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[Think0028]

Welcome to Beginner's Mafia XXIX!
Let's Play Who Messed Up the Infiltration

Introduction

This version of the game is aimed specifically at players who are new to Mafia, or are still relatively inexperienced. Here, it's more about having fun and learning than anything else, so don't give up hope if you find yourself in a bad position!
This Beginners' Mafia will feature playing ICs. This means that two more experienced people will join in the game to help you guys out and will actually be playing in the game. They can also be scum too, so always stay suspicious!
The ICs will never lie to you about the game mechanics though, and will usually have a special IC voice to use when they want to teach you guys, since their goal will be to get you guys ready for a real Mafia game. Just because they're playing doesn't mean you can't learn!


Gameplay and Concept

In Mafia, you are divided into two parts: 7 Town players and 2 Mafia players:

If you are Town, your goal is to lynch the Mafia. You do this by convincing others that one of the group is scum, and getting enough votes on them to lynch them.  The Town does not know who else is Town.

If you are Mafia, your goal is to kill off the Town until there is an equal number of them to you by getting them to lynch other Town or by killing them. You are given a kill each Night to kill any player in the game.  All the Mafia members know each other, and can communicate privately.

Each Day, everyone votes to lynch a player.  Vote for a player by posting their name in red.  You may change your vote at any time, remove your vote, or vote for No Lynch. Whoever has the most votes at the end of the day gets lynched, even if there is no majority. (Example: Nobody votes except for one guy, who votes Generic_Steve. Generic_Steve would get lynched). If you have a great deal of suspicion for someone, but don't want to vote for them just yet, point their name out in blue.

The Day will not end prematurely unless people vote to shorten the day. That is, there is no "hammer" in Beginner's Mafia, where X amount of votes (more than 50%) on a single person immediately ends the day with a lynch on that person. Some games do that, but not this one, and you would be explicitly informed in the rules if the hammer is active.

If there are tied votes for who gets lynched at the end of the day, the day ends in a no-lynch. (Two people vote for Generic_Steve, two people vote for Unassuming_Mary. Nobody gets lynched.) 

Each Night, you send in your actions. The cycle continues until one side wins. Days are 72 hours and nights are 24 hours. Weekends count for zero hours.


Rules and Guidelines

• You may not PM other players other than the mod. The mafia will have a place to talk to themselves.
• Never edit your posts, even to fix typos!  If you make a mistake, just double post- it's permitted here. Violation of this rule can lead to deadly repercussions.  I recommend using the preview button every time you post.
• Never quote your role PM or any other PM sent to you by the mod.
• If you need more time to discuss, you may ask for an extension.  If more players ask for one than those who decline one, the day will be extended by 48 hours.
• There are no limit to the number of extensions allowed per day.
   
• Please don't forget about this game if you sign up! If you cannot continue playing, please ask for a replacement! I will prod you via PM if you do not post in 48 hours to remind you that this game exists!
• Note that a Mafia game usually takes a long time to finish: two weeks at least, and sometimes even longer than a month. Be ready for this.
• Upon receiving your second prod, you are forcibly replaced (Another player takes your place) or modkilled (removed from the game) for inactivity. Beware.
   
• Upon being killed, you are entitled to one "Bah!" post, but you are not allowed to post any game-related content. After your Bah post, you MUST NOT POST AGAIN unless you somehow come back to life (impossible in this setup) or replace back in (you must have been town to do this). Failure to comply with this rule can lead to a bad reputation amongst mods, and difficulty in joining other games.
• Never underestimate your importance, and always play to win!

In this setup, there are the possibility of extra roles. These roles are Cop and Doctor for Town, and Roleblocker and Godfather for Mafia.

• A Cop inspects any player at Night. They are told that player's alignment, but not their role.
• A Doctor may protect any player at Night. This stops that player from being killed.
• A Roleblocker stops an extra role from using an action. This stops Doctors and Cops but does nothing for Townies.
• Roleblockers do not actually discover if their attempts were successful or not; that would be too powerful because the roleblocker would know they found a town power role. It isn't an investigative role (the same goes for the Doctor)! The Mafia needs to find the town power roles the old-fashioned way: analyzing behavior and voting patterns.
• Townies do not receive a message if they were blocked by a Mafia Roleblocker. Only a Cop or a Doctor will receive a message.
   
• A Godfather, if investigated by a Cop, looks just like a normal Townie.

There is a 50% chance for any of these roles to show up. It is possible to end up with no extra roles.

Extensions require support from at least one of the players.  You may oppose extensions as well, which cancels out an extension request.  For example, if there were five players, with two requesting and two opposing, there would be no extension.  (2-2 = 0 of 5)

Along with opposing extensions, there is also the option to Shorten/End the Day. They work differently from extensions, 33% required to pass with no objections. Shortening the Day ends the Day makes the day end as quickly as I can process it. Due to the nature of these requests, they also act just like Counter-Extensions.

Please bold requests/opposition to extensions, and Mod/my name if you want to ask me a question in-thread.  (IE: Mod: I have a question!)


Attendance Sheet

Players:

• Fanofgaming
• Remalle
• Mormota
• ansontan2000
• Helmie
• Andrew425
• Nilum

ICs:

• Jim Groovester
• Dariush
• Non-playing Mafia IC: Toaster

Player Replacement Queue:

Frequently Asked Questions

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• Oh my god this game seems fun. But wait, what are the rules?
  This is a good Mafia tutorial, brought to you by the wise JoshuaFH. Heed his words. It isn't included here because it's rather too long for that.
• People are accusing me of being scum! I'm about to get lynched! What do I do?
  The first and most important order of business is not to give up.
  One, two votes isn't much. Even if someone's got a bandwagon on you and people are writing walls of accusations, do not lose hope. You can still turn this around, no matter how bleak it appears. Fight them with your own arguments, and search for people you may think are scum, and try to turn the votes against them. About the worst thing you can do is give up, whether you are town or scum; you are harming the town by making it lose another member, distracting them from hunts for the true scum, and worsening your own game as well.
  The other players have nothing against you: it's just how the game goes. Even if you foul it up and people yell at you for it, once the game is over we're all friends.
  There are still people who give up, saying things like "You'll all be sorry when you find out I'm just town afterwards!" and "I'm not even going to try, there no way to stop this". Don't be that guy. Not only is it rather selfish, it will simply deepen your grave. You have to get out of it with real, meat-laden arguments, and these empty threats and remarks will only make you appear more scummy.
• Do I have to post so much? I can't be bothered.
  Yes, you do. You have to be an active player to scumhunt effectively, and with a lurking playerbase you might as well just hand it to the scum. There is always something to say; even if someone said what you wanted to, say it anyways in your own words. Always ask questions, always observe.
  This is a very demanding game. If you don't have enough time, then perhaps you should look elsewhere.
• How do I even tell if someone's scum anyways?
  This is, in fact, a difficult question. The game involves a lot of observation, and often it's more about intuition.
  You can often tell with the help of the List of Common Scumtells, provided below, but don't make the mistake of overusing it. Not every accusal against you is an OMGUS, and not all attempts at logic are WIFOM.  If in doubt, always remember Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. Don't take anything for granted.
• What's all this wine stuff that players keep talking about? Does Mafia cause alcoholism?
  They are likely referring to the concept of WIFOM. It's a name for the kind of circular reasoning that you'd find when scrutinising scum motives, and is described in the CEAs (Commonly Encountered Abbreviations) and Other Terminology Commonly Found in Bay12 Mafia below. It goes like this:
  
  A: Why didn't our most active player get killed? It would be the scum's goal to kill the most active players to remove accusal, wouldn't it? The only conclusion is that [active player] is scum!
  
  B: Or is it? What if the scum wants to keep the most active player to draw suspicion on him? The scum could then head the attack on this player, thus pushing themselves into a position of trust amongst the town! I've got my eye on you, A!
  
  A: No, that isn't right! Clearly, they would stay in the background, and the people who go for the bait like me would be attacked by the scum, thus making themselves appear insightful! B, how dare you do this to me!
  
  B: Or perhaps the scum would be someone voting for a person that isn't the subject of a bandwagon, thus appearing both inconspicuous and independent! [lurker], you are scum!
  
  As you can see here, both A and B are making wild speculations on the motives of the scum. Their votes and eyes are all over the place, and nothing is really getting done. It distracts from real scumhunting, which is seeing people play and making observations from that, not speculating on how people would or would not play.

Resources
Our own Bay12 Mafia tutorial
The Notable Games archive. Read a famous game from start to finish! Learn some Mafia history.
The Mafiascum wiki. Lots of theory, terminology, and game analysis.
An Interactive Flash tutorial by one of the Mafiascum.net people. Helpful visualization!

Spoiler: Dakarian's Scumhunting Bible, reposted here for your convenience (click to show/hide)

A VERY rough sketch of how a scumhunt is done (to help those who aren't sure now).
Step 1: When you have no suspicions on anyone, pick someone at random (I MEAN random.. some use Random.org for this!), take a glance as their past posts, and talk to them, usually with a vote.  The goal is not to kill but to learn more about them.  The vote is a "Pressure Vote", simply used to make sure they don't ignore you.

Step 2: When someone feels 'off' to you: perhaps you disliked their answer, or maybe they scare you, or confuse you with their text.  Perhaps they look fine but your feelings or your gut says something is wrong. Perhaps you see them do one scumtell.  Don't ignore it: make them your target.  Attack them.  Tell them what bothers you about them.  Push them, harass them.  Tell them how scummy they are.  Ask them every question in the book.. and I mean EVERYTHING:

Litia: "You bother me.  Vote Dakarian!"

Dak: Meh.  Why?

Litia: "Because you bother me.  Why are you pushing me off as if it doesn't matter?"

Dak: "What? No, you just have nothing on me."

Litia: "You're voting for Vector.  why?"

Dak: "He looked scummy.."

Litia: "Vagueness is a scumtell!  "Scummy.. how is he scummy!"

Dak: "He just is.. you don't have a reason to go after me either."

Litia: "OMGUSing now Mr.Scum?  Being defensive?  You also didn't answer my question!"


Note, this is Step 2: Litia doesn't feel like she knows Dakarian is scum.. just had a 'feeling'.  She has no hard evidence, nothing real.  The questions are to add pressure.. make Dakarian crack and panic.  If you did it right, they WILL town or scum.  WHEN they do, you will be able to see more of their true self.  From there, decide if you can find them as scum for truth.  If you don't: pull out and go to your next suspect: if no one else is there, go back to Step 1.

If you do believe they are scum after that, Step 3:


Step 3: When you believe someone is scum, gather evidence.  Find every scum tell, every sign of their true motives.  Pull more from them.  DON'T LET GO!  Even if the town ignores you or even votes for you because of it, DO IT ANYWAY!  Push, push, PUSH, ***PUSH*** until you have solid proof of what they are.

If you can't find enough to prove them and run out of things to say, check one more time to see if you still feel he's scum, then pull back, look at others (Step 2) but be ready to go back to them at any time.  If your convinced and ready to kill them, Step 4

Step 4: Final step.  It's time to convince the town.  Show what you have.  Push the target so they show more scumminess.  Attack, but do it only to demonstrate to the town what you KNOW is true.  You aren't trying to argue with the mafia anymore.. you are trying to show the town why you are right and Mr.Mafia MUST be lynched.  If you are at this point, only 3 things can happen:

1.  The scum is lynched.
2. You are given so much information that you become CONVINCED that the target is town. (no less than CONVINCED.. doubt, maybe, 'perhaps' won't due)
3. You are dead.



That's how a basic scumhunt is done.  One last note on doubt:

Doubt is something that's ok to have but UGLY to show.  If you doubt or have second thoughts, DON'T DISPLAY IT.  If you think "He looks passive but I don't know..."  you SAY "You scum!  Stop being passive!!!"  If you think "He may have a good reason to attack guy really." say "Give me your reasons and stop being vague."

Doubt is something for yourself.  When you have doubt, go back and see if your original ideas still hold up.  If they do or if you find yourself saying "I'm not sure" then go back to the attack until you are sure.  This ain't the USA: we play by Guilty until Proven Innocent here.  Unless you can get yourself to believe they may be honest, keep the attack.

So doubt is ok to have if used right.. but the town does NOT need to hear it.  If you doubt, accuse anyway as if you know.  If you wonder, accuse as if you know it.  If you know the answer, ASK ANYWAY and let THEM answer.  Make them convince you they are town: don't do the job for them.


And that's scumhunting in a nutshell.  Everyone, try to figure out what Step you are on and work accordingly.  Note that you should be almost done Step 1 by the end of Day 1 (though some may be higher by then).  If you aren't, keep random voting and consider an Extension.

If you don't know WHAT you are.. you're in Step 1.  Get to random voting.

Last note: 'Not voting' should only be done when you are doing a quick look over everyone's past.  Otherwise, your vote and your attention should always be on SOMEONE, even if it is at random.

It's best for a lynch to be for a reason reason.. but it's better for someone to be lynched randomly than for no lynch to occur at all.

Spoiler: CEAs (Commonly Encountered Abbreviations) and Other Terminology Commonly Found in Bay12 Mafia (click to show/hide)

Alignment - Who you share a victory condition with. Town-aligned, Scum-aligned, or third party alignments.

Bandwagon - Multiple votes on a single person. Can be justified, or unjustified. Unjustified bandwagons are scummy. Joining bandwagons blindly or without reason is also scummy.

BM - Beginner's Mafia (Or, Bastard Mod, a Mafia game with a purposefully unreliable moderator, or misleading information)

Bus - (noun: the bus ; verb: bussing, throwing him/her under the bus) When a mafia member attacks another one in order to make themselves look like a loyal townie when his or her scumpartner gets lynched.

Cult - A group of players that share a win condition, know each other, and can communicate freely. They are generally a second type of scum, although rarely they can be town-aligned. Instead of a kill, they can recruit players into the cult. There is generally a cult leader, who is in charge of recruiting.

FoS - Finger of Suspicion, writing someone's name in blue signifies a great deal of suspicion. It's kind of like a fake-vote, or the threat of a vote. Good for getting attention.

FTD - Failure to Deliver, also known as Toaster's #1 Scumtell. The act of promising to post more information at a later time, and then failing to do so. A very difficult action to justify as town, because it means you are either lazy or lying, it is therefore seen as a pretty solid scumtell.

IC - Inexperienced Challenged, players who are too experienced to justify playing in a Beginner's Mafia, and act as mentors/guides for the Town or the Scum.

Lurking - Purposefully not posting, so that you have few or no posts that can be analyzed. Generally a good strategy for scum. However, has the danger of earning you prods, getting modkilled, or found out via Zathras' Lurkertracker. Lurking is different than simply being away or unavailable. A good way to tell if someone is lurking is to check their profile's last active time, and compare it to their last post.

LYLO - Lynch or Lose, a situation where Town only outnumbers Scum by a single person (e.g. 3 town vs. 2 scum). During LYLO, Town MUST lynch Scum or instantly lose.

Masons - A group of town-aligned players who know each other to be town-aligned. They can communicate with each other freely.

MYLO - Mislynch and Lose, a situation where Town outnumbers Scum by two people (4 town vs. 2 scum). During MYLO, if Town lynches Town, Scum will win after night-killing town, making it 2 town vs. 2 scum, which is an instant scum win.

NL - No Lynch, to choose to end the day without lynching anyone and see if any information is revealed in the night.

OMGUS - Oh My God U Suck, a vote on someone else simply because they voted or attacked you

PFP - Posting From Phone (or Profession), throwing up a short post to prove you aren't lurking, when you are too busy at the time to make a more complete post.

PL - Policy Lynch, lynching someone for reasons other than scumminess. Variants are Lynch All Lurkers, Lynch All Liars, etc. Also see: Org.

PPE - Pre-Post Edit, typically done when you go to either Preview or Post and notice that someone else has posted before you. PPE is shorthand for acknowledging the "Warning - You may wish to review your post" message.

RIA - Refuge in Audacity, acting really crazy or really scummy to make people think that you couldn't possibly be scum because of how crazy you are. This never works. Neither does sarcasm in general, really. If you want to be sarcastic, make it painfully obvious you are being sarcastic, with <sarcasm>fake sarcasm tags</sarcasm>. Even still, it's not a good idea, because Mafia is SERIOUS BUSINESS

Role - Also called Power Role, any special powers you have. Cops, doctors, roleblockers, and godfathers are examples of classic roles. Some roles are alignment-specific, some aren't, and some can be for any alignment.

Rolefishing - Any question or attempt to learn information about someone's role. Typically something done at the beginning of the game. Typically a scum move, because it is in scum's advantage to find and lynch powerful roles. Can be acceptable later in the game, or in special circumstances where it is beneficial for town to learn someone's role. The reason it is scummy is because the really powerful town roles want to stay hidden so they don't get lynched by scum, and bringing attention to them by rolefishing risks their secrecy.

RVS - Random Voting Stage, the early-early game, shortly after the game begins, where people randomly vote each other and ask each other different questions, trying to find any good reason to suspect someone.

Scum - Mafia, or someone who isn't aligned with the Town. The Informed Minority.

SK - Serial Killer, a third party role with a nightkill, and who is hostile to everyone.

Survivor - a third party role whose win condition requires that they be alive at the end of the game. Normal players can die and still win as long as their team as a whole wins, but a survivor must actually be alive at the end.

Third Party - an alignment that is independent of scum and town. Has a unique victory condition, and is typically a lone wolf type character.

Town - The anti-Scum. The uninformed majority.

Vanilla - Someone who doesn't have a power role. "Vanilla Town", "Vanilla Scum", etc.

WIFOM - Wine In Front Of Me, the circular reasoning that results from trying to determine the choices of an opponent who acted with full knowledge that his behavior would be subject to scrutiny.

"All right: where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right and who is dead."

"But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you. Are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet, or his enemy's?"

WoT - Wall of Text; a really really long post. Sometimes unavoidable, but generally you should try to keep them to a minimum. Sometimes scum use them to seem more active then they are.

Massclaim - When everyone starts roleclaiming, or saying they are a power role.

Spoiler: A List of Common Scumtells (click to show/hide)

(Thanks to IronyOwl for making the orig. version!)

Scumtells are things that someone does or says that imply that they're scum. Usually the reasoning is that it's bad or not productive for townies to do it, so it can be hard to distinguish signs of being scum from signs of being a noob. This is one of the reasons scum almost always win beginner's mafia games.

Note that scumtells are very very subjective; there's no simple way to distinguish a scumtell from a noobtell from being justified and/or lazy. Whether a justified, non-scummy version of a scumtell should still be called by its normal name varies from person to person. (Someone might describe their voting of someone who voted them as "not an OMGUS," other would say it's "a justified OMGUS" for instance)

In any case, common scumtells include:

Bandwagoning: Voting for whoever has the most votes or seems most likely to be lynched, despite having poor/no reasons or not wanting them lynched previously. It implies that you don't care who gets lynched, you just want someone gone, which is generally the case for scum.

OMGUSing: Short for Oh My God You Suck, by the way. Voting or otherwise applying pressure to whoever's voting you. It implies that you're really concerned about being pressured/lynched and want them to stop, which is more a scum thing. A townie would, in theory, be more open to the notion that their fellow townie is attempting to scumhunt at them, and less concerned about being found out.

Defending/Chainsawing: Defending just means what it sounds like: saying things to defend another player's actions or words. Chainsawing or chainsaw defending means attacking someone who's attacking another player in an attempt to get them to stop. The idea in both instances is that townies don't know if their fellow players are innocent or not, and hence have no real reason to defend them from legitimate persecution. Scum, on the other hand, know they're on a team and so are prone to not wanting their buddies found out or pressured.

Lurking: Not posting. Especially suspicious in the case of Active Lurking, which is trying to look active while not actually doing anything (posting frequently but with no substance, for instance). The idea in either case is that townies actually care about finding scum, and so should be doing things. Scum don't care, they just want some random guy lynched so they can kill someone at night.

Appearing Too Townie: There's no official name for this one, but being too concerned about your image; specifically avoiding things that might be seen as scumtells. The idea is that scum are very concerned about being found out, and so want to act nonscummy. Townies know they're not scum, so they're less concerned about LOOKING nonscummy and more concerned about finding scum.

Passiveness: This is when a person refuses, simply hasn't or seems reluctant to take a stance, such as lynches. Scum will be concerned about their image, and thus don't want to be seen supporting a town lynch or an attack on a town.

Backtracking: When a person changes their stance on a subject after stating it, such as supporting a lynch and after doing so claiming that they didn't do it. This is very suspicious, and is often a sign of scum wanting to retreat their position so as to be able to save their face.

Lying: Well this should be obvious, right? It happens when someone fakeclaims (says they're a cop/doc, but is just town for example), fabricates evidence and stuff like that.

Rolefishing: Trying to find powerroles (cop and doc in vanilla Mafia), often via questioning.

Resigning yourself to being lynched.
Saying something like "there's no way for me to avoid being lynched so I won't bother trying"
Blackmailing the town, like "You can lynch me, but you'll be sorry when you see I was town all along!"
Voting yourself for any reason.

If you're still confused, join anyhow and we'll teach you!

And if you have any other questions, just ask!

[Andrew425]

I'd like to join as my schedule for the next few weeks is clearing up.

Though I don't want to bump anyone else off if they really want to play.

[Think0028]

One slot left! (Is this a record? I think this is gonna be a record.)

[Jim Groovester]

There's this guy we probably shouldn't forget about.

I'll send him a PM.

[Halmie]

Haven't played mafia in over a year.

[Johuotar]

/in

[Dariush]

In as town IC.

Dariush is inna house, bitchez.

[Toaster]

I'll take Nonplaying Mafia IC then.

[Fanofgaming]

I am quite eager for this.

[Mormota]

Neato.

[ansontan2000]

Looking forward to this. Also, a warning to you all; I live in south east Asia, and may not be able to answer all your questions immediately. If you would like to know what times I'm on, just check my profile page. I will be on mostly after 4:00 PM my time.

[Toaster]

The day usually takes several RL days, so that's not really a problem.  Additionally, we have players from all over the world, so it shouldn't be an issue at all if you have a non-US timezone.

[Dariush]

Looking forward to this. Also, a warning to you all; I live in south east Asia, and may not be able to answer all your questions immediately. If you would like to know what times I'm on, just check my profile page. I will be on mostly after 4:00 PM my time.

Mafia rule #76 - never explain yourself before being asked to. Keep valid excuses as aces up your sleeves.

[ansontan2000]

Sheeeeeeeeeeet. Dang it, where did you find that rulebook?

EDIT: MOD, if there is a role blocker this game, will it be town or mafia side?

[Urist Imiknorris]

Mafia.