Not reading your role PM

[Quagmire]

I'm going to bring up this topic again, because I feel nobody ever created a good argument against it.

If some people may recall, I created a policy where I would never look at my role PM until night one -- a policy I still live by currently. Can this be a valid strategy?

[Quagmire]

The "spirit of the game" argument holds no water. Strategically, it's far better not to read your role PM. We're not talking about ethics, morals, or whatever, we're talking about strategy. All's fair in love and mafia.

That's wrong on both counts. It's clearly much better for you to read your role PM, unless you're quite bad as a scum player, and even if you are then it's still better in the 75% of the time you're a town player. If you're half decent as a scum player, then you're still much better off knowing that you are scum and knowing who your scum partners are then you would be not knowing.

As for the second thing, the entire point of mafia is that you are going to try to read how people are acting and try to figure out their motivations and their own win condition from that. If people don't even know their own win condition, then it makes day 1 a massive waste of time.

So it's both bad strategically, and also allowing that is very bad for the game of mafia itself.

The second point is the only point that holds any water whatsoever.

The first point is wrong entirely.

[Quagmire]

If you don't know your win condition on day 1 then you are not truly playing to win.

Bingo. You're not playing to win, so you are breaking the fundamental rule underpinning the game.

Also, people who claim to have not read their role should be policy-lynched on sight, for obvious reasons.

I haven't read my role PM on day one since like 2006. Should I be policy lynched?

[Quagmire]

I can think of a few reasons:

1)

If you're a scum power role, you might have some kind of a daytime ability that you won't be able to use on the first Day if you don't read your role PM. Same goes for town power roles that have daytime abilities or even third party roles that have them.

So? Use them day two. I haven't yet run into a situation where I've missed an ability. It's much less of a competitive advantage knowing your role than being strictly a townie and deciphering people's actions outside of the game.

2)

Just because you don't read your role PM that doesn't mean you're suddenly invincible to the lynch. Suppose you do reach L-1 on D1 and are asked to claim. Are you going to claim Vanilla? What if you have a town power role and get lynched because a good amount of people on here lynch claimed Vanillas? What if you're scum and were provided a decent safe-claim?

If you're at L-1, you should look at your role... agreed on that point. But if you don't read your role PM, you're going to be acting like a townie, so the chances of you getting lynched decrease by a significant margin.

3)

By not reading your role PM, you could be forgoing the opportunity to learn information about the set-up, particularly as scum. For example, in this game I was scum with Glork and dahill1. There were a few quirks about being scum in that game: if dahill1 got lynched, we'd lose our ability to kill. I couldn't imagine not reading my role PM and possibly being in on his lynch pretty much costing us the game straight from D1. And imagine the Night 1 discussion if that

did

happen...

On more than one occasion I've been scum and haven't read my PM, and then I've gone and bussed a scumbuddy because I caught them being mafia like. This helped me later in the game and essentially gave me a free pass to winning. The advantage it gives you as scum is incredible.

[Quagmire]

The arguments here seem to be predicated on quite a bit of 'what-ifs' that are so uncommon in the game of mafia it makes it almost an invalid argument. It's tantamount to arguing, "well, you should never drive your car, because the chances you'll get into a car accident are incredible," which of course is ridiculous.

[Quagmire]

The "spirit of the game" argument holds no water. Strategically, it's far better not to read your role PM. We're not talking about ethics, morals, or whatever, we're talking about strategy. All's fair in love and mafia.

That's wrong on both counts. It's clearly much better for you to read your role PM, unless you're quite bad as a scum player, and even if you are then it's still better in the 75% of the time you're a town player. If you're half decent as a scum player, then you're still much better off knowing that you are scum and knowing who your scum partners are then you would be not knowing.

How so?

Personally, the information I get about the game from my mafia role PM is incredibly useful. That's actually the main reason I get lynched a lot less as scum then as town, is because of the information I have about the game when I'm scum.

Well, let's take a look at why the first point is wrong. Realistically, the only thing your role tells you is alignment and ability, neither of which is necessary to know on day one. The other flavor information will never, ever get utilized on day one, and instead is part of the game mechanics that tend to get passed over until later in the game (usually day 2 or day 3).

Now, to go further into detail:

The "spirit of the game" argument holds no water. Strategically, it's far better not to read your role PM. We're not talking about ethics, morals, or whatever, we're talking about strategy. All's fair in love and mafia.

That's wrong on both counts. It's clearly much better for you to read your role PM, unless you're quite bad as a scum player, and even if you are then it's still better in the 75% of the time you're a town player. If you're half decent as a scum player, then you're still much better off knowing that you are scum and knowing who your scum partners are then you would be not knowing.

I disagree. I would consider myself a half-decent scum player; occasionally I can get flustered and captured if someone pays enough attention to me (to put it differently, I have tells that people who I've played with may or may not have noticed). I can establish myself as a pro-town player regardless of my alignment on day one instead of beginning to reveal tells. It creates an absurd advantage for future days down the road.

[Quagmire]

Quag, your never going to be joining my games, imo. I'm going to have all players confirm to me via PM, telling me what their role is. If someone doesn't do, they get replaced. Plain and simple.

Your playing against everyone, as you don't know what your supposed to be doing, and it's unfair to the rest of the people that DID read their role PM.

I would think Quag not joining any of your games is not due to you blacklisting him, but ultimately I'm fine with whatever illusions get you through the day.

Whose alt are you? Simenon?

[Quagmire]

Another thing people are failing to consider is that "read and quote PM" does not imply that they've read and understood their role. You'd have to enforce a "tell me what your role and alignment is" in a PM in order to ensure this to happen, and that sounds to me like it'd be cumbersome to moderate and play under.

I think people are simply refusing to consider this a valid strategy because of "spirit of the game" arguments, except for Yos2, who's trying to put together a logical argument.

[Quagmire]

3)

By not reading your role PM, you could be forgoing the opportunity to learn information about the set-up, particularly as scum. For example, in this game I was scum with Glork and dahill1. There were a few quirks about being scum in that game: if dahill1 got lynched, we'd lose our ability to kill. I couldn't imagine not reading my role PM and possibly being in on his lynch pretty much costing us the game straight from D1. And imagine the Night 1 discussion if that

did

happen...

On more than one occasion I've been scum and haven't read my PM, and then I've gone and bussed a scumbuddy because I caught them being mafia like. This helped me later in the game and essentially gave me a free pass to winning. The advantage it gives you as scum is incredible.

Why can't a scum knowingly bus a partner?

I don't know, but every time I've done it unknowingly I've had a free pass until at least very late in the game.

[Quagmire]

The "spirit of the game" argument holds no water. Strategically, it's far better not to read your role PM. We're not talking about ethics, morals, or whatever, we're talking about strategy. All's fair in love and mafia.

The "play to your win condition"

does

apply here. You can't play to it if you don't know what it is. It is absolutely necessary for you to be aware of your alignment to fulfill the "play to your win condition" rules of mafia. Just because it is possible to ignore it and still be responding to a thread is a point completely irrelevant when determining whether you are actually playing the game.

See, that's bullshit. Let's consider the 3 situations here, and see if you're actually playing to win:

You're town-aligned

Of course this means you're playing to win, as you're scumhunting and playing like a townsperson in general.

You're scum-aligned

This still means you're playing to win D1, as you're masking yourself very effectively as a townsperson, which will set you up for future days and it deceives the rest of the town, assuming you're doing a good job of being townie of course.

You're third-party aligned

See Scum-aligned.

[Quagmire]

shafted, I did already respond to it:

The arguments here seem to be predicated on quite a bit of 'what-ifs' that are so uncommon in the game of mafia it makes it almost an invalid argument. It's tantamount to arguing, "well, you should never drive your car, because the chances you'll get into a car accident are incredible," which of course is ridiculous.

Of the past few years when I haven't been reading my role PM day one I've run into day-powers a grand total of 0 times. Perhaps I've been lucky, or perhaps they're just not utilized often, but insofar this is not something I should be concerned with as I'm playing.

To put this a different way, let's assume I'm playing with an A-Hole Mod who purposely assigns me a dayrole just to catch me in a trap and vindicate his disagreement with this strategy. What did I really miss? One usage of a dayrole? I'd argue my time is better spent scumhunting and such instead of spending the entirety of D1 trying to consider who I'm going to investigate/kill/rb/etc.

[Quagmire]

I also still don't agree that there is any advantage in not knowing you're a power role or scum. There are a lot of decisions to be made at night if you have an action and not playing day 1 in that proper frame of mind could cause you to make suboptimal decisions.

perhaps if you know you're playing a mountainous game this would be a slight advantage. But I don't see it being a great benefit in an unknown setup.

Disagreed again... playing as a townsperson gives me a clearer picture of the game instead of being clouded with things like "who do I think is the cop" "who is the doc" "is there an RB in this game" etc.

[Quagmire]

Would you like playing in a game where everyone adopted your strategy?

Yes. It'd be more fun than what the current state of mafia has become.

[Quagmire]

Does Yosarian2 have the status now that whenever he makes a post 2-4 people follow him with "I agree with Yosarian2" or "Yosarian2 just won the thread" regardless of the post he made?

[Quagmire]

I'm not talking about the flavor information. I'm talking about who your scum partners are, and, by extention, who the town is, if there's only one scum group.

This is incredibly useful information. By knowing who the town is and who the scum is, you can act in a way that will EITHER help your side more then you could without that information, or in a way that will make you look more pro-town then you possibly could without that infromation, or sometimes even both.

If I'm town, and there's a shitty case on player A, I'll probably defend him against it. If I'm scum, and there's a shitty case on player A and I know he's town, I'll probably defend him ineffectually, so he'll get lynched anyway but I'll look good in the process; or else I'll act in such a way so he gets lynched without me taking any blame for it. If I'm scum, and there's a shitty case on player A and I know he's my scumbuddy, I might defend him if I know I can win, or I might bus like a mofo and get tons of town credit for it.

That's a simplification, of course; it depends on a lot of factors, like who else is in the game and what kinds of scum tells they look for.

But in general, if you want to look pro-town, and you're good enough to not make obvious tells or connections, it's quite helpful to know who the town and the scum are.

While, on the other hand, if I am pro-town, I'll often take bigger risks on day 1 to get more information. lt works, but doing that as scum as foolish, since it increases your odds of getting lynched.

I dunno, I think this is too gross of an oversimplification to take it seriously... It's still more worth it in the long run to look like a townsperson on day one, regardless of who's who. Other than "I might bus my scumbuddy or defend him," how does your strategy differ whether or not you've read your role regardless?

I can establish myself as a pro-town player regardless of my alignment on day one instead of beginning to reveal tells.

Even if you can act just like a townie without reading your role PM, that just means that, all else being equal, you come out of day 1 on about the same level of pro-townie-ness as the 9 other people who actually do have a pro-town role PM. That's not much of an advantage.

It is. Think of it this way...

When I act like a townsperson day one, I've formulated my suspicions and determined a specific set of people who have acted like townies and scum. With that determined, I now have an idea of who I plan to attack in future days and who I plan on defending, which is where most of the competitive advantage comes from.

[Quagmire]

I dunno, I think this is too gross of an oversimplification to take it seriously... It's still more worth it in the long run to look like a townsperson on day one, regardless of who's who. Other than "I might bus my scumbuddy or defend him," how does your strategy differ whether or not you've read your role regardless?

There are all kinds of strategic options you can go with. The entire advantage of being mafia comes from knowing who is who. You're throwing that away if you are scum and you haven't read your PM. For example I was in a game with an atrocious partner. I could tell they were going to be lynched early in the game. So I did a decent job of making a case against him that I probably wouldn't have as town and tying as many of his defenders to him as physically possible. In the end this helped me win the game when a day before LyLo mislynch drove itself due to the seeds I had been planting since Day 1 and I was able to convince a confirmed cop to vote the other way a LyLo because I didn't have to get my hands dirty.

It just seems to me that you are playing this way because you want to look like town. Thus there is no advantage to be gained if you are actually town. And when you are scum, you're throwing away the inherent advantage of the role, informed minority. Your argument is that said information is a detriment because it makes you play differently. But that's the whole point of having it so that you do play differently.

From all the years I've played, I've realized it's optimum strategy to be viewed as town on Day 1, as that sets you apart from other players generally... not in the sense that 'you're seen as blending in' but instead 'that guy is solidly town.' This makes a difference in future days, because any scummy slipup you make will be taken in context with your fruitful day one scumhunting.

With that said, you're really only giving up your informed minority in the small portion of the game where it doesn't really matter. As you said yourself, sometimes you want to bus your partner, and sometimes you want to defend him -- except in this case you're doing it blindly. There really isn't much difference when you stop and think about it.

[Quagmire]

The "spirit of the game" argument holds no water. Strategically, it's far better not to read your role PM. We're not talking about ethics, morals, or whatever, we're talking about strategy. All's fair in love and mafia.

The "play to your win condition"

does

apply here. You can't play to it if you don't know what it is. It is absolutely necessary for you to be aware of your alignment to fulfill the "play to your win condition" rules of mafia. Just because it is possible to ignore it and still be responding to a thread is a point completely irrelevant when determining whether you are actually playing the game.

See, that's bullshit. Let's consider the 3 situations here, and see if you're actually playing to win:

You're town-aligned

Of course this means you're playing to win, as you're scumhunting and playing like a townsperson in general.

You're scum-aligned

This still means you're playing to win D1, as you're masking yourself very effectively as a townsperson, which will set you up for future days and it deceives the rest of the town, assuming you're doing a good job of being townie of course.

You're third-party aligned

See Scum-aligned.

No, your response is bullshit. You are only

assuming

that you know the win condition of any of the possible 3 groups you've listed. In addition, you are altering the precondition of playing to win to be "play to win day 1", which is absolutely not playing to win the game. Even then, in your ignorance you are wrong.

Role PM says "You are scum with player X. You win if you and player x are the only 2 players remaining. You lose if player x dies."

lynch player X!

Congratulations. You just lost the game.

As I've said before, I've never run into that situation in the 3 or so years I've been playing mafia without reading my role PM day one, so this argument is tantamount to "you shouldn't drive a car, because you might get into a car accident."

Also, if I'm 'playing to win day one,' and then I read my role PM and begin playing to win for that, am I not playing to win after day one as well, making your argument incorrect?

[Quagmire]

Also, I'd have to say that I very much doubt that even the supposed benefit of not reading your role pm (always playing just like you would as vanilla) actually holds. As vanilla town, you see, you know you're town, and you know you're

not

scum and you're know you're

not

a PR and that knowledge affects your behavior and influences your decisions. When you haven't read your role pm, I'd imagine the uncertainty involved would have an effect on your play---you won't really play exactly as you would if you were a vanilla townie.

How would you know until you've tried? It's not really hard to say "I don't know what I am, so I'll try and scumhunt until I do."

[Quagmire]

Quag: What's the point of playing Mafia with people if they don't know their role?

There isn't one... fortunately I'm the only one who thinks this strategy works, so I don't really have to worry about future games where half the players aren't reading their PMs before the game starts.

[Quagmire]

Even though Adel didn't say anything inflammatory I feel like she's trying to troll me.

[Quagmire]

It's not really hard to say "I don't know what I am, so I'll try and scumhunt until I do."

No, but my point is that there are differences in your play that will come out subconsciously. The only reason (I imagine) that you think not reading your role PM is a good idea is because you believe the knowledge will affect your play, unconsciously and whether you like it or not, in ways that could be bad if you're scum or have a PR---but what I'm saying is, not knowing you're town (and especially, not knowing you're vanilla town) will make you play differently than you do as town, just as surely and unavoidably as knowing you're not town will.

At this point we're going to have to agree to disagree, as I don't think that's the case at all, and I can't think of a way to objectively measure who's right and who's wrong here.

However, I don't see the difference between being a townsperson blind to everyone else's alignments, and an outside player reading the game to try and figure out the alignments of the players in that game. Both roles are just as blind to the rest of the setup, and thus both would scumhunt one in the same. I feel I do my best scumhunting the more detached I feel from the game (this doesn't imply boredom during a game).

I'm still not decided how I feel about this practice from a mod's perspective. I like players to have freedom, but at the same time, if EVERYONE decided to play in this manner the game would be completely non-functional on Day1. I will most likely combat such tactics with a prevelance of roles that would greatly benefit from reading their PM pre-game rather than flat out blacklisting players.

If I were to mod a game, I'd prevent this 'tactic' by requiring players to pm me their role name and win condition in order to confirm. Players retain their freedom not to play in games with such rulesets

Mods should place this warning at the beginning of the announcement of their game in order to avoid dealing with players like me, who will stubbornly not read their role PM on day 1 during daystarts no matter what, so as to avoid finding a replacement during confirmation stages, which are (IMO) just as irritating as replacements on Day 5.

[Quagmire]

Doing things blindly really seems suboptimal to me. I don't know why you feel so insecure about your scum game that you have to play in this manner. And you've basically replied as though the difference is rather subtle between reading and not reading your PM. It seems as though the strategy may be a thing that works for you, but I have a feeling you just like stirring the pot. I personally wouldn't try this because it would remove quite a bit of enjoyment from the game for me.

It adds plenty of enjoyment for me.

What I enjoy the most in mafia is the day one and day two analytical portions of the game, where behaviors and arguments are taken into account before game setup and mechanics. Taking a step back from my role provides me the best opportunity to do this job well.

It's by far where my best play comes, because once game setup and mechanics rear their heads in the later stages of the game, I'm generally clueless.

I'm still not decided how I feel about this practice from a mod's perspective. I like players to have freedom, but at the same time, if EVERYONE decided to play in this manner the game would be completely non-functional on Day1. I will most likely combat such tactics with a prevelance of roles that would greatly benefit from reading their PM pre-game rather than flat out blacklisting players.

Considering all the people who agree with me, I don't think you have to worry about many players doing what I do.

[Quagmire]

Many posts in this topic have raised another issue I feel is wrong in its theory and its practice, which is "Policy lynch someone for ___________."

Policy lynches are always suboptimal play.

[Quagmire]

People who don't read their role PM and don't

tell

people that they didn't read their role PM would be a bigger problem.

After Tree Stump I, where the majority of day one was a me vs. the rest of the town fiasco that ended up in my policy lynch, I didn't tell any mod of any game I played in that I didn't read my role PM day 1. So I guess I'm a plague to mafia.

[Quagmire]

Michel:

What I enjoy the most in mafia is the day one and day two analytical portions of the game, where behaviors and arguments are taken into account before game setup and mechanics. Taking a step back from my role provides me the best opportunity to do this job well.

It's by far where my best play comes, because once game setup and mechanics rear their heads in the later stages of the game, I'm generally clueless.

I feel as if I do my best scumhunting when I do not know my own role.

[Quagmire]

So, you'd rather not read the PM at all?

vote:Quag

with 3 playing it takes 2 to lynch!

Good one forums user animorpherv1!!!!!!!

[Quagmire]

SensFan nobody responded the first two times you posted in this thread why would you try again

[Quagmire]

Quag, if I ever play against you, surely I would just ignore the first day of play. I know you haven't read your role so why should I look at day one at all?

Because you know I'd be searching for scum.

[Quagmire]

Quag, have you ever considered just replacing into more games?

You can read days of conversation without the bias of your role PM, and come into the thread a super scumhunter.

In the past year or two, I've probably replaced into more games than I've joined outright.

In either case, if I replaced in the middle of the day, I wouldn't read my role PM until that night.