What makes a good town player?

[northsidegal]

Whether it's egotistical or not depends on the delivery

No, thinking that you're superior is egoistical, no matter how you slice it. Not egoistical would be making some agreement, i. e. we lynch your scumread today and then we lynch mine next day

I don't really think that it (it being "thinking your reads are correct") is necessarily egotistical and that it's just a matter of presentation to make it not look so. All arguments in mafia are (ideally) based on some kind of evidence. If you scumread or townread someone, it is because of some piece of evidence, textual or subtextual, known to you consciously or subconsciously.

Different people have different methods of affecting the game given their reads. If you intend to convince other people using evidence, it seems to me that none could say that this is necessarily egotistical, unless your evidence is something like "i'm the best ever at this game and i scumread X", and even then that argument is theoretically valid and not actually based on the speaker's ego. You might argue "assuming that your interpretation of the thread is better than others' is inherently egotistical". I'm actually not sure if I could say that that'd be false, but I would say that the premise is flawed. A difference in reads can just as easily (and perhaps far more probably) be explained by a difference in prior knowledge (or prior beliefs) rather than a "better reading".

That is, if you're aware that Mulch always says "you're ruining the game" as scum, I personally wouldn't consider that putting yourself in some superior position. That's an obvious meta-based example, but other examples less meta based are easy - they're just the things that you believe are scum or town indicative: knowing that newbie D1 lynch wagons on town almost always have 1 scum on them, thinking that scum almost never do self-meta, etc.

[northsidegal]

I disagree (somewhat) with the notion that read accuracy is unimportant, or only important up to a point. If we imagine the ideal town player as someone who ensures that town wins every game in which they are town, then it seems natural that this ideal town player does so by rattling off the name of every member of the scumteam and possibly also by showing themselves to be town (if, say, in a setup where there isn't even enough leeway to lynch the ideal town player first and ensure that they're town). You might call that an absurd example, but I think it illustrates an important principle - even knowing nothing else about our ideal town player, even assuming that they have to get lynched themselves to confirm that they're town, they can still win the game for town every time through read accuracy. They could be the least charismatic, least eloquent, least mechanically knowledgeable player in mafia history and still win every game.

Of course, I assume that this ideal town player is known as such through reputation, which you might call cheating the scenario. This is where I start to agree that it's not the

only

factor that matters. If we were to assume a scenario where our ideal town player was starting out unknown, or perhaps played every game without reputation effects,

then

skills like making oneself known to be town and effectively pushing lynches comes into play.


Disconnected from platonic ideals and also moving into the realm of some kind of actionable thought, I think I agree somewhat with hito's linked post in that there's a sort of pyramid or something of what makes a good town player. Trying to actually come up with some kind of order would probably be pointless, but among the skills besides reads accuracy would certainly be making yourself look town, working with others and recognizing when someone else has a read you should listen to (a la Mathdino), being willing to admit that you're wrong, and being able to work with others to get your goals accomplished.

[northsidegal]

townhunting > scumhunting

as a town, you know how a town would act. you don't know how scum would act.

the nature of the game is to make you jump on anything that you see as scummy. town do inherently scummy things because they are uninformed.

now, if you look for scum in a game where 75% of the playerlist is town and, most importantly, UNINFORMED - therefore, they are doing a lot more scummy shit - you are at a disadvantage.

It's lack of your experience/knowledge of scumplay, if you don't know how scum act. Also, you don't know how town would act just because you are same alignment, different people have different playstyles that might be vastly different from yours

Then, couldn't I say that you don't know how scum would act just because of your "experience/knowledge of scumplay", given different people have different playstyles that might be vastly different from what you expect?

[northsidegal]

it's just my opinion.

[northsidegal]

there's a joke in there about calling yourself an ancient greek philosopher and ego, but i'm not sure the best way to make it

[northsidegal]

Here's another thing that my favourite philosophers can debate

How do you distinguish between confirmation bias and actually being right when other people heavily disagree with you?

i don't really think there's an answer to this. or maybe i should say i don't think there's an "easy" way to do this. understanding your own biases, recognizing them and trying to overcome them is, i think, a neverending process.

Also, a lot of team play talk here, but if I just

know

I'm right, how am I supposed to act in this situation if other people don't listen to my read?

Do I fall back on that read and pursue the common interest among towns?

my suggestion would be to go all out in explaining every piece of evidence you have that leads you to "

know

" you're right. if, in the process, you find that you have less evidence than you thought, your evidence is weaker than you thought, or you just begin to doubt yourself, i'd say that's a good process for checking yourself. if that doesn't work, you could always try other strategies.

although, let's return to the realm of our platonic ideals and assume that you actually

knew

that someone was scum, however that may have come about: a guilty, aliens beaming the information into your brain, hacking their account to read their role PM, having your alt RAS on the scumteam, having Mulch say "you're ruining the game", etc. in

that

case, it's probably just more effective to go for some other strategy to get people to listen to you rather than trying to list a bunch of reasons, especially if the method by which you

know

they're scum isn't actually based on their play. if you tried to come up with a case in that scenario, it'd look more like you just going through their posts looking for reasons why they're scum rather than actually having those reasons.

[northsidegal]

Once you accumulate several games like that, assuming you already have a high Read Accuracy stat,

your Charisma will grow accordingly and you'll start to win more.

I don't think this is necessarily true unless you define charisma more as "having people listen to you" rather than a more traditional definition, and doing that feels somewhat tautological to me. I also feel that, taken as a goal or as advice, it'd be misleading to define charisma like that.

That is, if theoretical town player Belli Ereth always lists the scumteam and then prodges until death or game over in every game, I think it would be misleading to say that if people started noticing that Belli's scumreads were always accurate, that would represent Belli's "charisma" improving. We imagine that Belli's winrate would start to go up over time, but this doesn't mean that any aspect of Belli's play has changed.

[northsidegal]

What Fark is describing as Charisma seems to be perception-based as opposed to innate - your play can be the same and yet you can have more situational Charisma if people listen to you.

Sure, I get that. I guess I just feel like that is better described as something like "reputation", and that calling it charisma is a bit confusing and perhaps a little bit misleading, in my opinion.

[northsidegal]

charisma is having an aesthetically pleasing avatar

finally, someone who knows what they're talking about and the objectively correct answer

[northsidegal]

it seems tautological to define those two things that way.

saying "ellibereth was great because he was all three of accurate, charismatic and obviously town" seems misleading to me when the last two are basically a byproduct of the first. i think it creates expectations that aren't correct.

also it is my understanding that ellibereth came back for only around one year? and was also far and away

much

much accurate during that most recent year as compared to the years he played previously. (i'll bet that sooner or later he might chime in, i feel like he always tends to pop in when people mention him)

[northsidegal]

oh, i altslipped

[northsidegal]

FLASH OF GREEN

[northsidegal]

If charisma were defined as a function of read accuracy, then every player who has consistently reads with higher than average accuracy, would be charismatic--but they aren't.

here's a function for you from a bona fide computer science genius:

Code: Select all

if read accuracy >= ellibereth's read accuracy:
    sheep
otherwise:
    don't sheep

i'm joking, but the point i'm trying to make is that i think ellibereth is something of a special case given the fact that, if memory serves, he was either never wrong or wrong only once. if we were to return to theoretical player Belli Ereth who does

nothing

but list "Here are the members of the scumteam:" with 100% accuracy and then prod dodge, i believe a similar situation to the one you describe as a result of ellibereth's charisma would arise. people would sheep belli, belli's scumreads would be dead incredibly quickly. that doesn't happen for players like creature because despite creature's high accuracy, it's not

perfect

accuracy.

i'm not trying to argue that ellibereth is uncharismatic. personally, i actually thought he was pretty funny and had a lot of great ideas. i'm trying to say that what you describe as his "charisma" is really primarily a function of his read accuracy.

[northsidegal]

we should take a moment to recognize that this discussion (or argument, if you'd like to call it that) is a definitional one - there are few factual disagreements between anyone here, i'd say. this might seem so obvious as to be condescending to say, but i think it's useful to take a moment to recognize. we primarily disagree over the word "charisma" - what it means, what falls under it, etc. is "charisma" getting people to do what you want? then, would strongarming people and forcing them to do things via threats be considered charismatic? does "reputation" fall under charisma?

definitions really only matter insofar as they are useful to us. that's why i think that this conversation is important to have in the first place, and the distinction between reputation and charisma important to make. i think that to have too broad a view of "charisma" implies things that aren't true. if you consider reputation to fall under charisma, it might lead a prospective player to think that to be great one has to improve their charisma (where the player in question takes a more traditional view of what charisma is), when in reality that definition would imply that charisma (via reputation) comes naturally from reads accuracy. does that make any sense at all?

[northsidegal]

Long time no see/talk y'all. Hope everyone is managing to stay some combination of healthy and sane.

haha, i called it.

[northsidegal]

I would define charisma as something that fully functions when you secret alt and don't get outed

exactly. this is one of the reasons that i think a definition of charisma that includes reputation doesn't make sense. we imagine that a player's attributes such as their reads accuracy and their charisma are a part of their person and not their account, right? so if switching accounts removes their "charisma", that seems inconsistent.

[northsidegal]

I think both fall under the category of "things that can get people to listen to you" or something less verbose, but there are important distinctions that make it sensible to separate the two. In real life, charisma may be inseparable from that sort of situation, but within the context of forum mafia and specifically "What makes a good town player?", I think it makes sense to specifically focus on traits of individuals. And, with that in mind, we can see that reputation is a matter of one's identity and can be disconnected from via something like an alt, whereas "charisma" (or let's call it "charm", if you prefer) we might consider to be a skill that one possesses that one could make use of regardless of identity.

Do you think it doesn't make sense to separate the two?

[northsidegal]

Don't think I rank highly on the "talent' side of things and that any success I have was predicated on hard work.

almost all talent is predicated on hard work. i wouldn't take that away from yourself.

[northsidegal]

There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who are born with worth, and everybody else. No matter how hard a lowly human tries, they will never be the same as someone who was born worthy. They say that "effort breeds success"... but that's a complete lie. The world is not that accommodating.

No matter how hard a small dog tries, it will never become a large dog. No matter how hard a penguin tries, there's no way it will ever soar through the sky. Which means... unworthy humans will never become worthy, no matter what they do. People with talent don't become talented... they're just born with their abilities right from the start.

[northsidegal]

(just to be absolutely clear: that post does not reflect my actual opinion at all)

[northsidegal]

something that occurred to me recently is that i don't think that what we typically think of as real-life charisma actually translates into being able to have people follow you. what i mean by that is that players who i think of as the most charismatic in the traditional sense of the word aren't actually the players who i think of as most being able to get the lynches they want, and vice versa: players who most often get the lynches they want i don't think of as the most traditionally charismatic. if anything, charisma in the traditional sense just seems correlated with not getting lynched - not even necessarily getting townread, just not getting lynched.

of course, this could just be a function of the specific players that i'm thinking of, but it seems to me that it's never through traditional "charisma" that hard-gotten lynches are attained.

[northsidegal]

i think "force of personality" is exactly what i would call the trait that correlates with getting the lynches you want. very good term.