Live Action Mafia

A game of sneakiness and paranoia
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 Post subject: Strategy Discussion
PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2018 6:32 pm 
Keep in mind when game will end. It often seems to be the case that town gets blindsided when mafia can push through a victory, because town doesn't realize how fast endgame creeps up on them.

Remember to use your powers! Unless you're a vigilante or a child, you should be using your role every day.

Role-specific strategy
Pair Investigator: Not too much complex stuff here. I guess if you're a new player, you should know that it is standard practice to pick a proxy to tell your investigations to, and then they'll report the results in the town square. That way you aren't publicly revealing yourself to get trapped by the mafia.
Priest: Keep your lists full every day! Don't be afraid of losing your powers, because if that happens, you've narrowed down the killer to one of two people, which is worth it already. Proxy results like a pair investigator would. If you get a hit (e.g. a saint did kill a sinner or vice versa) make sure to get the results to town ASAP, and mention which direction it went in. Though if you get a miss (e.g. a saint was not killed by a sinner or vice versa), still report that to town, but it's not quite as immediately urgent. Remember that your results can't be tampered with by mafia powers affecting guiltiness.
Roleblocker: Proxy out who you roleblocked each day. If someone is roleblocked, then they can't have made any kills that day (barring weird secret admirer triggers), even if mafia use powers to manipulate guilt, which is very useful for town to know.
Secret Admirer: The dream trigger for you is to have your admiree die, you make a useful set investigation and a useful infallible investigation (killing the murderer if correct), and then mafia waste their kill power the next day on you before you die. So you might want to admire people more likely to die on days when you're easily killable the next day, and vice versa. It's unclear whether in expectation your power triggering is positive utility for town in the general case though. Probably proxy out results the day of your admiree's death, but reveal the info yourself before the end of the day when you die, once it's clear mafia aren't going to kill you.
Splitter: Split every day with sets that are as large and as even as possible. Don't be too aggressive about putting yourself in your own sets (otherwise mafia might trap you), but probably do so with increased probability. You do want to put more active people in your sets, such that they'll actually use their splitter investigations, but you don't want to collide with all the other splitters such that mafia can preemptively kill off people with a bunch of splitter investigations.
Vigilante: There's not quite as big of a penalty as there used to be for shooting wrong, but remember that you can inadvertently kill town secret admirers and cause town priests to lose their powers whenever you make a shot. So if there is a spare lynch, using it is better than having you shoot. So you should only shoot in the endgame, if there are multiple people in the queue to be lynched, or if you're very confident. If you're shooting on a day in which town is likely to lose otherwise, shoot early in the day; there have been many endgames with active vigilantes who just get shot because mafia were more on top of things than they were.
Child: Probably don't use your role unless you're about to be lynched. Mafia being able to use slaughter the weak on you is very good for them.
Planeswalker: The good roles to planeswalk into are splitter, priest, pair investigator, and child. Probably don't bother with roleblocker or secret admirer, and generally leave kills for vigilantes. Splitter is good to use early, because there is a delay. Splitter and priest both scale with the size of game (splitter loses a slot at 24 players alive, 18, etc, and priest loses a slot at 20 players alive and 10 players alive). Child isn't as directly useful as the other 3, but it might cause mafia to waste their one use of the Slaughter power, which might save a real child.

Item-specific discussion: Honey jars are best used on vigilantes right before they kill (getting to know the target's alignment is very good, and vigilantes are often pretty trappable by mafia anyway after they've made a kill). There are probably few enough that using them on other things is not very good. Remember that shovel handles can (and should) be sold for a coin.


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 Post subject: Re: Strategy Discussion
PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2018 6:51 pm 
Should we create spreadsheets for tracking items, alibis, and pair investigations?


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 Post subject: Re: Strategy Discussion
PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2018 6:54 pm 
ABCD := always be creating d'spreadsheets


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 Post subject: Re: Strategy Discussion
PostPosted: Wed Oct 24, 2018 5:25 pm 
Some tips for being a good townie:

1. Pay attention to discussions and remember to vote in executions. It's also generally a good idea to vote with the plurality (which is hopefully a majority). Don't let inactivity cause you to seem more suspicious or get tiebreaks against you.

2. Post alibis promptly. Post your alibi for each kill as soon as possible, so that investigations and productive discussion can happen at a timely pace.

3. Use your daily role powers unless you're a Child or Vigilante. See ksedlar's post above.

3b. Investigate promptly, though you should wait for alibis. The earlier pair investigations are posted, the earlier we can discuss. Remember to check Town Square before investigating to make sure you're not investigating something that's already been investigated.

3bi. Proxy out investigation results. If you get an investigation result, either from GMs or from another player proxying them to you, you should pass on the results to another player with some probability, and post them publicly some probability. This way, no one can be sure of the identity of investigators, but town can still dig up a proxy chain if we think the investigator might be sketchy.

4. Attend town meetings, such as Spirit Searches.


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 Post subject: Re: Strategy Discussion
PostPosted: Wed Oct 24, 2018 6:30 pm 
Good advice here all around. Read all of it!

A couple more things:

Interact with people as much as you can, and tell others your thoughts about them, preferably in the town square.

Likewise, report anything remotely suspicious immediately. Don't worry about being wrong. Misunderstandings can be corrected.

Be very, very careful about biasing your decisions in favor of the people you live close to/hang out with. We took tremendous advantage of this last game.

Likewise, use your role powers and items. I'll be pushing for this really hard. The mafia wouldn't have stood a chance last game if the town had used all the power at their disposal.

Start discussing much earlier in the day, regardless of whether there's been a new kill. We (the mafia) thrived last game on last-minute execution decisions that we could consistently manipulate.

Stay engaged in the game. Otherwise, we will lose. The mafia will definitely be engaged and active (even if they aren't publicly). We need to match their attentiveness.

There will likely come a point when I am dead, as are most of the other most active players. It is critical that you make decisions for yourself at that point, rather than just follow someone blindly (this applies all game of course, and you'll have more fun anyway if youre actively discussing and debating, but it is especially critical later in the game.) Ideally, I won't be one of the most prolific posters in the town square!


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 Post subject: Re: Strategy Discussion
PostPosted: Wed Oct 24, 2018 11:05 pm 
A bit about proxying:

Many times in game, we want some piece of information to persist in game (that is, there always exists some player knows it), but we don't want the information to be public. The main example is who is responsible for various role usages, so if we get suspicious that those role usages were lies by the mafia, we know who is responsible.

In general, for any piece of information that you know, you should pick exactly one other player to tell this information to, so that if you die, town will not lose that information. Any time you do this, choose a third player, the "witness" to tell who you entrusted this information to. This way, if you die, the person whom you trusted with said information can still be held accountable for said information.


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