Is mafia kill usually not free on mafia universe or something? And did nobody read the bullet directly above the discord link y'all clicked in the OP? I'm bumfuzzled. Can everyone please take a minute to thoroughly read the first post of the thread? It'll be helpful if everyone knows the rules of the game we're playing.
Yeah, we're pretty much a homebrew, I had to adjust to a lot of stuff that was absolutely foreign to me when I went to MU to prep for champs.
Every mod basically sets their own rules, it's a good idea to carefully read every one, but even there, not every mod follows every rule fully or interprets it exactly the same - this is EP as mod and not a bastard game, chances are high every rule is as-stated but there's also the 'traditional B12 stuff' like how you pointed out cryptography's not forbidden. Unspoken rules are all over.
Some of us are not nearly as concerned about if that mafia kill was free or not as you appear to be - I had read that, and not even filed it in my memory. I don't expect generic mafiakill to be free or cost, I don't expect the mafia to have or not have other actions, perhaps including complex, awesome, free-or-not non-generic mafiakills. I personally have had a role where I could have claimed 7 actions as my own actions that previous night and still not admitted to 4 others, very different ones that I had actually forced other players to do in addition to their actual chosen actions (so tracking, haha, good luck). And I was town with that.
So yes, the rules matter and matter a lot, but there's so much about the actual abilities we have and how we use them... that's where my deeper focus is, personally. Makes total sense for a newer player to deeply focus on the rules as written, and want us all to.
I've lost a bunch of games just from town not reading the rules. I've also caught scum who were pretending to not have read the rules. I'm not as fixated on them as you seem to believe I am, though, despite us talking a lot about this now. I do have a town read on you despite what I mentioned.
What's more concerning though is that your readslist basically pans out to nothing. Can you summarize your reads by just giving me a list of town and scum, without reasoning? I would prefer if you didn't include all of the players, obviously.
Nope - mostly nope. Of the people I can read and read well - nope. There is not 1 player here beside myself that I would bet the game on being town unless I had no other choice. Currently I have other choices - more time before I have to make any bets like that.
Every single player here could fox me at this point in the game. You're my strongest 'this could be scum' read, and I'd like you to be town and can see how you could be town and playing as you are, and I am very against your easy elim for you being unknown and playing unusually. That said, you could be scum and if you're consensus elim and fail to prevent that, I don't have any info that would make me say 'not Mater, not D1.'
Most of the people here have seen me play a few times. I suspect I could say "Because of my role and information that I should not share yet, we need to elim X today." and get seriously listened to even if we end up not doing that. I essentially did a similar thing in a previous game D1 and made it happen (it was VERY hard and Max was a defending fellow scum which made it even harder to make happen) and it was arguably the scariest scumrole possible that we flipped .... I can't imagine a scarier one, maybe there are worse but in a game with 12 players, 3 scum, and 1 survivor-like weird third party, that anti-town player could unlock 7 mafiakill per night and potentially have that unlock by N2, and I caught him by understanding my role, the game's potential, his playstyle - and CrystalizedMire that game called me 'the towniest town that ever towned'.
I wasn't super useful past D1, in terms of catching scum. The rest of town did the rest of the elims, I focused on the edge cases and the 'omg, if we're in trouble this is the trouble' and everyone else town solved the rest of the game around me and the baddies.
So, my reads, this game especially, D1 with how we've played so far - ehh, I am 100% sure most of us are town. I'm saying what matters to me and making it clear what I want to see happen in the future. I've made offers, both to explore if someone wants to volunteer telling us all either:
1) if they unlock/improve in some way by either giving 'items' (doesn't matter what the item is), or by giving 'items', (doesn't matter what the item is), or by specifically getting or giving 'fruit' that has no use I know of,
2) I've invited anyone to target me with a non-lethal ability if they don't have a preferred other thing to do N1 (it's totally cool that some folks do other stuff, I'd like at least 1 person to target me, more than one are fine, all 10 or 11 of you is fine but I don't recommend or prefer it, it's not needed and if you have something more useful to do N1, do it, really) and I specifically request Vermilion to target me N1 if willing.
D1, that stuff is more important to me than my own personal reads, though I'm listening/thinking/feeling checking us all out super carefully. If I live very long, same as the rest of us, the game will unfold as things happen. Things will happen D2 because of me if I live to N1 and am targeted by at least 1 player N1, which I've tried to ensure happens. This should be easily and clearly discussable D2+ even if I'm dead before D2, and I think I'm making useful contributions to the game - in this case more useful than the reads I literally don't have at this moment.
See, I learned I can't reliably catch CM D1. I can't reliably catch MS D1. I haven't seen evil Tric yet that I can remember, but right now I'm not sure I can catch him D1 either. Fallacy? Uhh, probably not. You? Maybe. Maybe not.
Some games as town I'ma hunt, right or wrong, and that's my focus. This game, you see my focus. I'll do my best every moment I play though, promise!