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

Lucky admits that a meaningful conflict exists only where players have personal knowledge about which side they’re on. That alone is enough to vote Pro. It’s enough because mafia’s defining feature is a conflict between an informed minority and uninformed majority, and the only way to ensure that conflict has meaning is if its players know their individual alignments.None of Lucky’s arguments show otherwise.A. Lucky Concedes That A Meaningful Conflict Requires Personal Knowledge Of Which Side You’re OnLucky admits that not-knowing your alignment “would render the central conflict of the game meaningless,” at least “insofar as the entirety of the game begins and ends in DP1” (Lucky’s words). Lucky also admits that never looking at your role PM would amount to “nonplay.” Together, these statements admit the necessity of knowing one’s alignment at some point in the game. And so, Lucky concedes the principle underlying my argument – that a meaningful conflict requires personal knowledge of which side you’re on.Under this principle, Lucky’s position would render D1 meaningless and with it the entirety of the game. After all, Lucky's position opens the possibility that no player ever looks at their role PM. And that’d be nothing more than gambling.B. Lucky Never Justifies Any Limits To His PositionIf it’s okay for a player to not-know his alignment on D1, why not all players and all DPs?Lucky argues that it’d be “suboptimal” if nobody ever knew their alignment. But the argument is irrelevant, unresponsive, and factually incorrect: irrelevant because what’s optimal strategy has no bearing on the issue of what’s allowed in the first place, unresponsive because Lucky fails to explain why his position is limited specifically to one player on D1 rather than three players on D2, and factually incorrect because given a certain meta it would be optimal for everyone to play the entire game without knowing their alignments (e.g. in a nightless game where everyone involved is exceptionally good at scumhunting but terrible as scum).Lucky also argues that mafia isn’t a “single-stage” game. But that doesn’t justify rendering a particular stage of the game meaningless. Every stage matters. The first quarter in a basketball game, the opening moves in a chess game, the pretrial motions or opening arguments in a trial – these aren’t meaningless. Many games and trials are won/lost in their opening stages.And mafia’s no different. In fact, Lucky himself designed and moderated a mafia game beginning and ending on D1. [1] The game had only one scum and the town lynched correctly on D1. So the game ended before N1. And if the sole scum hadn’t looked at his role PM, the game would have ended before he knew his alignment, which in turn would have cheapened the town’s win and negated the mafia’s loss (i.e. it would have rendered the entire game meaningless). That alone proves the importance of D1 as well as the absurdity of limiting Lucky’s position to it.Any limits on Lucky’s position would also be unworkable: How would Lucky determine whether not-knowing is optimal or suboptimal? How would Lucky determine before-the-fact whether the game will end on D1 or after? How would Lucky ensure that only one player didn't know alignment? How would Lucky determine which player? And how would Lucky ensure that players look at their role PM after D1?At bottom, Lucky’s position lacks any limiting principle. And without limits Lucky’s position slips beyond absurdity, swallowing the whole of mafia with it.C. Lucky’s Position Unfairly Advantages The MafiaBalance is a tricky business. Mods must determine when to start the game (N1 or D1), how many town, how many mafia, and what set of roles, will produce roughly equal chances for both sides. Starting on D1 advantages the town, while starting N1 advantages the mafia. The decision either way evidences a mod’s meticulous balancing act.Lucky’s position destroys this balance by robbing the town of a meaningful D1, which in turn gives the mafia an unfair advantage. Lucky calls this “game-theory optimized play” but in actuality it overshoots its mark, crossing the line into “cheating.” It effectively changes the game against the wishes of its creator.Lucky’s position also advantages the mafia unfairly in another way: it turns the mafia into an uninformed minority, thus allowing the mafia to play as if they were town. As Lucky explains, “I was able to play the role of the clueless townie without having to act clueless, I simply was clueless.” But the mafia aren’t supposed to be clueless, they’re supposed to act it. Or put differently: the mafia are supposed to be “informed” and to be “informed” means nothing if it doesn’t at the very least mean knowing one’s own alignment. That said, being “informed” means much more than that: it means knowing other players’ alignments too.So, again, if you follow in Lucky’s footsteps, you're not playing mafia anymore – and worse, you’re cheating the mod out of her carefully-crafted balance.D. Public Knowledge Is IrrelevantLucky admits that every game in the history of humanity requires players to know which side they’re on – every game, that is, except mafia. According to Lucky, mafia's different because alignments aren't “public knowledge.” This distinction lacks any force, however, because it has nothing to do with the principle underlying my argument.While a conflict is possible without public knowledge of who stands where, a conflict isn't possible without each player knowing personally where they stand. That's the reason competitive games require personal knowledge, including several games that require players to have personal knowledge without public knowledge. Murder mystery games, for example, where one player is secretly a murderer and the others must determine who among them it is. Nobody could plausibly argue that it’d be permissible for the murderer to not-know he was a murderer. Nor could anyone argue that it'd be permissible for the innocents to not-know they were innocent.And so too in mafia.Sources:1. World’s Fair Mafia, http://www.debate.org......