While we wait for our host to get up to date with what they're doing with a player who hasn't logged in for a month, I thought I'd get a head start on some IC posting since it's not part of actual gameplay itself.
Slightly difference since we've got a bunch of ToS players. I haven't played ToS, but I've watched people play it and it's pretty much the same as EM which I used to be decentish at.
The main differences between B12-style "slow forum mafia" and realtime mafia with short timed phases- Night phase gameplay is pretty much the same, except mafia have the opportunity to examine their reads as a group to a greater extent (i.e. speculate on roles)
- All of the methods for finding scum during the dayphase that you are used to still work, but the difference between finding scum and lynching scum is much greater on forums
- It's much easier to find players that are town on forums because they're ignorant at all times, which is hard to fake and harder to hide, unlike in realtime mafia where a player can at any time and as any role lose grasp of what's going on
- There is often no Night 0
With all that in mind, the main thing I think I need to give people with a ToS background is an outline of typical Day 1. The later the day it is, the more mechanical information is available and the more gameplay elements shared with realtime mafia will come to the fore. Day 1 is something which doesn't exist in 99.9%+ of EM setups and I believe the same is true of ToS.
Day 1Bay12 often does not have a Night 0.
This is a big deal.
Day 1 begins with town players knowing nothing but their own role. In setups which have scum, scum have more information on several players; all of their teammates, as well as their own role. Third parties typically have an information advantage in knowing that there is a third party in the setup and what the powers and objectives of that thirdparty are (their own role).
This is extremely bad for the town. Typically, there are more town players than non-town players, so theoretically the lynch should follow town interests. However, the town, as mentioned, is ignorant.
What this means, is that every player has a strong incentive to take control of the lynch and direct it against players that are not on their team. Scum and third parties know the members of their teams and therefore know which players are not on their team; scum in particular are interested in the 'powers' of other players roles but not the 'alignment' thereof. For town, the 'alignment' of other players roles is their paramount interest, because the goal of town players is to lynch players who do not have the town alignment.
That's all well and good, but there's no (or generally very little, if day powers or setup information exist) mechanical information on other players roles available, especially in terms of their alignment. As such, unlike other days where players can jump right into their gameplay, Day 1 tends to follow a more arduous process in terms of it's scumhunting.
- RVS
- Gut Reads ->Pressure
- Case Building
- Lynching on a Case
Steps 3 and 4 don't always happen, which is bad for town because it gives them less to work with on Day 2+, since any cases which don't end can be picked up, and any cases which do (because the player dies) can give insight into the players making them
[personally I don't believe that last part, but it is a common belief amongst players who've been around for longer than I have].
Step 1 is very important and very tedious. Since, by definition, nothing is happening when the game starts, players need to make something happen out of nothing. The way this is typically done is by asking each other questions which relate to the game in some way and shed some insight on the state of mind and thought process of the players. These questions will also serve as character reference material. Typically, the questions are accompanied with a vote directed at one of the players being asked a question. Since the town players know so little, these votes often have little conviction behind them. This step does not always need to be resolved through random voting accompanied by questions; you can look at Paranormal 25 on this board or some of Dariush's games (if I'm recalling correctly) as an example of alternatives. 'RVS' with it's implicit association of low impact questions is a common and useful method, however.
Typically, these questions will provide some insight into other players that you can use to make gut reads. This tends to cause players who have given responses which either appear to be working against the interests of the town, usually by giving away little or obviously manufactured information about the player, or which have failed to engage sufficiently in the activity of the previous step to have a lot of votes on them. Again, these votes are generally easy to move; however, they tend require the player with the votes on them to say something in order to move them. Ideally, this step will generate enough stated reasoning behind the voting of certain players to allow cases to be built.
Step 3 can proceed when a player(s) have actually been scumread by one or more (town-aligned) players. At this point,
a member of the town knows one or more players that they want to lynch. Lynching players tends to be quite hard to achieve on forums, because people have plenty of time to overthink things. As a result, the players who want to make a lynch happen need to make the player(s) they want lynched look more scummy than every other player. This means highlighting parts of a player's posts that make you think they are scum and explaining your reasoning such that other players follow along with and agree with you, and (to a lesser extent) arguing with players voting for someone who you don't want lynched (anyone other than your current target) about the merits of their current voting choice. This is the productive and useful part of Day1, because players will come off looking towny or scummy at the end of the day as a result of how they look during this step. Since scum know which players they do
not want to lynch from Step 1, they can have a hard time pretending to find someone they want to lynch. Players who do not engage in building cases will typically have to justify doing so (by explaining the current state of their reads) or will be seen as scummy. Similarly, doing a bad job in this step in terms of building a case which doesn't make sense to other players (e.g. if it is fallacious because the one building it is scum trying to lynch someone they know is not) will make a player look scummy.
Step 4, a player gets lynched. Having been lynched, their role (and alignment) is visible to all players; this means that most/all of the information that was available to them is now available to everyone else, who can reread their posts and posts about them in a new light.
Wuba or shakes should call me out if I've said something dumb. I've tried to keep my voice out of this as much as possible.