Live Action Mafia

Hm, ksedlar is a GM this game, and usually takes point on discussion... well, I guess I'll try for now, and be much worse at it.

Hi everyone! If you're a new player, welcome; if you're an old player, welcome back! We should talk strategy or something so that we don't get steamrolled by mafia. Here are some links to strategy discussion threads of some older games; some roles have changed, but a decent amount is still the same (F18G1, F18G2)

The most important things to do to help town, in order of importance, are:
0. don't lie unless you really know what you're doing
1. be active, which involves
1a. voting
1b. using daily role powers
1c. participating in discussion

One important tool that town has is the use of proxy chains. The basic premise of a proxy chain is that you have information you want to tell all of town, but you don't want people to know the source of that information (for example, because the mafia can use that to trap and roleblock you). To start a proxy chain, tell your information to another player in game, and make up a pseudonym to claim as its source. If someone tells you something in this fashion, you should either continue the proxy chain by passing the information on to the other person, or post it publicly to forums (with the pseudonym cited as the source). No one except the original sender should know where they are in the chain. Here's an example of a past thread of proxied information.

Here's some basic strategy for each role; feel free to discuss if you disagree:

Pair Investigator: Generally, you should wait until reporting and discussion of alibis has mostly resolved before pair investigating, so you can have an idea of who to investigate. You might even want to wait a bit more even to wait for people to come to a consensus on who's sketchy. However, you do NOT want to wait until right before day end to investigate, especially with the delay from proxy chains.

Roleblocker: You should roleblock someone everyday. After a kill is made, you should proxy this information out as evidence against that person having made that kill.

Splitter: You should use your power everyday. People who get splitter investigations should announce such, as mafia already know this information, and if you notice that someone hasn't announced a splitter investigation they got, you should call them out on it through proxy.

Priest: You should use your power everyday, and proxy out both positive and negative results.

Conspiracy Theorist: You should use your power everyday.

Planeswalker: You should use your power everyday. A generally good pattern is -1, -1, +2, -1, ..., with the best uses probably being Splitter, Priest, and PI, in that order? Not sure, discussion welcome.

Vigilante: I don't really know strategy for determining when to kill, but if you do decide to kill, the proper procedure is as follows: do it publicly in front of other living players, let your victim know that you're vig killing them before you do it, and ask them if they have any information they want to pass onto town before they die (for example, their role and role actions are useful, as they can't be trapped if they're dead). A good way to do this is to put your hands above their shoulders as you're announcing your intentions, so that you can kill them if they try to run.

Relatedly, if someone tells you that they're going to vig kill you, running just makes you look sketchy; don't. Trying to reason with the vig is reasonable.

Gay Knight and Seer: I've never played with these role, so don't know. Seer should still use their role everyday.

Hey I'd just like to bump and second Jason's advice. The one thing I'd add (to new players especially) is to post any suspicions you have. Even if you just get sketch vibes from someone. These can sometimes lead to mechanical investigations and new info

_________________
"I intend to live forever or die trying" - Groucho Marx

Can't stress enough so I will repeat it here:

BE ACTIVE

BE ACTIVE

BE ACTIVE

Town has lost way too many games because there are not enough active people and mafia end up controlling the conversation (since they can coordinate with each other and create some sort of echo chamber among the few active players). Being active and participating in the conversation helps prevent that from happening.

On Information Security

Players often know things. In particular, they often know things that not everybody else knows. Often, if the mafia knew these things, it would be bad. Sometimes, we will question someone and want to learn about information they learned earlier in the game. In these situations, we would like a few things to be true:

(1) We can verify that the information is real, and isn't just being made up on the spot by a mafia member.
(2) Somebody in game actually knows the thing we are asking about; that is, the information wasn't lost because everyone who knew it died.
(3) The mafia don't already know the thing

Examples of such private information are: your role, your items, how you used an item, how you used your role, where someone was at a certain time, etc.

Sometimes we don't care about (3). In that case, just post the thing publicly on forums as soon as possible. This takes care of (1) and (2), because we can all read forums. An example of this would be an investigation produced by a splitter, because the mafia would already know about that.

Other times, (3) is pretty important (e.g. when the information is your role). In that case, posting on forums is not a good idea, because the mafia can read. On the other hand, doing nothing is pretty bad for (1) and (2); there's know way to verify anything you say if no one else knows about it, and if you die it's lost forever. A good compromise is telling exactly 1 other player the information. Now there is someone else who can vouch for you, so (1) is covered, and if you die, someone else knows the thing, so (2) is covered. Since most players are town, (3) is probably okay because you probably didn't tell a mafia the thing.

This is closely related to the "proxy chains" jasonye mentioned before.

Little-used town strategy: want to make your roleclaim more believable later? “Hint” it earlier. For example, if you are a Doctor (not a real role), you could post “I think we should be patient. I’m going to check up on Random Hall’s opinions,” and then later point out the words “patient” and “check up” as Doctor hints.

Of course, if you’re too obvious, you get roleblocked, and if you’re too subtle, no one will believe you didn’t “hint” all the other roles too. So it’s a difficult strategy.

By the way, if you know that someone has an immovable rod, and then they are killed, please tell everyone.