Live Action Mafia

People should discuss what they think good strategy is for using totems!

One topic of discussion is how we want to try coordinating people choosing totems for tomorrow. As Pravi noted, any publicly dictated scheme where someone knows that a totem went from A -> B results in a trap. Even if people privately reach out to the person they are going to target / someone who might want to target them, this can lead to a trap from the mafia knowing where their totem will be the next day, AKA ~4 traps each time we do this. I'm pretty sure that is long-term just bad.

If someone better at math than me wants to calculate the expected number of collisions from randomly selecting people, that could be helpful. Certainly if we decide to go with randomly selecting people, then people should use an actual randomizer, because people are internally non-random about these things in similar ways.

Unless I say otherwise, I am going to corn today. Saying this now to help coordination because my sleep schedule is messed up and I might be asleep soon.

I think we should use the Ice Bear/Care Bear pair to attempt to prove someone innocent, at the cost of the care bear totem and ice bear totem. The player who was the Care Bear the previous day should claim who they are and who they've given bang immunity to, and the ice bear should make a vigilante kill attempt against them. The mafia would have to connect THREE mafia to fake this (one mafia to give themselves bang immunity with care bear, one mafia to fake claim care bear having given mafia #1 bang immunity, and one mafia to claim ice bear), as well as 2 levels and a daily kill.

Once this happens, we have one proven innocent and one player who has used 3 levels to provide a strong update of goodness, and we've used two totems. A proven innocent is extremely powerful because it means that everyone can roleclaim all totems to them. It is very likely this leads to future proven innocents and a massive town information advantage.

This doesn't work; care bear bang immunity is only from farmers. So doing this would literally just cause the ice bear to kill the person the care bear targeted.

I agree though that getting a proven innocent is very strong. There is no conscription mechanic this game and there is a lot of useful information that we could pile on someone sufficiently trustworthy (i.e. all the totem information and totem actions in game). The care bear is still very good in conjunction with a proven innocent, because even without revealing themselves, whoever is care bear can just keep protecting the same person, making the proven innocent unkillable (until mafia hold the care bear totem themselves).

Oh, we could use the honey jar on the Lots-o-Huggin bear in order for them to use their role power twice. Then, we set up a vote that would lynch X if the hugger has +1 vote and Y if the hugger has +2 votes. This proves them innocent, at the cost of a honey jar, the totem, and having the lynch vote be more arbitrary than otherwise.

I think the general principal of roles usage should be to use all powers that would require the mafia spending levels to mimic. This increases the chance that we'll be able to verify a claim of role usage late in the game. It also increases the chance that we can identify that a totem wasn't used, and track down information about who had possession of it. If we ever believe that a totem has been in mafia hands, we could try to track down who has held onto it.

Overall, totems being in game is good for town, but levels being in game is probably bad for town.

Honey Bear (Roleblocker):
I think they shouldn't roleblock. Mafia can use it too (with 50% chance of no result), and it decreases town power overall. If one mafia is roleblocked, a different mafia will just make the kill, so in a monty hall way, people being roleblocked doesn't make them look more innocent.

Yogi Bear (Planeswalker):
Complicated and depends on what roles you've had before.

Grizzly Bear (PI):
Make the investigations, and proxy them out to a random player. There is a lot of investigation manipulation, however, so it's unclear if these provide much of an update at all. The mafia could manipulate roughly every single kill if they wanted to do so.

Panda Bear (PI):
See Grizzly Bear

Ice Bear (Vigilante):
Situationally useful for town, but I would never, ever use this except as part of a town-sanctioned plot, or in the endgame.

Care Bear (Police Officer):
Use your power every day. Unfortunately, only works against farmer kills, so can't be comboed with Ice Bear.

Lesbian Bear (Secret Admirer):
Use your power. If it goes off, you become proven innocent temporarily and can produce a massive information advantage before you die. The investigations are infallible, which are way, way better than normal investigations this game. Also, make sure the totem you admire is own that had a good chance of being in town hands.

Gao-me Bear:
passive, nothing to use.

Lots-O'-Huggin Bear:
Mafia can fake this role easily until late in the game, so it doesn't really matter.

Sir Berenstain (PI):
See Grizzly Bear

Papa Bear (Secret Admirer):
See Lesbian Bear

Pooh Bear:
Seems like a strong totem for mafia, so it would be nice to keep it out of their hands.

m2w:
Town should be vigorously discussing what m2w should do. You only get a limited number of posts/pms, and one of them should always be a post that comes at the end of the day. You should always, always make a post during a day; it guarantees that if mafia have used the power, they've at least spent a level to do so.

Gaoldilocks:
The most useful items this game will be shovels and honey jars. Spirit Searches are less useful due to the quantity of manipulation abilities. Tasers are an item that in my experience the town have not been able to use effectively.

Ducky Bear (Roleblocker):
See Honeybear

Chicago Bear:
Totemlocking reduces the number of levels in game (because someone doesn't get to see a new totem) while increasing the total number of totems in game (because you've made it much harder for the mafia to trap a specific totem). Use your power every day.

Hacker Bear:
Use your power every day, since it costs mafia to use it, make them pay to fake it.

Ayula, Queen Among Bears:
passive, nothing to see.

Monokuma (Priest):
Use your power every day and try to get it to go off. If it does go off, you should probably proxy it out as pair investigations. You usually want to put prominent players on your list; people with jobs or in isolated living groups are historically poor choices, people at popular living groups are pretty decent choices.

Paddington Bear:
Take the gamble each day, it's positive EV.

Thonking Bear:
This is equivalent to a spirit search except the Thonking Bear will get the result. No particular reason to prefer this to a spirit search other than convenience and it avoids selection effects of who shows up. This is probably worth 3 coins if you have them, but I would not advise selling items to use this power.

How is lesbian bear proven innocent temporarily? They are proven when they die of heartbreak for sure, and it's probably bad in general for mafia to fake claim this (such that the claimed dying lesbian bear should be treated as the most trustworthy person), but that's still a far cry from proven innocent, it seems like.

Wait, there's totally a way to prove an innocent. ICE BEAR can be proven innocent, by killing a Care Bear protected player through their protection. We then prove that, modulo both these totems being in mafia hands, that the person using Ice Bear is innocent.

^@aok if this actually owrks you should get it to happen ASAP

It cannot possibly happen until day 2 at the earliest, and day 3 most likely, because of level restrictions.

I think it is day 3 at the earliest?

In theory one of the 1.5 level boosted players on day 1 could get it on day 2. That would be unlikely, though.

Oh yeah, you’re right.

I think thonking bear is significantly better than a spirit search. Spirit searches give random results if mafia performs 2 of them beforehand, AND are manipulable normally. Also, thonking bear can pick an exactly optimal set, rather than whoever happens to show up, which is big. Given that coin generation exists in game, I think it’s pretty good for thonking bear to pick a proxy to gather 3 coins for them in order to do the set investigation.