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?

[crypto]

No.

[nhammen]

Against the spirit of the game.

[Battousai]

Against the spirit of the game.

Agreed.

[Albert B. Rampage]

What would happen if no one read their role pms on day 1? You wouldn't be playing mafia anymore. More like a popularity contest.
One that you would lose.

[ortolan]

LOL

not that I particularly agree that mafia isn't already a popularity contest

[Raskol]

It's not a valid strategy because it's not even a strategy. It's a way to postpone your own entry into the game until night one/day two. If you don't know what your role is, you're not even playing the game.

Good thing it's so easy to prevent---mods just have to require that players confirm with their rolename via pm.

[Sopianae]

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.

[Kublai Khan]

Eh, the argument that convinced me not to do it from the last thread is that it's not a strategically sound strategy. One of the major tells I generally look for is a change of attitude/playstyle that happened over the night.

Also, assuming that a player who hasn't read his PM will play to his vanilla townie best...

If you have a mafia PM, you run the risk of lynching (one of) your partner(s). Thus putting your faction at a disadvantage.

If you have a power role PM, you eliminate the ability to breadcrumb early and you run the risk of being too townie. I generally believe it's better from power roles to make a few minor scummy mistakes during the game and not look the towniest.

If you have a 3rd party PM, you may have attracted too much attention to yourself.

[Incognito]

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.

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?

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...
The other quirk was that in pre-game, Glork came up with the idea that the game was probably all or close to all vanilla just by reading his role PM. That also helped us shape our strategy.

There are probably other reasons but these three are pretty good ones, I think.

[PokerFace]

If you don't know your win condition on day 1 then you are not truly playing to win. I'd like to see your face if you later got to night 1 and your win condition was "You win if you are lynched on day 1". Mafia is a team support unless you are a 3rd party role. You don't know your team or faction and can possibly hurt your side beyond repair during the time you don't know who you are.

If you are 3rd party attracting too much attention can get you night killed, so you need to know how to act, so read your pm especially considering the diversity of 3rd party win conditions and objectives. Whoops you were a day 1 lyncher and failed to get incognito lynched day 1. Looks like you loose

Also let's say you have a posting restriction. And you don't read your pm. Guess who's modkilled day 1 page 1? You!

[The Fonz]

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.

[Yosarian2]

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.

[Battousai]

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.

That's what I said...

Against the spirit of the game.

Agreed.

Stop showing off your vernacular skills please.

[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.

[animorpherv1]

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.

[Yosarian2]

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.

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.

[Pomegranate]

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?

[Pomegranate]

Also this:

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

[Battousai]

Only if more mods would require confirm via return PM and role confirmation...

[Sopianae]

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.

[SensFan]

I agree with Yos2.

If John hasn't read his Role PM, he's not playing any more than Bob is, and Bob didn't sign up for the game.