Mafia Debate: You should not be allowed to play on D1 without knowing your role/alignment

FourTrouble's position rests upon three contentions. First, not knowing your alignment renders the game of mafia incoherent. Second, that if everyone refused to look at their role pm DP1, then DP1 would be meaningless. Third, that I necessarily have to defend players never looking at their role pm. I will respond to these contentions oftentimes with reference to my particular implementation of this strategy. My strategy is an interpretatio of the game-theory optimized response to the current metagame and would necessarily shift towards looking at role pms DP1 if that was the optimal approach to the mafia metagame on DDO. I am only responsible for defending my strategy as I implement it as this debate originated from FT directly attempting to have me modkilled for my implementation of the strategy (in a game that he is not even in).Answer To (1) Not Knowing Your Alignment Renders the Game of Mafia IncoherentThere are two facets of this argument to contest. First we will talk about the sports analogy that FT provides. This is a false analogy for a few reasons. First, because in every single sport he referenced, the teams or alignments are public. If, as mafia, you score for the other team so-to-say, by bussing a teammate, they may believe that you are on their team which in context of mafia means survival. The fact that in mafia the teams are private rather than public makes the analogy moot to begin with. Further, in all of these sports there is objectively no benefit to scoring for the other team. Again, in mafia there are measurable benefits to doing so. Quite often bussing a teammate is the best move. With that said, not knowing your alignment DP1 as town changes essentially nothing as you would presume that you are town anyway - statistically it is the most likely case. If you do not know your alignment DP1 as mafia, however, you are better able to blend in as town because you have no reason to act as mafia. In this way, not knowing what team you are on can be an even greater benefit to your survival than intentionally scoring for the other team. It is because in mafia that (1) teams are private rather than public, (2), intentionally scoring for the other team is often beneficial, and (3), not knowing your alignment on DP1 can be of even greater benefit than intentionally scoring for the other team that the sports analogy FT utilizes is a false analogy.Second, he argues that not knowing your alignment would render the central conflict of the game meaningless. This is true insofar as the entirety of the game begins and ends in DP1. The fact of the matter is, however, mafia isn't a single-stage game. Mafia is inherently an iterated conflict in which a game theory simulation is played out in each DP. The town debates which player is most likely to be mafiai and the mafia attempt to paint a town player as the most likely mafia. At the end of each DP there is a lynch and either the mafia or town win that leg of the game, but then the NP occurs and another DP followed an iterated scenario in which the game is played again. The continuity is significant here. To take oneself out of the central conflict DP1 is not to take oneself out of the central conflict of the totality of the game. In fact, it is to further embed oneself within it. If you are town, your reads should be exactly as they would be had you known you were town, and nothing changes. If you are mafia, however, you are now committed to reads that you made when you did not know you were mafia and the way you develop upon them in stage two of the iterated game and in subsequent stages is critical and unique to this playstyle. FT placed value on the ability to pick up on tells, yet this playstyle offers a unique set of tells beginning DP2 which you otherwise would not have access to.Answer to (2) If Everyone Refused to Look at Their Role PM DP1, DP1 Would be MeaninglessThis assumption relies on suboptimal play. We should not dictate rules on the assumption that players engage in suboptimal strategy. The reason that not looking at my role pm DP1 works for me is because it is optimal given the metagame that surrounds my playstyle. This strategy originated in live mafia where my winrate was so high that NP1 I would be the target of every investigative role in the game, and, if I was town, the mafia NK. I was also pressured to claim first every single game. In refusing to look at my role pm DP1 I first of all relieved myself of claim pressure. Moreover, I was able to play the role of the clueless townie without having to act clueless, I simply was clueless. In doing so I created the image of a less prime investigation and night kill target. Simply because this strategy is optimal for me does not mean that it is optimal for everyone else, therefore it is silly to assume that everyone else would employ the strategy.But let's say that every player was in the same situation as myself and saw this strategy as optimal, then what? The optimal strategy becomes to look at your role pm DP1 so that you can dictate the game when not a single other player has a clue what is going on or believes that anyone else should have a clue what is going on. Because this strategy is simply an adherence to optimal gameplay, it allows for strategic variation as the metagame shifts and solves for the criticism that FT offers on its own. There is never an optimal time for nobody to look at their role pm DP1. Furthermore, just because every player claims to have not read their role PM it does not follow that no player has read their role PM. The WIFOM in such a claim where every player made that claim would be delicious to decipher and in fact, it sounds like an amazing DP1 to play through. One would have to deduce whom is telling the truth and who is lying in addition to their motives for doing so. That sounds like scumhunting and manipulation to me.Even moreso, if DP1 was simply an instant no-lynch or random lynch, that would not make the game as a whole meaningless. We used to play DP1 on mafia with random number generators. We would utilize them to determine whom we would pressure for claims, and oftentimes who we would lynch during that DP. The games were not meaningless back then, and there is no reason to assume that they would be meaningless now. There has been at least one game that started in NP0 prior to the posting of DP1. That game was not meaningless either.Answer to (3) I Necessarily Have to Defend Players Never Looking at Their Role PMHonestly, no I don't. In the same vein that I don't have to defend suboptimal play, I do not have to defend nonplay. My strategy is not a static statement which never changes, it is an interpretation of the game-theory optimized response to the current metagame. There is never a game-theory optimized approach to the metagame in which one never looks at their role PM because the benefits derived from not looking at your role pm can only be actualized upon learning your role and continuing accordingly.