I thought that poking lordnincompoop1 was hard because there was no actual pressure for most of the week, only when it reached the deadline did he crack and appear non-scummy.
Eh? Cracking is a towntell? I always thought it was the other way 'round, most of the time.
Everyone cracks under enough pressure. It's all about how they crack. I've taken note of how I crack every time.. I'd be "No, I'm not a mafia, I'm a ____!" and everyone would go "Oh, ok." It's a lot more believable if you crack as a specific role.
When town cracks, they usually show nothing. Whether you're relying on just gut instinct or analyzing it, you'd see nothing. When there's nothing, it's a good towntell. Akigagak covered up his cracks by countering with an attack on me, which made it hazy to tell whether he was really town or scum covering up as town.
When scum crack, they've got nothing but scum underneath the shell. They'll quickly try to cover up the crack with townieness, and that results in an inconsistent story. Or they cover it by becoming batshit insane (like Zrk) or more aggressive because they don't have any facts to cover up for themselves. It's really hard to play as scum, because lying is very difficult for everyone. The best that scum can do is to make up a back story to fall back on to when they crack. My favorite tactic when playing scum is to have whoever is under too much pressure to pretend to be a cop/doctor, when they get cornered, they'll get in a fight with the real cop/doctor for the roleblocker to hone in on.
Personally, I find these beginner mafia games the hardest because there's so many plain roles. A scum could very easily act as a town. In other games where you've got like 5 power roles, 3 scum, 3 town, all the scum would pretend to be town (not power roles), and you can pick everyone off by simply targeting the town guys. In beginner mafia, there's mostly town, and the scum can very easily act as one. I'd actually like to see a BM with pros, and see if it fares better than with beginners.