The first installment, on arguing in the game of mafia can be found here:
http://mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12228
A discussion on randomness on day one:
Introduction
The beginning of a game of mafia is in many ways difficult. Mafia is inherently a game of information. The more you have of it, the better off you are. Because of this, you want to get as much information as soon as possible. At the beginning of the game, you have no information other than your role pm, and therefore must start playing almost blind, with much less information than the scum, who have high levels of information because they know who the bad guys are. This is what gives rise to what has been popularly dubbed the “RVS, or random voting stage.” This article will be in two parts. First, I will discuss what the random voting stage IS, and what it is not.
This discussion should give us a decent starting point to discuss misconceptions about this part of the game, and also what you should be trying to accomplish during this part of the game. Second, I will discuss what I see as optimum strategies. That is to say, I will discuss what I think ought to be done to accomplish the goals set out in the first part of this article, and how practically you can accomplish this. The random voting stage need not be as random as we are making it.
Part one: What is it?
It is important to understand what the random voting stage is in order to discuss it. More importantly it is important to understand what it is not.The random voting stage is defined by a low amount of town information, so that all actions taken are a little bit random due to not being as informed as they could be. It is NOT an area of the game where it is ok to BE random, and where actions and votes do not matter because they are random.
Remember, all actions in a game of mafia are structured by your role pm, and since you already have that on day one, all actions are still inherently readable. Scum can only hide in the RVS if you let them be unaccountable. In a game of mafia we vote on motivations, as well as on actions an role based information. At the beginning of the game, there is a distinct lack of the latter, and a steadily increasing, yet comparatively low amount of the first two things. To get around this, players resort to many tactics which they feel get them to information to lynches. Some of these work, some of these do not. It’s important to understand what you should be trying to do in the random voting stage: Getting the town out of the random voting stage as fast as possible. This is the towns main goal at that point. No one is going to leap up and scream “I AM SCUM!!!!!” The ones that do not have at their core some basic misperceptions about the random stage.
First, that you cannot scumhunt without information. This assertion seems on face ludicrous, but I hear it made in almost every game I am in. To understand why this is wrong, we need to have some sort of basic understanding of what scumhunting is. This article defines scumhunting as “Any action taken that makes it more likely for the town to find scum.” By this logic, asking questions is scumhunting, discussing relevant things is scum hunting, and any action you take which might give you a clearer indication of the alignment of any player is scumhunting. Given this definition, the claim that you can’t scumhunt on day one seems patently ridiculous. Furthermore, it would seem to me that you would want the times in the game where you have the least information to be the times you scumhunt the most. This is what forms the basis of fully informed lynches later on.
Second, that the random voting stage is random, so its ok for me to be random. This one is most pervasive. It is the idea that since we have little information, then the best play for the town is to just be random as well. We can see pretty clearly that this isn’t true. In order to force information into the light, the town must be as non random as possible, they must attack leads, ask questions, and create situations that bring information to light.
Ironically, this misperception of the random voting stage is what CAUSES the random voting stage. By not making players accountable for their actions, and acting in a manner that is entirely random, I have seen players make the stage of the game with decreased town motivation last almost all of day one, or well into day 2. With the right methods I have seen the town exit the time where they have almost no information as early as page 2.
So what sort of actions fall into these catagories? In the first one we have things like lurking through day one and not voting on day one. These strategies are completely incoherent in terms of playing to win. Since we need the most information on day one, when players lurk through the day, or don’t vote during that day, they are actively hurting the towns quest to find information, and thus are playing in a manner that is completely anti-town. Notice I use the phrase anti town, and not the phrase “scummy.” Because in my experience town players are just as likely to take these actions as scum players, even though they detriment the town. In order to play the RVS effectively we need to stop letting these strategies be mainstream for town as well as scum. By doing this we take away a scum crutch and force them to take positions much earlier than they would like to.
In the second one a whole myriad of things are done. The two that I find most objectionable are completely random votes, as well as self voting. When we vote with dice, or for ourselves, we are playing right into the scums hands, because we allow them to be unaccountable. They can vote completely randomly as well, and that puts us in a situation where It takes much longer to get some sort of coherent vote record. Voting with dice is probably the most socially acceptable version of this approach, and there is often little to no discussion of why these votes hurt the town, allowing the scum to hide under a shield of randomness that can be avoided.
On the subject of self voters, you should never EVER EVER vote for yourself in a game of mafia unless by some way it helps achieve your win condition. A good example of this is Mr. Flay voting himself to achieve a lynch as scum, so that he could end the days discussion and not let the town have information. As a town player, when you vote for yourself, you are voting for the only player in the town that you know to be not scum: Yourself. This means that your vote is inherently unreadable and inherently unhelpful . Some mods go so far as to ban self votes from their game, which is not ok either. You should be able to vote for whomever you want, and when town does this it is bad play, and not out of the purview of the game. We have to punish such behavior to create less places for scum to hide day one.
Part two: So what do we do?
So we’ve established in the first part of this article what you want to do in the RVS: Create as much information as quickly as possible. How do we do this? Are forever going to be lost in a sea of no information until some scum player magically does something stupid? Fear not, there are ways out.
First, you want to make everyone accountable for everything. A good town player never accepts the excuse “it was in the RVS, so it doesn’t matter!” By making players accountable for their actions you turn everything they do into a piece of information. Do not let people get away with anti town plays just because it is the random voting stage.
A good thing to note here is that in the RVS, your threshold for what constitutes something voteworthy is lowered dramatically. The less information you have, the less scummy something has to be for you to vote for it.
Remember, bandwagons are good, pressure is good, votes are good. These are all things that create situations that are serious in game, and require reactions from not only the player who is being bandwagoned, but the other players in the game. Just because something is based on a low threshold for a vote does not mean it can’t be serious and have in game repercussions. By creating band wagons over a minorly scummy thing, you take the game out of the area of randomness, and into the realm of information. As people react to these bandwagons, as well as votes, you will get more information, which will create less random votes, and less random bandwagons. This is how we progress to better information.
Second, by asking questions. When players make actions, ask them about them, ask other players to comment on them. By asking questions that relate to the game even tangentially you are creating information about the other players in the game, even if it is theory based. These lines of questioning may not yield directly voteworthy information, but the other players in the game will comment on the answers as well as your questions, and these comments and stances DO lead to vote worthy information.
It is important to note here that not all questions are “good questions.” Fully theory based questions that do not in any way pertain to the game bog down the town into theory discussion that is not in any way role relevant, so avoid that kind of questioning. Theory questions that relate to the game are however a great way to get players to take positions which are relevant later on. For instance, the question “What do you think is optimum scum strategy in this game, and who’s play most closely models that play?” is a personal favorite of mine, because it makes a player state an early suspicion, as well as create a reference to look at their play later on.
Part Three: Conclusion
The RVS can be frustrating, but that is not a reason to perpetuate it. Many of the actions town takes when they are in the RVS are completely incoherent given the aim of getting the town more information so that we can leave the random stage. Misconceptions about, and they allow scum to hide within the shadow of our misinformed actions. Stop playing the game as if day one has to be random, it does not. By making actions that decrease the randomness, and scumhunting on day one, you actively bring the town around to real discussion and lower the amount of areas for scum to hide.
I hope you enjoy this article as well as my previous one, and I look forward to any feedback you have to offer on it. I will hopefully continue this series, and anyone with a subject they would like me to write about is more than welcome to PM me their thoughts on that matter.
Thanks,
TheStatusQuo