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[notquitethere]

Maybe not for every game, but it would add a level of backroom politicking. Secret deals and counter-deals.

[Leafsnail]

You don't really get many backroom deals in mafia games, though, unless the game has a lot of third-parties (so Paranormal sometimes sees them).  Most of the time PMs are just used to help break the setup, which is why they're not really a good thing to make standard.

[Superblackcat]

It certainly made it more interesting in paranormal...
and more annoying when Tiruin kept bugging me >.>

[Tiruin]

Oh sure blame me for that despite me warning you neutrally three times or so on that part.

[Superblackcat]

I'm kiddin

[TolyK]

PTW and maybe add something of what I come up with.

[4maskwolf]

I'm going to hijack this thread (and necro it, I guess) to posit a mafia theory that I started thinking about after another player brought up the concept of a reanimating role in Jack's BYOR.

Being a reanimating town player, in cases where there is no flip, is likely to be a detriment to the town should they be lynched.

I have noticed in my time here that people tend to get VERY focused on cases they have built up, to the point that they start ignoring other cases. If someone dies, comes back to life, and doesn't flip, they have put themselves back in the exact same position with one exception: a round of night power usage. This includes the scumkill/convert. Thus, the game enters a very similar position the next day, only with one fewer player. The likelihood of the reanimating player being lynched again is rather high unless an information role brings back additional information, but few information roles will stick their neck out to prevent a townie from being lynched.

There are flaws in the argument, yes, but I believe that in the end on one-shot revive townie is a detriment, not an asset, to the town.

[Jack A T]

I'd put it as pro-town in the hands of NK bait, and anti-town in the hands of a player likely to get lynched.  A lynch would basically lead to a situation similar to a last minute tie, but with less anger at the unlynched lynch target.  Little change in information between days beyond a few night actions is, as you noted, not going to lead to much change in votes.

The discussion the next day, and chance for reevaluation, mitigates some of the damage, but not all.

It's an odd power, probably helpful in the right hands and probably harmful in others.  It's rather similar to vigkills in that respect.

[Toaster]

Revives on lynch and revive on kills are indeed two different beasts.

[Leafsnail]

It's very rare for mafia members to be able to revive-on-lynch though, so a player who comes back will probably be a semi-confirmed townie in a closed setup (or at least they're pretty unlikely to be mafia).

[notquitethere]

General question: How important is voting in your first post of the game? I don't use this anymore because I have found it to be completely ineffective in finding scum, but I have been questioned about this a lot in previous games and was wondering what other people thought about that.

With the current meta, I see the initial randomish votes as having little purpose.  Everyone knows such votes are non-threatening, and everyone knows they'll be gone by the end of the day.  I could see several randomish votes on a single person spooking them a bit, but that almost never happens.  There's rarely much to analyze about specific votes, too, especially with the number of people who make truly random votes.

If the votes were more threatening (and, for that matter, less random), they could probably be more useful.

The only time I've seen rvs votes be useful is when you can use the fact the vote hasn't been moved to spot a player who hasn't been able or willing to form a fresh case.

[Shakerag]

The only time I've seen rvs votes be useful is when you can use the fact the vote hasn't been moved to spot a player who hasn't been able or willing to form a fresh case.

Just anecdotally, I've had a few instances where a prodding question and an RVS vote ended up sticking the whole day, and then I have to defend (and re-defend, and re-re-defend) why my vote never moved. 

[notquitethere]

Yeah, like most scumtells it's not 100% alignment indicative.

[4maskwolf]

Spoiler: 4maskwolf on general things (click to show/hide)

One of the reasons I believe that the scum are winning so many of the recent games is not anything to do with the setups themselves but with the lack of ability to scumhunt properly.  As time progressed, certain scum tactics were discerned and codified into the set of ideas we teach beginners today, but in codifying them we have become stuck in our sense that those are the primary scumtells of the game.  In the meantime, because we have freely declared what we deem as scummy we have given the scum all of the tools they need to obfuscate and confuse us.  By giving them a specific set of scumtells to work with, they have a set of tools to attack any player they see drift close to one of those scumtells, and because they know who the scum actually are they are able to attack without hesitation.  And you know what we think attacking without hesitation seems like?  Town.  Because we have this misguided view that town don't need to be concerned about their image when they DO, because their lynch does not help the town in any way.

Another problem is that many of the scumtells on the list are often extrapolated and blown out of proportion.  If someone doesn't really have much to say on the current proceedings, they are accused of active-lurking.  If they vote someone voting them, no matter what the reason, it's an OMGUS.  These scumtells are intended as guidelines, but they are presented and used as hard rules.  In reality, what makes a scumtell is INCREDIBLY subjective depending on the player being analyzed.  For example, I wouldn't vote Tiruin for inactivity, but if NQT started lurking in the background without a given reason it would ping my suspicions fairly quickly.

I think most of these problems come down to how much we have codified the game.  That is one of the reasons I pull batshit-insane gambits every game: it shakes people out of their complacence with the old ways of doing things.  And in general, people hate it when I do them.  Anything out of the standard metagame is viewed with more suspicion than it probably should be, because people aren't used to it.  But rather than adopt it or integrate the good parts, in general things don't change except for the one or two holdouts who play differently.  For instance, NQT's intensive vote analysis or my crazy, gambits.  There are good and bad parts to all strategies, but it doesn't seem like we've adapted to meet the changing times.

In the end, what it comes down to is that we aren't evolving our metagame.  Playing town is by nature a reactive game, but people need to find new ways to throw the scum off guard.  Because right now, a canny scum can fool most of the town with only moderate effort required because they know our strategies but we haven't kept looking for theirs.

Edit:

Used to be more common here, where scum would specifically lurk and post as little as possible in order to avoid garnering any attention.

Then a few people started using the Lynch All Lurkers rule to both weed out lurking scum as well as get rid of unhelpful players in general, so it is much less common.

Still, I occasionally see it crop up in scum chat where someone will mention that they are being lurky scum in order to avoid attention.

This rule should be law someday. >:I
Activity is the soul of games.

This is absolutely hilarious in hindsight

[Jack A T]

As time progressed, certain scum tactics were discerned and codified into the set of ideas we teach beginners today, but in codifying them we have become stuck in our sense that those are the primary scumtells of the game.  In the meantime, because we have freely declared what we deem as scummy we have given the scum all of the tools they need to obfuscate and confuse us.  By giving them a specific set of scumtells to work with, they have a set of tools to attack any player they see drift close to one of those scumtells, and because they know who the scum actually are they are able to attack without hesitation.

I can't say I fully agree.  It's common knowledge (at least among the veterans and most of the moderately experienced players) that that scumtell list, while not useless, is not representative of the current meta (being years old) and lacks both current tells we tend to identify and the subjectivity necessary in interpreting actions, while including tells that are largely rejected today (OMGUS being the best example).

As an explanation of the BM scum bias, though, this works well.

[...]we have this misguided view that town don't need to be concerned about their image when they DO, because their lynch does not help the town in any way.

While I see the "real townies don't care about their image" thing pop up still outside of BMs, I think we've mostly moved on to the more nuanced "town cares, but generally not as much as scum unless inexperienced" view.

Another problem is that many of the scumtells on the list are often extrapolated and blown out of proportion.  If someone doesn't really have much to say on the current proceedings, they are accused of active-lurking.  If they vote someone voting them, no matter what the reason, it's an OMGUS.  These scumtells are intended as guidelines, but they are presented and used as hard rules.  In reality, what makes a scumtell is INCREDIBLY subjective depending on the player being analyzed.  For example, I wouldn't vote Tiruin for inactivity, but if NQT started lurking in the background without a given reason it would ping my suspicions fairly quickly.

This has been the classic newbie flaw since at least when I first arrived years ago: the "Look, a scumtell!" style of scumhunting.  There is a statement in the BM OP spoiler, early on, that the tells are "very, very subjective," but it is underemphasized.  Add inexperience/lack of knowledge of what makes tells strong, and the result is not great.  We do need some changes to how scumtells are presented to beginners.

OMGUS accusations I know I, and several other veterans, largely don't take seriously.  I don't think there is a single kind of accusation that gets more quickly and consistently shot down than OMGUS accusations.  I see them a bit too often outside BMs, but I think I've only seen a few stand up under the slightest bit of scrutiny.

That is one of the reasons I pull batshit-insane gambits every game: it shakes people out of their complacence with the old ways of doing things.  And in general, people hate it when I do them.

I can't think of all that many cases where people tended to strongly dislike your gambits.  Only cases I can think of: Paranormal 24's PM thing (based on an overvaluing of a mid-range investigative role and collapsed instantly), KYOSN and the lever pull (where you got misblamed for my last-minute voting mode change), and Supernatural 7's big thing where you ignored nuance in voting (which was disruptive and distracting, the two things that consistently provoke the most anger in Bay 12 Mafia).  I may be/likely am unaware of something, though, but when the benefits of your gambits outweigh the costs, I think people are okay with them.  There's a reason people loved your Choose-Your-Own-Masquerade play.

And overall, we're evolving.  Not as quickly as you want, and quite likely not as quickly as we should be, but we are evolving.  Though massive strategic changes haven't been happening, there are significant matters where the general collective view is changing.  (One big change I would like to see: an increased emphasis on lynch arguments as being to convince people, with greater acceptance of acceptance of arguments.  There's an aversion to bandwagoning, I think, that keeps people from publicly agreeing with the points of others.)

As a side note, I consider you to play in the general Bay 12 style, with gambits being your main quirk.