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

(+) Yeah! (+)

i'm reading too, it's just, there was a typo. so i had to comment.

I'm reading in case my housemates ever start playing Town of Salem again. Obviously not everything carries over but it's a fun read anyway!
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also in for corrik and chris dissectiing me as a player
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I am re-encouraged. Do keep in mind folks that writing this takes effort, so seeing people actually getting something out of it is better than all jokes and typo corrections.
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I am enjoying it
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ScareChan posted...

I am enjoying it

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up
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wont let you off that easy chris
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Thanks for saving it haha. Just was swamped with work. After dinner tonight I will have time. Long weekend.
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Yay.
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Mafia encourages some really unpleasant internet personalities

Being loud, obnoxious and forceful while ignoring detractors and tooting your own horn is the best strategy, regardless of what faction you are. This has absolutely contaminated the politics threads at the bare minimum
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Resistance is so lame from a Mafia perspective. It's almost always math-solvable, so the optimal play is to just sit there and calculate the math. No personality required. Only problem is if the others are too dumb to be convinced by the math (very common).

The Merlin thing is cool but it only comes to a head once, after a 45 min game, and it's a coin flip.
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banananor posted...

Mafia encourages some really unpleasant internet personalities

Being loud, obnoxious and forceful while ignoring detractors and tooting your own horn is the best strategy, regardless of what faction you are. This has absolutely contaminated the politics threads at the bare minimum

At high levels this isn't true. You will just get ignored.
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foolm0r0n posted...

Resistance is so lame from a Mafia perspective. It's almost always math-solvable, so the optimal play is to just sit there and calculate the math. No personality required. Only problem is if the others are too dumb to be convinced by the math (very common).

The Merlin thing is cool but it only comes to a head once, after a 45 min game, and it's a coin flip.

I'm skeptical of your math

Just started to read this now that some content is actually produced!
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foolm0r0n posted...

Resistance is so lame from a Mafia perspective. It's almost always math-solvable, so the optimal play is to just sit there and calculate the math. No personality required. Only problem is if the others are too dumb to be convinced by the math (very common).

The Merlin thing is cool but it only comes to a head once, after a 45 min game, and it's a coin flip.

The optimal play can make a lot of tabletop games easier to win, but its also not fun to shut up so the try hard guy can think.
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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

The optimal play can make a lot of tabletop games easier to win, but its also not fun to shut up so the try hard guy can think.

That's basically my point. If the optimal play isn't fun, then it's a bad game. Also if things don't get more fun the more optimally everyone starts plays, then it's a bad game.

Mafia definitely gets way more fun the more optimally you play. And also what is optimal changes drastically. Only exception might be a dumbass/troll on the scum team, but even that can end up with interesting gameplay.
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I remain extremely skeptical that you know what optimal play in resistance looks like

foolm0r0n posted...

If the optimal play isn't fun, then it's a bad game. Also if things don't get more fun the more optimally everyone starts plays, then it's a bad game.

I have never played a good game.
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Paratroopa1 posted...

I remain extremely skeptical that you know what optimal play in resistance looks like

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See this is why resistance sucks
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maybe, not sure
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Black Friday bump
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ScareChan posted...

Lopen posted...

I know among b8 players I'd probably rank you 4th best as town at best so unless B8 is the best mafia community out there it seems implausible you'd be top 5 town in the world. Very plausible you'd be top 5 on b8 though.

it is very likely we have the best players in the world in our community. Whenever we send players to do the cross community events they kill it. Chris was a finalist and I think MI and Dels both won the championship games?

From what I have seen we have like the cream of the crop

So if I'm low-bottom tier here I'm like mid-tier elsewhere?
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Doopliss_Power posted...

ScareChan posted...

Lopen posted...

I know among b8 players I'd probably rank you 4th best as town at best so unless B8 is the best mafia community out there it seems implausible you'd be top 5 town in the world. Very plausible you'd be top 5 on b8 though.

it is very likely we have the best players in the world in our community. Whenever we send players to do the cross community events they kill it. Chris was a finalist and I think MI and Dels both won the championship games?

From what I have seen we have like the cream of the crop

So if I'm low-bottom tier here I'm like mid-tier elsewhere?

Using IGCD as an example, he is not very high teir here, but over on MU he was very well liked and did very well in the game he subbed into. So a good chunk of players who may not seem good here may still be good players just by playing the cuthroat style that we do.

That said I have played with a lot of really good players at MU too and some of them would fit right in, and some of them would struggle here I feel. So if you are serious or want to test your prowess its a good idea to check out other communities I think

Like everyone I Have played with that come from Minimafia, they are all very trollish but they can all be very aggressive when they want. Their style would be a clash here, but they do what they do very well.

and they have their fair share of... not great players too. You definitely want to make sure you find a game that fits your interests first. They are good there about letting you know what type of game it is before time, often open setups
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b. Setting an agenda

Good job, you have started to interact with the rest of the game and are now focused on being goal oriented. You will be gaining a lot of information and even if you dont know what to make of all of it, you are pushing the game forward. Now you have to decide what you are going to do with all of that new influence and information that youve been generating. You have to become a town leader! This is a concept that many find difficult to grasp or daunting, but it doesnt need to be! All you need to do to be an effective town leader is set an expectation of how you are going to use the information youve gathered and go from there. This section wont cover how to do what youve decided well, but rather the mere act of decision making and why it is important.

The Agenda is whatever you decide it is, be it privately or publicly. Be it to ensure lurkers are active by questions or votes, or by targeting a well known slick player to try to corner them into being more forthcoming with information, to outwardly wanting to force people into claim situations to get more information out of them. The agenda matters, but as long as it is your agenda that is most important. Now your agenda may not always be the one you came up with personally, it may be a fellow town leader wanted to do something and you agree with it independently, which is of course fine. However you have to use all of the data points you gather from the first portion of this chapter and make sure that you are an active participant in whatever the agenda may be. Towns without proper agendas flounder. They fight among themselves and it allows scum of various skill level to pick them off.

Being a town leader is not always about being the originator of an idea, but the one who helps to carry it forward. Information gathering and having macro goals are useless if you dont establish micro goals to go along with them. Your agenda can vary every game, and later on we will discuss some pros and cons of transparency in what you aim to do, but if you dont implement anything you are just asking to be sidelined by a scum team that, with more knowledge of you of the game due to being the informed minority, will outflank the town and gain victory. Town will not always have enough leadership to win, but by having an idea of what you and town should do every day you are alive you ensure that you are, in a vacuum, a positive force for town and thus can be reliably called pro-town, which unfortunately is a step many still struggle with even after years of playing.
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ScareChan posted...

he is not very high teir here

Ha, thats an understatement.
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I don't think IGCD is bad.
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HanOfTheNekos posted...

I don't think IGCD is bad.

I agree, I think he is at least middle of the pack.
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DoomTheGyarados posted...

Being a town leader is not always about being the originator of an idea, but the one who helps to carry it forward

this is a big thing. I used an example in last post game that I think one of my strentghs is pushing lines of questioning. And even if I dont come to the right conculsion, as long as I helped to create content for someone else to find something is important. You dont have to be right, but put others in position to become right is just as powerful

Personally I think that I usually have a voice in town and my activity usually catches eyes, but actually LEADING town is a bit of a hump. I usually need to find someone else in town and try to get them to help push my cases for me.
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One of my biggest problems is that I'm often too willing to let others set the "agenda" as you call it, for that day, and work around it myself, instead of forcing to people to look at what I want. A prime example would be Han last game D4. I was the only person who wanted to lynch him until Dels replaced in but everyone else (which was a set of people whose viewpoint was basically completely controlled by scum) wanted others I wanted to lynch far less. I decided my day would be about making sure the one I was certain was Town didn't get lynched, instead, and although I succeeded there, because I didn't push what should've been my own agenda we still lynched town and lost handily.
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Sheep007 posted...

One of my biggest problems is that I'm often too willing to let others set the "agenda" as you call it, for that day, and work around it myself, instead of forcing to people to look at what I want. A prime example would be Han last game D4. I was the only person who wanted to lynch him until Dels replaced in but everyone else (which was a set of people whose viewpoint was basically completely controlled by scum) wanted others I wanted to lynch far less. I decided my day would be about making sure the one I was certain was Town didn't get lynched, instead, and although I succeeded there, because I didn't push what should've been my own agenda we still lynched town and lost handily.

The next subject will cover this a bit.
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Scare my hero.
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I am still following this. Believe it or not I am not so arrogant to think I don't have things to learn from you even if I dismissed the strength of your town play somewhat. Not to say that I'm not reading the stuff the stuff I have a reasonable grasp on as well, but we're not at the most interesting chapters to me yet! (Not that I even play mafia anymore but knowing theory is fun if I ever play again)
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tag
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Lopen posted...

I am still following this. Believe it or not I am not so arrogant to think I don't have things to learn from you even if I dismissed the strength of your town play somewhat. Not to say that I'm not reading the stuff the stuff I have a reasonable grasp on as well, but we're not at the most interesting chapters to me yet! (Not that I even play mafia anymore but knowing theory is fun if I ever play again)

It probably helps I am talking from a teaching stand point and without any of the Chris brand of gusto.
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tag
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c. Expression of thought

This will bring to a conclusion the core tenants of how you interact with players in the game of mafia, and it is important: Remember that in the game of mafia you are your only advocate. You can trust no one else in the game to see you as town, to believe when you post, or to understand any of your points. Through what youve learned so far you may gain allies who come around to what you are saying, but there are no certainties.

Which is why it is so important to speak clearly, confidently, and honestly about what is going on through your head at any given time so that your thoughts are translated as accurately as possible. Until you have been in a community for years, and where you know at least 90% of the user base intimately, there should be no exceptions to what I just said. You advocate for yourself most strongly when your thoughts are laid out in in a consistent manner that is easy to understand. You are the ultimate minority of one in the game of mafia as town, it is not other peoples job to understand you it is your job to be understood. People misconstrue you? Examine your words and find out where the misunderstanding comes from and solve it. You are only part of that beautiful uninformed majority when you impress it upon the rest of them that you are working for them and not against them, and thus every game it is always your duty to make them informed about you.

Activity is important, and not just to push the game forward but also the games perception of you. The amount you need to post varies and you do not need to live in game but if you are not constantly progressing peoples view of you in a meaningful way misunderstandings arent going to just occur, they are to be expected. By being an active participant in threads of discussion you started as well as interjecting into discussions others are in, your perspective gets more well known and as you develop as a communicator it will be easier for your game to understand your thinking process and if they understand it, they will trust and believe you to be town.

This concludes chapter one. I will now open the floor to questions as it pertains to this chapter.
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tag

also b8 mafia>>mafia most places

i was awful at b8 mafia and do very well in most other settings of it

(resistance>mafia tho)
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Up this goes.
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I absolutely do not understand how to apply this advice practically. I am still going to read and probably reread it when it finished but I just don't get how to apply this knowledge.
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None of this makes any sense without examples tbh. There's archives so it should be possible. It's a lot more work obviously but this is already approaching published-strategy-book-on-amazon territory (if it's not just a platform for Chris rants). Which is actually a pretty cool idea that I don't think exists yet. Not that anyone would be interested in such a book.... maybe? We could convince all those mafiascum nerds to buy it.
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This is all confirming things I already thpught. I've only played 1 or 2 games and the last one was a trainwreck. The Looney Tunes Mafia where I got freighttrained on like the 1st day or something was quite the experience. I got trained so late in the game i didn't get enough time to actually defend myself. I'd like play again but sign ups are either over in the blink of an eye or the flavour doesn't interest me.
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IfGodCouldDie posted...

I absolutely do not understand how to apply this advice practically. I am still going to read and probably reread it when it finished but I just don't get how to apply this knowledge.

What has you hung up
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.
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ScareChan posted...

IfGodCouldDie posted...

I absolutely do not understand how to apply this advice practically. I am still going to read and probably reread it when it finished but I just don't get how to apply this knowledge.

What has you hung up

Setting an agenda, I'm not sure what that should be. Being a leader, my activity can be decent but actually getting people to listen to be is not going to happen. All of this is for naught because I can't read people at all.
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You have to make a trade to get people to listen. It's a transactional game. Give them something they want first. Not sure if Chris wrote that yet.
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foolm0r0n posted...

You have to make a trade to get people to listen. It's a transactional game. Give them something they want first. Not sure if Chris wrote that yet.

I ... hmmm... kind of disagree with this in the way this is phrased, although maybe not in principle. I believe creating social dynamic is more important but it can be argued the social dynamic you create between yourself and someone else involves this process.
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well what do you mean by transaction?

my belief is that in order to make someone consider your point, you have to consider their point first.

if you give them your opinion on one of their reads, they'll be more likely to give an opinion on yours

or at the very least, you have to acknowledge their points, if you're on opposite sides. "i understand why you think X is scum, you're right, they are playing less energized than usual and they had some weak cases, BUT, i think those things are explained by Y"

you can't convince someone of something if you're not open to being convinced the other way around. it has to always be a two-way street.