I’m still irked at getting lynched in one game for referring to a scum role that investigates as town as an alpha instead of a godfather.
I have been playing Mafia for just over a year and I think I am still a newbie, I haven’t got that thick skin yet, Silver Jan is still ME! I remember crying in BYOR cos gnarly was scum and I had investigated him hoping he was Town.
At the moment I don’t trust anyone which is wrong, most people are Town. I found it easier in my earlier games on the big bad boards to try and identify scum because I hadn’t played with them before, I just read the post and evaluated it. Now I tend to look at the person and then evaluate their post, my bad.
I must start looking at the post 1st, player afterwords. I also need to grow a thicker skin and take more notes.
After Pizza’s game I was going to give up Mafia, I couldn’t though because I had a really good role in another game and I couldn’t let the team down.
I think I need to talk more and not just drop little comments.
Sorry if this doesn’t help the rest of you but it helps me realise what I do wrong.
It still irks me that in my 1st game with the big guys you were kind to me and you were SCUM lol
I like to think that I’m kind to everyone regardless of my alignment.
If you are playing the game, even if you are wrong every time, you are still playing the game, and I would take that over any number of lurkers.
One thing that drives me nuts is when people want to have their arguments both ways. For instance, someone will say something like “I believe X and Y are scum buddies because of reason Z.” And then Y will get lynched and pop town, and that same person will say “I think X is scum because he was buddying up with town Y for reason Z.”
Evidence doesn’t work that way.
Another thing that drives me nuts is when people assume someone is scum first, and then explains how that person’s behavior is scummy. In Phere, I was accused of being scum because I defended myself against the lynch, and because I was being fair and reasonable towards another player. Clearly, only scum would do that. 
I struggle with that one myself, and I try to keep that in mind when making cases.
I did appreciate it 
I might have given up otherwise.
Lurkers or non participants bug the hell out of me, why sign up for a game that you don’t want to play? I even managed to play when I was in Mauritius lol, I had to, I was scum but everyone knew where I was! I live in South Africa BTW. I won’t be able to play at the end of the year cos I will be in NZ with my sister.
Visor, I will also be going to Oz between Xmas and New Year!
Nice. Hope you enjoy it over here again. I will be under threat of cyclones (again) in that period. 
I Hope you will be safe, you need an enemy that you like 
:bump:
OK, so here is a bump up now that our recent game is over.
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If you participated in this thread 2 years ago, have you thoughts on the game changed?
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If you did not participate, what thoughts do you have about general strategy both from a Town and Scum perspective?
I think we need smaller, faster-paced games. There were a couple of reasons our most recent game slowed, but one big reason was lack of participation from more than six players. That’s a killer, especially as town starts lynching the loud and scum methodically remove the people getting closest to finding scum.
There’s gotta be a sweet spot between week-long Days and not giving players enough time to play around their schedules. Maybe a slowly-shortening period, like
Day 1: 6 real-life days
Day 2 & 3: 5 real-life days
Day 4 & 5: 4 real-life days
All further Days: 3 real-life days
Fiddle with numbers as needed, and maybe balance it to end around Day 6 or 7. That’s 27 real-life days, for a single month of playing. Totally doable for most people.
One point that I can’t remember if I made, but which is relevant: If I’m voting for a person, it does not mean that I think that it is more likely than not that that person is Scum. It means that I think that it is more likely that that person is Scum than it is that anyone else is Scum. This is especially true in the early game, when there is less information, and plenty of warm bodies about.
For instance, suppose that there are 17 players in a game, of which 4 are Scum. This means that, at the start of the game, my assessment of each other player is going to be that they’re 25% likely to be Scum. Now, over the course of the Day, as information comes in, those probabilities are going to shift… but with Day 1 information, they’re not likely to shift by very much. So maybe, by the end of Day 1, there will be one person who I think is 30% likely to be Scum, and someone else who is only 20% likely, and most players I don’t have much read on and so leave them at 25%. At this point, I think that that first player is most likely Town-- It’s over twice as likely that they’re Town than it is that they’re not. But I’m still going to vote for that player.
For the record, I agree with almost all of this still.
Except I have caught scum now for moves and hadn’t then.
It’s luck and best guessing.
shorter Days have merit. i don’t mind large games though. also we should end Days on weekdays when people are around more.
Some people are around more on weekends, but some people aren’t around at all then. It’s tricky to find a schedule that works well.
Another thing that boosts participation throughout the game are fluid powers. Story’s game had sinjin inheriting Daphne’s results, which was nice, as well as me gaining a power after Day 3. Pleonast ran a game where the powers could not be lost, and people were just voted into the powers each day.
I really like this element, and I’d like to include it in all my games going forward. Day 1 is usually jam-packed with discussion of mechanics, and extending that out is an easy way to keep talks going organically even if town doesn’t have a clue where to lynch.
Everybody thinks that - that when they’re caught as Scum, it’s not because they’ve done anything different than they’d do as Town. But I think they’re usually wrong.
I dunno, in my case it might be true, since I always get lynched early no matter what my alignment.
I don’t think that when I am caught as scum. I think that when my town team catches scum.