A minor nitpick: did you actually say that? (snipped and bolded)
There’s a difference between pointing out or analyzing information that is already public and sharing information which is non-public.
I fully agree that it’s important to be sure that the benefit to Town is greater than the benefit to scum when deciding whether and/or when to disclose non-public information.
discussion of public material is de facto good and pro-town as mentioned by several people, it ensures that townies get full understanding of any revelations and minimises risk of a townie skimming over important info.
disucssion of non-public info can be good or bad and which applies is a case by case decision. Non masons with info that are delaying the reveal are taking the risk that the info goes to their grave with them, but they are presumably taking this risk for an expected reward. I.e. cop not revealing night one inv, wanting to get more invs in etc etc. Only the player in question can make that judgment call.
I was counting “conclusions based off of public knowledge” as non-public knowledge.
Why or when would it not be in town’s best interests to share these conclusions?
If you’ve concluded that so-and-so is a power role, keep your mouth shut. This isn’t rocket science.
You do have to balance that between expected gains for sneakily hinting who you might or might not be to interested parties. For example, I’ve seen games where a cop and doc have successfully made themselves known to each other in such a way that the cop got a lot of protection while the scum didn’t find the doc.
On the other hand, I’ve seen games (like my first) where the cop breadcrumbed himself hard and the only people who picked up on it were the scum, so it goes.
As always, my thoughts boil down to “We are all smart people, and we are all (especially power roles) able to and required to evaluate the consequences of our various available courses of action.”
For the most part, this is closer to what I was trying to say. As a townie, if you have non-public information, there appears to be a one best time to say something. If you speak before this, it could be less than optimal for town. However, town always has an uphill battle. I frankly think that the one best time to speak will NEVER come, if everyone waits for the other in a game of chicken.
In my experience, the only way that town gets ahead, is once something ““unexpected”” happens. That is, scum slip in one way or another. Town can then swoop in and reveal this that or the other. Something unexpected happens, a townie sticks his or her neck out, and the game proper begins.
We don’t need to assume that Scum play on the top of their game. Scum start XX% ahead of town anyway, that it would approximate a great deal more than Town has period. It may not be the Top of their game, but its a hell of a head start.
Right, and my quesiton from the start on Rysto was his motivation. I think the responses on his post all get to “motivation”. Why is he saying that? [Again, I would have called this WIFOM if I didn’t know any better.]
But, I think we re-hash this part game and game again as well. Mafia will always give Scum a “town blueprint”. I know I have compared scum to rectangles and town to squares, and therefore all scum are also town, etc etc, in previous games.
I am not going to rehash that, but, suffice to say, I think handing scum a town blueprint is inevitable. For the most part, experience on either side is enough of a blueprint anyway. I don’t think we should worry about it, because I think it happens, regardless. False claims have happened, and Im willing to guess that even more elaborate gambits by scum have occured in other games as well.
Is Day 1 always doomed to come down to a last 24 real world hour segment of discovery / slip / claim and a vote against (using the new information) it?
I am willing to bet there is an upper limit to this. 
SNIP.
I don’t think I did it the best way I could, but you also have a situation where you can overplay your role, once the game pretty much accepts (You are all but Mod-confirmed) you at your word of your claim.
In LOST, I was Sawyer, I told the game, that at game start, I was handed a limited number of bullets* to Vig with. I tried to imply that I was going to go on a spree if I made it to the next night. This was in efforts to get night killed. I held no additional bullets, and I was bluffing.
I still like the move I attempted there. I think it would have worked, if I did something better.
**
It would not have had a chance of working f I kept my mouth closed earlier.** [Then again, let’s not forget that I Was basically Mod confirmed due to a rules loophole / backpedal.]
Well, I’m a little grumpy. Mahaloth, I totally understand why you cut me, but I do think you made the subs quite a bit early. (Especially since I told you in the other thread that I’m generally unavailable on weekends.) So I was really excited to see the thread and was just about to make my apologies for getting in late, and bam! I’m already out. It’s just unfortunate, is all - it would’ve been nice if you’d waited a bit longer.
Anyway, I’ll watch from the sidelines. Again. My absence probably won’t hurt much; I’m a total newb.
And now I need to apologize to Mahaloth! He’d PM’d me a bunch of times, starting last Thursday. Yeah, I’m crap at checking PMs, but that’s really no excuse: had I checked them, I’d have been on the ball, instead of just noticing this today. My bad.
Thanks for the opportunity, though - keep me in mind for next time. And I’ll watch and learn.
You can configure the board to give you a pop-up every time you get a PM. Depending on how many PMs you typically receive(and as you don’t check PMs often that’s probably not very many), it can be helpful to avoid missing a PM.
No problem. I understand.
(bolding mine)
I’m glad Rysto got a meaty discussion happening on Day One, which is a nice change of pace from the usual rigamarole. I think his overall point (bolded) is really spot-on and pretty much indisputable: THINK about what the benefits and drawbacks are to revealing information you might possess before you reveal it. Measure twice, cut once. One of my Mafia flaws is getting worked up and posting emotionally, so this is particularly good advice for me
Typically, yes. That isn’t necessarily bad, though–a good number of times, the slip is really a slip.
And just as frequently, the slip is careless language by a Townie, and the person pointing it out is Scum. I’m not a big fan of the “slip” theory. Very rarely have I seen a true Scum slip.
Unvote Shadowfacts
Wasn’t a serious vote anyway, obviously. Actually, I do think I have an idea how to form suspicions in day 0, but it’s not a very good one. In particular, how do you tell the difference between someone that’s lurking because they’re scum laying low from someone that has a power role they’re trying to decide how to use, from someone that just has been too busy to post?
I am going to laugh when people cluster up into ‘share info’ and ‘hoard info’ factions that have nothing to do with town/scum.
And just so that I have an active vote in case I drop dead for a week:
Vote tiltawhirl
Again, just prodding the not-yet-active.
What’s very rare? Or alternatively, what’s “true scum slip” mean?
I think it happens once a game or thereabouts that a scum player carelessly says something that reveals a non-town perspective on the game. I apologize if I’m misremembering, but I also think that you were among those who discounted Tom Scud’s “overnight thread” in the last game, which by my estimation was certainly a “true scum slip.”
Do we REALLY have to trot out examples of how often the scum actually slips up? Really? Every game?
(bleached)
Care to give more info about this? Because from where I sit, this is a horrible justification for a vote. Lets examine it closer:
How is this scummy/ What’s the scum motivation? Leaves you off the “Did not vote” list while making a vote of no accountability.
Yeah, well, it’s still early in the day on day 1. But rubbish voting is rubbish voting, no matter what part of what day you do it on.
vote Chipacabra
The comment about dropping dead was a joke, really.
Defending myself:
My vote is pretty much entirely designed to encourage participation. In the games I’ve seen, one of the strongest scum moves is just shut the hell up and stay under the radar while town tears itself down. I don’t want to allow that.
At this stage of the game, everyone is under equal suspicion. (Including me, so I don’t take your vote personally.) I don’t expect to vanish. I have lots of free time, and no plans for the immediate future. But even if somehow my internet shuts off or something, I want to have SOMETHING out there to get a paper trail going, both for myself and for all the random people I point at until then.
This would be true if I actually do vanish, which I don’t intend to. So, I guess I’m locked into staying active this day, which I intended to do.
Is it really that off base to just poke around with random votes early in day 1 and see what shakes loose? There’s still lots of time for me to change when someone actually does do something suspicious. If I were doing this later in the day, I could understand your objection, but why do you think that, at this stage of the day, a random vote is scummier than no vote?