Mastin's Mafia Q&A

Type: Play Author: Mastin2

History

Original Publication: May 23, 2013 by Mastin2.

Original Thread.

Disclaimer

Please note that this is still under construction. I am taking suggestions for questions and revisions. (In particular, with formatting.) Also note that the goal is to talk to them as if they're an actual person, so I was not aiming for maximum succinctness; I was aiming for a more casual and relaxed tone. (However, suggestions to keep the current tone with less words would be welcome.)

"Help! I'm getting eliminated often! What do I do?"

1: Practice makes perfect.

As clichéd as it sounds, it's true. You need enough games of experience to learn what's causing you to be eliminated.

2: If you know what to practice and want to.

Assuming you've had a fair number of games and it's still a problem, there are a few things to keep in mind. First and foremost, you have to want to improve, which if you're reading this you presumably do. You won't get better if you don't actively try to get better.

3: Schools of thought on improvement.

There are generally two schools of thoughts at this point: "be yourself; doesn't matter if it's good enough for someone else" and the "try as hard as you can to look town".

People in the latter will point out the former doesn't work for a lot of people, as their natural selves are so scummy that they get eliminated easily. People in the former will point out that those in the latter are playing artificially, which increases their chances of being eliminated.

That's because the actual answer is in the middle--acknowledge who you naturally are (for instance, I'm verbose), and find small ways to slowly better yourself (for instance, in my case being concise).

4: Combine these steps.

Analyze why you're being eliminated. Is it for abysmal logic? Is it as a compromise? Often, the answer's merely that you lack the charisma to talk your way out of an elimination. Study players who have low elimination rates and see what they do to charm their way out. This method of escaping the noose is different for each one of them, which is why you have to tie it into betterment of yourself--know who you are and what works for you, and you've opened the gate to finding your technique.

"I was accused of lurking! What do I do?"

1: Don't lurk.

Yes, really, that simple. :P You shouldn't be in a position where you're allowed to be accused of lurking. Posting (preferably with content) once a day might not be mandatory, but if you fall lower than that, you're at risk. Presumably, it's too late for your current situation, but keep it in mind for future games. As for how to deal with it...

3: Be honest.

If you continue to lurk, you get eliminated and/or replaced. If you ignore it and come in after the accusation, you get eliminated. If you lie about your reason for lurking, it shows and you get eliminated. If you argue you weren't lurking, you'll get eliminated (unless you actually weren't).

Unless the accusation is false, being accused of lurking is not a good situation, but the way to make the most out of the bad situation is to be honest, admit you were lurking, and to explain exactly why you were. Though lurking is seen as being scum-motivated, there are town reasons to lurk, and plenty of personal (i.e., not alignment-indicative) reasons to lurk as well.

So just tell them the truth. (Unless, of course, you were scum and your truthful reason really was what you were accused of doing, in which case, find the town and/or player reason closest to your actual reason and use that.)

"How do I scumhunt?"

1: There's no correct answer.

Every game's different and every player's different, so it's true; there's really no single way to answer--what works for some won't for others. The right answer for one person is the wrong one for another. In general, though, there are two fundamental methods of scumhunting:

Logic and gut. Some swear by their gut and insist on its accuracy, and that logic leads you down the wrong path. Others swear by logic and say that gut is purely subjective/emotional. Most successful players use a mixture of both, and I argue that the two separate methods are arguably the same at their core level. (At least for an experienced scumhunter.)

Some of my most logical arguments came from a gut feeling that I tried to find the rationalization for--the "why" behind the feeling. And when there's a bunch of evidence pointing one way, yet a fair amount pointing the other, I do not make a logical conclusion on which I think to be true. The final decision is based off of what I subjectively feel to be stronger, my gut, despite the reasoning having started as logic.

Find the balance which works best for you. Regardless of where on the logic-gut spectrum you fall, there are other things to keep in mind:

2: My golden rule!

Make sure your reads fit the evidence; don't morph the evidence to fit your reads. There's a difference between having a gut feeling and trying to rationalize it, and having a bias and creating a rationalization. Keep an open mind; you're more likely to be wrong than you are to be right. You need to avoid confirmation bias at all costs. I can boil that down to essentially this:

3: Don't assume; speculate.

Sure, there are some safe assumptions you can make (for instance, assuming two scum in a micro-sized game, three in a mini-sized game, four in a 17-20 player game, and such), but there are also incredibly dangerous assumptions you can make. Among them being that a player is scum. If you make the assumption a player is one alignment, then you've already lost ground.

You can, however, speculate they are scum. Explain why you're making the speculation and what led you to make this theory. This is a fundamental part of communicating your ideas to others, and with it, your theory can be analyzed.

4: Keep Occam's Razor in mind!

The simplest explanation is often the correct explanation. Speculation which relies on the existence of unproven scum PRs (e.g. a godfather, a redirector, or a roleblocker; those seem like popular choices) has caused the death of countless towns. This also applies to interactions between players; if your master scumteam theory you concocted relies on a series of convuluted jumps, you're probably wrong. Speaking of hunting teams...

5: Hunt entire scumteams.

You should be doing so. You don't have to aim for a whole team (though I, personally, do), but you should avoid focusing on a single player at a time entirely. (A) It'll make you look like you're tunneling, (B) if you're wrong you're more likely to have antagonized players, (C) it can breed a "oh, that's a townVtown" mentality, (D) and if you die with only that read (even if correct!), the town has nothing to go off of to gauge other potential scumbuddies. As just a few reasons to avoid single-player battles.

6: Look at motive/intent!

It's by far the largest tip for improving your play that I can give. It's what separates the vets from the newbs. The best players look at the reasoning behind the words (judging if it's town- or scum-motivated), whereas lesser players will pay attention to the literal wording--this is near-guaranteed to fail, because town players say scummy stuff 100% of the time, and scum players say townie stuff a good 80% of the time.

Something to consider

When looking at an action and wondering if it is scum-motivated or town-motivated, keep in mind, it's possible it's neither, and that it's something done as a person, not as a player. Some people do certain actions regardless of their alignment, and it helps to nail down what those are. Basically the question you're asking shouldn't be "is this town/scum motivated?", but rather, "does this have an alignment motivating it, and if so, which one?"

If you're looking for a list of them, though, you're sadly out of luck. Motives are highly, HIGHLY circumstantial, because the motive will differ in every single game. It may be possible to find specific trends, but it's no small feat to do so.

7: Know the players.

It helps to know the players you're playing with. I don't mean meta a player and say, "they did this in game X as town, and didn't do it in game Y as scum, so this makes them town". That's just as bad as looking merely at the surface of posts, if not worse. I mean being familiar with how they operate--just as understanding yourself will decrease your chances of getting eliminated, understanding others will help you know when to eliminate them and when to not. So, know what from them is just their normal typical selves, and look for consistent trends in their town/scum selves. Which brings me to the last tip for this question:

8: Look for trends!

There's almost always a pattern in things, be it nightkills, votecounts, or interactions between players. Finding the scum's method of operation will help you hone in on who they are, for instance.

"I drew scum, now what?"

Read How to win every scum game on MS.net. It might seem like a joke, but it's actually much less of a joke than it seems. In fact, you can see many of those tips in the above. Posting actively does wonders for towncred, especially with content. Contributing actively will more often than not buy you at least a couple of days before you're in danger of being eliminated. Use your method of avoiding being eliminated (which in that thread were stated as AtE and self-meta; your method can be different), and you'll likely survive even longer. So long as you bus conservatively (if at all), this will put you in an excellent position to win, as you and your scumbuddies are all/mostly alive and therefore have greater leverage over the town.

Always keep risk/reward in mind. As scum, losing your scumbuddy/ies is an incredible risk, delaying elo and increasing the likelihood that town PRs will nail you. Therefore, the only time to bus is when you're reasonably certain that the reward is much more profitable to your long-term goals than the risk. (A good rule of thumb, each scum death delays elo by one day, so to be worth it you have to gain two days of town eliminations from it assuming you're in a normal game. In nightless, you need to gain four town eliminations.)