Playing for fun by weaversden

## Introduction

Hello! I am weaversden, and this is just a brief monologue on how I approach playing mafia games. As an aside, this is NOT a guide—it is simply a playstyle that I find fun, enjoyable, and rewarding, even when losing. For guides, you should peruse our category of guides. Thank you!

I'm also pretty bad at writing guides but I found this fun so that is okay! If you find any errors on this guide or believe I should add a topic, please let me know!

## Day 1

Usually on day 1, I will **instantly vote a player and try to run them into the ground**, while persuading other players to vote them as well. This is mainly just a reaction check—by being open, vocal, and persistent about who you think is mafia, other players will be much more inclined to interact with you: either by voting with you, voting against you, or ignoring you altogether. By forcing others to interact, you can get a better understanding of the game.

### Example D1 template

I will prove you are mafia, using the CER (claim evidence reasoning) format.
I will **CLAIM** you are mafia.
My **EVIDENCE** comes from how you are very coasty and give little to the gamestate while also generally providing a bad atmosphere to the town. Your quotes are bad, your votes nonexistent.
My **REASONING** is that you are a member of the mafia. I beseech you, town, hammer them before they can defend.

This is often followed up by statements such as "I can actually confirm from [number] independent sources that [Player] is scum here" and "[Player] is the vote 10/10 times today".

### Reading and Pivoting

Now, often this day 1 push will be completely and utterly wrong, and that's okay! **Statistically, you have a 25% chance of actually hitting mafia on day 1.** Next, you should see how your accused reacts, and how fast other players vote or ignore them. In general, I will continue pushing this first player if I think they will be unhelpful later on (saying nothing, getting upset without sussing others, etc).

Full disclosure: I don't actually read anything most players say on day 1 and simply focus on my own play. If you get easily confused like me, you may find this flood of words from 10+ players distracting. To combat this, I usually only focus on two or three players at a time to keep my mental strong.

Now, if you decide your initial push was town, **it is time to pivot.** Don't be afraid of pivoting: a good mentality is to pivot whenever is convenient for you. This includes being sussed early on and having to vote the next most sus player simply to survive. Pivoting is easy: just **claim your target is locked town and swap your vote to another player**, continuing the onslaught of words.

Based on this day 1, you should now have plenty of logs and votes to sift through for night 2! Good luck!

## Fakeclaiming

In many games, I will fakeclaim a power role. This is done in a few scenarios: either to give yourself **town credit**, to ensure you **survive,** or to make**chaos**. Fakeclaiming is a difficult and complex art, which is likely how I am condemned most of the time.

### Towncredit

By fakeclaiming, you designate yourself as a power role for the town. This means they are less likely to condemn you over someone who has not claimed. An example of this is claiming cop when you have a hard scumread. This is also probably the worst reason to fakeclaim, as it does more harm than good in 90% of scenarios.

### Survival

This is probably the least often reason I fakeclaim. When straits are dire, and you're up on the stand with a desecrated reputation and empty pockets, fakeclaiming cop is a great last resort. I usually follow this by **asking the real cop not to cc**, which is very important as to not give unecessary information to the mafia.

You might be thinking, "Isn't this exactly what a mafia member would do to survive?"

Yes! In fact, you should be doing this as both mafia and town. As mafia, you usually want to survive no matter the cost. As town, you also want to survive—because as S-tier IlluminatiLizard states, you're confirmed town from your perspective, so dying is a major mistake.

The only scenario where I wouldn't advocate for survival is when your mental is weak. Sometimes you will have a bad game, where you have miscondemned three town in a row, which is most of my games. Sometimes town will flame you for being a bad leader. This is okay! It is important to **recognize when you're bonus mafia, and accept being condemned to reset the mental of town**. Being bonus mafia feels pretty bad, but these games happen, and the best thing to do is go next and try to improve for next game.

### Chaos

Another benefit of fakeclaiming is making town confused. When you have no idea what to do, making town confused is a great idea—**if you don't know what you're doing, how are the mafia supposed to?** Fakeclaiming is not only hilarious, but it also builds bonds of trust. While mafia will be less likely to push you for fakeclaiming, the power role you are fakeclaiming may take every opportunity to push you, cementing their status as town. This also works the other way around. If said power role **TRUSTS**you, they will let you claim and get away with towncred scot-free.

You may ask, "How would a power role (PR) ever trust me for claiming their role? Doesn't that go against every thread of logic?"

Well, not exactly. Trust is a two-way street, and you need to be as confident in the PR's mercy as confident as they are in your towniness. Essentially, you want them to think, *what imbecile would claim my role so blatantly? Nah, they have to be town*. This results in **TRUST'***'*forming between you and your fellow PR, ensuring you can open fort on defense and condemn the mafia as you please.

This also works as mafia! Again, if you are able to form **TRUST'***'*with a power role, you're set up to take a win very nicely. Remember how I said that trust goes both ways, however? When you are a power role, you must be prepared, and happy even, for others to claim your role. In these scenarios, I usually try to endorse this claim with all my might (unless I scumread them, of course). This crucial reciprocity, this **TRUST**, can make games a lot more fun than if you never trusted anyone.

Lastly, it's important that when sowing chaos, you claim a power role early in the game—typically on days 1-3. Any later than this, you risk being seen as an opportunist and lose the ability to build **TRUST** between said PRs.

## Midgame

After day 1, it is ill advised to run the same cookie-cutter template that I've been using, since every game is different and requires you to adapt to the circumstances. Two important factors to playing the midgame are **pocketing** and **logs**. Another part of the game I think is important is **mechanics.**

### Pocketing

Pocketing is another part of the **TRUST**that I've advocated for so deeply earlier. In a game based on social manipulation and deception, I like to**TRUST**as many people as I can. This usually happens by me claiming a player is "locked town", and then asking them to vote my scumread. As mafia or town, I think it's important to **have as many pockets as you can**. Not only does this build **TRUST**, it also feels pretty good players think you're town!

Other veteran players, like xinde or Firefly7 or IlluminatiLizard or anyone that reads this guide, will likely clown me for this perspective, since being "outed" as town gives you less of an opportunity to interact with others and make scumreads. I don't disagree—I just think not needing to defend is pretty neat.

I would, however, advise to not overtly pocket others. Sometimes mafia can be found by creating a large towncircle and going from there, but I usually leave making towncircles to others and pursue the mafia directly and laugh when they flip blue.

### Logs

A big part of mafia.gg is reading logs. I usually have two goals when reading logs: to check **if the night kill was important** or to **provide evidence on my current scumread**. Remember how I get easily confused? Looking through logs can be overwhelming, so I often just take one or two players and quote their scummiest logs to fit my narrative. While having a wider scope of the game likely wins you more games, I find I get dizzy and my winrate plummets if I try looking at more than two players at once, so giving up and tunneling is the best play—until I pivot off, of course.

### Mechanics

Gameplay mechanics are an important part of improving in mafia.gg. An example is *Gnightless* by Xinde, which is a setup with 7 Patsy and 2 Marksman. The idea of the setup is to have a nightless game, where the Marksmen need three miscondemns to win the game. In *Gnightless,*my main strategy is to never shoot until I can manipulate votes. For instance, if we have miscondemned twice, there are 5 town and 2 mafia, with 7 votes in total in simple majority. In this scenario, we only need one town to vote incorrectly to win the game. If both marksmen vote Town A while Town D is also voting Town A, the marksmen can shoot Town B and C to win the game. Before shooting, however, the marksman must be Hapi from Fire Emblem:Three Houses and say **"Nighty night"** to successfully grandstand.

This is an ideal scenario, of course, which will likely never happen. If you're ever confused about gameplay mechanics, I highly reccomend **ignoring everything and treating the setup like mountainous**, leaving others to ponder over the finer details. This, of course, will fail in Ascension, so do your best not to be confused!

## Lategame

As long as you follow this playstyle, you will never reach lategame. Rejoice in this fact, and die early.

## Honour and Integrity

Honour (l'honneur) is one of the most integral parts of mafia.gg. There is really only one scenario where this takes place, however: when **you are mafia and a town is afk.** In this situation, an honourable player will **always kill the afk town**, no matter what. Sometimes this results in not killing the outed cop and being redchecked into instantly losing, but this is still a big win in my book, because you have maintained your honour. Honourless players will not kill afks and instead take advantage of town's weakness. You do not want to be dishonourable.

Being honourable, however, is not easy, and I am still struggling to achieve true honour. One scenario where this might be acceptable is if you do not realize said AFK exists and are too busy poring over logs to pay attention to afks.

Integrity is the second most important part of mafia.gg. There's an official section about it on their website, so I'll just say being mean is not it. In everything, we should strive to be nice, or at least not be intentionally toxic towards each other. **Criticize the play, not the player.**Calling someone outed mafia and textbook scum is okay, but calling them a shit player (at least imo) is not nice. It may be true, but we should still strive for tact when players are gaming suboptimally. By being polite to others, you increase the chance that you are townread and therefore pocketed, while also improving the rate at which your antics are accepted by the community pog.

## Lying and Evidence

I only lie on mafia.gg when it is either early game (day 1-2 to gather information), or when it's very funny and benefits my narrative.

You might realize, "But this could apply to any scenario ever!"

True. So never lie, but lie if you need to. By doing this, you can claim "I never lie when I don't." While this may not increase **TRUST,**I find it immensely improves your mental and increases the chance of winning the game.

Getting evidence is similar. You usually want all your evidence to be true. There is a tactic mafia players use called gaslighting, which is twisting evidence to make a player question their own sanity (not a real definition). I try not to use this tactic. When I do, it is almost always unintentional and is caused by my skewed sense of gameplay mechanics and missing half the content in the game. Sometimes it works!

Oh, and another thing: if someone wants evidence for your claim, you must **always be prepared to give it.**It is a mistake to run someone down without prepping beforehand, and mafia.gg is no exception. Check their logs, check their votes, lie if you have to, but make sure not to lie. As long as you can provide reasoning for your actions, it won't matter how faulty it is if you have enough pockets. In conclusion, lying and evidence go hand in hand—lying supports your evidence, and if you do it good enough nobody should have evidence for your lies.

## Mafia

I absolutely despise playing as mafia. It's just a lot less fun trying to confuse others into thinking you're town than confusing others into condemning three mafia in a row. When I first started playing, I was very bad not nice and would basically do nothing, ever, as any role. I then started only doing this as mafia before I felt bad because it was mean so I started trying as all roles.

Ideally, I try to play mafia exactly the same as I play town, but because I have all this extra information I usually tend towards bussing my teammates. A great idea is to **start an initial vote on your mafia member**, and claim "This bandwagon was way too fast time to pivot" and **have town ignore them for the rest of the game**. Veteran players may see this coming and revisit this scummy player and you, however, so it's not as good as it seems.

Open wolfing is another tactic. You can google the definiton of open wolfing, however when my mental is weak and I don't want to be mafia I usually just **fakeclaim every role and run miscondemns on whoever I can**. Not only does this strategy confuse the town, it also often outs several power roles who soft that you're bent in the head and need to be condemned. You should also inform your team to bus you at this stage, because there is a 0% chance you're making it through day 3.

## Conclusion

While more can always be said on how people play mafia, I hope this provided some insight into how I play. I think this way of playing is a lot of fun, so give it a go if you don't want to live past day 3! Don't forget to develop your own playstyle, though—it's important to find out what works for you, and what the highlights of mafia can be for your games above all else. Good luck on your games and don't forget to join the mafia.gg discord to troll in #general!