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

I'll start with a discussion of burdens. Then I'll rebut Lucky's arguments. And then I'll conclude with a summary of my arguments.BurdensThe debate’s about whether players should be allowed to play the first day phase without knowing their alignment. It’s a normative topic, so the burdens are equal. If you disagree, put the burden of proof on Lucky, since he’s the one arguing for a departure from convention and common sense.RebuttalsAs I explained in R3, Lucky’s “arguments” are irrelevant, unresponsive, and factually incorrect.First, Lucky’s longwinded rants about strategy are irrelevant. The debate’s not about what’s optimal or suboptimal as a matter of strategy, it’s about what’s allowed in the first place. If a chess player can checkmate by moving her rook diagonally, you wouldn’t call the move “permissible” simply because it produced a “desired” outcome. Nor would you call it “permissible” if a townie were to copy/paste her role PM, even though in some circumstances doing so would produce a “desired” outcome for town. The point is, it doesn’t matter if not-knowing your alignment produces a “desired” outcome for your team – the issue is whether it’s permissible. And on that Lucky hasn’t said anything.Second, Lucky never explains why his position (as opposed to his personal strategy) is limited to D1. It doesn’t matter if the debate’s about not-knowing on D1 or if Lucky’s personal strategy is limited to D1. The question is this: If it’s okay for a player to not-know alignment on D1, why not all players and all DPs? That, Lucky never answers.Lucky instead argues that a mod could theoretically force players to look at their role PM and players could theoretically vote others for a claim. But the issue of what a mod or player could do has no relevance to the issue of what a mod or player must do. In practice, no mod has ever required players to look at their role PM on N1 and players rarely call for a mass claim. So Lucky isn’t saying that mods/players must do these things. Lucky isn’t even saying mods should do them. And the reason Lucky never says as much is because doing so would support my argument. After all, the only reason for mods to force players to look at their PMs is to ensure there’s a meaningful conflict between an informed minority and uninformed majority.Third, on issues of balance, Lucky’s response reduces to this: “fvck the mods, fvck other players, I know best, and what I know is that I should be allowed to do whatever I want, mods be damned.”That cannot be. Mods design the game, not players. So it’s mods who dictate a game’s overarching balance. And players must play within those confines. If you don’t like how a particular mod mods, the remedy isn’t to destroy their game – it’s to not play in their game. But in no circumstance should players change a game’s setup or balance against the wishes of its creator. Doing so is patently unfair and disrespectful both to the mod and to the other players in the game.Fourth, the public knowledge distinction fails for three reasons: (1) whether you’re “bussing” or “scoring for the other team” isn’t relevant to the issue of whether there’s a conflict in the first place, (2) “bussing” involves “intent” and therefore isn’t the same as “unintentionally playing against one’s team,” and (3) there’s no way to know ahead-of-time when the game will end, thus defeating Lucky’s “continuity” argument. Also, Lucky doesn’t meaningfully address my analogy to murder mystery games.ConclusionAt the start of this debate I explained what mafia is, how its defining conflict gives rise to the possibility of scumhunting, and why these things matter. These definitional points gave rise to two arguments.First, I argued that posting without alignment-knowledge removes you from the game’s defining conflict, which means you’d no longer be playing mafia, because whatever you were doing would no longer model a conflict between an informed minority and uninformed majority. I supported this point in numerous ways, including reference to the history of humanity, reference to the history of mafia, reference to the game’s setup, reference to real-life mafia, and reference to absurdity. And Lucky never disputed the relevant facts: no game or conflict has ever allowed what Lucky proposes; no mod has ever forced players to look at their role PM on N1; games sometimes end before N1; being “informed” requires looking at your role PM; you can’t play real-life mafia without knowing your alignment; and the game would reduce to nothingness if nobody ever looked at their role PM.Second, I argued that Lucky’s position unfairly advantages the mafia by allowing them to play as if “uninformed,” thus robbing the town of a meaningful D1 and destroying a mod’s carefully-crafted balance. I explained how Lucky’s position changes the game against the wishes of its creator. And I stressed why you can’t hunt for scum if the mafia’s uninformed – in short, because it’d be impossible to identify any behavioral differences. Finally, I explained how these harms are magnified by the possibility of a game in which nobody ever looks at their role PM.Each argument alone is more than enough to vote Pro. Together, they’re a lock.