Live Action Mafia

Here are thoughts (from my strategy doc).

I suggest you think about things yourself before reading my ideas, because my ideas are heavily biased toward the set of stuff that I could think of, which (as evidenced by my inability to figure out how town could win for quite a while) is not a very complete set.








Without further ado,

SUGGESTED GAME PLAN

Let K1 denote the first killer (who will be outed after loop 1) and K2 the second (who stays hidden a bit longer).

LOOP 1 - K1 kills nobody day 1, lukesci day 2. (Unless lily claims DA, in which case they kill Lily day 1.) (Unless aok swaps protection to lukesci, in which case they kill jamb day 2.) (Maybe we should kill aok day 1 to prevent this? Either way, jamb will know if aok swaps his BD target, but it might look sketchy if mafia know this.) K1 is either outed or in a beef with lukesci, preferably just a beef.

LOOP 2 - K1 kills aok before Troy can kill K1, day 1. (This requires race conditions, but shouldn’t be hard because Troy has a life.) K1 probably dies day 1. K2 kills me, but I blame someone else (in particular, ksedlar or isaacg would be easy blame targets if I die at random, since I’m around them a lot and they’ll be claiming P). I’ll be in a beef with someone, but I look better than they do, at least until P evidence messes this up. Meanwhile K2 has not been outed.

LOOP 3 - let’s face it, K2 will probably get outed soon via P evidence. So we might as well out them in loop 3. If they’re *not* quite outed by P evidence then we should have one of our own fake P’s out them toward the end of this loop. Anyway, K2 kills either me or lukesci on day 2, whoever aok doesn’t protect. Alternatively, we could repeat the thing from Loop 2 if we don’t think K2 is even close to getting outed.

LOOP 4 - By this point it will probably be obvious that I’m bad and the person in a beef with me is not a killer, but in the case that it’s not, then town thinks there are 3 killers, and town can only get rid of 2 of them on the first day. IF troy is still alive day 2 AND so is the beef person, lily should DA protect them so they’ll look really bad if troy tries to kill them that day. (This is still assuming lily did not claim DA and so can do this anonymously.) Anyway, if we don’t have any killers alive the second day, they can at least take Troy down with them, so CT1 can live for a full 2 days even if acting sketchy. “Acting sketchy” = saying boo to 4 diff people over those 2 days, thus outing themself, but not making it clear which ones are the culprits. These 4 people should include blumberg on day 1 (she’s day 1 culprit so this will give everyone 2 paranoia) and pravinas on day 1 or 2 (she’s day 3 culprit so this will make us win). CT1 will almost certainly get lynched on day 2, but if they don’t they should put paranoia on 2 more people day 3 to spread the evidence out. If something ridiculous happens (ie Pravina figures out she’s day 3 culprit and realizes she has to suicide day 2), CT2 can reveal themself to throw paranoia on luke, but let’s please avoid this. Note: CT1 should be the person who’s closer to being outed as mafia.

LOOP 5 - we do whatever shenanigans we think could work to kill KPs if possible, but almost certainly at this point in game we’re going to be winning via culprits. Repeat the outline for day 4, putting paranoia on exactly the same set of people if possible so that town doesn’t get new evidence.

LOOP 6 - in the absolute ideal case, we still have a DA and CT2 who haven’t been outed. Everyone else will either have been outed through actions, or (in my case) through a beef that will certainly have resolved by then. If either one of these people can keep their cover and stay alive to end of day 4, we win. This will be *really* hard and require lots of well-constructed lies about P evidence.



Side note: if our fake P’s “discover” that lukesci is day 4 culprit, I think this would (a) make them look good and (b) “prove” me and lukesci innocent because we both have to be alive on day 4 for town to win and thus can’t be mafia… hopefully no one will notice the logic flaw. Unfortunately it won’t be hard to figure out that I’m day 2 culprit if I die a lot and therefore don’t get the -1 vote… on the other hand if we don’t put paranoia on many people in the early rounds, this will be harder for town to figure out.

Does anyone see any obvious ways that town would see through this? Suggestions for improvement? We can certainly tweak during game if town has figured out more / less than we expect them to.

Oh, and for reference, this game plan would go with proposed role claims (in the format NAME (ROLE) - CLAIMED ROLE):

jamb (KP) - KP
lily (DA) - P
dylan (K1 or K2) - P
adam (K2 or K1) - P
dpalumbo (CT1 or CT2) - CT or P
dgrazian (CT2 or CT1) - P or CT

Yes, I'm aware, this would make a total of 8 claimed P's, which would make anyone *not* claiming P look really good. On the other hand we really shouldn't have our killers claim anything else imo because town can then force them to use their kills for testing role claims day 1, and we should even more not have lily claim honestly because then town can find her out if the KPs aren't protected.... and this has the nice benefit of making it hard for town to trust info coming from legit P's.

Hopefully no one will metagame notice that Pesto made many of the actual P's people who were less likely to be at the house often, since their role doesn't require as many in-game actions.

Tl;dr I made a list of stuff town needs to know and ways we can win if they don't get everything right. Most exciting part: if town isn't really on their game we can win via day 1 lynch vote.



THINGS TOWN NEEDS TO DO ON FINAL LOOP TO WIN
if we can prevent them from getting any single piece of this information, we’re golden!

1. Have Troy kill K1 and lynch K2 on day 2 ----> need to know exactly who K1 and K2 are
2. Win the lynch vote on day 1 ----> 1 mafia dead = 5 mafia (one DA) = 6 mafia votes, 7 townies (we kill K + DA) = 7 mafia votes ----> town needs to all vote together
3. Have Pravinas suicide on day 2 ----> need to know who Culprit 3 is and realize that she can suicide
4. Win the lynch vote on day 2, 3 (strictly easier than day 1 but still requires people voting as a bloc)
5. Get Luke a gun and have him kill a mafia on day 3 or 4 ----> need to know that luke is good and jamb is bad, vote him goodwill (or maybe just randomly choose correctly between them)
6. Kill and/or paranoia-dump Lily before Luke’s vig kill so she can’t body double and protect a mafia from Luke ---> need to know who the mafia DA is (or trust in luck)
7. Kill all other mafia (aka both mafia CTs) ----> figure out precisely who the set of mafia is (excepting jamb)


Note: if town isn’t super-organized and if we kill Troy+aok day 1, we could conceivably win the lynch vote day 1! (Or, tie it, which is just as good because there won’t be any tiebreakers at that point, and all tied players are executed ---> vote for jamb and we win easily.) This is actually really possible!!! (Particularly in the middle rounds, after our killers have been outed anyway but before town is being super careful about getting stuff right.) (Unfortunately it also reveals how many Mafia there are…)

This is really incredible what you've done here Jackie!

Even after reading everything multiple times, I'm still wrapping my head around it.

I guess the only thing we need to commit to right now is what roles to claim (though the role claims depend on our game plan.)

I fully agree that we want Lily to claim P (she needs to be able to anonymously withdraw protection.)

What is the reason for having so many other people claim P?

I guess the question is whether there is any value in having CT or K claim their role honestly. Can either of them do anything useful for us without giving themselves away as mafia? If not, then we probably might as well have them all claim P.

Thanks

We certainly don't want K's to claim honestly, because then town would dictate their kills and force them to "bang" protected people on day 1. (At the very least, we need one K who doesn't claim honestly.)

CTs are somewhat different, because they have up to 2 power uses per day, need to use at least 1 per day, and won't be particularly useful to us in the early rounds. It'd be a pain to keep both them hidden by having them each privately "boo" a mafia every day. Also, the CTs may have a slightly larger say in discussing who they (as a group) will "boo" each day, so it could be good to have a mafia among the CT discussions.

Another issue is that, with such an implausibly large number of P's, town will trust people who didn't claim P more. For example, if Troy is the only claimed K, he's almost certainly good. If aok is the only claimed DA, he's almost certainly good. We don't want town to be able to trust the rather large set of {anyone who doesn't claim P}. Imo that makes it worth it to have at least one CT claim honestly. It might even be a good enough reason to have both CTs and a K claim honestly.

On the other hand, the more false P's we have, the harder it is for town to trust any of the info they get from P's, which is important. And CTs are much more likely than Ks or even DAs to stay permanently undercover as Ps.

Also, if we have K2 claim honestly as K, I'm worried that town would come up with the brilliant idea of having Troy + K2 kill each other on day 1 just to be safe. And then once K1 reveals themself, they lynch K1 on day 1. Or they force K2 to kill K1, and it's implausible that K1 wouldn't then also kill K2 as they died... we could get into nasty killer-less situations by having even one killer claim honestly. It also gives town too much killing power.

So I think I still recommend that we should have one CT and me (KP) claim honestly.

Thoughts?

I'd like to be the ct that claims honestly.

Unless you have a strong preference to do that dpalumbo.

Or if we decide to both claim honestly that's likely fine, too.

And of course, DO NOT role claim until Pesto had verified that all roles have been sent out! Anyone who does that would be instantly outed as Mafia.

Unless anyone has further arguments,

jamb - KP
dgrazian - CT
everyone else - P

Hold on, sorry if this is a dumb question, but why do we care if town knows we're mafia? Town doesn't win by lynching us all, so why should we care at all about outing ourselves?

Town *does* have to kill all of the Mafia except me, or else we can win via day 4 event. (Assuming we put paranoia on that person, which is easily possible.) We shouldn't make it easy for them to figure out who this is.

in a private discussion we were having, aok pointed out that if the day 1 culprit event happens, he'll have more paranoia than goodwill and thus can't body double anyone. This is maybe a strategy we should use?

So, town seems to be thinking along the lines, "all mafia Ks have to kill someone each loop, or else they'll die end of day 2," which is false because actually the mafia Ks can just bang me on day 1 and I'll live. Nonetheless, town has concluded that they'll be able to determine the number of mafia Ks this way on the first loop. We could:

(a) take advantage of this to confuse town; they'll think there's only 1 mafia K. Unfortunately, once another mafia K makes a kill, town will figure out the error in their logic and realize one of the KPs is mafia. This would be sad.

(b) do what town expects to happen on loop 1, which makes the KPs look good. K1 kills aok day 1 and jamb day 2. Then K2 kills K1 on day 2. Thus nobody knows who K2 is, but they've indicated to town that they exist and had to kill a fellow mafia. This pretty definitively outs K1, but they're already outed and the loop will already be roughly over at this point.

Personally, I like (b) as an amended day 1 game plan.

D'you suppose there's any way we can manipulate town into voting me some goodwill in one of the middle-ish loops? We could get me secretly banana breaded so I get the gun before town thinks I would have enough goodwill. Then I could kill myself which would be fabulous

So, a problem is that town has concluded there are <= 2 mafia Ks. This is a problem because, if K1 is discovered in loop 1 and I frame someone (F) in loop 2, and then town kills K1 and F in loop 3, town will assume there are no more mafia Ks. If I somehow die after that, I can hardly blame someone else for having killed me - it'll be obvious that I'm lying if I claim to have been killed by 3 distinct people.

Therefore, I propose we get creative. Here's an outrageous idea that is legal under the rules, but may or may not be pull-off-able:

Sometime when Pesto is sitting on the beanbag with his laptop out, I sit down next to him and pretend to see something I shouldn't on his screen. (For example, maybe I'll claim he had it on the main screen, and since each forum displays the name of the person who posted more recently, I "discovered" that X is mafia.) I'm immediately horrified, apologetic, say something like "oh shoot I should NOT have seen that" and ask to talk to him privately. We go talk in, say, Left Front, where K2 is waiting to kill me. When I leave Left Front, I'm dead, and it looks like I've been smited.

Note: Pesto confirmed that there is no mechanical difference between dying and being smited, and that it is acceptable to pretend to have been smited, as long as I don't deliberately do anything actually smite-worthy. A potential problem is that this plan requires some cooperation on the part of God, but on the other hand it's not unreasonable for him to go talk with a player in Left Front if they request to do so.

Anyway, suggestions for improvements would be appreciated. If you were a townie and you saw someone apparently see information they shouldn't, and then they went to talk to God and were dead when they returned, would you have any doubt that they had been smited?

Cons of this idea: hard to pull off
Pros: another loop goes by with me looking non-mafia and our killer not being outed. Also, if we pull it off, we should get like +500 mafia points for creativity.

Another possibility:

Have CT1 out themself on round 1 to put paranoia on D1C. Then everyone gets +2 paranoia, in particular, aok. This means aok has to lose his body double ability (since he can't possibly get 2 goodwill on night 1). Then K1 can freely kill me the next day and not be outed. This is REALLY strong. Then we just keep doing this every loop.... eventually it becomes obvious that I'm a sketch ball but what can town really do about that?

This almost feels too easy, we never have to out our killers and they kill me on day 2 every round... what am I missing?

I know there's a bit of a race condition for CT1 to put paranoia on D1C before Troy can kill either CT1 or D1C, but in the worst case we out one of our killers to just kill aok, and I don't think we'll have too much trouble winning this race condition. Or, if Troy kills CT1, we could out CT2. Or, if Troy kills D1C and a killer kills aok, then we could flat out win the lynch vote. Also, I guess psychiatrists / goodwill voting will gradually prove people good/bad, but that will take town a long time especially if they have only 2 days in each loop.

I don't really like this personally because it makes me almost immediately obviously bad, but I know that's just silly.

Lol @Katie we might not even have to out CT1 to make the day 1 culprit trigger

I hope she gets people to go along with the "let's paranoia as many people as possible on day 1" strategy. It *does* give town more info but I think overall it's strong for mafia bc it effectively kills aok without us having to make a kill or give paranoia under race conditions.

Pesto says I broke the game and now he's modifying the rules (just slightly).

The rule changes are likely to be:
-Double agent can banana bread themself, just like the other roles with mechanical actions.
-Consensual mechanical actions can be done at night, but don't take effect until the start of the next day.

(Posting here first so that if this is still broken and I have to change the rules again, I don't let town know that's something's up by the repeated rule changes.)

Nice job breaking the game Jackie!

Jackie, awesome ideas. Sorry I haven't been contributing much. I haven't been thinking about the game as deeply as you have, so I'll just defer to you. I agree that killing you seems like a really strong plan.