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[Jim Groovester]

EDIT 1: Above partially answered.   Do you have examples of where that was successfully pulled off?

I do.

NUKE9.13 did this to Dariush in Cult Mafia. It was a beautiful move. He was converted Night 1 by Urist_McArathos and then spent most of Day 2 jestering it up and defending Dariush to make people think Dariush was the Cult Leader. Ultimately, he succeeded and laughed his ass off about it on Day 3.

I do not necessarily endorse this strategy, but it can be an effective one. You really have to know what you're doing in order to pull it off, otherwise, people see straight through it, ignore everything you have to say, then lynch you posthaste.

[Griffionday]

Okay, that was beautifully done; thanks for the link.  I think I'll hold off on attempting that until I get experience playing town though.

[Toaster]

I also advise that you never panic, ever. If you feel like panicking, do something besides mafia for a while until you don't feel like panicking. Then do it a little longer because you're probably overestimating your ability to remain unpanicked. Staying cool and collected is one of the most valuable assets a member of the scum team can have.

I don't have much to add to what Meph said, other than make heavy use of the preview button. Think consciously about how people will react to what you're going to say and have a justification prepared ahead of time.

Amen to both of these, town and scum.  The preview button can prevent you from saying something stupid as town.  (And even catch formatting errors!  Plus, I caught a grammar error previewing this post!)

You will find it a little difficult to press cases against people when you know for a fact that you're wrong. Do it anyway.

To add to this, you have to be okay with telling bold-face lies.  If you are scum and building a case on a townie, don't conclude it with "I suspect you so I'm voting you."  You have to go for the throat to really sell it.  Instead, say something more like "You are a lying mafia scumbag.  Go hang."

On that note, we're brutal in game but friendly outside it.  Don't take anything personally.

[Toaster]

Not that I don't believe you, but there's a crowd of newer people here who are quite likely to use inspects on you, since you have a reputation as a strong player, are largely unreadable to them, and have a playstyle that's intentionally slightly scummy. (What I'm saying is, Hapah's choice to investigate you wasn't random)

I defer to your experience, of course. But in this case I think I've got a point.

You may indeed have a point.  See, I've never had this problem while playing with the old guard--almost never lynched, almost never NK'd, almost never inspected.  I do need to adapt to the fact that I actually have a reputation now among younger players, and I thank you for pointing it out.

Missed this.

This is the Webadict Effect.  Web got such a strong reputation that he became a night-target magnet.  Let me give an example from Bring Your Own Picture 1:  There were 18 total players going into N1.  Web was inspected, protected, blocked, watched, and killed.

[Urist Imiknorris]

And his fellow scum tried to abuse that by using their super-multi-kill on him (the one that killed the target, the target's target, and everyone who targeted the target, except the user).

[Tiruin]

So how successful can pulling ruses like picking town members to be unwitting scum buddies with be in case the town decides to lynch you?  Actually in general: how good/bad an idea is it to fake tell if you are panicking and "know you're going to be caught" (this has the added advantage of forcing one to not play reactivly, allowing them to escape easier); because it seems like if done right you could set up several townies for lynch by proxy.

Well, I managed to get Tiruin killed off in the recent Totem Mafia game.  But in general, it depends on who you are and which sort of reputation you have.  You could pull off that sort of thing far, far easier than I could, for example, because folks tend to assume that I'm using multiple layers of deception (even when I'm using exactly zero >_>).

You should look at Beginner's Mafia IV.  I think that gives a pretty good example of what you're discussing.

Huh, I thought it was just bad play (of that Vig) that killed me and not you? :O

Still, I really believe reputation is the factor in which people who are undecided pick their targets. Granted, there are many of the old guard playing in the games right now that it isn't much of a factor.

[Jim Groovester]

A lot of this imparted wisdom would go very well if it were all collected into a guide.

I may just do that.

[Vector]

Huh, I thought it was just bad play (of that Vig) that killed me and not you? :O

No, I was actually courting your good opinion the whole of D2.  The minute you said "I'm not sure about Vector" I started lining you up for the town to kill.  That's why I linked BMIV above, where I led SirBayer around by the nose and got him to help me lynch a bunch of folks.  Buddying people who have the slightest interest in giving me the benefit of the doubt and then using them to slaughter the rest of the town is one of my key techniques.  Didn't work well this time, but, whatever.

[Jim Groovester]

Spoiler: Beginner Scum Tips from the Collected Wisdom of Bay12Mafia (click to show/hide)

Don’t panic! Ever! If you don’t know how to do anything else, then do whatever you’re doing calmly. If you need two hours to yourself to get calm, take four. It’s better to post later when you’re calmer than to post sooner with frayed nerves, even delaying raises some eyebrows.

Forget that you are scum during the day. If your scumbuddy is scummy, attack him for it. If a member of the town is scummy, attack him for it. If you cast a vote, have a good reason. If you make an argument, make it a good one, as if you were town and you believed it. The best scum games are ones that are indistinguishable from solid town play.

Be prepared to tell shameless, bald-faced lies. It can be difficult for new players to say somebody is scum when they know they’re not. This can easily give you away, so be prepared to make good arguments that are complete falsehoods, and to do so without hesitation and reservation.

Don’t ever reveal privileged scum knowledge. This includes stuff you know as a member of the scum team and stuff you talk about in scumchat. If some conversation you had in scumchat slips its way into the main thread, people will notice.

Make excellent use of the preview button. Screen your posts for potential scumslips before you hit post. This will also give you the opportunity to fine-tune your arguments.

Ask for help. If your scumbuddy knows what they’re doing a lot better than you, get their opinion. If you’re in hot water, they can probably tell you exactly how you ended up there and what you need to do to get out.

Anything to add before I package this up and instruct the next BM host to include it in the OP?

[Griffionday]

Buddying people who have the slightest interest in giving me the benefit of the doubt and then using them to slaughter the rest of the town is one of my key techniques.

Shows how much I've to learn: I'd not considered pushing a specific player into attacking targets for you, even though in general the goal is to manipulate all the players into attacking other targets.  Ah well, I'm sure I'll learn this with time.

[Toaster]

Don’t panic! Ever! If you don’t know how to do anything else, then do whatever you’re doing calmly. If you need two hours to yourself to get calm, take four. It’s better to post later when you’re calmer than to post sooner with frayed nerves, even delaying raises some eyebrows.

You should probably clarify the underlined bit.

[webadict]

Not that I don't believe you, but there's a crowd of newer people here who are quite likely to use inspects on you, since you have a reputation as a strong player, are largely unreadable to them, and have a playstyle that's intentionally slightly scummy. (What I'm saying is, Hapah's choice to investigate you wasn't random)

I defer to your experience, of course. But in this case I think I've got a point.

You may indeed have a point.  See, I've never had this problem while playing with the old guard--almost never lynched, almost never NK'd, almost never inspected.  I do need to adapt to the fact that I actually have a reputation now among younger players, and I thank you for pointing it out.

Missed this.

This is the Webadict Effect.  Web got such a strong reputation that he became a night-target magnet.  Let me give an example from Bring Your Own Picture 1:  There were 18 total players going into N1.  Web was inspected, protected, blocked, watched, and killed.

I was thoroughly disappointed when I couldn't respond appropriately with:

And his fellow scum tried to abuse that by using their super-multi-kill on him (the one that killed the target, the target's target, and everyone who targeted the target, except the user).

I proposed doing the action, since I knew about this.

Sometimes, the mod doesn't let you have fun. We would've won so fast.

[Griffionday]

Mafiascum wiki read and bookmarked; now to go do background reading on all the players in the game I'm in... 

The wiki advised not trying to determine people's meta from games I was not a part of, so should I just read recent games to get a general sense of their play-style, and how good they're considered to be?

[Toaster]

Reading a couple recent games is a good idea, but more from a style and convention standpoint so that you know what you're getting in to.  Don't worry about meta arguments until you've got a couple games under your belt.

[ToonyMan]

My personal favorite Webadict N1 death is when I plasma bombed him in Paranormal 15.