Quagmire wrote: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?
Note to self. Include day 1 Jester in my next game.
Also the possibility of getting a role with day powers should be taken into account. Thus not reading your role PM you've missed a cycle to investigate, protect, vig etc etc. Or you may be a confirmed mason lynching your partner.
Sopianae wrote: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.
Yosarian2 wrote: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:
Yosarian2 wrote:
Sopianae wrote: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.
animorpherv1 wrote: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.
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.
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.
Sopianae wrote: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.
I have a degree in bullshit. I have patents on entire lines of bullshit. So don't sit here and feed me a line of bullshit and think that I'm not going to recognize it as one.
This unsupported statement brought to you by the Anti-Supported Statement League of the United States and Territories (ASSLUST)
P.S. - Quag that's your answer too. You aren't playing the game, you're just responding to a thread that should be limited to game participants.
I have a degree in bullshit. I have patents on entire lines of bullshit. So don't sit here and feed me a line of bullshit and think that I'm not going to recognize it as one.
This unsupported statement brought to you by the Anti-Supported Statement League of the United States and Territories (ASSLUST)
Sopianae wrote: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.
Quagmire wrote: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.
Quag you skipped my reply. If you're going to do this, you need to at least consider the liklihood of your mod using Daypowers.
Quagmire wrote: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.
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.
Quagmire wrote:shafted, I did already respond to it:
Quagmire wrote: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.
Sweet I got to be a part of a meta shifting conversation. Day powers are now the new Nurse with no Doc.
shaft.ed wrote: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.
shaft.ed wrote: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.
Those are all things I think when I play as vanilla.
When I'm the cop I think "I am the cop" not "who is the cop"
Hoopla wrote: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.
If everyone played like you, how would you know what you are lynching? There would be no tells. Day 1 would be a complete popularity contest, random phase, or battle of who is least stupid
That wouldn't be mafia as there is no informed minority if nobody reads anything
When I joined this site, I was a software tester for mobile business applications and the song PokerFace was not yet written by Lady Gaga
Now I test lottery and gambling software as my job. It's funny how my life has turned out. Somewhere a Time Traveler is laughing madly
PokerFace wrote:If everyone played like you, how would you know what you are lynching? There would be no tells. Day 1 would be a complete popularity contest, random phase, or battle of who is least stupid
This is pretty much Day 1 in a nutshell. The only difference is that sometimes you can draw information from all of the crap that goes on after the fact. If noone's reading their PM, it's of little value.
PokerFace wrote:If everyone played like you, how would you know what you are lynching? There would be no tells. Day 1 would be a complete popularity contest, random phase, or battle of who is least stupid
This is pretty much Day 1 in a nutshell. The only difference is that sometimes you can draw information from all of the crap that goes on after the fact. If noone's reading their PM, it's of little value.
That's not at all what day 1 is.
I want us to win just for Yos' inevitable rant alone. -CrashTextDummie
The problem would be that there would be no information to be drawn from D1. The game might as well started with night and given scum an extra night kill.
Battousai wrote:The problem would be that there would be no information to be drawn from D1. The game might as well started with night and given scum an extra night kill.
But Quag obviously isn't operating in an environment where he should assume that noone is reading their role PM.
mikeburnfire wrote:Somebody should make a game where the scum PM is something like "You are scum with Mr X and Mr Y. But if Townie A dies, you all lose"
