Now that the game has started and I am now responsible for teaching seven of you how to play a game, I will say the following first.
I will be a completely impartial source of advice that I will freely give at every opportunity, whether I am asked for it or I decide to give it on my own. You can trust that everything I have to say will be given in good faith, even if it comes at a personal cost to me in this game. If you do not listen to what I have to say, for any reason, you will severely hamper your ability to learn how to play the game. So, to reiterate,
Listen to what I tell you.If you don't, then what's the point of me being here?
For those of you who don't know what to do, games usually start with the Random Vote Stage. You should pick a target randomly, vote them, and ask them a question. The sole purpose of this is to get conversation going when there would otherwise be no reason to do that. I'll start.
Chaos Armor, let's say you're the Cop. What would you look for in a target? How would you pick somebody to inspect? Now, be thorough. I want some serious thinking on your part about the subject.
Ideally you should ask game related questions in the RVS. Asking what kind of flavor of ice cream is a player's favorite does absolutely nothing to help you find scum, which is your primary goal.
And because it bears repeating:
Your primary goal is to find scum. Everything you do should help you towards that goal. And I do mean
everything.
If you're scum, you will obviously have a different goal:
Avoid detection until the end of the game. The best way to do this is to look like you are trying to find scum.
Since many of you are going to have no idea what to do and will mangle scumhunting in just about every possible way, it does you no good to hold back. So be bold, and just do the best you can. Ask lots of questions, try to get a good feel for how the game is played. I'll be there to help you when you go wrong.
Additionally, before anybody else does anything, I will stress the importance of activity. You should be as active as possible. A good guideline is to get one good post in a day, but if you can post productively more often than that it's generally a good idea to do so. As a player, town or scum, being active and visible is very much an asset, as you're out there making yourself readable, and this is considered a town quality. While there are very good personal benefits to being active, the reverse is detrimental to the whole game. Low activity makes games hard to play or outright kills them. This is fun for absolutely no one, so make a good effort and be active.
If you played a Beginner's Game before you probably recognize this spiel, but it's good all the same.
Okay, so how are we going to make this work? I think for starters, everyone should post their ideas of strategy. We could either lynch someone inactive under the assumption that the mafia isn't very good, randomly lynch and hope for luck or vote no lynch and wait for some evidence to pop up. Now, someone MIGHT say something incriminating on the first day, but I doubt it, so how do you guys want to play this?
You're going to play this by aggressively questioning everything you find odd or scummy. This is to get you in the habit of asking questions a lot, since that's how the game of mafia is played and won. This doesn't mean you'll have any idea what is odd or scummy, so just ask about what you
think is odd or scummy and then I'll tell you whether you're right or wrong about it.
This goes for everybody.