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[JoshuaFH]

I think not knowing your own alignment has little to no effect on your ability to guess another player's unless there are significantly fewer cards.

What I'm trying to say is: by not looking at your own card, you're removing one of the three ways you can win.

While yes, having no idea what your alignment is doesn't in any way hinder your ability to deduce another person's alignment, it also means you can't bluff either.

Since you're not looking at your card, your opponent will never, ever call Mafia on you. It's not a sane choice. That being said, you can only win through getting lucky and being dealt the joker; and being able to deduce when your opponent is dealt the joker.

[Darvi]

Now here's a stupid idea: laconic mafia. Like the Twitter mafia, but you can only post votes and unvotes.

[webadict]

To be fair, the same could be said of you. If your opponent never guesses Mafia, you never guess Mafia.

I fail to see how you're any more likely to win.

Which is why you need fewer cards. If there are 3 cards, there's a 66% chance of a Mafia in the game, so not looking at your card makes it detrimental, as you lose any sort of knowledge and it becomes a guessing game.

Now if you want to argue about psychological game theory, it's probably less likely that a scum will drop scumtells than a townie, since they'll want you to guess scum. A scum will drop less obvious tells, while a Town will drop stupid obvious tells. Though, there's no point in saying anything at all, and keeping a straight face and using their guess as a way to determine their alignment.

[JoshuaFH]

Changing the number of cards to such a low number though, alters the nature of the game significantly.

I placed so much emphasis on the lack of bluffing in the no-look strategy, because that's where most players will be scoring most of their wins, in my opinion. This is because there would be 53 cards in the deck at the start of every game, and the players use up 2 each round, meaning a maximum of 26 rounds.

( I probably should have mentioned it earlier, but in the odd case where the joker is the last card in the deck, then the game is a draw. A 53 card deck is necessary, so that no player can be trapped in an unwinnable scenario in the last round. )

The way I imagine it, there is quite a lot psychological pressure in addition to the need to hide and give tells. Depending on the Joker's starting position in the deck, there can be 10, 15, or 20 rounds of "Town. Town. New round" before the game is decided. That's a lot of rounds of not looking at your card and hoping things will go alright.

This is because what I said earlier, the fact that a player facing a 'no-look' player will never call mafia, is not true. There's an odd chance of him calling mafia as the number of cards in the deck decrease, and his chances of making a successful call increase with each round.

Plus, that's 10-20 rounds of a normal player throwing feints and maneuvers to try to get a no-look player to guess wrongly.

Though I don't really understand when you said:

To be fair, the same could be said of you. If your opponent never guesses Mafia, you never guess Mafia.

I must have misrepresented the rule. The moment that someone calls mafia, the winner is decided. The card flips, and the game ends with whomever won that game. Pick up all the cards from the discard pile, reshuffle, and start over.

The fact that the winner can be decided with each round, piles on a lot of psychological pressure, I believe.


Now WA, I don't want to discard the "3-card deck" idea or whatever you had in mind. I'm sure it would be it's own fulfilling game, but it's not what I had in mind.

[RedWarrior0]

Now here's a stupid idea: laconic mafia. Like the Twitter mafia, but you can only post votes and unvotes.

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[Vector]

VoteVoteVote VoteVote VoteVote Vote VoteVoteVoteVote VoteVoteVote Vote VoteVote VoteVoteVote

... If I understood morse code, I'd let you know precisely how much you won with that >_>

[webadict]

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... If I understood morse code, I'd let you know precisely how much you won with that >_>

Somebody was never a boy scout.

[Vector]

No ;_;  Such is the sad and pathetic lot of women!

... In other words, I'm going to spend the requisite two hours to pick that up this summer >_>

[IronyOwl]

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VoteVoteVoteVote VoteVoteVote VoteVoteVote Vote   VoteVote VoteVoteVote   VoteVoteVoteVote VoteVoteVoteVote VoteVote VoteVote VoteVote Vote VoteVoteVote

No ;_;  Such is the sad and pathetic lot of women!

... In other words, I'm going to spend the requisite two hours to pick that up this summer >_>

What? Don't girl scouts need to know morse code to help with their cookie smuggling? I can't imagine what else they'd be doing. :<

[Vector]

Ahh, but I was not a girl scout, either--because it was too damned cliquish and my mom didn't want to put up with the other moms, so I stayed home with her and learned a. algebra b. basic woodworking/woodsman/plant identification skills and c. how to punch things.

... Yup.

[RedWarrior0]

You know what, I'm not going to keep doing that unless someone writes a script for it.

[Pandarsenic]

To be fair, Vector, those are all useful skills.

[Vector]

To be fair, Vector, those are all useful skills.

Haha, I was making an attempt at joking--because what I stayed home and learned were "manly" skills, rather than what the girl scouts seemed to be.  "Fake bellyaching," I guess.

I also learned to embroider, sew, and knit, so... ha.  I got the best of both worlds.  Nyaaaah~

[webadict]

To be fair, Vector, those are all useful skills.

Haha, I was making an attempt at joking--because what I stayed home and learned were "manly" skills, rather than what the girl scouts seemed to be.  "Fake bellyaching," I guess.

I also learned to embroider, sew, and knit, so... ha.  I got the best of both worlds.  Nyaaaah~

There's a sexist joke in there somewhere, but I don't know if I want to get punched. Plus, it's quite possible you have magic powers.

[Leafsnail]

No ;_;  Such is the sad and pathetic lot of women!

... In other words, I'm going to spend the requisite two hours to pick that up this summer >_>

Hey, our scout group allows girls.  I'm sure we could make you an honorary member!  Then you can learn how to fall into the water after the badly tied knot comes loose build rafts and completely fail to start fires like all of us!