Definitions: sketchy item - an item someone has that they are not publicly known (or known via a pickpocket proxy) to have. non-sketchy item - the opposite finesse an item - make a sketchy item appear to be a non-sketchy item claim - something I think is unquestionably true thought - something I think is probably true, but I am up for discussing
Claim 1: No townie should ever have sketchy items, aside from when the item is about to be used (e.g. tasings). If a townie has a sketchy item, they have probably done something wrong (modulo weird town schemes).
Claim 2: We want to maximize the ratio of mafia/SK's sketchy items to their non-sketchy items, in order to make it easier for pickpockets to catch them.
Thought - sketchy item stacking: Note that mafia/SKs can finesse some of their sketchy items by killing people with like items. E.g. Mafia X has a taser, so mafia Y kills python and gives python's taser to mafia X, so that the sketchy taser is indistinguishable from the nonsketchy taser. Note that serial killers can only do this by personally killing someone with their same type of item. Thus, if a person with with item X dies, players who have a non-sketchy X should be thought of as somewhat sketchier.
Thought - hymnal ritual item stacking: If we do a hymnal ritual, this could potentially allow mafia/SKs to finesse more items. At game start, mafia can only finesse a maximum of 4 out of the 6 types of items, but if a hymnal ritual lets mafia/SKs have a greater diversity of non-sketchy items, then they can do more finessing. We can prevent this by making people transfer their items after hymnal rituals to people with the same type of item. E.g. If achester (mafia counter holder) and boof (coin holder) are in a hymnal ritual, and achester gets a coin from the ritual, then a mafia achester could be able to finesse coins in addition to mafia counters. However, if he gives his coin to boof, this is no longer possible, and a mafia boof has negligible extra ability to finesse.
Thought - item stacking on high-priority kill targets: Normally, if a mafia/SK kills someone and gets a non-finessable item, a pickpocket has a 50% chance of learning that the person is bad if they pickpocket them. This is because most people have one non-sketchy item -- the one that they started with -- and most of the time killing someone will cause the killer to gain one sketchy item. But if the killed person had say, 3 non-sketchy items, then a pickpocket's chance of catching the killer would increase to 75%.
It's definitely the case that some people are higher priority to kill than others. For example, Sammy is a very strong townie who is good at psych-reading people and who will probably catch some mafia if he remains alive long enough. On the other hand, people feel bad new players, and new players are less likely to come up with plots that are dangerous to mafia, simply due to inexperience. Given claim 2, it makes sense that we might want new players to pool some of their items on Sammy, so mafia/SKs who kill Sammy get a bigger penalty. Given that all the new players (boof, ixa, natalyat, and rusch) have coins, I actually propose the following for realsies: Thought - Boof, Ixa, Natalyat, and Rusch (or some subset >=2) give their coins to Sammy (and announce so publicly), and Sammy gives one of them his taser. Thought - I acquire an item somehow (from someone publicly giving me an item, or via a hymnal ritual). Currently I have 0 items, and I would say I am a higher kill target than average, despite being somewhat inconvenient to kill.
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