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

Mafia has two defining features: (1) the existence of an informed minority and uninformed majority, and (2) a conflict between these two sides. This structure – informed minority vs uninformed majority – is fundamental to the game. It's what creates a conflict between the two sides, thus giving rise to a competitive yet fun game. It's also what makes scumhunting possible, because it establishes objective differences between the mafia and town: mafia are informed, town aren’t; mafia manipulate, town scumhunt; mafia already know the alignment of those they push/defend, town don’t; mafia win by nightkilling, town by lynching; mafia don’t need to lynch, town do. These differences create "tells" and "tells" allow players to scumhunt. As a matter of common sense, one would think that playing such a game would require knowing whether you're part of the informed minority or uninformed majority. And in real-life, you'd be correct: players are told their alignment in-person so that there's no possible way for them to play without knowing. On the Internet, however, players are told their alignment through PMs, so if a mod starts the game without asking players to confirm alignment, a player could theoretically post in the game-thread without ever looking at their PM. This has led some folks (e. g. Lucky) to play the first day phase without knowing their alignment. This should not be allowed. Why? Because knowing which side you’re on is fundamental to the structure of any game in which two sides compete for a win. Because the game’s setup – informed minority vs uninformed majority – implies knowledge of one's alignment. And because not-knowing your alignment would render the game incoherent, illusory, and meaningless. It would defeat the purpose of having a conflict between two sides. That’s why no game in the history of humanity has allowed competition between players who don’t know which side they’re playing for. It’s why you can’t play chess without knowing if you’re black or white, why you can’t play League of Legends without knowing if you’re blue or red, why you can’t play in the Olympics without knowing which country you play for, and why you can’t play basketball, football, baseball, soccer, or any other sport without knowing which side you're on. It’s also why you can’t go to war without knowing which country you’re fighting for, and why you can’t go to trial without knowing whether you’re the plaintiff or defendant. To have a meaningful conflict between two sides, you must know which side you're on. To post without knowing your alignment is to remove yourself from the game's defining conflict. Or put differently: It's to no longer play mafia, because whatever you were doing would no longer model a conflict between an informed minority and uninformed majority. You would instead be rolling dice. You’d be gambling. Yet that is precisely what Lucky supports. To appreciate the absurdity of Lucky's position, suppose nobody looked at their role PM on D1. The game would devolve into nothingness. It'd be entirely random, as there'd be no way to scumhunt or manipulate. But that's the logical endpoint of Lucky's position: a game where all the players don't know their alignment on D1 and thus cannot scumhunt or manipulate. There's no principled way to limit Lucky's view to a single player, so he must defend the broader consequences of his position, including a day phase in which nobody knows their alignments. There's also no way to limit Lucky's position to D1. If it's okay to play D1 without knowing your alignment, why not D2, D3, and so forth? What's Lucky's limiting principle? There is none. So in effect we're not talking about a basketball game where one player forgets which team he's on for the first quarter – which itself would be unacceptable – but rather we're talking about a game where every player forgets which team they're on for the entirety of the game. In other words, a non-game. That's what Lucky advocates, a game where it's okay if nobody ever becomes part of an informed minority or uninformed majority. That game (if you could even call it a game) is not mafia.