Hotline Mafia | Mafia host test game

Originally Posted by whiteflame on 8/3/2026 at 11:07 PM (post #10)

Honestly, forgot this was happening today and didn't get a ping, glad I suddenly remembered before I called it a night.

Small but interesting group in this one. Odd way to balance the game regardless of that first lynch. If scum get lynched first, we skip the NP, so... scum lose out on an NK? I don't get that, seems to just dig their hole deeper since there are no other night actions. The other caveat makes a little more sense at least, otherwise the game could just end NP1 with scum reaching parity on their first NK.

I don’t care for this post. People tend to complain about things that are obstacles to them, and scum is easily more likely to complain about setup choices that are difficult for them to deal with.

Originally Posted by Hyper on 8/3/2026 at 11:59 PM (post #18)

I'm somewhat inclined to just take #13 and #14 as towny at face value; the transition from a direct question to Awesome5000, to an "agree-to-disagree" type post to me, is indicative of already having some level of internalized reads. There is the alternative explanation that Awesome5000/whiteflame are soft distancing as S/S, but that feels less likely off whiteflame's lack of attempt to push me on my townread on the former.

To me 13-14 just looks an attempt to draw suspicion onto someone without directly accusing them.

In the event of a quickhammer, I've got some thoughts on how I would direct my focus. Revealing that thought process would give scum more insight than I'd prefer to provide at this juncture.

First town points of the game of Whiteflame here

for Whiteflame*

Originally Posted by Thoth on 8/4/2026 at 4:52 AM (post #23)

I don't see the point of skipping night 1 if a Mafioso is lynched today. Seems to me like that would make the game too swingy, and that, if anything, night 1 should be skipped if a townie is lynched.

Don’t like this for the same reason I don’t like it from Whiteflame.

Someone needs to explain to me how and why this setup behooves any strategy other than rolling the dice and praying to RNGesus.

Just read people.

Originally Posted by awesome5000 on 8/4/2026 at 10:25 AM (post #32)

I decided to vote the GLOBAL MODERATOR so it wasn’t completely random lmao

(also you can check the database on MU for my games, I don’t feel like linking it because I got temp banned from that site)

So, what do you think of Whiteflame’s reaction to it?

Originally Posted by Casey_Risk on 8/4/2026 at 5:43 PM (post #44)

Originally Posted by Hyper on 8/4/2026 at 12:01 AM (post #19)

VTL: Mag1cman

Thoth's entrance was okay, I suppose.

The entrance is whatever imo, but I'd like to know why he waited to contribute anything to the thread

I wouldn’t say Thoth contributed nothing. No reads but some setup complaints. The setup complaints do feel regurgitated.

So here’s a thought: Does scum regurgitate off a teammate? Probably not. I think scum would want to avoid having the exact same behaviors as a teammate to avoid looking paired. If scum Thoth is regurgitating, he more likely would have borrowed it from someone he knows is town.

So one of our two players complaining about the setup is town most likely. I think this is an unpairing of Thoth-Whiteflame.

Originally Posted by Hyper on 8/4/2026 at 10:17 PM (post #53)

As for Casey (and to #41, thanks for the welcome), posts #43 into #45 seems decent, it's indicative of some natural development of reasoning (i.e., finding whiteflame's initial post offputting then questioning the justification). I don't necessarily agree with it—personally, I find whiteflame's reaction to be more likely the result of being unused to vanilla-style setups with little to work with in the beginning—but it feels like Casey's at least trying to latch on to something rather than fly under the radar.

I do want to ask regarding #44, though, which seems to carry some skepticism of Thoth. What distinguishes their entrance from awesome500's in your view, considering that both made a single post then left?

First post from Hyper that I feel is objectively towny. Very good question to ask for the purpose of reading someone.

Originally Posted by Hyper on 8/4/2026 at 10:29 PM (post #55)

Whiteflame/Thoth

Whiteflame/Awesome5000

Whiteflame/Mag1cman

Whiteflame/Casey

Thoth/Awesome5000

Thoth/Mag1cman (slight)

Thoth/Casey

Awesome5000/Mag1cman

Awesome5000/Casey

Mag1cman/Casey

List of possible pairings, strikethroughs represent ones I surmise are less likely .I'm kind of operating off the assumption that scum are more likely to try and get townread early on rather than go for immediate distancing by the nature of this setup, which discourages bussing when scum lose the Night 1 kill.

I'd like to unpair whiteflame/Casey but would need to see a bit more there.

Yeah Hyper seems town.

What’s the idea behind a Whiteflame-Casey pairing?

Thoth - Starting with the "why did no one ping me?" post leaves me a little mixed. It's likely scum got pinged about the game starting, but no one else did. Just seems a little weird to call it out when all of us can see it. Aside from that, he's mainly just been frustrated that he has to evaluate other players behaviorally, which I somewhat get, but we all signed up for this game knowing that the setups would demand more on that front. I don't really get why he'd complain about it. I get that this DP is filler, but I don't like how much of his posting is just being frustrated, and yes I say that as someone who complained about the setup from the start, so I recognize it's a little hypocritical. Mainly wondering if some of this has been more performative.

Honestly a really good point.

Hyper - Just a lot of really good game analysis and incisive thoughts about behavior so far. I appreciate how Hyper is digging into our behaviors, and while I've seen players use this kind of thing to control the direction of the DP, there's also a lot of questions about how we perceive certain choices and a genuine effort to understand player behaviors as we've experienced them before. The attempt to figure out plausible pairings also comes off as a good way to look at how we're all bouncing off of each other. Can't see eliminating them this DP.

Agreed. I’m not familiar with this guy, but his process feels intuitively towny.

Casey_Risk - Not a whole lot to read into so far. Casey's been focused on my response to awesome's vote, which I'll admit likely comes off a bit odd considering I didn't realize it was an RVS for a bit. Mentioning that Thoth was slow to contribute to the thread after his initial post is fair enough, though I can't say I'm sussing the delayed contribution. I like the engagement so far, but I can't say I can read a lot into a few responses in a short period of time, so I'm waiting to see more interaction from them.

I have a theory that Casey is nicer to others when scum that I’m thinking about but I don’t really have time to check it. Thoughts?

Mag1cman - One post saying that he wouldn't be available for a while and, so far, nothing additional. Basically inactive, nothing to read into.

Hi.

awesome5000 - I've already given my basic thoughts on awesome, though I'll summarize. The random test vote, which I am realizing was almost certainly just RVS (really did think it was just testing the voting system, that's just me being dumb) doesn't say much by itself, nor does the follow-up. I still think it's a little defensive to just blurt out a reason for the vote unprompted, rather than a reason for keeping it up or some insight into what he's learned from the RVS, but there's just not a lot to read into with these posts so far and if there is a plan of action here, it's not popping out to me.

I have a couple ideas but I want to see his responses.

Similar to Hyper, while I'm not fond of just defaulting to our inactive player, Mag1c would be my first choice at this point. I'm debating between Thoth and awesome past that point, want to see more from both before I try to pick between them.

Gun pressed to your head: Who do you lynch and why?

Honestly I feel like I’m on a similar wavelength to Whiteflame on his reads.

I’d rather lynch Thoth.

WF - I was bothered by his complaints about the setup from earlier but looking beyond that he’s got some towny posts in his favor. Withholding the thought process on quickhammers and his reads list are of note to me.

Thoth- Similar entrance to Whiteflame but regurgitated and that’s about it. Looks worse when you’re the second person saying it, and the lack of anything else is kinda bad. If he’s busy that’s one thing, but why not say something more when you do have the time?

Casey- Somewhat leaning scum off a meta read- iirc Casey is nicer to people when scum, and more combative as town.

Awesome- Don’t really have an opinion yet.

Hyper- Towny by how they post. It’s not just the high effort, it’s that the specific angles taken and questions asked show a real thought process that I can see, that feels genuine.

Hyper

Whiteflame

Awesome

Casey

Thoth

Thats my town ranking

Originally Posted by Mag1cman on 8/5/2026 at 9:20 AM (post #61)

Originally Posted by whiteflame on 8/3/2026 at 11:07 PM (post #10)

Honestly, forgot this was happening today and didn't get a ping, glad I suddenly remembered before I called it a night.

Small but interesting group in this one. Odd way to balance the game regardless of that first lynch. If scum get lynched first, we skip the NP, so... scum lose out on an NK? I don't get that, seems to just dig their hole deeper since there are no other night actions. The other caveat makes a little more sense at least, otherwise the game could just end NP1 with scum reaching parity on their first NK.

I don’t care for this post. People tend to complain about things that are obstacles to them, and scum is easily more likely to complain about setup choices that are difficult for them to deal with.

I'd say this is NAI for me, but that's because I'll always mention oddities in the setup regardless of my alignment. I prefer a game that's balanced and this was something that wasn't announced before the DP was posted. I'd have a lot more to say in the scum chat about it than I did here, but I'll admit, I'm likely to complain publicly even then.

Originally Posted by Mag1cman on 8/5/2026 at 9:36 AM (post #63)

In the event of a quickhammer, I've got some thoughts on how I would direct my focus. Revealing that thought process would give scum more insight than I'd prefer to provide at this juncture.

First town points of the game of Whiteflame here

for Whiteflame*

Another instance where I'd call this NAI, but I think I get why you're townreading it.

Casey_Risk - Not a whole lot to read into so far. Casey's been focused on my response to awesome's vote, which I'll admit likely comes off a bit odd considering I didn't realize it was an RVS for a bit. Mentioning that Thoth was slow to contribute to the thread after his initial post is fair enough, though I can't say I'm sussing the delayed contribution. I like the engagement so far, but I can't say I can read a lot into a few responses in a short period of time, so I'm waiting to see more interaction from them.

I have a theory that Casey is nicer to others when scum that I’m thinking about but I don’t really have time to check it. Thoughts?

I'd have to revisit more previous games to get a sense of that, though it is a trend I'd noted. There's more of a tendency to be non-confrontational early from what I can recall.

Mag1cman - One post saying that he wouldn't be available for a while and, so far, nothing additional. Basically inactive, nothing to read into.

Hi.

Hello! Good to have you posting, always nice to bounce off of you in these games.

awesome5000 - I've already given my basic thoughts on awesome, though I'll summarize. The random test vote, which I am realizing was almost certainly just RVS (really did think it was just testing the voting system, that's just me being dumb) doesn't say much by itself, nor does the follow-up. I still think it's a little defensive to just blurt out a reason for the vote unprompted, rather than a reason for keeping it up or some insight into what he's learned from the RVS, but there's just not a lot to read into with these posts so far and if there is a plan of action here, it's not popping out to me.

I have a couple ideas but I want to see his responses.

More activity would definitely be helpful. He is now the least active player in this game, and while that's not unusual for awesome based on previous games, it's really going to affect a game with only 6 people.

Gun pressed to your head: Who do you lynch and why?

Torn between Thoth and awesome, but if I had to pick... probably Thoth. The posting so far largely feels performative, and while awesome has not been all that active, I can at least see something of a strategy there. My opinion may change if he doesn't post before the end of the DP.

Automated Vote Count

This system-generated vote count was posted on behalf of the main host.

Mag1cman (1/4): Hyper (p#19)

whiteflame (1/4): awesome5000 (p#4)

Not Voting (4): whiteflame, Thoth, Casey_Risk, Mag1cman

With 6 players alive, the base elimination threshold is 4. Configured role modifiers may change vote power or an individual player's threshold. Day phase ends in 7 hours.

To #60, nope, hence the difference in what I'm used to in terms of game culture.

For #61, what motivation does whiteflame have to complain about the balance of the setup in the thread, as opposed to say, privately to the mod? The only explanation I could think of (other than a WIFOM play, but anything can be WIFOM) is difficulty posting content, but I'm skeptical of that based on the fact that he clearly can make reasonable-looking reads.

I kind of disagree with #62 but it might be a difference in playstyle (personally, direct accusations tend to lead to unnecessarily confrontational T/T fights early on).

I do like #61 into #65 into #68. The first two posts are already internally consistent, but continuing his line of thought with the third one reads as a natural expansion of reasoning. Town are more likely to revisit and build off their earlier reads.

For #70, if you're asking why I haven't unpaired Whiteflame/Casey, it's because #43 and #45 could easily be the result of naturally paying more attention to a teammate and ascribing scummy motivations to what seems more like an NAI/leaning town action. Granted, I don't think it's likely (I wrote it down as a difference in playstyle), but it's also plausible enough that I can't rule out the pair.

I find the read on Casey in #73 to be pretty interesting. If Casey is town, that's actually a point in Mag1cman's favor. Imagine if someone scumread you, a townie, for being nice. You'd probably be skeptical, and a bit annoyed, and take a closer look at them. So to me, it seems like Mag1cman is unnecessarily drawing attention to himself when he could easily just express a nullread on Casey. (If Casey is scum, then I can see it being a deliberate attempt at distancing though).

UNVOTE

Originally Posted by whiteflame on 8/4/2026 at 8:20 PM (post #58)

As for reads, I don't have a lot to mention, but I'll give what I can.

Thoth - Starting with the "why did no one ping me?" post leaves me a little mixed. It's likely scum got pinged about the game starting, but no one else did. Just seems a little weird to call it out when all of us can see it. Aside from that, he's mainly just been frustrated that he has to evaluate other players behaviorally, which I somewhat get, but we all signed up for this game knowing that the setups would demand more on that front. I don't really get why he'd complain about it. I get that this DP is filler, but I don't like how much of his posting is just being frustrated, and yes I say that as someone who complained about the setup from the start, so I recognize it's a little hypocritical. Mainly wondering if some of this has been more performative.

Hyper - Just a lot of really good game analysis and incisive thoughts about behavior so far. I appreciate how Hyper is digging into our behaviors, and while I've seen players use this kind of thing to control the direction of the DP, there's also a lot of questions about how we perceive certain choices and a genuine effort to understand player behaviors as we've experienced them before. The attempt to figure out plausible pairings also comes off as a good way to look at how we're all bouncing off of each other. Can't see eliminating them this DP.

Casey_Risk - Not a whole lot to read into so far. Casey's been focused on my response to awesome's vote, which I'll admit likely comes off a bit odd considering I didn't realize it was an RVS for a bit. Mentioning that Thoth was slow to contribute to the thread after his initial post is fair enough, though I can't say I'm sussing the delayed contribution. I like the engagement so far, but I can't say I can read a lot into a few responses in a short period of time, so I'm waiting to see more interaction from them.

Mag1cman - One post saying that he wouldn't be available for a while and, so far, nothing additional. Basically inactive, nothing to read into.

awesome5000 - I've already given my basic thoughts on awesome, though I'll summarize. The random test vote, which I am realizing was almost certainly just RVS (really did think it was just testing the voting system, that's just me being dumb) doesn't say much by itself, nor does the follow-up. I still think it's a little defensive to just blurt out a reason for the vote unprompted, rather than a reason for keeping it up or some insight into what he's learned from the RVS, but there's just not a lot to read into with these posts so far and if there is a plan of action here, it's not popping out to me.

Similar to Hyper, while I'm not fond of just defaulting to our inactive player, Mag1c would be my first choice at this point. I'm debating between Thoth and awesome past that point, want to see more from both before I try to pick between them.

The read on Thoth is probably a towntell if I stretch (I don't think scum whiteflame speculates that scum got pinged [presumably in scumchat], since it looks almost like TMI). I think Thoth's setup frustration is pretty NAI (I can see the argument for it being performative, but the actual lack of follow-up posting is some evidence it could be real). Regardless, I'd like to see more from him.

Rest of the reads seems reasonable for the time it was posted. The general inactivity is a bit unfortunate, but we'll have to make do.

If I had to describe my thoughts on Mag1cman, it's that his thoughts are surface-level but pretty consistent internally. I don't mean that in a bad way at all—in fact, it's what I'd expect from a town player not used to playing vanilla setups. With this in mind, I'm probably not voting him today barring further information. It's a relatively weak read since it's not too hard for competent scum player to simply post decent-looking thoughts, but it's better than nothing.

Reads:

Town

Whiteflame

Casey / Mag1cman

Awesome / Thoth

Scum

I found Awesome marginally townier earlier but Thoth's continued absence feels slightly more consistent with his overall don't-care approach compared to awesome's absence, which seems NAI. Either way, considering I have better reasons to townread others, I'm running out of reasons to townread this pair.

Reasons for Casey/Mag1cman are given in my posts earlier. Unless whiteflame is a particularly tricky scum player who knows how to towntell early in vanilla setups, I'm inclined to think he's likely to be town.

To clarify #79, I wrote that post after reading whiteflame's #75. Considering that I was townreading whiteflame for his setup complaints, it seems less likely he'd say that it's actually closer to NAI. While that could be a defense against Mag1cman's suspicion, it's still a towntell, especially combined with his response to Mag1cman's #63.

Whiteflame/Thoth

Whiteflame/Awesome5000

Whiteflame/Mag1cman

Whiteflame/Casey

Thoth/Awesome5000

Thoth/Mag1cman

Thoth/Casey

Awesome5000/Mag1cman

Awesome5000/Casey

Mag1cman/Casey

Crossing off Thoth/Mag1cman more confidently now. While the initial suspicion in #65 could be distancing, #68 feels like it would be unnecessarily piling on to a partner.

I'm actually slightly hesitant on voting Thoth before Awesome5000 because if my unpairings are correct, Thoth can only be paired with Awesome5000, in which case we'd lose nothing by voting Awesome5000 first anyway.

My weakest Thoth unpairing is probably the one with Casey, which is solely based on #44 (seems like a rather pointed callout). With that in mind, I'd like to hear more thoughts from Casey when they get back.

whiteflame, Mag1cman: since you two are leaning Thoth, can I get your thoughts on the above? I do want to form consensus at some point, since we only have 5 hours left and a no-elimination would be pretty disastrous.

Setup Clarification

If no one reaches majority by the end of the day phase the largest wagon will be lynched. In the event of a tie the lynch will be randomized.

No lynch is a valid vote.

Time check: Less than 3 hr 30 min remaining

Automated Vote Count

This system-generated vote count was posted on behalf of the main host.

whiteflame (1/4): awesome5000 (p#4)

Not Voting (5): whiteflame, Thoth, Hyper (p#77), Casey_Risk, Mag1cman

With 6 players alive, the base elimination threshold is 4. Configured role modifiers may change vote power or an individual player's threshold. Day phase ends in 4 hours.

Interesting, so plurality voting is present as well. That's somewhat helpful, but doesn't change the fact we still need to consolidate (if both scum players are active enough to vote, then that at least three town players have to vote correctly to secure a successful elimination).

My thoughts haven't changed much since #79 and #81, so I'll start here:

VTL: awesome5000

Originally Posted by Hyper on 8/5/2026 at 1:49 PM (post #81)

Whiteflame/Thoth

Whiteflame/Awesome5000

Whiteflame/Mag1cman

Whiteflame/Casey

Thoth/Awesome5000

Thoth/Mag1cman

Thoth/Casey

Awesome5000/Mag1cman

Awesome5000/Casey

Mag1cman/Casey

Crossing off Thoth/Mag1cman more confidently now. While the initial suspicion in #65 could be distancing, #68 feels like it would be unnecessarily piling on to a partner.

I'm actually slightly hesitant on voting Thoth before Awesome5000 because if my unpairings are correct, Thoth can only be paired with Awesome5000, in which case we'd lose nothing by voting Awesome5000 first anyway.

My weakest Thoth unpairing is probably the one with Casey, which is solely based on #44 (seems like a rather pointed callout). With that in mind, I'd like to hear more thoughts from Casey when they get back.

whiteflame, Mag1cman: since you two are leaning Thoth, can I get your thoughts on the above? I do want to form consensus at some point, since we only have 5 hours left and a no-elimination would be pretty disastrous.

I understand the eliminations for the most part, though I agree the unpairing between Thoth and Casey is pretty weak. That's part of the reason I view a vote on either one as pretty viable, just a matter of how many plausible pairings we're reducing down to (either 2 for Thoth or 3 for Awesome).

Given that a no elimination isn't possible (see above), the disaster here would be in being so scattershot in our votes that wagon analysis becomes incredibly difficult next DP. My preference currently is to lynch Awesome, since his absence is actively hurting any kind of analysis we could possibly get from him and he's trending more scummy to me. I was giving him the benefit of the doubt in case he showed up, but with about 2.5 hours left, I wouldn't rely on his return. Thoth returning isn't terribly likely either - he tends to post on the late side, but for some reason just didn't yesterday - but at least we have some responsive posts from him, even if they all come from roughly the same time.

Originally Posted by Hyper on 8/5/2026 at 4:03 PM (post #85)

Interesting, so plurality voting is present as well. That's somewhat helpful, but doesn't change the fact we still need to consolidate (if both scum players are active enough to vote, then that at least three town players have to vote correctly to secure a successful elimination).

My thoughts haven't changed much since #79 and #81, so I'll start here:

VTL: awesome5000

That's where I'll go as well if we don't hear from him before a certain point. I'm giving Awesome a little longer, probably another hour and change, but that's all I can afford him at this point.

I know y'all are wondering why I have been posting so little. I didn't realize that y'all were going to take this game remotely seriously. I thought we would just turbolynch each other at random so Kohai could test the host dashboard.

Originally Posted by Thoth on 8/5/2026 at 5:04 PM (post #88)

I know y'all are wondering why I have been posting so little. I didn't realize that y'all were going to take this game remotely seriously. I thought we would just turbolynch each other at random so Kohai could test the host dashboard.

I mean... I literally have no history of just laying down or turbolynching anyone DP1. Don't know why you'd think that would change here.

Originally Posted by whiteflame on 8/5/2026 at 4:08 PM (post #89)

I mean... I literally have no history of just laying down or turbolynching anyone DP1. Don't know why you'd think that would change here.

It says host test game. I can't imagine Kohai was especially interested in having us take a bunch of time that delays testing.