Board 8 > Chris explains why he is a top 5 town player in the world at mafia itt

(+) Yeah! (+)

Dels posted...

man is it the end of the year already? you've got a good shot for best scum player i'd imagine

I should have a nom for star trek and should have a nom for best team for frost punk. And I want to play one more solid game as someone said they would nom me since i qualify for rookie too
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I smiled when I swept best scum/town/overall at mtg my first full year there. Completely different pace and i ate them alive. They are really good too.

Anyway

3. Scum hunting
a. Why pressure matters
b. Why most votes don't "matter"
c. Argument agility versus Argument strength
d. Advanced Statistical Analysis
e. Aligned pairs
f. Process of Elimination: the undefeated scum hunting tactic.
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If Chris actually does this essay it will be an awesome read.
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DoomTheGyarados posted...

f. Process of Elimination: the undefeated scum hunting tactic.

Neab is listening
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Well it's hard to say who my top 5 are I kinda pulled a random number out of my ass. Always thought you were better, thought Luis, Drak and myself were better back when they played. IIRC Han and Shad were okay so possibly them but it's been a while. I think Corrik is actually better at finding scum than Chris (but total ass at convincing anyone) I'd need to lurk more games to actually pinpoint a remotely current list of people who are better but I'm confident I wouldn't rank Chris as best town unless he's gotten much much better at actual scumhunting in the past two or three years.

Best overall player on b8 I could humor though because as scum he's completely terrifying because being wrong doesn't matter and he's very hard to actually lynch.
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4. Town Clearing
a. What makes someone NOT scum
b. The beauty of unaligned pairs
c. Trusting the process
d. Theoretical Quantum Town Mechanics
e. How I learned to stop worrying and learned to love town hunting
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PrinceKaro posted...

Translation: itt chris strokes his already too large ego

and possibly his dick as well

yes but this time there's a table of contents

And finally, or first....

0. The obvious
a. Learning to cope with being wrong
b. The absence of fear
c. Having fun
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DoomTheGyarados posted...

a. Learning to cope with being wrong
b. The absence of fear

*Gets out notepad*
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ScareChan posted...

I thought mi went deep. I remember him being well received. Oh well

I may be up for like 3 different awards, I want to take at least 1

I was in a stacked game. I was 4th in voting to move on!
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honestly lopen i don't remember those other people well enough to comment, but thanks for answering. i agree that chris is top 5 in the world though.

It's possible I undervalue being able to direct a town too. I would be interested in observing Chris in a more neutral environment might give me a bit more appreciation for him.
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Dels posted...

honestly lopen i don't remember those other people well enough to comment, but thanks for answering. i agree that chris is top 5 in the world though.

And we had him lynched but sbell fucked it up
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Lopen posted...

It's possible I undervalue being able to direct a town too. I would be interested in observing Chris in a more neutral environment might give me a bit more appreciation for him.

Chris and I will be a hydra in a game coming December 10th. If we have a general I will post a link then
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Dels posted...

honestly lopen i don't remember those other people well enough to comment, but thanks for answering. i agree that chris is top 5 in the world though.

I've learned a lot from chris, even if it's in tidbits, just a start and it opens doors.

If he writes all of this he should submit it to the articles section on mu
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Lol it's a nice thought but I shouldn't be on a best of list, I don't have the time to.
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NL first day forever
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Honestly I think my scum game is pretty nice, but my Town game sucks if I dont stay interested.
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Lopen posted...

Well it's hard to say who my top 5 are I kinda pulled a random number out of my ass. Always thought you were better, thought Luis, Drak and myself were better back when they played. IIRC Han and Shad were okay so possibly them but it's been a while. I think Corrik is actually better at finding scum than Chris (but total ass at convincing anyone) I'd need to lurk more games to actually pinpoint a remotely current list of people who are better but I'm confident I wouldn't rank Chris as best town unless he's gotten much much better at actual scumhunting in the past two or three years.

Best overall player on b8 I could humor though because as scum he's completely terrifying because being wrong doesn't matter and he's very hard to actually lynch.

I'd still put Chris above everyone you listed. Problem is, it's been awhile, so the lot of you could have gotten better or could have stagnated. And Luis, who was great at finding Scum back in the day, also had newer players to figure out. I remember replacing into a game with a bunch of first time players, and just picking out all the Scum easily.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm pretty solid at reading into tone of posts and finding Scum in ways others typically don't, but convincing people is another story. And my Scumgame used to be a lot better.
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The Foreword

The original topic title for this describing myself as a top five town player in the world was meant to draw eyes and to elicit response, and it had the desired effect. Such manipulation is common place in mafia, and the more you learn about people's habits the more you learn to appreciate how to use people's mindsets and systems of thought in your favor regardless of alignment.

Plainly speaking, I have no true idea where I would rank in an "objective" town players in the world, only that I am very satisfied with my results over the years and the respect I have earned from people whose play I myself respect tremendously.

This will be the only post where I really talk about me a lot, but many of you have no idea how I play off site. So let's hear it from my home away from home:

Best Town Player
Sir Chris
A strong player that either draws a night kill, or makes the mafia team suffer hard.

Best Town Performance in a single game:

Sir Chris - Predator Mafia

As Taredas put it, "...SC is playing out of his mind. Personal bias might be involved there, since Sir Chris is reminding me of some of my best town games; he's *wrong* more than you are, I think, but he's doing everything else right. Also, SC has the town leader chair instead of you... which reminds me of Redux Mirror again, heh, and you *are* good at stepping back and letting another player you trust take town leader, then helping them out."

(He listed every game I had played in)

"..all contribute as to why I think Sir Chris is the best overall player this year. He's never gotten lynched and has won basically all of the games he's played, except for a couple of town games where he was a bit off kilter. It's been a truly excellent year for him."

Best Overall Player - Sir Chris
He plays a ton of games, he is great at changing his style enough to be believable as either alignment at any time, and hes Sir Chris. He should change his name to Feared by All

There, I have a smile on my face.

This topic is by me but really not about me though. I may need to cite specific examples of play, but I thought it was time I told my mafia manifesto to the community I eagerly joined, learned a lot from, did my best to help build and grow, and continue to enjoy in a far different role than I had ten years ago.
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idk Chris I think I'd rank you as 9th best Town player on B8
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Top 5 Town NA Sir Chris

Top 1 Scum NA Corrik
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oh yeah i totally knew chris was exaggerating and when i agreed he was top 5 i was just going along with it because i too am great at manipulating perceptions

I dont think there is a way to classify actual numbers with mafia itself. Even if you went by win percentage could be skewed, but we definitely have top tier players and some of at least top 5% players in the world here for sure.
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Are those awards you got on MU?
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You call yourself a great town player but I bet you don't even live in a town
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0. The Obvious

Not everything within mafia is strictly about the game that you are playing in. Outside factors will often determine your success and your ability to sustain long term success. Never harm yourself, even mentally, over how you approach the game and thats the first and best moment important way to become a very good player. You have to show up to be good, after all.

a. Learning to cope with being wrong

No mafia player is ever going to always be right. No matter how successful, intelligence, or diligent mistakes are always going to happen. It feels amazing to do everything right and to bask in the warm glow of victory, but what about when you make the decision that leads to towns downfall? What happens when you are trusted to safeguard a victory only for the final scum to have tricked you despite your best efforts?

Pinpoint the moment where the scum(s) started you on the path of faulty logic, embrace the error as solvable with diligence and post game strategizing, and move on to the next sign up topic.

Mafia is an incredibly hard game to play among peers who are comparable in skill, but when you are also playing against your ghosts it becomes next to impossible to play. Every one of you who has read this has been, and will be many times again, wrong in the game of mafia. As has this author. Thats OK! It does not mean that you should accept your flaws and not seek improvement, but for good mental health and steady progress it is imperative that you not punish yourself and become emotional over even really poor decision making. We have all been there, and you are only human. This essay is meant to instruct on how your best can be better, but at the end of the day if you gave it your best thats all anyone should ever ask of you.
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Up
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Interesting.
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b. The absence of fear

As either alignment mafia is largely a game of personality. No matter what you do as town you have to realize, in conjunction with the fact that you are human and are going to inevitably err, is that you cannot be afraid of making tough decisions. You will either be right or you will be right, it is a yes/no paradigm. Undue hesitation (which is not to be confused with prudent consideration) only harms both your decision making process as well as your reputation as a decider for future games.

When you allow fear to enter into the equation you allow yourself to be manipulated by arguments that do not matter. It does not matter who the person is or what role they have claimed or how upset you are making them if you, through your diligent method, believe them to be scum. Mistakes of thought are to be analyzed when an alignment becomes a known quantity, not while in the midst of the action.

We all fear that anxiety. That bubbling in our stomach of wanting to get it right. It is, again, human nature to hesitate and to torment ourselves when we invest fully into something. We dont want to mess up, of course. However it is key as a member of town to be able to quash that rebellious tendency and to move forward regardless. Measure twice, cut once, and you will never miss your mark unduly.

c. Having Fun

Despite what some may think, this section is probably the most vital thing I am going to write in this entire essay and it is much more than the generic sentiment that games should be fun. If you do not have fun playing mafia you should not play it not only because games should not tax you, but also because you will be a much poorer player because of it. When you do things out of obligation instead of zeal it will hinder what can reasonably be expected from you. People too often do not realize this and attempt to play in poor circumstances when really they would have been better served simply taking a break and coming back when they were better able to handle the workload that a high paced mafia game can put on a person from time to time.

In game this remains true. Frustration at times is to be expected if things are not unfolding in a manner which you would like, but allowing it to override your enjoyment of the game continuously is going to do nothing but harm the decision making paradigm you implement. Sustained stress and emotional volatility lead to lapses in judgment and in a game as competitive as mafia that can lead to unforced errors which will inevitably lead to just more stress. Nip it in the bud, and remember by having fun you contribute to a more welcoming environment as well as a better played game over all.
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1. How to win friends and influence towns

In this section I will be covering how to interact with town members, with "Town" as a whole, and how to ensure being who you are is not a liability to yourself or town.


a. Player to player interactions

No one listens to an asshole without due cause. This first sentence is really important. Because you can for sure be an asshole and play mafia, but if that is all you are then no matter how skilled you may be at observation and data analysis you will be less successful than you should be due to poor attitude. There is a time and a place to exert pressure and to be unkind in mafia, but it is not all the time. Use the tool of being aggressive and sharp with your tongue like you would any other tool in your arsenal, sparingly, lest you risk dulling the tip from overuse.

Okay so, now you understand that you shouldnt be rude to people. Now what? Assuming you are in a new community where you know no one, you have to change that. You are never going to be able to understand or influence others if you do not ask questions of them. The amount and type of questions you can ask are unlimited, just as long as you always keep in mind your goal is to either learn something or have influence over the situation. When talking with people as town these are the two most important things and if what you are doing, however you are doing it, is not towards these goals you may have gone off the rails early on.

Example one:

You enter a game with twelve others, with no players you are familiar with. It is about halfway through day one and discussion is fairly steady when suddenly you decide to ask a player their favorite flavor of ice cream when they are in the middle of casing someone for what they believe is a perspective slip.

This is a great question you just asked. As long as it has a point.

For example, maybe you are trying to discern their reaction to fluffy questions and to get insight on how they think. Will they react angrily for being interrupted, dismissive of you because the question is silly, or happily answer before going back to their case. Each one of these avenues, depending on the person grants you information to be filed away about how their mindset works. By asking questions you establish baselines for their train of thought. Also, in general, people like being acknowledged and asked things. People want to feel valued and part of the team. Therefore by going out of your way to ask someone their thoughts on a subject or to explain a point you may have missed you are creating a social dynamic between you and that person. If people do not know you they wont be influenced by you. People fear the unknown, and in this case fear translates to fear that you may be scum or poor at the game.

For example, every time I have walked into a new community my first game was met with reactions that I was a weird, probably not very good town member. Without exception. I have been bashed in every game I have been in for a new community. I was an unknown, my way of surmising information just confused the people I played with day one, and it took them time to adjust to how I perceived things.

So to summarize why you ask questions:

Gain Knowledge
Gain Influence by creating a social dynamic
Allows your thinking process to be laid bare and analyzed, building trust
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Now, an important part of this is you should be doing this with virtually everyone in the game to some extent. If you are going to be an effective town leader, more on that in another section, you will want as few gaps in your knowledge as possible and there is rarely a reason not to touch base with every player in the game. No matter how small every reaction and response to what you do in the game is a data point. Data points may not mean anything in a vacuum but successfully collect enough of them and you begin to notice patterns of thought that can inform a town read or start the hunch towards a scum one. The more you ask the more you are forcing a response from another player. This can be referred to as drawing a player into your pace where you are the one dictating the interaction and you can go as slow or as fast as you want because you are driving your conversation by asking the questions you want to ask. It is rarely seen as a good look to ignore questions, so you are likely to always get answers to your questions or, if you do not, it creates an interesting dynamic that will be discussed in later chapters about subtle ways the alignments interaction with each other when expectations of behavior are subverted.

So you arent rude and now you have been asking lots of questions of people with a goal in mind of gaining knowledge and influencing others. The final portion of this section is being active and keeping tabs on your questions and how it relates to the game. If someone didnt respond, follow up kindly and remind them that their answers are important to you. You didnt ask for no reason even if the logic for the question cant be explained right away, assure them it has a point. Even if at this point they refuse to answer for whatever the reason may be, that in itself turns into a data point and insight has been gained in a different way. By interacting with people in a goal oriented manner their reactions and answers ultimately become secondly to you. You are the force that makes the ripple in the ocean water that is the discussion for the day. Do this with consistency and with the goals you have never forgotten, and you will make an impression on the players you are playing with. You will not be an unknown quantity, but a force within the game. Forces are able to exert influence over objects and cause them move. Now you may not do it in a refined or correct way. If you stopped reading here there is assuredly many mistakes that are going to be made as this alone isnt enough to do anything, but here is a question: How often do you feel as if you are a passive part of a town? As if you have no force or sway about anything? Do you feel you are merely going along with the consensus or strong players? This is the first step for losing that feeling of hopelessness forever

So, to summarize you need a goal in mind, a strategy to carry out that goal, campaigns to implement the strategy and tasks to ensure the success of the campaigns.

Goal: Correctly attain the alignment of every other player in the game
Strategy: Gain Knowledge about and influence over the other players in the game

Campaign I: Ask questions
Task: Ensure outreach to every player
Task: Ask a wide variety of questions

Campaign II: Show consideration
Task: Follow up on other peoples questions of you
Task: Be civil in your interactions as much as possible

Campaign III: Be active
Task: Follow up frequently to your inquiries
Task: Keep the conversation moving with what you have asked in mind.

Follow this and you will be on your way to becoming an excellent member of town, irregardless of community type or institutional knowledge of the player base.
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You will either be right or you will be right

well maybe for you but we can't all be top 5 like that

So what I'm hearing is ask people what ice cream they like.
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I like coconut ice cream
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I don't like ice cream at all.
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Why not, sheep? Lactose intolerant, too much sugar, or what?
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Motivation to do this dying.
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Chris, should I try Mafia at some point?
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Lolo_Guru posted...

Why not, sheep? Lactose intolerant, too much sugar, or what?

Just don't like the texture and most of the taste. Vanilla is edible but nothing else.
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DoomTheGyarados posted...

Motivation to do this dying.

If this is my fault, I apologise. I was mainly making a joke about the ice cream thing.
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scarletspeed7 posted...

Chris, should I try Mafia at some point?

Yes. It is fun.
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DoomTheGyarados posted...

Motivation to do this dying.

Please continue, I am reading diligently. Getting to know players in the game, and being thorough in a quest to find answers is important. You won't always be right but that doesn't mean what you were wrong won't lead to someone else being right.
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Lolo_Guru posted...

DoomTheGyarados posted...

Motivation to do this dying.

If this is my fault, I apologise. I was mainly making a joke about the ice cream thing.

A joke? ?? But Chris said never to ask that question without determinate intent! You leaneed nothing!

Jk.

This is a good topic though Chris. I hope the write up is seen through to the end. Then you need to publish it lol
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IfGodCouldDie posted...

DoomTheGyarados posted...

Motivation to do this dying.

Please continue, I am reading diligently. Getting to know players in the game, and being thorough in a quest to find answers is important. You won't always be right but that doesn't mean what you were wrong won't lead to someone else being right.

You can't be good because you just go after certain ppl because you think u have something to show them
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Ooh I want to know why I'm bad according to Corrik, too
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Corrik posted...

IfGodCouldDie posted...

DoomTheGyarados posted...

Motivation to do this dying.

Please continue, I am reading diligently. Getting to know players in the game, and being thorough in a quest to find answers is important. You won't always be right but that doesn't mean what you were wrong won't lead to someone else being right.

You can't be good because you just go after certain ppl because you think u have something to show them

Oh really, who would be the people I specifically go after on a regular basis?
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Sheep007 posted...

Ooh I want to know why I'm bad according to Corrik, too

You aren't bad.
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IfGodCouldDie posted...

Corrik posted...

IfGodCouldDie posted...

DoomTheGyarados posted...

Motivation to do this dying.

Please continue, I am reading diligently. Getting to know players in the game, and being thorough in a quest to find answers is important. You won't always be right but that doesn't mean what you were wrong won't lead to someone else being right.

You can't be good because you just go after certain ppl because you think u have something to show them

Oh really, who would be the people I specifically go after on a regular basis?

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DoomTheGyarados posted...

0. The Obvious

Not everything within mafia is strictly about the game that you are playing in. Outside factors will often determine your success and your ability to sustain long term success. Never harm yourself, even mentally, over how you approach the game and thats the first and best moment important way to become a very good player. You have to show up to be good, after all.

a. Learning to cope with being wrong

No mafia player is ever going to always be right. No matter how successful, intelligence, or diligent mistakes are always going to happen. It feels amazing to do everything right and to bask in the warm glow of victory, but what about when you make the decision that leads to towns downfall? What happens when you are trusted to safeguard a victory only for the final scum to have tricked you despite your best efforts?

Pinpoint the moment where the scum(s) started you on the path of faulty logic, embrace the error as solvable with diligence and post game strategizing, and move on to the next sign up topic.

Mafia is an incredibly hard game to play among peers who are comparable in skill, but when you are also playing against your ghosts it becomes next to impossible to play. Every one of you who has read this has been, and will be many times again, wrong in the game of mafia. As has this author. Thats OK! It does not mean that you should accept your flaws and not seek improvement, but for good mental health and steady progress it is imperative that you not punish yourself and become emotional over even really poor decision making. We have all been there, and you are only human. This essay is meant to instruct on how your best can be better, but at the end of the day if you gave it your best thats all anyone should ever ask of you.

All very good points that even our best players should take note of

I know the last one for sure I connect with. Playing against my ghost put me in basically a year long funk
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