Ranger’s Apprentice Mafia Endgame

Scum asked a million questions about mechanics and roles, especially for flipped ones that I thought town missed.

In case anyone is curious, our questions were Alyss Mainwaring (making the gender softclaim ploy redundant), Will Treaty, Watcher, and Gifter.

Okay I see. Nah it was the right play because there was no way I was gonna self-doctor at that point. You would be stupid to NK me with only the two of us left in the POE. And I had no idea what a bus driver was so I wouldn't have anticipated that play.

I very much doubted that you would self-doctor, but I might as well have taken into account the possibility, however small, given that I believe the night action would have worked the same otherwise.

Why is it bad for a doctor to waive NP1? I know people scumread it but why. What i looked up seemed to indicate doctors should play conservatively.

More fundamentally than the answers other people gave, because waiving actions denies you information. There is an old saying in firefighting: "Never pass up fire with the nozzle". Since the hose has a fixed maximum flow rate, you should, as much as possible, have the hose running at maximum capacity and pointed at the fire, even if you are not aiming it optimally.

Not to sound like I am the leading authority on how to play this game, but information in Mafia is paramount and in limited supply, and abilities give you information. Therefore, you should always use your ability unless there is an overwhelming reason not to, even if there is a risk of harming town, especially considering that the information you gain may outweigh the harm you might do. It took me a few games to overcome my hesitancy to take the risk of hurting town. In a game of imperfect information, you have to take risks.

The 2x restriction on your Doctor might have been a good enough reason to override the default of always using it, since you had little information to guess who was worth protecting, and, even if you never got any scumreads, your probability of stopping the night-kill would become higher as players died.

I was pissed that I was killed because I thought they would kill Luna and did a lot of iso reading in the NP.

Iso reading?

Iso as in isolation. You can go through a player's profile page and read all their mafia posts in isolation to get a feel for how they evolved over the course of the game.

Iso as in isolation. You can go through a player's profile page and read all their mafia posts in isolation to get a feel for how they evolved over the course of the game.

De gustibus non disputandum est, but several people have told me that they would rather be town than mafia/wolf/scum/whatever you call the evil team, and I could not feel more differently. I love the challenge and risk of lying, manipulating, misdirecting, subtly misrepresenting, nudging people in my desired direction, fabricating bullshit stories complete with details, and not being caught doing any of those things. It's like an adrenaline high, but chronic rather than acute. Maybe I'm an anxiety-masochist or a high-functioning sociopath who found a healthy outlet, but playing scum is at least several times more fun to me than playing town.

Forget watching how I evolve over the course of one game. If I play a bunch of games on here, higher-than-average post count will probably become a decent heuristic for me being scum.

sure I’ll try to answer some of these

1. Why is it bad for a doctor to waive NP1? I know people scumread it but why. What i looked up seemed to indicate doctors should play conservatively.

Answered this one earlier, but I’ll be a little more in-depth.

First things first, there is no 100% perfect or optimal strategy to play any role or game out. There are, however, rules of thumb. I recommend newer players learn the basics first. Then, they can learn when they can break the rules. Kinda like in chess.

When you have a role with unlimited shots, using it every night is easy. When you have limited shots, you have to consider how long you think you’ll live, and compare to how many uses you have for your ability.

For a 1x, you probably should save it for a critical moment. For a 2x in a game that will have three night phases at most, it’s best to use both in the first two NPs, because odds are relatively high you’ll die before NP3. In a 9-player game, there are usually 4 players remaining when NP3 starts, meaning over half the player list has been killed at that point.

That being said, rules are made to be broken, and there’s plenty of mind games to be played with saving your role for later.

In this game, is used my 1x strongman right away, because i wasn’t sure of what protectives existed, and because we had other ways of messing with protective roles for once we knew who the doctor was.

While you were unaware of my 1x usage that night, you accidentally punished it by waiving. This meant that later in the game, I had to keep accounting for the fact that you can protect someone. In addendum, you were one of the four players who made it to NP3, which is never a given. However, your odds were helped by the fact that you were in Lunatic’s dream, which meant you were going to be a mislynch target, and therefore basically guaranteed to survive NP2.

However, it also depends on your role. For a doctor, protecting investigatives is critical, and even if you can save your role, it’s best to ensure the cops and whatnot stay alive, so that they can give results.

2. Why didn't anyone ask Lunatic if he was a 1x or 2x dreamer? RT even used his Asceticizer on Lunatic NP2, I assume to protect him if he had a second dream to spend? 

Honestly I just assumed Lunatic could dream every night. You asked because you were unsure of something I had already wrongly assumed. Good job.

3. Why did Magic try to float the argument that Pie wouldn't put a Hider in a 9 player game?

This depends on the mod, but the answer is rooted in game design. I’ve hosted many games, and a this point I have a pretty good grasp on what will and won’t be unfair to players.

The way I see it, a well-balanced game is one where town is able to survive as many mislynched as there are mafia. So in a 7v2, it should take three mislynches to beat town. In this game, that was the case (Mikal, Casey, Wryly).

For a hider to be in the game, the host has to recognize that Mafia has a chance to get a second night kill on any night the hider is still present. If we had kept Mikal alive for the night phases, and correctly predicted his hide target, we could used that to make the game way shorter. There would four players alive heading into DP3, and with two mafiosos remaining, we would’ve controlled the vote and therefore have won the game, despite that we only need town to turn on each other for two kills, which happens somewhat often.

This doesn’t mean hider is inconceivable or that mods can’t have ways of try to balance the role with their setup so the game isn’t scumsided, but it does mean the role is rare in a 9-player game.

THEN WHY ARENT YOU SIGNING UP REEE *smashes keyboard*

All the more reason to sign up.

It was a fortunate, for me, coincidence that we had a Doctor in this game despite Pie using them rarely enough that Lunatic reasonably concluded that it was evidence against Wryly.

All I'm saying is that I would not turn down a date with a supermodel due to having a low body count.

tyvm, very enlightening

Then the only reason my waive didn't bite me in the ass more is that I was in the POE, honestly. It kept me alive. And I definitely misjudged when you'd use your power, I thought for sure you would've conserved your 1x Strongman until later. Ofc, I didn't know Thoth had been given such a whopper of a JOAT.

It was a fortunate, for me, coincidence that we had a Doctor in this game despite Pie using them rarely enough that Lunatic reasonably concluded that it was evidence against Wryly.

I should've pointed out that Strongman counterbalances Doctor and there's not a great reason to put Strongman in otherwise, as WF pointed out, but I definitely did not think of it.

He wanted me to claim that I saw something that indicated that my results had been tampered with, hence why I did not claim immediately, and by claiming I Tracked him, nobody would have information to the contrary, unless perhaps RT Asceticized Magic. I told Magic that, if I were Tracker and I knew that I had been interfered with, I should have claimed this ASAP to let town know there is a role that can tamper with information. He replied that a Tracker would have good reason to hide their role so they could get more usefulness out of it. I said in the day thread that I had been debating with myself whether or not to claim, then claimed, and I believe nobody pressured me about it.

So the goal was to gin up suspicion that there was a scum role that interfered with role results?

So the goal was to gin up suspicion that there was a scum role that interfered with role results?

Partially, but the main reason was to explain why I had not claimed earlier.

I thought for sure you would've conserved your 1x Strongman until later.

That was Magic's idea. I disagreed.

Also, the Strongman role card had a typo in it: "Each even night..." Pie confirmed that we could use it any night, not just on even-numbered nights, and edited the role in scum chat accordingly, but the original version is in the OP of this thread.

In my first Discord game, I had a mentor who could see everything I could see, answer my questions, and give me advice on how to play, although I made all decisions. One tip he gave me is that, when confronted with seemingly irrefutable evidence, I should assert that something must have gone wrong because the chance of success, however small, is better than nothing. I deployed this tactic in DP4 against the inexplicability of Magic's self-visit, and I guess it worked.

One thing that really threw me off is why Mharman had such a hardon for lynching Mikal DP1. As scum I would want to keep him alive, especially if Thoth had a redirect.

We asked Pie whether or not we could Redirect a Hider, and he said lol no. I left the scum chat server, so I can't check, but I think he said that Deflector and Bus Driver would have worked.