not use the power. Your kill should be valuable, because if you make the kill and don't get it out that it was a vigilante kill, then town may waste investigations on it. However, communicating that it was a vigilante kill may leak information about your role.

One (as far as I can tell from God) intended use of vigilante is killing publicly revealed mafia (since vigilantes get the kill back). However, it is quite likely that mafia will have acquired a medkit / medkits at some point during game, which would of course be given to a revealed mafia and activated if it looked like a vigilante would kill that mafia (this would let mafia set-a-trap that vigilante). So, I think killing publicly revealed mafia may only be worth it if
a. They still have kills they can make
b. There are multiple people we want to lynch that night

So, I think the main use of vigilante is if that vigilante has someone they are suspicious of, but for reasons that are only convincing to them. For instance, in the 2014 Spring 2 game, mafia were pretty competent, so I figured they would have a mafia running for office. As of the first day, the only people running were me, Lily Chen, Miranda Gavrin, and isaacg. I saw isaacg privately smited in front of me, I knew I wasn't mafia, and Miranda had been killed, so I was pretty suspicious of Lily. However, I couldn't reasonably voice these suspicions to anyone but isaacg (who later was conscripted). So, Lily would have been a good vigilante kill if I had been vigilante.

If the vigilante kill is of the latter type, vigilantes should DEFINITELY ask their target, "Are you an innocent child or gay knight?" before killing them (sending off an "If I die, it was *target name*" message or other death identification method in case the potential mafia tries to kill them first). No sense killing of provable innocents (vampires can technically be proven innocent if they drink nontasty blood, but that also gives mafia a kaboom). Anyway, if the target answers "yes," then the vigilante should demand proof. In the case of identifying as gay knight, the target should tell the vigilante who their lover is, and then the vigilante should immediately contact the "lover" and ask who their lover is, so as to prevent mafia making an on-the-spot role lie.


People who have different opinions on vigilante strategy should say so.


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2015 3:29 pm 
Wow, is no one else awake yet... ?

Anyway, superhero strategy discussion: I think the superhero should generally be in their superhero identity, only switching to secret identity if their paranoia list activates or if they need to gather more clues. However, the superhero shouldn't exhaust all the clues for a kill before gathering clues for and investigating newer kills, particularly in early game, when kills are more likely to be manipulated (and the first/second kill is likely to have been Don-ed). When in secret identity mode, the superhero should visit all the murder sites they can to gain the maximum number of clues.


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2015 3:39 pm 
Edit to previous post:

Anyway, superhero strategy discussion: I think the superhero should generally be in their superhero identity, only switching to secret identity if their paranoia list activates or if they need to gather more clues. However, the superhero shouldn't exhaust all the clues for a kill before gathering clues for and investigating newer kills, particularly in early game, when kills are more likely to be manipulated (and the first/second kill is likely to have been Don-ed). When in secret identity mode, the superhero should visit all the murder sites they can to gain the maximum number of clues.

For the paranoia list, be sure to put an EARNER (Elected (mayor/police officer), Active (posts a lot, generally involved), Random (the dorm, and historically the "hub" of live action mafia), Non west campus (ET and EC are somewhat popular kill sources as well), Experienced (played/gmed many games), and/or Revealed (mafia knows their role)) person on your list. Good mafia strategy is generally to kill EARNERs, and so good superhero strategy is to put them on your list. Revealed/Elected generally are the biggest determiners out of EARNER qualities, since there aren't as many people with them. Mchang02 has been a historical exception to the EARNER rule, and has a VERY long average lifespan, despite being being active, Random, non west campus, experienced, and in one game a revealed investigator (but I don't think she's playing this game).

Vampire strategy discussion: not sure, will post thoughts in "Support the Vampires"


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