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[Mephansteras]

Makes sense. Scum tend to not want to bandwagon as a group if they can avoid it in order to avoid any connection to one another. So as long as a mislynch is happening anyway, they'll tend to split their votes up as much as possible.

[TheBiggerFish]

Bump.  Also maybe PTW.

[kanoguti]

You should always lynch day 1.
It's better to lynch a townie than to lynch nobody.

Mafia is a very uneven game in terms of skill. Removing people who are inexperienced, though incredibly rude, opens up room for the better players to take control of the game easier.
And of course, there is always the chance of hitting scum day 1.

[Mephansteras]

Welcome to the board, kanoguti!

And, yes, day 1 there is every reason to lynch someone and every reason not to (barring a strange rule set-up, of course).

[Leafsnail]

Technically assuming a vanilla game you should no-lynch if there are an even number of players alive. That's because you don't lose a lynch by doing so and you have a higher chance of hitting scum with fewer players alive on the next day.

That said the mafia also shouldn't kill at an even number of players for the same reason, so there needs to be some kind of stalemate-breaking rule built in to the game.

If there are an odd number of players alive you should definitely lynch because otherwise you're basically handing the decision of who to kill to the mafia.

[doll]

I've got a somewhat more meta theory based on some fridge logic (to use the expression) I've worked through in regards to what I've read so far on B12, in particular within this thread:
A huge portion of the mistakes in scumhunting documentation on B12, such as what has so far been discussed, comes down to an error in nomenclature being a lack of distinction between scumtells and anti-town behavior.

For instance:
Inactivity is anti-town but is most strongly associated with (vanilla) town, due to mostly being a gauge of user interest in a game (real life concerns being unrelated to role)
As mentioned, inactivity appears (as lurking) in the scumtell documentation but does not actually indicate scumhood.

This isn't an actionable thought but rather a perceived change in thought necessary to expedition evolution within the metagame, however.


Also I'd like to put forth that outside of mechanical considerations (i.e. within mountainous mafia) town has just as much of a reason to avoid being lynched as scum.
Within situations with mechanical considerations, town may have more or a reason to avoid a lynch than scum.
Being lynched in is the very worst thing which can happen during the day from the perspective of a town player, as it involves the loss of the only clear player in addition to being a mislynch.
In the case where one is vanilla scum on a scumteam with power roles, being lynched is not the worst thing that could happen during the day, as both you and the power role are clear and the power role is confirmed.

Of course, it is better to be lynched as town than to lose a confirmed cop or an open clear to the mislynch, but such an event should be impossible excepting anti-town behavior or certain overriding considerations within bastard setups.

[Persus13]

Yeah, I've seen people being accused of being scum because of inactivity when their inactivity was due to much more mundane reasons (mainly in BMs because it happens a lot and its something you can quantify). Inactivity is an overused accusation for sure .

That said, I've deliberately not posted as mafia to avoid people realizing that I could be scum before.

[doll]

Most mountainous setups at regular game numbers are stacked against town, even assuming lynches are truly random (which they are most certainly not with mafia in play, especially with a daytime quicktopic like on B12).
Inactivity (and so a lack of scumhunting) is therefore anti-town, and thus a thing scum would endeavor to do as much as possible.

Inactivity is an overused accusation for sure .

The reason why I made this point about nomenclature was essentially so that I could say the following: while inactivity is not a scumslip proper, it is anti-town behavior and does constitute a reason to lynch outside of any scumslips.

In other words, lynch noobtown in the absence of actual scum, I guess, which is a strong enough principle that it does actually justify my above reasoning.

[doll]

Effective RVS posts are essentially WIFOM.
The function of RVS posts is to cause scum to slip, producing scumtells from slips relating to either pressure or flavor slips.
The likelyhood of an individual slipping scales with the amount of thought the individual is putting into a tangential matter. This tangential matter need not be the actual game.

In other words, RVS content is town-sided wifom used to confuse and distract scum, and hence increase the likelyhood of scum slipping.
This is effective. Indeed, statistics from Bay12 mafia games show this is wildly and overwhelmingly effective.

Therefore, at any time cases are not being built (that is, at any time at which there is no information to obscure) it is pro-town to build elaborate cases of wifom and theory crafting, and to expose other players to such.

[Toaster]

It's a saying I've stuck to that for such questions the answer is irrelevant; it's the manner that you answer it that matters.  If nothing else, it starts discussion and provides a starting point.

I like the idea of classifying lurking as anti-town instead of a scumtell.  It's really more accurate.

[doll]

Anti-town behavior is anti-information.

The principle pro-'town' behavior is giving reads. All anti-information behavior: inactivity, lurking, communicating poorly, muddying the water while there are actual discussions based on real information going on, etc. is anti-town because it prevents town players (the uninformed majority) from finding slips, forming reads, and pushing on with the game in a non-arbitrary fashion.

Pro-informaton behavior which is anti-town includes actions which give information to scum, such as rolefishing.
Except, this is not true.
When no information is available to act on, pro-information behavior is anti-town (specifically, pro-scum) only when it fails to muddy the water. The scum are acting on different and usually more information than the town. In any situation in which the scum have more information than the town and the town do not have information, it is in the interest of the town to be disruptive and deceptive in all proceedings wherein the town do not have information, and in doing so to give reads.
Inactivity is anti-information, and so anti-town, and thus lynchable for the want of actual information.
Shitposting is not anti-information where no information exists such that shitposting would lower the quality of the information available to town. Bullshit is better than nothing, so to speak.
Much more importantly than this (giving town bullshit with which to work, that is) shitposting lowers the quality of information available to the scum where they have better information than the shit that is being produced.
It is harder for scum to keep their information straight the more bullshit town produces. Where town do not have any information, the production and rapid regurgitation of useless information is the only pro-town action. This is because scum do have useful information, which they may slip out by accident.
Obviously, this applies to third party/power roles as well.

Within B12 the primary form of zero-information shitposting is RVS (and flavor, due to the strong bastard influences on the subforum) rather than e.g. fakeclaiming.
However, this is a cultural trend and does not constitute ideal play.
Ideal play is not a stagnant object, because the effectiveness of play is also proportional to the degree by which it takes scum by surprise.


It should be noted here that all bullshit information should be dropped at the first moment that real information comes to light, and that town should be prepared to accept the dropping of such information.

It should always be possible to lynch scum D1 given enough time to collect reads. The time taken to collect reads is inversely related to the violence of play and the competence of players; good players will give town reads more quickly, but will also take longer to produce slips as scum (or power roles).

[Tiruin]

doll is a newbie to Bay12 and I am agreeing with their ideas--especially anti-town behavior. It's as if 'reverse psychology' is actually being treated seriously (I've a load to say against that, especially given my course of being in psychology)

Except when the notion of shitposting comes to light, or rather how that one statement was said. But adding a note towards talking about BS--one should always recall the importance of context and how it is said (and the people therein the game); timing helps whether it's pro-town or not, including if the interaction includes a response from the yet-unknown scumteam.

[doll]

Being in unfamiliar territory, I am using terminology which I understand. I was almost certain that 'shitposting' would not effectively convey the concept to anyone but myself, but that's better than using language which leaves the thought clear to no-one at all.

My idea can basically be phrased up as such: where town has no information at all and at least one other opposed party does have information, it is of benefit to lower the quality of all information in the game e.g. by deliberately being disruptive about a non-issue, or by giving deliberately deceptive information.
An extremely pure example of such is fakeclaiming a role which does not exist in the game, such as claiming rolecop in 'vanilla' mafia ('vanilla' being cop/doc/3xvanilla town/2x vanilla mafscum with N1 before D1 in this case); this may have very little effect on scum's grasp of the game, but it has a far greater (if negligible) effect on such than on town's grasp of their own role. In particular, the wifom surrounding such a claim with regards to it's impact on one's likelyhood of being the actual cop is the most likely aspect to distract scum, whereas the player may have resolved to make such a play before the game began. Of course, the objective here is to cause scum to make a mistake regarding the information they have by flooding them with confusing and irrelevant information, as it is far easier for town players to identify what information is not available to the town than it is for scum to do so. In a straightforward game, scum have no trouble with such because the information available to the town is straightforward and minimal. In a phenomenally muddied and unclear game, players in general, in particular those with more information than others (i.e. scum, but also power roles), are likely to make mistakes regarding information. Forgetting information available to town raises suspicions of being anti-town because it suggests sloppy and distracted play, but revealing information unavailable to town raises suspicions of being an informed minority.

To give a less theoretical example, consider blackmagechill's D1 lynching in Mein Kampf. He was very busy, concerned, and flustered on D1, and he did not notice that he was speaking about information unavailable to the town in high modality language. The fact that he did not doctor his flavor or realize the need to do so (when the need to do so had been discussed in the thread (regarding flavor given to the scumteam in WC)) shows that he did not have the opportunity to give as much thought to the information that he did have as was ideal, in no small part due to how much of the meaningless information created during the RVS discussions he engaged with. Yet, he had no choice but to play the way he did; to fail to engage with that meaningless information would be anti-town for refusing to give reads. Deliberate anti-town behavior, if out of character, is undeniably scummy.


The goal of a town with no information is to create discussion. The quality of that discussion does not matter, merely that the discussion resembles legitimate information which may arise within the game.

[Shakerag]

shitposting

Did someone summon me?

[Leafsnail]

It's from a while back, but don't fakeclaim if you're town barring extraordinary circumstances. Catching mafia members in lies about their roles is a powerful tool for identifying them. Almost all players will immediately conclude that anyone lying about their role is scum. If this assumption doesn't hold the town is at a huge disadvantage.