Going to say, flying all over my head due to self dumassery but
Really stupid question: what's stopping the Mafia from denying it as well for the dog in the know? Or at least any way for mafia to somehow subvert this?
Denying it means you say you aren't the dog in the know. The mafia can do this, but... then the only one who wouldn't deny it would be the actual dog in the know, so we have at least two confirmed town (the dog, and the one the dog says is town). Confirmed town can be
incredibly strong. Of course, there's a small chance that the mafia could fakeclaim it
and then the real dog in the know doesn't say anything... but since the real dog is town, this would just be moronic. It's willfully kneecapping your own team.
Cop reveal d1 dumb I consider since that paints a target on the cop back, and dogtor have to choose between either protect themselves or protect the cop because if cop role claims, then mafia would kill someone else if they think the dogtor will protect the cop.
Ehhhh, in this particular game, there's only exactly one player, the henchman, who the cop can actually catch. This means that the value of the cop is actually limited. If I were mafia, and a cop claimed d1, I'd be more interested in thinking about who that player will actually investigate before deciding whether he's worth killing right away.
Also, kind of important, it's not vanilla for doctors to be able to protect themselves. I don't know what tric did in this particular game, but I wouldn't bet on that being an option.
Mostly because of the meta around role reveals. It's very useful for the mafia to know specifics about town, but that doesn't necessarily confirm who they are striking that night. That predictive dance is complex and can have other factors.
Like, if cop does decide to reveal then does mafia night target the cop, or presume that doctor protects the cop, so the mafia has 4 unprotected targets to kill if they are right about the presumption?
The same thing can happen with our Know.
First of all, it won't because being the Dog in the Know isn't a priority target for the mafia in any way. From the mafia's position, the Dog in the Know is barely different from any other townie.
But more importantly, if it
did happen, it wouldn't matter! The mafia
never actually know who the doctor will target, there's always WIFOM in every kill when there's known to be a doctor. To take the cop example, very often doctors
don't protect the claimed cop because they expect that mafia will assume a claimed cop is protected and kill someone else... and usually, the mafia do assume that, so it's the right move. Ultimately, the game is no different either way.
To put it simply, your argument is incredibly superficial. You're just like... "the mafia always wants to know special roles, this is a special role, therefore the mafia want to know it!" but that's completely ignoring the actual dynamics of the situation, what the role does and why anyone would care. It's applying a general rule that doesn't really exist.
The mafia can also attempt to appear to be the Know, since they also know for their own reasons, and they could have one of the mafia reveal they know one of the town, but not others.
If a mafia claims cop or doctor role, the real cop or doctor can choose to role reveal, and then we know to kill one of the two then the other if needed.
If a mafia claims to be the Know, we all were told the real Know can't reveal it, but the real Know also surely got a private message from Tric about it, with contents that the rest of us may not fully know. That one dog knows what they cannot say, exactly, and the mafia can only guess, and the rest of us can only guess. But the mafia could attempt to use individual town decisions to influence, and their 'fake know' could actually be doing stuff that only Tric and the real Know can recognize as not even following the rules that the real Know has to follow. Thus the fake mafia know might even claim a bit more boldly than the real Know can, because the real Know has rules that forbid exactly what the fake know is doing, since the fake know only knows what we were publicly told.
I am honestly fairly confident that the real Dog in the Know didn't receive any more information about what that means than Tric told us in the thread, because A) this is supposed to be an open setup anyway, and B) you just don't know Tric like I do. The Dog in the Know was a mistake to begin with, so it's crazy to assume there are special rules. However, regardless, what the real Dog in the Know can and cannot do is irrelevant if the rest of town agrees to use their own freedom of action to narrow it down. I guarantee you that Tric is not
obligating the real Dog in the Know to say something specific in order to deny being so, just
not affirm being so.
And yes obviously the mafia can fakeclaim it, but that's actually still town-beneficial because, if there are two or three possibilities, we now know mafia is among them - unless town are being truculent, *cough*. Mafia have to choose between allowing us to have confirmed town, or narrowing themselves down to a much smaller group. There's a particular move here that I think is probably the mafia-optimal choice, but I don't want to explain it because I suspect the mafia don't actually know it. Suffice to say that if there are two or three people not claiming not being the Dog in the Know, then we definitely lynch among them. Since the real Dog in the Know would
certainly, I hope, be smart enough to signal who the knowledge-target is, then even if we are completely wrong and lynch the real one, mafia are still constrained to choose between trying to kill the target or letting us have one confirmed town next day.
Of course, that would become useless if some particularly dumb town members refuse to deny being the Dog in the Know based on faulty theories, allowing the mafia to skate by by denying it while making it look like some of them are mafia. I'd really hope that nobody is foolish enough to do that.
And of course, if any player who isn't the Dog in the Know clearly appears to be implying that he is, let's call that player "Cryre", I would hope that the real one would contradict this, and that no other town player who doesn't actually know would do so, since otherwise I am going to assume that extremely hypothetical player who doesn't exist is telling the truth, for now.
So, experienced townie. Explain to us how with your posts you are and have been scumhunting and progressing town goals, instead of wasting time. You know, doing town's job.
I am not obligated to explain anything to you. In the event that you're actually town, your fixation is completely nonproductive.
Last edit before posting: Tric basically just confirmed what I thought, that there isn't anything more complicated to it than what we were told. Why would anyone just assume there would be?