Some points Alex made that are so important they are worth repeating and expanding on:
0a. If you're reading this, read Alex's post above again! He's giving some really useful advice.
0b. The town (and the mafia) win together and lose together. Even if you die, you win if your team wins. You should always place victory above your own survival. For example, you should almost always prioritize the lives of special roles over your own (if you are a normal townsperson.)
1. If you are Investigator or Mad Scientist, use your role
every day!. The investigator should almost always use a proxy in revealing his/her information.
2. Be familiar with rules and mechanics and
especially rules pertaining to any special role you may have. There have been minor changes to the rules,
some of which were made at packet handout. Read the rules.
3. Keep track of items. Transferring items can be very important, but players should always be accountable for which items they have and who they have given them too. The town might well have won the last game, if they kept better track of who had the Fake ID's.
4. Start discussion early. This should be intuitively clear, since better-informed decision can be made with more time, but the consequences of failing to do this are not so obvious. Consider the following scenario:
At 11:45 p.m., a lynch mob forms to lynch X. X happens to be a special role, say the Ironheart. The only way X has any chance of surviving (and even this probably won't save him) is to scream on the forum that he is Ironheart (and that assumes that he is aware of what is going on.) A revealed Ironheart is obviously much less powerful. However, if the lynch-mob process begins several hours earlier, the Ironheart can be a little more subtle. He could, say, reveal himself to one other player and get that player to lobby in his favor. Hopefully, he can survive without any mafia having learned his identity. (Btw this situation basically occurred in the game last IAP. Ironheart was lynched in a last-minute lynch mob, despite his frantic efforts around 11:57 to persuade the town he was Ironheart.)
5. Be active and involved in the game. This prevents the mafia from controlling the game (see the game from this fall.)
A few new points of my own:
1. The following properties are really good for the medkit to have:
a. being in the hands of a special role (Mad Scientist would be the best of all!)
b. having it's location not known by the Mafia (note the absence of this property at game start. Xavier, this might be a good thing to fix.)
2. Same with the Microphone/receiver pair
3. Talk outside the forum! Get an idea of who you (somewhat) trust. Discuss strategy with other people. In addition to being really important to the town from a strategic perspective, this is the spirit of the game.
4. Don't be too paranoid! The mafia are (almost certainly) going to be killing somebody everyday, so even if you don't die someone else will, perhaps a special role character! (see 0b at the top of this post.) Also, the game's more fun when people aren't excessively paranoid.
4b. The above paragraph becomes less true near the end of the day, if the mafia are running out of time to make a kill and can potentially be denied a kill for the day or forced to take excessive risks.
5. With that said, if you're going to get killed try to do so in a way that brings down a mafia (your life for a mafia's is a sweet victory.) Send private messages to a couple people when you are meeting with somebody. Try to trap possible mafia into killing you when others know you are with that person. Be clever.
6. Keep up with the forum discussion. Be aware of what is going on publicly outside the forum.
7. Use private messages! You may not want to say something publicly, but often it is a good idea to tell one or two people (suspicions you have, where you're going to dinner, etc.)
8. Keep game momentum going. The mafia may well try to kill active players early. If you are a townsperson and there is a void in leadership, take some initiative. Don't leave the mafia to control the game! (See the game from this fall.)
9. Read Alex's post again
10. Please make comments, disagreements, concurrences, etc.