# MAFIA: The Game - Ideal for Beginners \[Game in Progress\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Thread Games\ **Created:** [July 14, 2015, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099 "2015-07-14T00:45:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Biotop](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biotop/32/321_2.png) [@Biotop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biotop)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/161 "2015-07-19T17:01:48Z")
> [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](#): > > I’m glad you find my being a wolf unreasonable. 🙂 Heh heh. That’s not exactly what I said. I only said basing suspicion on superficial matters is unreasonable. Changing my meaning around to imply I don’t think you might be wolf… now that could really be suspicious behavior! ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/162 "2015-07-19T18:35:00Z")
While it’s true that we don’t have cues like body language and tone of voice online, we do have a permanent record of everything everyone’s said, and time to analyze it. Overall, it’s probably a wash, though it does make the online game very different from face-to-face. And if anything, editing is probably an even worse idea in the early game, when people are desperate for reasons to find someone to vote for. But it’s never necessary, and only very rarely could benefit Town, so it’s probably best to just avoid it altogether and prevent the issue from coming up. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/163 "2015-07-19T20:01:16Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > With those numbers, we’re slightly (+1.5 points) unbalanced in favor of Wolves. Change a Wolf to a Vanilla Town, and we’d be much more unbalanced (+4 points) in favor of Town. It seems to me that the tie breaker element should work out in our favor, so in that sense town may still come out slightly ahead. Still, I’m not sure we want to aggressively try to engineer ties. It may work to our benefit in the long run but it’s also a potential wifom generator early on, when we don’t have much data with which to inform an analysis of the tie. Posted from my iPad. I take no responsibility for egregious typos. ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/164 "2015-07-19T20:45:18Z")
> [@TexCat](#): > > Plumpudding, There is an easy way to get the participation numbers. In the Thread Games forum, click on the number under the Replies column. It should bring up another window with who has replied and how many times. Huh. I never knew that! Not that I ever gave much though to who had posted in a thread before. But I did have the same thought that **Plumpudding** had (I presume): the players who have not been talking much about the game here might be absent because they are too busy talking about it over on the Scum forum. Or, they might just be having fun outdoors over the weekend, so who knows? ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/165 "2015-07-19T20:47:48Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > While it’s true that we don’t have cues like body language and tone of voice online, we do have a permanent record of everything everyone’s said, and time to analyze it. Overall, it’s probably a wash, though it does make the online game very different from face-to-face. > > And if anything, editing is probably an even worse idea in the early game, when people are desperate for reasons to find someone to vote for. But it’s never necessary, and only very rarely could benefit Town, so it’s probably best to just avoid it altogether and prevent the issue from coming up. This. On the other board I play at, you can edit your posts at any time, not just a five minute window. That’s why editing is illegal, you don’t want someone editing out a slip a week later under the guise of fixing tags of spelling. With a five minute window, there’s much less chance of abuse. ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/166 "2015-07-19T20:50:09Z")
Day one starts tomorrow morning, right? Or are we waiting for something else? ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/167 "2015-07-19T20:56:49Z")
> [@Biotop](#): > > I have never played the game before, so I don’t really know what I am talking about. That said, if we have a good reason to suspect someone of wolfism then who cares about ties. LYNCH THE SCUM!! And those who were not in favor got some serious explaining to do. > > But if we are accusing based on less than reasonable methods (example: **Prof. Pepperwinkle** is the only player whose name contains all the letters of “W-O-L-F,” then perhaps engineering a tie could tell us more than randomly lynching someone to see what happens. Precambrianmollusc contains S-C-U-M! He also contains M-I-L-L-E-R, though, so that’s probably just a false positive. Maybe his M-A-S-O-N buddy can confirm that for us. Yikes, he’s also the D-O-C and the C-O-P! This role is ridiculously overpowered. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/168 "2015-07-19T21:05:06Z")
Lynch the lurker is a relatively common tactic in the first Day or two. It’s not so much because the Scum actually lurk more often, though: Usually, lurkers are just people of whatever alignment who find themselves busier than they thought, or forgot about the game, or lost interest, or whatever. It’s still a good tactic, however, for two reasons: 1: If we tolerate lurking in general, then it will become a very powerful, nearly unstoppable, Scum strategy. If we don’t punish lurking, then there’s no reason for Scum not to lurk, and a lurking Scum won’t accidentally give emself away. 2: If we lynch a lurker and it turns out that they were Town, well, we didn’t lose much from it. There’s not much difference, in practice, between a Townie who’s dead and one who’s alive but not participating. That said, though, it’s way too early to start pointing fingers at anyone for low activity. Some people have more leisure time at certain times of week, and some people probably haven’t even noticed that the game has started yet. ---
**Author:** ![Sario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sario/32/18580_2.png) [@Sario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sario)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/169 "2015-07-19T22:10:00Z")
> [@JSexton](#): > > Day one starts tomorrow morning, right? Or are we waiting for something else? By my count we’re still waiting for **Dante G** to confirm PM, then **Story** will start Day One. ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/170 "2015-07-19T22:29:06Z")
I’m guessing weekends are typically slower? ---
**Author:** ![sangfroid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e0b2c6/32.png) [@sangfroid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sangfroid)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/171 "2015-07-19T23:45:20Z")
Just chiming in on my own situation and past experience on a different board, I’ve found weekends to usually be quite slower, due to a number of factors. I actually got in the habit of not checking in as often on weekends due to this, a habit I will rectify here, you betcha! There was a lot of weekend “fluff” talk and not so much game talk, until things got heated up a bit. In one game I was in (I was Town), the black hats used this quirk of posting (on that board, anyway) to their advantage, ramping up activity during times of relative inactivity and sowing discord afterwards. They were quite adept at it. Town figured it out after a while, though. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/172 "2015-07-20T00:33:00Z")
> [@Bayard](#): > > Huh. I never knew that! Not that I ever gave much though to who had posted in a thread before. But I did have the same thought that **Plumpudding** had (I presume): the players who have not been talking much about the game here might be absent because they are too busy talking about it over on the Scum forum. Indirect accusations always seem dirty to me. This one’s triple-indirect. It seems to me that **Plumpudding** pretty directly disavowed what you presume about the motivation there by saying “It doesn’t say much at the moment…” Anyway. On the subject of the tiebreaker: 1. I lack the analytical ability to make use of it myself so I have nothing to contribute substantively but 2. I appreciate the general thinking-out-loud that’s been going on surrounding it thus far. I think it’s strongly pro-Town to share the ways this information could be helpful now. Especially because dummies like me won’t figure it all out on our own. With that said: [QUOTE=Precambrianmollusc] Agree and highly suspicious of those saying scum would avoid engineering a tie , a tie gives no accountability for votes , scum has the most information out of a tie and the mechanism has the most " get out of explaining why a town got lynched because of a tie " excuses for scum. I am pretty sure a tie is bad for town and preemptivly assigning scummy behavior to avoiding a tie is , well kind of scum like. So big stinky Finger Of Suspicion (FOS) to those smudging that avoiding a tie is pro scum [/QUOTE] Who’s all this suspicion pointed at? ---
**Author:** ![Biotop](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biotop/32/321_2.png) [@Biotop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biotop)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/173 "2015-07-20T01:15:07Z")
Do Mafia games frequently have so long a night zero? This gives the wolves a lot of time to talk amongst each other at the very same time the town is initially planning. They can coordinate a response to our discussion \*as we are having it \* and influence that discussion. Makes me a bit leery about talking about any theory of substance until the actual daytime. ---
**Author:** ![Cygnus42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Cygnus42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cygnus42)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/174 "2015-07-20T01:21:49Z")
Good question…it’s hard (For me, anyway) to know what to talk about early on / pregame…having access to a special board to talk and pre-plan sounds like a big advantage. ---
**Author:** ![storyteller0910](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecae2f/32.png) [@storyteller0910](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/storyteller0910)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/175 "2015-07-20T01:25:50Z")
\*\*Night Zero is lasting this long mostly because I am spending my Sunday enduring a sleepover party for a small but piercingly loud army of 11-year-olds, captained by my daughter. I have literally no capacity to process, analyze, or create; I’m just rocking back and forth and wishing for death. First thing tomorrow, I promise.\*\* ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/176 "2015-07-20T01:33:12Z")
For what it’s worth, in my experience, the Scum don’t usually discuss nearly as much on their boards as Town thinks they do. It’s not uncommon for an entire Night to go by with no more discussion than “I think we should kill A.” “Nah, I think B is likely to be a power role. Let’s kill her instead.” “OK, kill B.”. ---
**Author:** ![Biotop](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biotop/32/321_2.png) [@Biotop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biotop)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/177 "2015-07-20T01:37:57Z")
> [@Cygnus42](#): > > Good question…it’s hard (For me, anyway) to know what to talk about early on / pregame…having access to a special board to talk and pre-plan sounds like a big advantage. Right. Again I am new at this …but if we plan for five days while the wolves can’t do anything without us seeing, that is surely an advantage for us. Sure they then have two days to formulate a response after a game day, but they have to deal with FIVE full real days of postings. That’s a lot to cover and something might be missed in their response. Or perhaps a coordinated wolf response might force someone to change their tune, which the town could notice and question. Right now they can plot together an immediate response to whst we post. So right now I am content to just talk about the weather until the daytime. Sure is hot, isn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Nonsuch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nonsuch/32/2922_2.png) [@Nonsuch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nonsuch)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/178 "2015-07-20T01:40:59Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > 1: If we tolerate lurking in general, then it will become a very powerful, nearly unstoppable, Scum strategy. If we don’t punish lurking, then there’s no reason for Scum not to lurk, and a lurking Scum won’t accidentally give emself away. > > 2: If we lynch a lurker and it turns out that they were Town, well, we didn’t lose much from it. There’s not much difference, in practice, between a Townie who’s dead and one who’s alive but not participating. This makes sense to me. I could see a real “level one” scum player trying to lurk in the first day or two, figuring they’d be overlooked in the noise, but I don’t think anyone on this board is that unsophisticated. As discussed above, the whole point of this game is to post; if you’re not posting, you’re not playing. So as you say, lynching a lurker is not such a terrible loss, assuming he is town. ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/179 "2015-07-20T01:42:13Z")
Hot? Yeah, it’s been hot and very wet here. I understand in New Delhi it’s been at 100+ degrees for so long the streets have melted in places. ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2015, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099/180 "2015-07-20T01:43:22Z")
> [@Biotop](#): > > Do Mafia games frequently have so long a night zero? This gives the wolves a lot of time to talk amongst each other at the very same time the town is initially planning. They can coordinate a response to our discussion \*as we are having it \* and influence that discussion. Makes me a bit leery about talking about any theory of substance until the actual daytime. Oh, I very much hope they do! Scum trying to coordinate is a gift. The key to mafia is detecting insincerity and lack of a genuine desire to hunt scum. Scum have extra info, but the paradox is that the more they use it, the likelier it is for us to catch it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-the-game-ideal-for-beginners-game-in-progress/725099.md?page=10)