Improving your Town Play 101

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Moderators: Varanus, FM Game Moderators

Improving your Town Play 101

Postby Rickdaily12 » Thu May 09, 2019 8:34 pm

Hey everyone. I can see a general consensus among the player base about some rather shoddy handling of town play among a lot of you, including the ones saying this, so I figured it was probably about time to pitch in something nice and color coded to try to assist you in your future games as a member of the Town Alignment.

Before we get into anything specific, you will now notice the sheer size of this thread very quickly no doubt, hence why I'm about to warn you with the following bolded:
YES, this is a big thread. Your first word of advice: reading helps. If you don't read posts, FM might not be for you.
Try playing other mafia games where things move faster and easier to follow. Tabletop, video mafia, hell Discord Mafia is apparently a thing. Turbo is also a thing on Mafia Universe. Forum Mafia is a correspondence game, which means that games take much longer (at least weeks on average) and threads that breach 200 pages you'll probably notice is the norm here. If you don't want to read people's posts that are bigger than a one liner on a regular basis, you should either change that attitude or perhaps consider a different medium for mafia entirely. One that will require much less effort than this, because this medium always requires the most attention on a literary level than any other form of Mafia.

If you just want specific pointers, however, don't worry. Things will be nicely colored and bolded and spoilered for you in neat tabs.
Still wouldn't mind if you wanted to read the other stuff later though. Other ideas and tips and opinions can always help others, and at worst still wouldn't hurt people's gameplay.

Also, please note: this is STRICTLY a guide on how to play as Town. Henceforth, the perspective of these tips will always come from the point of view from a Town member. There will not be any hindsight tips on how to separate scum from this guide, as the whole point of this guide is to help properly teach you how to handle yourself to be Pro Town in the most pure way you can manage while actually helping out your team in catching the bad guys and to reduce the likelihood of you being mislynched.
Scum will, if good, ALWAYS try to do this and blend in. But the difference between the actions of a Town member in posting things on the thread and a Scum member is purity. The goal of this guide is to teach you how to think like a Town member and how to help out as one. Empathy helps. If someone sounds insincere, like they're not thinking the way a Town member would, they're probably in an awkward position and you need to figure out their intentions. Or, if you are the one in an awkward position, this guide will also try to help you avoid being killed and keep your teammates looking at the real bad guys.


On the subject of activity:
Spoiler: So this might come as a shock, but the more you're around, and the more things you do, the less people are going to want to lynch you. This might seem a bit duh at first, but the way you go about this might not be obvious to you if circumstances are out of your control.

For example, you might be someone who asks, "but Rick, what if I'm going to be at (insert irl excuse here) and can't post for 24 hours?" Which, to this, I'll remind you that this is a prod timer issue for you to possibly have to raise with your moderator, and not the other Town members in the game. You being away from the game for whatever personal reasons what have you can be addressed because this is still a game and you don't have to nolife this game if you don't want to. But if you want to be useful to your team in this game and don't want to replace out for your irl reasons, then you still need to try to help others whenever you can. You did commit to this game, after all, and if you weren't intending to, you shouldn't have joined.

So if you really intended to commit, don't feel like you'll be so far away that you have to replace out, and want to continue playing, try to remember the following things:

As a rule of thumb, the longer you're away from the thread, the more you must address when you come back.

Assuming people aren't shitposting all the time, there is a good chance someone has asked you a question while you were away- especially if you mentioned that you were going to be gone for a bit of time. So the first thing you should always do is address anyone who may have asked you to clarify something while you were gone, because it might become relevant later. Also, it evolves the discussion, and helps separate you from the scum who are just trying to avoid the thread. Which, if you recall, avoiding the thread is a thing Scum can and will do. It's a stall tactic. I often use it as Scum when Town is making mistakes without our misdirection. Hence, it's so important for you to be almost aggressively helpful and involved if you've been gone for a while. Scum often don't want to be in the spotlight if they don't have to. The more you insist on making up for your absence and putting risky ideas out there, really sticking your neck on the line while trying to advance things in a way that clears the air for Town, the more people might forgive you for being away, and Scum usually doesn't want to hide away if the thread hasn't dived into chaos and confusion, so trying to sort things like that will generally help make you look better while pissing off your enemies (as it's harder to justify avoiding the thread when things are calm and clear- they have to do something now to start confusion again).

If you are the kind of person who can only commit an hour or two to the game per day, relax. The above still applies to you. As long as you do address people when you're around and do things that progress the thread in a meaningful way (especially without having been asked to) with the short amount of time you have, then you're more help to your team than you realize. Above all else, don't make your lack of your appearance your team's problem. If you intend to do this, seriously, do everyone a favor and just do other things until you're able to commit some more. No one wants that person who only dodges the thread all game long. At that point, please, literally do anything else besides join a game you never intended to play.

If you CAN commit hours at multiple times each day, you're not immune to shooting yourself in the foot, however.

No one likes that person who posts 500 different posts in a day with garbage, useless posts. I'm talking people who, in that day, literally only posted maybe 10 things that were probably telling or helpful about themself or the other players in the game, and the other 490 posts were pretty much spam or out of game stuff. The game is already hard enough as is to read without you doing this. You can do this in other places. Chances are good that maybe half the other people in your game aren't your close friend, and the other half who aren't definitely do not appreciate this and will call you out for it.

You see, the thing is, if Scum aren't going to dodge the thread, then they're going to try to make it look like their posts are actually doing anything when their posts on their own generally don't help all that much upon closer scrutiny. Some might even make trashy posts themselves for the sole purpose of muddying up the thread a little bit. Which would normally be fine if it was Scum always doing it. But if you're the type who, during a tense session of questioning, starts distracting everyone with this kind of nonsense and detract from the whole attempt to catch someone up in a slip, you're the one who looks anti-town now. Now everyone is going to be reasonably pissed at you because why in the hell are you pulling this kind of crap when you could either add your thoughts on the current exchange, start a new exchange between yourself and someone else, or just allow things to continue without your interruption.

Now Scum can point to you and say "Hey, when [blah conflict] was happening earlier, [You] were being dumb trying to get everyone to stop talking about it" or the sort.

If you're going to be around all the time, you should be the kind of person keeping almost a kind of record book for the town, or the active lawyer at the witness stand, if you will. Keep rehashing what it is that the Town thinks that it knows, what your thoughts are about these things generally and when those thoughts update, and what you think people should be looking for in the others. If you're not going to do that, then go back and read what other people have said and press them when you think you've found some inconsistency in what they've said. Or ask them for more details if you think they're being too vague about something. Get people to say more things so you can draw out where they are either telling you something like it is for them, or they're constantly having to come up with something fake on the spot because you keep poking at them.

If all of that sounds like too much work for you, then fine. Do less in the thread, then. If you don't plan on helping advance the active discussion, you can at least help by having 10 useful posts in your day with less than 5 of garbage useless crap, as opposed to the alternative. It makes things a much easier read and will put more focus on the scum. As long as you're around and helping when you feel like it, it's better to at least take a step back when you're done doing that, rather than giving your teammates a headache trying to read you and all the trash you've left for them to clean up in your posts.

Regardless, whether you are generally active or not, don't be afraid to be controversial.

You're a Town member. It's therefore on you to force the Mafia/Scum to make posts they otherwise don't want to have to make. No one else but you and your team can make them do this, and you have no one else but you to rely on to help handle others who don't want to engage in the thread in this way. People who are never around are useless. People who are around but don't help are just as useless. They either are Scum or help the real Scum disappear while you're left looking at bad Town ruin the game. So, keep in mind that there will be people you play with who don't understand why proper respect of activity as Town helps them help their team win the game for you. But a lot of the time, you will also meet other Scum who understand that you have useless teammates and they will try to take advantage of this as well.

Ultimately, the best you can do, active or not, is to just address the most that you can. ONLY post when you have something to say that is relevant to the game. It puts pressure on the others to do the same, and makes people want to not lynch you over others when you're the one doing it and others aren't doing it instead.

On the subject of gamethrowing:
Spoiler: It honestly depresses me that I even have to make a post describing why this is not okay to do. Yes, this is a game. Yes, Forum Mafia is something you should have fun doing. But this kind of behavior isn't fun for anyone, and you have to understand why that is. People might be jokey about how they carry themselves because they're relaxed around people they know and enjoy playing around. But a CORE ASSUMPTION that people are going to use when you play this game with others is that you will always try to play to your win conditions. So doing absolutely ANYTHING counter to your win conditions for the blatant purpose of not caring about the consequences is a dick move, plain and simple.

Don't try to justify what you did. If you have done this, own it up to it. The Moderator of your game not caring what you did isn't an excuse for it either. Because let's face it, this community's moderators are disgustingly lax about rule breaking to astronomical levels (there are reasons so many people on this site are banned from other places, and it's not because people aren't breaking the same rules they have over here), but it doesn't make gamethrowing behavior from you and your blatant lack of caring about it any less disgusting. It's not the point of this thread, either.

If respect matters you to at all, do not gamethrow.
If you even have to ask if what you're doing is throwing, it probably is. If it isn't, then it is guaranteed to be stupid.
Don't do it on purpose. Don't think about doing it. Don't even think about thinking it.


For Town, this INCLUDES but is NOT LIMITED TO: delibrately attempting to kill confirmed/likely Town; self-hammering as Town; allowing or getting known/likely Town killed (if you have the power to stop it) without absolute guarantee that the Town wins in so doing this; openly claiming to be a Scum Role when it obviously/likely will get you killed in the process by the Town; and my personal favorite, is giving zero shits in trying to convince the Town to not lynch/kill you when they are seriously considering lynch(kill)ing you at a crucial game-tipping moment that can result in your team otherwise losing or likely losing if you allow it to happen.

No one cares if you think your team consists of idiots. Bastardized/Modified win conditions do not count. If people are asking you to help out as a Town member, and your response is to desert them in this way, you are just as scum as the Scum players are in the game, except minus the actual role card.


Be a Town member. Try to win as a Town member. Play the damn game. And if you refuse, you probably won't get punished for it, but please never play again anyway unless you repent so hard that even a philosophical skeptic can believe that it is 100% certainly the case that you meant that apology (and they think you can't trust anything with 100% accuracy). So yeah, just don't. And if you had to open this spoiler because you wanted to know how to not gamethrow, shame on you in the first place.

If you want to gamethrow, replace the hell out instead. Please never join another game again until you clean up this blatant disregard of the game integrity, because no one wants to deal with it.

On the subject of anti-town behavior:
Spoiler: No, seriously, try to avoid doing any of these. They don't help the Town at all, first of all. It doesn't mean only scum will do it, but it does slow things to a crawl purely because you resorted to it, and it makes you look worse and more likely to be lynched than other people.

Don't sheep. Yes, this is still a thing. If Player X says all sorts of wacky stuff and all you do is walk in and say "oh and basically just look at Player X if you wanna see where I'm at", then you're just openly admitting being lazy and useless when compared to X. You're offering people an excuse to kill you over X 100% of the time, because X will do things like contribute and poke people and offer hir two cents more often than you. No one finds an echo useful.
At the very least, if you plan on saying that you agree with someone, give a bit more reasons as to why. Come on. Two people are rarely the same on every detail. X might have said other stuff you disagree with, go for that. Build on stuff you think X might not have mentioned that makes whatever idea stated more obvious to go for as Town. But if all you do is say "read X for my contribution", then you're just wind in the air, with a vote. You're more expendable. And we don't want you to be mislynched, right?
X might not even be Town anyway, so there's always that to consider before gluing your lips to people's asses. You always want to look unique no matter what.

Don't fluff. If you have nothing useful to say, say nothing. It's okay to include a jokey thing here and an image/gif there. Whole posts devoted to bullshit is an entirely different story. If anything less than 80% of your posts are strictly useful to the game and telling about you, you are being too useless to the Town.
You can't have it both ways. Either you can be around to contribute to the game discussion, or you're too busy and people can wait for you to stop being busy. But if you're here and not contributing by posting trash all the time, you're making the lives of scum all the easier by making the thread almost too unbearable to even attempt to read.
It's not helping anyone, not even yourself. Post your cat gifs on other places if you have to.

Avoid spamming. For the same reason as the above. Your posts might not be huge, but it runs into the same problem if you're the type who likes to post 5-20 times in a row rather than one to three nice bigger posts addressing previous people or newer ideas as they develop.
Before anyone gets offended at me saying this, I'll admit being guilty of this too sometimes, lol.
At the same time, though, it's against the rules in most places, and more importantly, helps the thread look smaller than it really is and people might be more willing to not resort to thread dodging because the size of everything intimidates them. Generally, if I know I just made a post like 5 minutes ago, I try not to post again unless the issue is time sensitive or otherwise completely in contradiction to a recently prior post I made (or an edit.) Or, the post I made previously in the thread was several hours ago and no one has posted since then.
But yeah, generally, your posts shouldn't be 15-20 (or more) posts of any page with a time stamp of smaller than an hour total for all posts from start to finish in that page. Because, come on, that's just excessive. Just make a bigger post at that point and spare people the panic of multiple unnecessary pages since their last check-in.

Don't habitually prodge. See "on the subject of Activity" earlier in this guide with an obligatory eyeroll and sigh.gif if you skipped it.

Avoid OMGUSing. Oh, I know. It can be brutal sometimes to remember not to do this, and you have to try that much harder and be that much more patient to make sure you never ever get caught dead while doing this. There are real possibilities that the person who just voted/scum read you is in fact scum themselves, but the majority of the people surrounding you are Town as well, and Town get a pass for being stupid because, face it- they're Town members. They don't know enough about you, that could very well be why they resorted to voting you in the first place.
So all OMGUSing is going to do is piss them off. Scum reading them for scum reading you isn't a valid reason to SR/vote someone unless they go about it in a sketchy way, but even then. I might just be the type of person shy to let a vote fly. Normally when I vote someone, as Town or Mafia, I'm probably going to stick with it unless I have a solid reason to move it. But even if you're the type of person to let your vote fly every hour (and be the nightmare of Forum Mafia moderators everywhere), when someone votes you, right then and there is a good moment to reconsider everything you've said and done and ask how your actions might have irked them. Try to be diplomatic. Try to really understand if their progression on you makes sense. If it really doesn't add up to you, then fine, go ahead and consider voting them, but it usually requires a bit more digging and investigating than within one hour of their vote on you.
Self-preservation votes are never OMGUS, by the way. If the survivor of a EoD wagon voted their counterwagon, this is always strictly NAI and never OMGUS.
At any rate, if you try to be helpful and address anyone who votes you in a logical and thoughtful way if the wagon on you is unfounded, people will generally be more sympathetic and usually will suggest other lynches anyway. That is at least usually the case unless your Town play this game has been quite poor already up to this point.

Avoid IIoAing. Yeah, Player X is dead. Yeah, that means there's one less Town member in the game. If you're thinking about stopping your post here, then either don't stop typing just yet, or just delete the post entirely. Your posts need to contain more than just a constant restating of facts that the Town already knows. Literally anyone can post stuff like this, and it won't sound any different from any alignment coming from anyone else's mouth.
Include your thoughts on what you think it all means. If Player X just died, who does it implicate as Town or Scum, and why does it do this?
And, especially if the game you're playing in has an open role list: now that Player X is dead with that role, where are the Scum likely to be hiding in the claims now?
If you're ever going to rehash information the Town already knows, it should be because it hasn't been done for a very long time (at least an entire Day phase), and if you're ever going to do it, then right then is a fantastic time to try to give your most provoking thoughts on the implications of that information. Really go out and hit everyone with your strongest idea or tinfoil of who you think can be lying under the circumstances and how that death tells you all of this.
Otherwise, IIoA is probably one of the easiest indications of Scum trying to blend in with the Town. You said a thing that everyone saw. Woohoo. And of course you didn't add any other thought or spice to that post that really puts your ass on the line, which shows intimidation to be in the spotlight. It generally doesn't look good coming from anyone.

Don't reaction test. This is a no-no. They don't work. It's too easy for the person you're trying to "reaction test" by whatever bullshit you're about to pull out of your ass to be too confused in what you're trying to do that they're either going to set you off or you interpret what their attempt to answer your question was incorrectly. Also, if you think these ever work, then you grossly misunderstand what Scum are trying to do when they play the game.
First, remember that Scum try harder than Town to avoid giving away information. Town are trying to figure out any clues people give away about the game, whereas the Scum are doing everything in their power to avoid saying anything they don't want you to know. Also, if you're all like "I know something, I know X is the case" and give away that you know nothing in your stunt by being wrong (you're dealing with the INFORMED minority) Scum are immediately going to know you're pulling something whereas Town don't.
Which brings us to the second part of the problem. Town still sometimes decides that it wants to lie to you. Or play along with stunts like this and see where it goes. Then you pounce and either try to get that person lynched for "confirming" what you thought you knew, and/or retract whatever claim of information you had and say that you think the way the person responded to you was scummy. If you picked a bad person to reaction test and they turn out to be Town, you just signed a suicide pact between 2 Town.
It doesn't matter how likely you think this person is to be scum. ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE CITIZEN. DO NOT DO THIS!
ESPECIALLY DO NOT DO "REACTION TESTS" THAT LAST LONGER THAN 24 IN-THREAD HOURS!

Citizen is too garbage to believe you to be after you got a Town member killed. It sounds way too typical, especially if there are Neutrals in your game. It's also harder for you to prove, so Town is going to kill you for doing something so stupid when you could have just kept being a Citizen, waiting for the actual PRs to solve the game for you.
And, if your "Test" is something you think you can walk back after consecutive day phases without being murdered, you're being adorably bad at the game still.
At the end of the day, remember that more than half of you are Town, and that just assuming someone is scum and pulling this bullshit rarely works. On the off chance that you're right, you still might die first for it anyway and it's a 1 for 1 trade for a scum member. But more often than not, especially lately in our games, these backfire spectacularly and just result in you and your target (who is Town) in being chain lynched, and Mafia looking all the more better for it.
So just don't do reaction tests.

Avoid claiming your role. There are other ways to avoid getting yourself killed, which this guide will touch upon later. All claiming your role does if you survive this attempt on your life is tell the Scum who to screw around with if you live, and who to blame for your death if you die.
When you claim your role, know that unless you are a role that can self-confirm by the next Day Phase, Scum can be in your shoes lying about who they are.
So claiming your role in these cases is counterproductive, as it wouldn't change by itself if you're telling the truth, and Scum can use this information against you later.
If you ARE a role that can self-confirm, then shame on you. Mishandling yourself to try to draw Town into lynching you is NOT a good play. Don't do this.
Claiming your role will hurt the Town if Witch is alive; if there isn't one, confusing other Town into wanting to kill you is still bad play.


Don't self-meta. Especially, do NOT self-meta to argue that you're Town without being prompted to. I know this one always confuses people because a lot of people like to throw meta at each other and meta rebuttals, but if you're going to allow this and do this yourself then you render every meta argument you ever make as pointless.
Why, you might ask? Well, it's a very simple concept to grasp.
THE ENTIRE POINT TO META ARGUING IS THE POINT THAT [PLAYER X] IS NOT AWARE/ABLE TO STOP DOING [ACTION Y] AS [ALIGNMENT Z].
Too often I see so many arguments getting winded and dumb between people over the discourse of meta, and this point keeps tripping people up. It makes my eyes roll hard both as an in-game player and as a spectator. You cannot, especially when unprompted, argue how you are locked town for blah meta reasons. Especially when they only require interactions in the thread only. If you are fully aware of what you do as Town and how you behave as Town, you directly imply knowledge of how to act as Scum and can at least somewhat mimic it.
The moment anyone says "I'm Town if I do this, and I did this, proving that I'm Town", everything they say after this is bullshit. Even if it's true, even if it's genuine. Aside from being fakeable as hell, it's also a circular logic fallacy, which is a no-no. The reason any rational person gets tripped up in response to something as crazy as this is because you just took the time to admit you have knowledge on how to pass yourself as Town when you are Scum, and once we hit that point everything you say about your meta means nothing.
Which also brings as to a sub add-on:
Don't make someone else self-meta. At that point you're just being a jerk and you should admit not having any valid reason to read that person anymore.
Just let it go. Null read them and revisit that person when you have something more alignment indicative to read them on. Don't put them through this crap, it has a stupid amount of potential to launch into a nasty TvT suicide pact. Just save yourself a huge amount of suffering, whether you're the one doing it, or encouraging others to do it.

NEVER GIVE UP. Compare and contrast with "on the subject of Gamethrowing".
You have a responsibility to your fellow Town members to try everything humanly possible to convince them not to kill you, and what you think Scum are actively plotting to do at every moment that your friends continue gleefully murdering you.
It doesn't matter how bad it looks.
It doesn't matter how wrong everyone surrounding you is.
They're wrong because they're uninformed. This happens. Try to consider who else could be at fault if your assumed suspects are innocent as well. These words can be your last.
But the moment you give up and throw in the towel, you effectively guarentee that you die, and you effectively join the scum team at that point.
You never know. If you try hard enough, you just might change their minds and avoid your death after all. That will almost never happen if you just give up. (Especially if your game includes Neutrals who lose on death. Only people about to lose get this hopeless. You will never be them- unless it's LyLo, and giving up then is straight up throwing.)

If you avoid all of these behaviors, you make it harder to be mislynched, and more likely that the Town doesn't lose upon your death due to pointless drama.

On the subject of pro-town things that are easy to miss:
Spoiler: Sometimes when things get so heated in a Day Phase, you might be so focused on this conflict or that exchange between two players that you completely forget in all the commotion that something happened that really impacts the game. Or, maybe you have information that changes the outcome of what needs to be done this Day Phase and you want to make sure the lynch hits more accurately instead of the conflict in front of you. Here are some things to remember to do every Day Phase to reduce mislynching.

If someone just flipped Scum, ISO the crap out of them. Look carefully at what they said. Who were they interacting with? Who were they ignoring? How did they progress over the course of the game if we're almost in endgame by now (Day 4 or later)? Are they likely to have buddied Mafia, or distanced in their interactions with certain people? Or, if they were Neutral, did they give any indication of who they thought the other scum were?
It's really easy to forget to remember to always do this, especially if the scum member that just died has nothing to do with an argument that recently exploded between two currently living players. What is so important to remember, though, is that even if that conflict does have a scum in it or not, the dead scum are going to have a better idea than you are about where the others are hiding, and so it's important that you always start asking questions there before proceeding to look at the people fighting in front of you.
And, if any conflict currently happening involve two members not in the Mafia, you can bet your ass that Mafia will want you looking at those two all day long.

VCAs are your best friend. If one hasn't been done this Day Phase, go do one! ESPECIALLY do this if Scum just died. But even if Town has died more recently, it helps to ISO the Moderator and see how people have been voting. Mafia are trying to make you look bad by getting you to lynch the wrong people, and they want to look more innocent when lynches happen, whether by being on lynches that hit Scum when they can't avoid it, or typically by not being on the wagon that lynched Town. But their primary intentions are always to get Town to lynch Town at the start of each Day Phase whenever it can be helped.
So look at the Moderator's vote counts and observe how people's votes have changed with each update. What are people doing? Does anything look odd?
Pay special attention to conflicts between two currently living players in the thread. How have they been voting?
Is there someone who has been voting with someone they're scum reading, but hasn't explained why they suddenly agree with their scum read on who to vote?
Are there ever points where the same group of people eventually start voting on the same wagon more often than you notice? Are they confirmed Town?

Sometimes you might catch the occasional Mafia member bussing their scum partners just a little bit too hard and suddenly pull back once the pressure mounts up. Other times you might discover someone who seemed to know a little too well how the wagon was going to flip. But ultimately, any of the above three highlights are the most telling points that something wrong is happening. And, above all else, remember one final golden rule:
A person who successfully survived their lynch by voting their counterwagon is ALWAYS going to be NAI for having done that.
So if you're scum reading them, you can't mention this talking point. If they were Town, they should be trying to live; you need something else for SAI stuff, or back off for now.
Doing VCAs will be one of the best pieces of information that unfolds during a Day Phase that anyone can ask for, and too often people don't do this when they need to. Sometimes Mafia are being a little too obvious, too clumsy with their votes, but if all people see are the end product and not the whole picture, then it can be easily missed.

If someone tries to impose a gladiator on a conflict without good reason, you want to pressure that person. You ESPECIALLY want to do this if the person in question isn't confirmed to be Town yet. TvT conflicts happen all the time, but Mafia love when they do, because they can more easily let you keep looking at that conflict waiting for you to decide if you're going to kill into that conflict or egg someone into demanding that someone in that duo/trio/whatever dies.
If people don't have hard evidence that there is Scum in a conflict, people shouldn't be eager to lynch in the issue. Short of having a parity cop check or a confirmed Town which confirms a liar in the pair, if all two people are doing is having a heated argument that really flares up, it could just be temper and ego. At the end of the day, it isn't alignment indicative purely on that basis alone, despite how distracting it just was. Town aren't flawless either, obviously, so sometimes two people just really derail the thread with their argument but turn out to be on the same side. Chances are, you aren't going to know if that conflict has scum unless you have direct evidence to the contrary.
So if all of a sudden, someone shouts "someone in that pair is getting lynched today!" (especially if the Day Phase isn't ending for 24 or more hours...)
You should probably ask that person why they're so certain that the conflict isn't TvT in the first place. Their answer will probably be at least telling.
Keep an open eye out for people who disappeared once the argument started, or just sort of let everything explode out of control and more or less encourage people to take sides on a hypothetical lynch in that pair. Anyone without a solid reason as to why the conflict is certain to be not TvT should have great reasons for it, or looked at for pushing this.

If you're ever at a loss for what to do next, and the thread is stalling, go poke someone! It's better than no one making a post in the thread all day long. By keeping discussion going and engaging people, you force everyone to think about the events that have happened and the next logical step forward. The more people are being forced to give their opinion, the more you get a sense of how people want the day to resolve and what should happen next based on that.
You also put Scum on the spot and force them to come up with something. They know not to come back to you with nothing- it'll imply their being okay with the thread being in dead silence while not giving a damn about it, and they might come up with something that really makes that clear.
Be a pest. Constantly put yourself out there for everyone to see. Demand people who lurk to talk to you. It's better than the thread dying at a standstill.
This is something you're constantly going to want to do especially in SFMs or any game where someone takes an action and the players wait to see if the Moderator will confirm the action or not. Looking at you, Day Vigilantes. Also, while on this topic:
Don't do anything requiring Mod Confirm (like day vig) which effectively silences the thread if you're not being serious about it.
It kills the thread. People can't progress until they realize you were just lying about it. You're a Town member, so act like a damn Town member. If you kill the thread, you're killing your team. Don't pull this useless bullshit or you only have yourself to blame for issues after. If you're going to do it, do it, otherwise let things progress the way they have been. Otherwise you're just eating away at precious time and it's going to cost you later. Also, it's a dick move and everyone's going to get rightfully pissed at you for it.

On the off chance you know something about a conflict, you have a duty to resolve it. Cops, I'm looking at you in particular.
I get it, it's tough sometimes. It's Day 2 or 3, and there's still so much of the whole game left to go. But you're watching people really go after each other's throats. And if you have anything night related that tells you whether one of the involved people are Town or Scum, and you don't want to make a claim to prove it, you still need to appropriately handle the situation. And if you don't, people are going to ask why you didn't later.
There are ways of dispersing with the issue without claiming if you want to wait it out a bit longer. The fact of the matter is, though, the Mafia is going to get involved with this conflict one way or the other, and you owe it to your team to make sure that the wrong person doesn't get lynched. Odds are, if you don't get involved, someone is going to.
If you know the conflict has Town, you really need to push people to cool their heads. If you don't do this, people are just going to doubt your claim later once you out your results and they notice that you didn't take any clear steps to examine the crux of the issue.
And if you knew the conflict has Scum, people are DEFINITELY going to wonder why you didn't claim your role then and there. Really, unless all of the Town Protectives are dead, you really don't have an excuse for not getting involved if you knew this was the case.
Hiding your role from the Mafia is important when it can be helped, but you have to stop Town from getting mislynched if you can help it. It isn't worth trying to guess all the Mafia by waiting to see who pushes your green checks the hardest, because odds are, you're going to guess wrong and find yourself in an awkward spot for that later- and if you slept on a red check the same day a mislynch happened, you're going to get yourself killed no matter how hard you plead with Town not to do it.

Process of Elimination requires people to both Whitelist and Blacklist. Anyone who spends too much time telling others to stop wasting their time looking for people to scum read or town read for any reason needs a reminder of this and a smack in the head to go with it.
The fact is, when people do reads and tell you both who they think is the most Town or Scum, you have a crucial piece of information to go on about the scum when they finally die, or if a Town member died when more obvious targets existed, they must have said something about this that either was so close to being the right thing (they were night killed to remove pressure) or so disgustingly wrong that their Town reads should be examined more (they were night killed to frame their incorrect scum reads).
So, anyone who tells you not to do X reads of others has the wrong idea of why this kind of information helps.
Within reason, of course. Reads that don't go into too much detail OR come within 24 hours of the game having started are probably worthless and the person looks opportunistic giving them. It doesn't make them scum, however- it just makes them bad at giving believable or accurate reads.
In particular though, aside from all of the above points, if all else fails, keeping a good track of a solid PoE and where everyone else stands with it is one of the final lines of defense the Town has for open information. Again, you will irritate Mafia by having to come up with it on the spot, so it is worthwhile to see where people stand with others.

The point is, even after reading all this, you will probably find yourself in tough spots in a Day Phase anyway. But keeping yourself on top of these simple tips can help keep you on track to winning, or at least make it harder for you to lose. So do try to follow this as often as you can.

On the subject of games with night actions (not VFMs):
Spoiler: Night Actions are wonderful. As a member of the Town, they're probably some of the most important pieces of information about other people that you're ever going to get about the game as it plays out in front of you. People can always lie to you about who or what they are and who they apparently trust during the Day Phase, but what you learn about others and what they learn about you during the Night Phases are much more difficult to fabricate in a believable way. They're powerful, they're good. Sometimes, a game can be turned on its head on the point of a single choice during the Night, and as always, here is what you need to remember about Night Phases and your actions during the night.

First off: No matter what, every Night Phase, you should always read the thread, even if you have no ability. Usually I like to take a bit of a walk after a lynch flip and stew on the information I've been given about the person who just died. After having done that, I go back and reread the person who flipped and the people most likely to be telling the truth, and the most likely liars, based on the flip I just saw.
The usual things you want to be looking for are that person's counterclaimers. Who is more likely to be telling the truth, or lying?
And as always, if you suspect that person to be Mafia, look for potential teammates. It'll probably give you a smooth idea of what to do next.

Now, for a bit of lead-up. The Town should always have various resources available at its disposal at all times. Each individual night action given to the Town probably helps fill some puzzle piece or other with time, but generally, the reason why the Town is weaker during the Night Phase is due to the lack of ability that it has to coordinate within itself to make logical and collective choices and a plan of attack against the Scum. However, as is usual in Standards and SFMs, there are typically more Town members with Night Actions than there are Scum members, and with a bit of careful direction with some smart consideration about the possibilities in front of you, you can really put the Scum in uncomfortable positions no matter what they try to do to stop you. There are plenty of advantages that Town can use when the conditions are right, and when properly exploited, Night Actions can usually win you the game alone when correctly used at your disposal.

Hence, it's important to understand, that solid Night Planning gives Town an advantage during the Night. A balanced Scum team can certainly try to disrupt your plan, but a good Night Planner can usually account for this and make disruption all the more harder for them if they're careful about the execution of each plan.
Until Mafia Deception is ruled out, never give exact Town Investigative targets. Always give a handful of good targets instead.
Until Witch is ruled out, never claim your role. Do not mass claim until Witch is dead. Refer to each faction or role loosely instead.
Unless Confirmed Town is about to outright win the game, only give a list of Town Protective targets. WIFOMing is ALWAYS more effective.
Most importantly of all, NEVER, EVER, tell a Town Killing role what to do. These actions are ALWAYS best said after the fact.


The goal here is twofold. Start by making a list of likely Town (these guys get targeted by Town roles which support others), a list that you want to force the Scum to reconsider risking firing into. Odds are good that if they have something like three Town members they really want to kill, but they suspect two Town Protectives are alive and those three members are in that list, you're going to force them to start shooting elsewhere or risk outright losing their factional kill to a Protective.
Problem is, they have nowhere else good to shoot. You gave the list of likely Scum suspects to the other Town roles (these guys get targeted likely by the likes of either Cops or otherwise hostile Town roles). These people are going to be subjected to all kinds of prodding that results in more information being handed to the Town, which could either kick them into the list of likely Town, or confirms them as Scum to be dealt away with next Day phase.
Everyone else in the middle of both lists are left, which also probably contains scum that the Mafia may or may not know is on their side. Shooting into here is likely only going to help Town solve the game even faster than they would normally, which slowly but surely tightens the noose around the scum's necks even faster. They have to either kill Town they could have mislynched at some later point in the game, or worse, hit a Scum member, which increases the amount of time that Town has to catch them even more.
Finally, by being vague about the exact targets as possible, you give Scum the maximum chances of blowing their lifesaving actions.
Your targets given should be accurate, especially for the supportive Town roles. These are the people Scum are going to want dead. You don't want to make it clear who should ultimately get the Protect or help, but all roles that can assist in this way should try to make their target as unclear as possible to scare the scum away from risking into this group without suffering for it later. It's a tightrope you have to walk with ease, while also making sure there's enough variables to protect you.

Obviously if there are probably fewer protective roles, this list should be smaller, and vice versa. You don't want Scum to try killing your strong Town without risking getting caught or losing their kill. You also don't want to be obvious about your suspects either, or innocent Town might be perfectly framed into a mislynch and the Scum can run you in circles because you were careless. Ultimately, you want both lists to be big enough so that Scum can't disrupt the Town's actions, while small enough so that each role directed has solid choices to make and to make choosing targets for the Scum difficult enough to fail more often than not. You want to maximize the success of the Town's actions while reducing the effectiveness of the Scum's.

Remember, even if you are just a Citizen, you can attempt to make Night Plans like this. If it seems reasonable, sensible, that it sounds logical enough and could work out well enough to narrow things further for your team, then even if the Town can't trust you as a person that wins with them, they might trust that listening to your plan sounds pure enough to give it a try.
They have reason to do it, for the pure reason that a well coordinated Town will have an easier time winning than one that stumbles around, each on their own.


A couple more things you should know for games with Night Actions...


First, if there is a massive number of Town versus a Mafia with 1 Kill Power, DO NOT LYNCH!!! I'm talking about games with Town having more than a two-thirds majority, E.G (9+) v (4 or less) and there are no other roles on the side of Scum that kill any faster every Night Phase than the usual factional kill. In these kinds of games, Mafia will WANT YOU TO MISLYNCH TOWN, and since there are so many of you, YOU PROBABLY WILL.
In these kinds of games, when Town has a ridiculously stupid number of players on their team versus a laughably small number of Mafia, AND Mafia cannot kill a Town filled with Power Roles up to the brim in a reasonable amount of time without Town mislynching at least 3 days in a row, the better play here is to ALWAYS GO FOR MORE NIGHT PHASES. By going for more Night Phases, your Power Roles outclass the Mafia outright, gaining more information that confirms themselves and the other Town members, and if you're lucky- they might also ruin the Mafia's factional kill.
TIP: If Mafia has to kill 7 Town members in a row before they win, then by confirming all other Town, you guarentee they lose.
So, the winning play here is to /vote No Lynch a few times. Use those night actions. That way, once people mass claim, you have more information to go off of, and Mafia will have to fabricate more information that likely either gets them killed, or Town confirmed enough of themselves that the Mafia get caught with enough time anyway.
Instead, if you start madly lynching people without any information, you don't pressure the Mafia at all and lose the one advantage over them you have: NUMBERS!


Second, once a Mass Claim happens, remember to ask: Does each person's given actions make sense? Anyone with Night Actions should constantly be trying to produce a good result that helps bring the Town closer to solving the game. No matter what role people claim to be, they should be playing that role in some capacity that makes enough sense to help out the Town to the best of their ability.
For example: Town Protective is trying at every point to protect someone the most likely to be Town, the most likely to be attacked, and to cause the scum the most harm by living and having the Mafia factional kill ruined on. So, is this Protective causing exactly these things to happen? Are each of their targets likely to have done this each time?
Is this Town Investigative scum hunting? Were they trying to pressure people and testing responses to try to gather more information on better targets? Were they backing off a little on targets that they realized were Town? Was each target intended to have the maximum effectiveness of narrowing down the scum list?
Is this Citizen trying to help the other Town choose better night targets? Are they using their voice and vote to pressure the Mafia into making posts or slips they don't want to make? Or is their claim just as bad as any other claimed Citizen?
Consider how every person chose their actions for this game and how they've responded to information they claim to have learned. Once you have what they've told you, go back and skim through each phase and how they claim to have interacted with the game. Does their story check out?
It won't always be the case. Some people are just weak when they play Town. But generally, the weaker responses to this question are more likely to contain the scum.
And you only have this type of advantage of directly comparing what people say to what they've done when most people get Night Actions.

In short, as you can see, Night Actions are broken when you have access to them. If you play your cards right with them and keep the Town thinking about them in the right way, you have the power to win the game outright handed to you as long as you're careful and thoughtful about it.

On the subject of your particular role card:
Spoiler: These tips will be given in general whenever they apply. Hybrid roles (such as Lookout or Transporter) should obviously consider strategies from multiple factions, not just their core alignment subfaction wherever these tips are applicable.

If you got Citizen, OR pretty much any other Town role card, then remember that this entire guide given to you so far applies in full force. No matter what kind of role you have in the Town, you should be aggressively using your voice and your vote as though they are the only tools they have at your disposal when dealing with other people. For some of you, they are exactly the only tools you have at your disposal, and by acting like they are the only tools you have at your disposal, you irritate the Scum into participating in the game in ways that might make them uncomfortable enough to make mistakes, and by acting like a Citizen, convince the Mafia to try to get you lynched rather than attack you at night.
If you're good at playing your cards and making your arguments the way Town would, then you should have an advantage in every conflict between yourself and Scum, because every case of this will be you making pure arguments versus them making fabricated ones. The harder you try to push Town agenda, the more believable you will sound, and the harder it will be to lynch you, which screws Mafia twice as hard if you are actually a Citizen (you remove their claim space from them).
Actual Citizens, DO NOT fakeclaim your role. Anything you fabricate is almost certainly going to be realized to be fake by the actual Scum. Worse, when you retract it and end up going with Citizen, you will look just like Scum who might have to readjust the things they say when they get caught in a lie, which makes you a prime lynch candidate and virtually nearly impossible to clear using night actions. Actual Power Roles will also frown at you for seemingly trying to blend in with them as a attempt to avoid being a lynch candidate, which is bad purely because only Scum would try as hard as you just did to do this.
In addition, Actual Citizens, DO NOT avoid the thread or wait for your win or loss. You have a job to do just as everyone else does. While no one expects you to do anything at Night to contribute to the game and help Town win using those tactics, by exhausting everything you can during Day Phases to try to hunt the scum or otherwise pressure them, you make it more likely that your team looks at other scum roles instead of you. By sitting around and avoiding the thread, again, you look like Scum trying to hide while people lynch others who look exactly like you.
Actual Citizens, you have a duty to the Town to look so obvious that Town has to be reluctant to kill you. Everyone knows that not having a Night Action sucks sometimes and would be so much more fun, but you need to suck in that letdown and still give it your all, because winning as Citizen sucks a whole lot less than losing as one.

If you are a Town Investigative role, your job is the same as Citizens, except: You need to be subtle. When you die, your information dies with you. Play like a Citizen, and try to make any changes in your progression sound logical "on reread" as you gain more information.
If you're holding onto a Green Check, or rather, information that means that you have more reason to believe that someone is or more likely to be Town based on what you know, you need to somewhat allude to this knowledge. If you don't change your perspective at all and continue trying to get your target lynched, you look less believable when you claim. As one of the easier groups of Town PRs to fake, you must avoid this and look more believable versus other would-be CCers.
A tip I might be able to give you, is that it might actually help to approach the situation like you would as Scum buddying other scum, and lie a little. Come up with just about anything you can find as an excuse to back off the person even mildly. If you were really calling for that green check's head earlier, it's fine if you even continue scum reading them to look less obvious, as long as you come up with a stronger reason to scum read someone else even harder and try to get that person lynched instead. As long as you take active steps to lead the Town away from lynching your Green Checks while believably hiding from the Mafia, you're probably clear.
If you're holding onto a Red Check, then 9.5 times out of 10, the time to claim your role is right now. Or rather, if you have information that all but proves with certainty that you have found someone who is NOT aligned with the Town, you must claim to have found that person. It is unlikely that death tunneling that person without claiming your role will save you if you're correct about your check, whereas claiming your role now makes it more likely that the Town can take steps to protect you.
Having been discovered to have been sitting on a red check (unless the circumstances are VERY extreme, I do not say this lightly at ALL) will almost certainly get you killed instead. Almost every Town will immediately point out to you that a 1 for 1 trade is in their (and by proxy, your) better interest to have claimed right there and then, so unless your excuse is amazing, I'd highly recommend against this.
Otherwise, just play like a Citizen and you should be able to do rather well for yourself.

If you are a Town Protective role, your job is the same as Citizens, except: Don't be a big damn hero. Ask questions, engage with people. You're mildly less easier than a Citizen to lynch if push comes to shove in the eyes of Scum, but you are still a prime kill target at night, and by being the role that does the protecting, you have no one else to rely on but yourself. Try to be a Citizen, only ever so SLIGHTLY less aggressive, where you're still pressuring people and being open enough to pass as Citizen, but not so provocative to the point that Mafia doesn't care about you being a Citizen to stab you anyway.
Your role truly shines at Night. Are there people provoking Mafia worse than you? Are there any confirmed Town? (If so, your job is pretty easy) There aren't a whole lot of dos and don'ts with this subfaction. As long as you have good reasons for either believing your target was Town and likely to be attacked when called to explain, you should be relatively clear. Avoid protecting any scummy Town whose death would help solve the game faster and you should be mostly fine. Even if you aren't scum reading those people, if the general consensus that everyone else is doing it, then you can probably bet on that person not dying to a night kill anyway, and so you'll have better targets.
Be careful to not protect anyone you're scum reading. I probably don't have to explain why too much. It would just look weird to everyone else.
Otherwise, just remember that you're the other primary Power Role fakeclaim that Scum would go for, so just be as obvious Town as a Citizen would and continue trying to convince everyone that if you do have a challenger for your spot, it clearly isn't you here.

If you are a Town Support role, your job is the same as Citizens, except: Nah, I don't have much more to add about this, though this might partly be due to lack of my experience as this particular subalignment. Play like Citizen.
I will, at the very least, have this to add about your Night Action: Chances are good that you guys especially have to watch out for who you target. Serial Killers, Veterans, stuff like that. It might, depending on your exact role, be a good idea to go target low profile players who show decent WIM when pushed as lynch wagons (usually indicates Mafia if their WIM isn't normally either high or low).
Mediums and Trauma Patients or the like, you probably have it hardest to prove your role's alignment above everyone else. The former should endeavor to throw all their information they have about the dead when it's time for them to claim. The latter should try to pick the most important self-confirming town role when the time comes.
Otherwise, by and large, most Town Support roles are difficult for Scum to fake and gain more power over time, so they're probably okay playing as a Citizen but a touch bit more passively, trying to outlive the more aggressive Town, as they'll usually overpower the scum closer to the endgame if the wrong roles on their side are killed.
I assume, at least. Again, I have fairly limited experience with this subfaction, admittedly. <_<

Lastly, if you are Town Power or a Town Killing role, play as a Citizen, except: Decide when you're going to reveal. In general, none of you want to claim as early as Day 1, as it often tells Scum too soon what they don't have to prepare for.
The Killing roles have the Witch to worry about. If ever known, they can be weaponized to murder other Town. Do not claim until Witch is dead, ever.
As for the Town Powers, all of them benefit from remaining hidden unless Town truly cannot get anything done without a direct leader, and even then, assuming your game doesn't have whispers, what will them knowing you change? Jailor and Retributionist especially have more reason than the other two to remain hidden over the others, but even Mayor and Lawyer can provoke Mafia into screwing up and giving too much information away if there's no obvious Town Leader calling the shots. A hidden Mayor and anonymous Lawyer force Mafia to try to openly talk to them into making a mistake during lynching, and if they don't know who to direct these comments to, might accidentally slip.
Do NOT, as any of these roles, provoke Town into voting you by playing like an idiot. It doesn't help. It confuses your team. It removes every advantage to you being hidden, it instantly boons the Scum as you guys are the strongest threat against them as they now know who you are and what you can do to them. You are also one lucky shot away from being murdered, so unless Town can't get anything done without knowing they can trust someone else, try to help them from the shadows as best you can.
If you are a Killing Role especially, do not talk about kills done by the Town members at all. Do not kill your loudest vocalized Scum reads. Do not make your viewpoint of the game transparently obvious to the rest of the other players- Scum is trying to figure out who thinks like you, and the more obvious you make yourself, the easier it will be to turn your power against you.


TL;DR Play like a Citizen. Don't play like an idiot. Play to your strengths, and cover your weaknesses. There are things you should and should not be doing at all times.

On the subject of being a lynch target and how to avoid your mislynch:
Spoiler: This is less than ideal. Regardless, you must still try everything in your power to prevent from being killed in a way that screws over your team.

First, never dodge the thread. Be aggressively helpful to the Town. You should almost be annoying people with your thread presence, demanding everyone to explain the case against you, and refuting every bullet point against you to the best of your ability. Explain your point of view a thousand times over. Explain why what you did at the time made the most sense for you. Be relentless and unforgiving about explaining your point of view. There is a chance you can change people's minds when you demand everyone explain why what you did wasn't the best action for you to take given the information you had the time. If you had played your cards correctly, someone might notice and start trying to help you get everyone else to back off of you.
If, however, you screwed up, and made a mistake and this is the reason for people wanting you lynched, then it's going to be harder for you to talk your way out of this in a way that will sway the other Town that you made the best choices that you could at the time. The very least you can do is still try everything in your power to convince them to see things your way and why you went against what they thought was better at the time.
If you hang around, and constantly argue why it's only logical that your actions came from Town, you might convince people with your relentless effort. People about to lose in your position as Neutral would have probably thrown in the towel long ago since their capture would most likely be inevitable anyway, so you're really only arguing at that point against being either Mafia, or a Neutral who wins in death. Trying everything in your power to push that point might rule you out even further and save your life.

Second, do NOT point fingers blaming people for your lynch. Don't demand a revenge lynch. As Town, especially one in a position as desperate as this, you need to remember that you cannot in a clear conscience separate Town thinking that you've handled yourself poorly from Mafia/Scum trying to dive onto your wagon to avoid their team from dying in your place. There's just too many suspects and not enough time, but chances are that the people you blame were on your team all along. If you blame Town members for your death, Scum will likely just try to feed to that fire anyway.
This obviously does not apply to hard TvS counterclaims. Blame all you want at that point, but still try to look better than your scum counterpart.
Being bitter doesn't help. Also, being hostile to Town members explain why they think on a vote on you is more logical is less likely to sway them. Being diplomatic is ALWAYS more effective than being salty about your fate. If you want to win people over, you can't insult them. At that point they will stop caring about whether they can be wrong and give no craps about your feelings in the matter when they just want to see you removed from the game thread at that point.
Otherwise, if people just think that you're the best lynch candidate out of everyone, and no one is at clear fault for it, blaming anyone as likely Scum for your lynch helps no one. Again, it's not going to convince anyone to change their minds, no matter how upset about this you get. Use logical reasoning, not emotional bantering. Use thoughts, not salt. Town will make mistakes and launch a conflict with other Town. The best you can do is try to convince people that they're reading you wrong. Try not to argue how they're reading OTHER people wrong, when at the end of the day, barring you being a TI, you probably don't have a keen idea on those people yourself.

These could be your last words. If there's something you know and need to say, say it now. Do not be that Town Investigative who just dies with their information either by accident or out of spite. And unlike other Scum who do lose upon death, you are still in the game until everyone else in the Town dies, and this could take a while. If any information you can offer helps the Town out after you die (and if you do die, whatever information you offer is confirmed true), then you still help your team out even if they do try to kill you. Mistakes like this can happen, but it's how you make the most of it that counts.
Tell the Town everything they would never find out without a Medium once you're dead. If you've already claimed everything, then you're fine on this point, but otherwise, you are claiming something important in the event that you die, so that Town has that information once you're gone. (Note: this is different from claiming your role as an excuse not to be killed. Your claim isn't supposed to convince them not to kill you, as it probably won't work- you want claim what you KNOW so that your role gave something of use before it died.)

Don't be toxic. Remember that it's still just a game. Your real life isn't at stake here. If you need to take a moment to walk away and come back when you've calmed yourself a bit, it's a better choice than the alternative. People are more willing to listen to you when you aren't saying intolerable things. They aren't called for. Their argument for lynching you isn't a personal one- saying hurtful things in response is personal.
And again, by that point, people would probably just want to lynch you for being toxic and clearing up the game thread a bit more anyway.

Last of all, as previously stated before: Never, EVER, give up. You never know what might happen. Someone might be motivated to change the stakes substantially. Someone might retract something they've said about you after your passionate defense. Someone else might decide now is the time to pitch what they know because the lynch seems less clear after how you handled yourself. If you drive discussion forward in spite of what people say about you, you motivate others to maybe consider other actions they can take in light of the things you've been saying.
If you give up, they'll be more likely to wait it out instead, and do whatever they would do come the next Day Phase.
Motivate people to care about what you're saying. Try to help people in spite of them thinking they don't win with you. If you can convince the right person that you might be telling the truth as Town, all it might take is that right person to say something to get more people to back off of you.
You never know if you never try hard enough to convince that person!
(And, again, trying nothing to convince people not to kill you as Town is gamethrowing, so there's that too.)


Do everything in your power to prevent your lynch! If you can't do that, drive conversation as far forward as you possibly can before you die! If this moment is your last, make everything count, and don't get emotional!
Last edited by Rickdaily12 on Thu May 09, 2019 9:12 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby Chemist1422 » Thu May 09, 2019 8:53 pm

This was much-needed, was going to write one myself but I kinda suck a lot of times. Thanks a bunch Rick!
mist ~ she/her

i guess this is goodbye?
(still here for danganronpa i guess)


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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby Eragon1329 » Thu May 09, 2019 9:17 pm

who needs to read :^)
Spoiler:


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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby Eragon1329 » Thu May 09, 2019 9:24 pm

@rick

i actually disagree with the "Self-hammering as town is gamethrowing" in some scenarios.

90% of the time, you are correct, it is trash, it is terrible, it is game-throwing.
and on this site, with almost every game having plurality, this point is moot.

However, in some games that are majority-only, if you are the "decided lynch" for the day, and yet you have not been hammered and it is running close to EoD
it IS OK to self-hammer
its basically what people say about "any lynch D1 is better than a no-lynch"
No-lynching does nothing except get 1 scum chosen kill out
so instead, yes, you get mislynched
but you don't get mislynched the day after, with 2 town dying at night instead
and town gains information from your lynch

this is not saying self-hammering is expected.
Self-hammering is simply a very last resort in majority-only games to ensure that a lynch does occur
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby Rickdaily12 » Thu May 09, 2019 9:46 pm

Eragon, I have to passionately disagree with you. You, as a Town member, in a non bastard game, strictly are always more useful to the Town alive rather than dead. As well, more Town members living are collectively more useful than more Town members dead.

People don't consider the merits of No Lynching enough. I have always been the type of person to point out (especially if the game has Night Actions and a way of clearing Town during the Night), that the longer Town lives, the longer Mafia has to avoid getting caught. Ergo, mislynching Town is always worse than No Lynch. In my eyes, for Mafia, it's literally a free night kill. This is especially true when people have little to no way of sorting Town who had every reason to lynch that Town member from Scum trying to trick other Town in doing it.

And even in VFMs, I'm extremely hard pressed to accept any Town member who would rather murder themselves than never stop trying to convince others not to do it.

So it's basically always gamethrowing to me. I don't think anyone can convince me that wanting yourself dead as Town, willingly, helps your team at all.
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby LOLingHyena » Thu May 09, 2019 10:59 pm

:cheers:
On the prospect of me being a wolf in VFM 18:
milte345 wrote:A hyena can't be a wolf because it is in fact a hyena
Ez.
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby LOLingHyena » Thu May 09, 2019 11:21 pm

I think the only thing I disagree with is your stance on reaction testing, though I can definitely concede that there are drawbacks to using them (you mentioned the main ones in the post) and that not all reaction tests are good (in fact, a lot of the ways people try to do 'em are bad). For me, good reaction tests fall under 'don't be afraid to be controversial'.

Rickdaily12 wrote:Don't be toxic. Remember that it's still just a game. Your real life isn't at stake here. If you need to take a moment to walk away and come back when you've calmed yourself a bit, it's a better choice than the alternative. People are more willing to listen to you when you aren't saying intolerable things. They aren't called for. Their argument for lynching you isn't a personal one- saying hurtful things in response is personal.
And again, by that point, people would probably just want to lynch you for being toxic and clearing up the game thread a bit more anyway.

Yes, this ^. I haven't seen this be as big of an issue as it used to be, but I do still see it happen sometimes. It can really ruin a game for me more than anything else. Don't do it.
On the prospect of me being a wolf in VFM 18:
milte345 wrote:A hyena can't be a wolf because it is in fact a hyena
Ez.
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby Rickdaily12 » Fri May 10, 2019 12:10 am

I mean, it's more or less a gauging of personal observation. I really personally have yet to see any sort of instance where someone doing a "test" didn't have it completely go to hell myself.

My best advice I can give I think is that it's usually just more trouble than it's worth and you might get the desired effect using different approaches entirely, but that's just me.
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby TheDebil » Fri May 10, 2019 12:33 am

yes, lad
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby GrumpyGoomba » Fri May 10, 2019 1:28 am

Well this is gonna come in handy
Spoiler: Why did you click this spoiler?
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby UzayAltay » Fri May 10, 2019 3:26 am

A very good article , I want to add/argue A Few things.

The First thing I want to add is not just fake town Actions or sth Like that Kills thread , bad town play Also kill thread and demotivate town ( Yes , I am looking at VFM42 when bad town play kill activity completely at A level town mislynched with one vote ( #3084252)

" Which, if you recall, avoiding the thread is a thing Scum can and will do. It's a stall tactic. I often use it as Scum when Town is making mistakes without our misdirection."
17E Watt can be The example of that ( Watt says A lot of time in Mafia chat that he Dont want to involve thread with Town being that confused )
About GT :
Trying to kill likely town , is discussable . Confirmed is Okay , but likely , If You are thinking they are scum and it is possible , I cant see A problem Unless You are doing it when there is outed scum , which is Another topic.
Self-hammering , I cant say always . Most of The time it is , but I cant say always .
Also , I am not agreeing no-lynch is better Than mislynch , there are scenarios when no-lynch is better , there are scenarios mislynches are better . But A self-hammered should look risk and reward on it , which generally overlooked .
Allowing town killed , assuming as TP but isnt WIFOM A thing ? Okay most of time it harms but I cant accuse A TP for GT for not protecting confirmed Town .

" Also, if you're all like "I know something, I know X is the case" and give away that you know nothing in your stunt by being wrong (you're dealing with the INFORMED minority) Scum are immediately going to know you're pulling something whereas Town don't"
"Anything you fabricate is almost certainly going to be realized to be fake by the actual Scum."

Example : 17E Linear's Gambit : He just fabricate one thing : He says he was Double .
The Result was Maf thinking he is Stalker , and was mislynched .
At no-lynching , You should be sure your power Roles outclass Mafia , otherwise no-lynch may harm Town. Again saying , mislynch and no-lynch should be compared before decide on one .


"If you're holding onto a Red Check, then 9.5 times out of 10, the time to claim your role is right now."
Example : VFM44 , cop decide to not claim redcheck , it didnt end well.
About not self meta-ing , If nobody Ever points my Meta , or give false information , Than I Will self-Meta .

Last words : Dont just give mechanichal information at Last Word . Say everything .Always say your reads If You havent yet.
46-46 Spoiler: Town Games(27-32)

NFM50,NFM51,NFM52,14D,14E, NFM54 ,14H (AF), 14G, NFM 55, NFM 56, 15C, NFM 57, NFM 58,15F,SFM45,16B, VFM36, 16D , SFM 47 , VFM38, NFM62 , 16G ,VFM 39, EpisodeXVII, 17B , 17C , VFM44 , 17D , 17F,18C,18D,18E,VFM55,VFM57,SFM64, 19C,VFM58,VFM59 ,19D,VFM60,SFM66,SFM67,VFM64,SFM70,VFM69,XX7,XX9, VFM71,VFM72, VFM73, VFM74, 21A,VFM75,VFM76,XX14,VFM77,XX16,VFM78,VFM79

Scum Games (19-14)

NFM 48 , NFM 49 , TFM 65 ,TFM 66 , Episode XV ,TFM68 ,VFM 34, NFM61 , VFM42 , SFM53, VFM43,17E,VFM49,SFM60,CFM19,VFM54, EpisodeXIX, SFM63, 19E, 19F ,VFM62 ,VFM63,XX3,VFM66,XX5,VFM67,XX6,SFM72,XX8,VFM70,XX10,SFM76,SFM80
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby S0me0ne23 » Fri May 10, 2019 9:52 am

Spoiler:
TheCow wrote:Another thing that newer players, or players looking to get better at the game, ask me is, “what NOT to do as town”. There are a lot of things not to do as town, but the rule of thumb is do not do anything which will directly or indirectly work away from the town’s win condition. This includes a few of the following things:

  • Gambiting. Do not gambit. Typically, gambits involve lies or falsely presenting information. A player is going to see through your deception and call you out on being scummy. It is not their fault when you are lynch and flipped town, it is yours for gambiting as Town.
  • Do not do “reaction tests”. Many players do something scummy or stupid and just say “oh, it was a reaction test”. This is not a good idea, in fact it is the very definition of playing stupidly. Just do not do it.
  • Fake claiming roles which are not your own. Because you are lying, if you attempt to change your claim later or are caught in your lie, you will most likely be lynched.
  • Avoid lying to other townies. Remember, “lynch all liars”.

TheCow wrote:1. Don't act scummy.

TheCow wrote:6. Don't fakeclaim as Town unless you know what you're doing.
7. If you need to read this, you don't know what you're doing.

TheCow wrote:13. Be yourself.

TheCow wrote:22. "Mind games" is what bad players call their poor play to make them feel better about how bad they are.

cow is probably still idolized i thonk so i'll just quote cow on why reaction tests are bad so i don't have to argue anything
if you need to "reaction test" to pressure somebody, it means you're bad at pressuring. just don't be bad at pressuring. end of story.
if you need to gambit for whatever reason, history has shown that this almost always backfires. you're not an exception, don't do it.

reaction tests are bad and if you think you're an exception, it's because you're too bad to realize you're not
fakeclaiming is bad and if you think you're an exception, it's because you're too bad to realize you're not
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby Transcender » Fri May 10, 2019 9:58 am

I see you've posted it.

When I was going to make one once I werent in the worst position ever I had the exact opposite points on alot of these.

"reaction tests are bad and if you think you're an exception, it's because you're too bad to realize you're not
fakeclaiming is bad and if you think you're an exception, it's because you're too bad to realize you're not"

*fakeclaims as vet*
*fakeclaims as scum*
*fakeclaims as cit*
*fakeclaims as town power*
hmmmm
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby S0me0ne23 » Fri May 10, 2019 10:05 am

fakeclaiming as scum is fine obviously. scum's objective is for there to be as much misinformation as possible, while for town the objective is for there to be as little as possible
fakeclaiming as vet/cit/town power makes me wonder why you're claiming in the first place :Thonk:
there are exceptions to fakeclaiming but the scenarios are very specific and honestly not worth going over.
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby Transcender » Fri May 10, 2019 10:06 am

S0me0ne23 wrote:fakeclaiming as scum is fine obviously. scum's objective is for there to be as much misinformation as possible, while for town the objective is for there to be as little as possible
fakeclaiming as vet/cit/town power makes me wonder why you're claiming in the first place :Thonk:
there are exceptions to fakeclaiming but the scenarios are very specific and honestly not worth going over.

vet and cit is to bait scum into killing you to stop important roles dying obviously
sometimes being forced to claim town power very fucking early can be a bad thing
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby S0me0ne23 » Fri May 10, 2019 10:14 am

Google wrote:
S0me0ne23 wrote:fakeclaiming as scum is fine obviously. scum's objective is for there to be as much misinformation as possible, while for town the objective is for there to be as little as possible
fakeclaiming as vet/cit/town power makes me wonder why you're claiming in the first place :Thonk:
there are exceptions to fakeclaiming but the scenarios are very specific and honestly not worth going over.

vet and cit is to bait scum into killing you to stop important roles dying obviously
sometimes being forced to claim town power very fucking early can be a bad thing

vet bait your risk killing town investigative and town protective roles
cit bait sure, but if you're not killed at night you are for sure getting lynched. plus you risk outing the pr you're pretending to be
nobody can force you to claim. claim when it's the right time to claim, not when others tell you to.
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby Transcender » Fri May 10, 2019 10:16 am

S0me0ne23 wrote:
Google wrote:
S0me0ne23 wrote:fakeclaiming as scum is fine obviously. scum's objective is for there to be as much misinformation as possible, while for town the objective is for there to be as little as possible
fakeclaiming as vet/cit/town power makes me wonder why you're claiming in the first place :Thonk:
there are exceptions to fakeclaiming but the scenarios are very specific and honestly not worth going over.

vet and cit is to bait scum into killing you to stop important roles dying obviously
sometimes being forced to claim town power very fucking early can be a bad thing

vet bait your risk killing town investigative and town protective roles
cit bait sure, but if you're not killed at night you are for sure getting lynched. plus you risk outing the pr you're pretending to be
nobody can force you to claim. claim when it's the right time to claim, not when others tell you to.

you forget that people can and will lynch you for not claiming straight away.
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby S0me0ne23 » Fri May 10, 2019 10:18 am

Google wrote:
S0me0ne23 wrote:
Google wrote:
S0me0ne23 wrote:fakeclaiming as scum is fine obviously. scum's objective is for there to be as much misinformation as possible, while for town the objective is for there to be as little as possible
fakeclaiming as vet/cit/town power makes me wonder why you're claiming in the first place :Thonk:
there are exceptions to fakeclaiming but the scenarios are very specific and honestly not worth going over.

vet and cit is to bait scum into killing you to stop important roles dying obviously
sometimes being forced to claim town power very fucking early can be a bad thing

vet bait your risk killing town investigative and town protective roles
cit bait sure, but if you're not killed at night you are for sure getting lynched. plus you risk outing the pr you're pretending to be
nobody can force you to claim. claim when it's the right time to claim, not when others tell you to.

you forget that people can and will lynch you for not claiming straight away.

if somebody pushes for claims d1, you can ignore them because they are either scum or bad
take your pick
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby Transcender » Fri May 10, 2019 10:19 am

S0me0ne23 wrote:
Google wrote:
S0me0ne23 wrote:
Google wrote:
S0me0ne23 wrote:fakeclaiming as scum is fine obviously. scum's objective is for there to be as much misinformation as possible, while for town the objective is for there to be as little as possible
fakeclaiming as vet/cit/town power makes me wonder why you're claiming in the first place :Thonk:
there are exceptions to fakeclaiming but the scenarios are very specific and honestly not worth going over.

vet and cit is to bait scum into killing you to stop important roles dying obviously
sometimes being forced to claim town power very fucking early can be a bad thing

vet bait your risk killing town investigative and town protective roles
cit bait sure, but if you're not killed at night you are for sure getting lynched. plus you risk outing the pr you're pretending to be
nobody can force you to claim. claim when it's the right time to claim, not when others tell you to.

you forget that people can and will lynch you for not claiming straight away.

if somebody pushes for claims d1, you can ignore them because they are either scum or bad
take your pick

a look at the playerbase will show you how this works
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby Rickdaily12 » Fri May 10, 2019 10:55 am

Google wrote:
S0me0ne23 wrote:if somebody pushes for claims d1, you can ignore them because they are either scum or bad
take your pick

a look at the playerbase will show you how this works

There is a reason I posted this guide though, is there not?

S0me0ne has the right of it. The disease is ever thinking that your role claim matters or that it proves anything on its own. All it does is give scum free information. At best for you it outs you having a confirmable role, but then at that point you're outted as being powerful and now that power has been dwarfed. People need to reconsider their tactics a bit more about approaching others and trying to sort them between people who play like Town and people who don't- hence the tips above to help you think like Town.

UzayAltay wrote:About GT :
Trying to kill likely town , is discussable . Confirmed is Okay , but likely , If You are thinking they are scum and it is possible , I cant see A problem Unless You are doing it when there is outed scum , which is Another topic.

Self-hammering , I cant say always . Most of The time it is , but I cant say always .

Also , I am not agreeing no-lynch is better Than mislynch , there are scenarios when no-lynch is better , there are scenarios mislynches are better . But A self-hammered should look risk and reward on it , which generally overlooked .

Allowing town killed , assuming as TP but isnt WIFOM A thing ? Okay most of time it harms but I cant accuse A TP for GT for not protecting confirmed Town .

At no-lynching , You should be sure your power Roles outclass Mafia , otherwise no-lynch may harm Town. Again saying , mislynch and no-lynch should be compared before decide on one .

About not self meta-ing , If nobody Ever points my Meta , or give false information , Than I Will self-Meta .

1) When I say "Likely", read as "all but confirmed". If someone says that they're a Jailor or Vigilante, they're claiming a role that can easily be proven and is a powerful boost to the Town. If your response is to immediately try to get that person lynched (and you are not TPow or TK), your intentions are extremely questionable.

2) The only reason this forum allowed self-voting in the first place was for Jester class roles. If your game isn't bastard at all, no Town member does better to their team, strictly, dead rather than alive. We can discuss how certain people often help their team by getting themselves killed, but this is a skill issue (that this guide is trying to solve). Mechanically strictly speaking, your death is always worse for the Town and hammering yourself is playing against your win conditions. You should always be trying to lynch Scum, not Town. You are a known Town member.

3) Please don't encourage this attitude. Even in a VFM, where there is MUCH less reason to No Lynch, the way players should be thinking about themselves is "I need to argue myself as Town SO HARD so that they never lynch me!" People should never be okay with their lynch and we need to encourage Town to try so much more harder to do everything in their power to stop it.

4) This is more situational and generally more applicable in SFMs, but let's consider: You are a Doctor and it is Day Phase. The Mayor or Jailor has been poisoned. Healing them is a free action. You opt not to do this for whatever reason. If it's obviously the case that you have the power to stop something this obvious from happening, do not sit on your thumbs.

5) Absolutely agreed. This point was made about games where there is a stupid number of Towns versus a pathetic number of Scums, 0-1 Town are dying each night, Town has a ton of Power roles, and sit at 68%+ Majority. At that point you should be no lynching and trying to gather more Night information.

6) You can try to do this all you want, but you still run directly into the problem of having utterly no basis at that point to claim anything like "I would not be able to, as Scum, to duplicate my meta as Town" when you are telling everyone in the same sentence that you know exactly what your Town meta looks like. It often runs you into the ditch and sets people off more often than it's worth.
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby UzayAltay » Fri May 10, 2019 1:41 pm

Rickdaily12 wrote:
Google wrote:
S0me0ne23 wrote:if somebody pushes for claims d1, you can ignore them because they are either scum or bad
take your pick

a look at the playerbase will show you how this works

There is a reason I posted this guide though, is there not?

S0me0ne has the right of it. The disease is ever thinking that your role claim matters or that it proves anything on its own. All it does is give scum free information. At best for you it outs you having a confirmable role, but then at that point you're outted as being powerful and now that power has been dwarfed. People need to reconsider their tactics a bit more about approaching others and trying to sort them between people who play like Town and people who don't- hence the tips above to help you think like Town.

UzayAltay wrote:About GT :
Trying to kill likely town , is discussable . Confirmed is Okay , but likely , If You are thinking they are scum and it is possible , I cant see A problem Unless You are doing it when there is outed scum , which is Another topic.

Self-hammering , I cant say always . Most of The time it is , but I cant say always .

Also , I am not agreeing no-lynch is better Than mislynch , there are scenarios when no-lynch is better , there are scenarios mislynches are better . But A self-hammered should look risk and reward on it , which generally overlooked .

Allowing town killed , assuming as TP but isnt WIFOM A thing ? Okay most of time it harms but I cant accuse A TP for GT for not protecting confirmed Town .

At no-lynching , You should be sure your power Roles outclass Mafia , otherwise no-lynch may harm Town. Again saying , mislynch and no-lynch should be compared before decide on one .

About not self meta-ing , If nobody Ever points my Meta , or give false information , Than I Will self-Meta .

1) When I say "Likely", read as "all but confirmed". If someone says that they're a Jailor or Vigilante, they're claiming a role that can easily be proven and is a powerful boost to the Town. If your response is to immediately try to get that person lynched (and you are not TPow or TK), your intentions are extremely questionable.

2) The only reason this forum allowed self-voting in the first place was for Jester class roles. If your game isn't bastard at all, no Town member does better to their team, strictly, dead rather than alive. We can discuss how certain people often help their team by getting themselves killed, but this is a skill issue (that this guide is trying to solve). Mechanically strictly speaking, your death is always worse for the Town and hammering yourself is playing against your win conditions. You should always be trying to lynch Scum, not Town. You are a known Town member.

3) Please don't encourage this attitude. Even in a VFM, where there is MUCH less reason to No Lynch, the way players should be thinking about themselves is "I need to argue myself as Town SO HARD so that they never lynch me!" People should never be okay with their lynch and we need to encourage Town to try so much more harder to do everything in their power to stop it.

4) This is more situational and generally more applicable in SFMs, but let's consider: You are a Doctor and it is Day Phase. The Mayor or Jailor has been poisoned. Healing them is a free action. You opt not to do this for whatever reason. If it's obviously the case that you have the power to stop something this obvious from happening, do not sit on your thumbs.

5) Absolutely agreed. This point was made about games where there is a stupid number of Towns versus a pathetic number of Scums, 0-1 Town are dying each night, Town has a ton of Power roles, and sit at 68%+ Majority. At that point you should be no lynching and trying to gather more Night information.

6) You can try to do this all you want, but you still run directly into the problem of having utterly no basis at that point to claim anything like "I would not be able to, as Scum, to duplicate my meta as Town" when you are telling everyone in the same sentence that you know exactly what your Town meta looks like. It often runs you into the ditch and sets people off more often than it's worth.


2-3) There are some Special cases it is better You are mislynched , but most of The time You are right . People aggreeing with their lynch ( or not fighting against it ) is A problem which is wrong on %99 of time .

6) I generally avoid saying "This is my town Meta " , I rather post A Game I Did similiar thing . I Dont even make it immadieatly , but If Everyone is insisting not looking A thing is my Meta , I Show that . Or at wrong Meta , for example sb is saying " Uzay Do X at their scum games " , If it is wrong and NAI for me , I Show it is NAI via Showing I Did it before as town .



And I Obviously didnt thought SFM at 4, from SFM PoV it make sense .
46-46 Spoiler: Town Games(27-32)

NFM50,NFM51,NFM52,14D,14E, NFM54 ,14H (AF), 14G, NFM 55, NFM 56, 15C, NFM 57, NFM 58,15F,SFM45,16B, VFM36, 16D , SFM 47 , VFM38, NFM62 , 16G ,VFM 39, EpisodeXVII, 17B , 17C , VFM44 , 17D , 17F,18C,18D,18E,VFM55,VFM57,SFM64, 19C,VFM58,VFM59 ,19D,VFM60,SFM66,SFM67,VFM64,SFM70,VFM69,XX7,XX9, VFM71,VFM72, VFM73, VFM74, 21A,VFM75,VFM76,XX14,VFM77,XX16,VFM78,VFM79

Scum Games (19-14)

NFM 48 , NFM 49 , TFM 65 ,TFM 66 , Episode XV ,TFM68 ,VFM 34, NFM61 , VFM42 , SFM53, VFM43,17E,VFM49,SFM60,CFM19,VFM54, EpisodeXIX, SFM63, 19E, 19F ,VFM62 ,VFM63,XX3,VFM66,XX5,VFM67,XX6,SFM72,XX8,VFM70,XX10,SFM76,SFM80
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby Transcender » Sat May 11, 2019 5:05 pm

Rickdaily12 wrote:
Google wrote:
S0me0ne23 wrote:if somebody pushes for claims d1, you can ignore them because they are either scum or bad
take your pick

a look at the playerbase will show you how this works

There is a reason I posted this guide though, is there not?

S0me0ne has the right of it. The disease is ever thinking that your role claim matters or that it proves anything on its own. All it does is give scum free information. At best for you it outs you having a confirmable role, but then at that point you're outted as being powerful and now that power has been dwarfed. People need to reconsider their tactics a bit more about approaching others and trying to sort them between people who play like Town and people who don't- hence the tips above to help you think like Town.

UzayAltay wrote:About GT :
Trying to kill likely town , is discussable . Confirmed is Okay , but likely , If You are thinking they are scum and it is possible , I cant see A problem Unless You are doing it when there is outed scum , which is Another topic.

Self-hammering , I cant say always . Most of The time it is , but I cant say always .

Also , I am not agreeing no-lynch is better Than mislynch , there are scenarios when no-lynch is better , there are scenarios mislynches are better . But A self-hammered should look risk and reward on it , which generally overlooked .

Allowing town killed , assuming as TP but isnt WIFOM A thing ? Okay most of time it harms but I cant accuse A TP for GT for not protecting confirmed Town .

At no-lynching , You should be sure your power Roles outclass Mafia , otherwise no-lynch may harm Town. Again saying , mislynch and no-lynch should be compared before decide on one .

About not self meta-ing , If nobody Ever points my Meta , or give false information , Than I Will self-Meta .

1) When I say "Likely", read as "all but confirmed". If someone says that they're a Jailor or Vigilante, they're claiming a role that can easily be proven and is a powerful boost to the Town. If your response is to immediately try to get that person lynched (and you are not TPow or TK), your intentions are extremely questionable.

2) The only reason this forum allowed self-voting in the first place was for Jester class roles. If your game isn't bastard at all, no Town member does better to their team, strictly, dead rather than alive. We can discuss how certain people often help their team by getting themselves killed, but this is a skill issue (that this guide is trying to solve). Mechanically strictly speaking, your death is always worse for the Town and hammering yourself is playing against your win conditions. You should always be trying to lynch Scum, not Town. You are a known Town member.

3) Please don't encourage this attitude. Even in a VFM, where there is MUCH less reason to No Lynch, the way players should be thinking about themselves is "I need to argue myself as Town SO HARD so that they never lynch me!" People should never be okay with their lynch and we need to encourage Town to try so much more harder to do everything in their power to stop it.

4) This is more situational and generally more applicable in SFMs, but let's consider: You are a Doctor and it is Day Phase. The Mayor or Jailor has been poisoned. Healing them is a free action. You opt not to do this for whatever reason. If it's obviously the case that you have the power to stop something this obvious from happening, do not sit on your thumbs.

5) Absolutely agreed. This point was made about games where there is a stupid number of Towns versus a pathetic number of Scums, 0-1 Town are dying each night, Town has a ton of Power roles, and sit at 68%+ Majority. At that point you should be no lynching and trying to gather more Night information.

6) You can try to do this all you want, but you still run directly into the problem of having utterly no basis at that point to claim anything like "I would not be able to, as Scum, to duplicate my meta as Town" when you are telling everyone in the same sentence that you know exactly what your Town meta looks like. It often runs you into the ditch and sets people off more often than it's worth.

take another look at the playerbase.
they wont take this
hell, seth thinks he's bringing a virtue by being here.
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby Rickdaily12 » Sat May 11, 2019 6:50 pm

I can't hold everyone's hand and make them read this. Even if I could, I can't force them to listen.

The best I can do is use the words of experience and explain why the alternative options are typically worse. If people keep trying the same tactics, keep having those tactics fail, and continue trying to do the same thing while expecting different results, that's the definition of insanity right there for you.

We can talk about why or why not roleclaims on day 1 are good or bad (spoiler: they're usually a bad idea and/or the result of bad play of the person claiming) but if the end of it all is a refusal to listen to alternative suggestions to be any different, there's not a whole lot I can do for someone who doesn't want to be helped.

If 10% of the playerbase reads this and feels like they gained from it, then even if the other 90% never bothered, to me this is still worth it.

From the reactions I've seen so far though, this guide looks promising for the amount of good it can do. :)
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby 0verki11 » Sun May 12, 2019 7:56 pm

Ok so im pretty sure this was touched on but there are very little times that you can fakeclaim.
One of them is sheriff/lookout swapping where you call someone out and once they say something along the lines of "Im cit dont lynch me" or something along those lines you can retract and claim lookout although there is really only a certain scenario where this is viable.
Claiming vet as vig and vice versa although you probably shouldnt of claimed youre exact role in the first place.
And then theres hardclaiming marshal as TP when you cant be protected which is also fun.
And yea dont do reaction tests if you dont know exactly what your looking for.
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Re: Improving your Town Play 101

Postby Transcender » Mon May 13, 2019 1:30 am

i like how im both critizising this and flexing my 0% winrate
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