When Is a Doc Pog Not Pog?

I'm sure even the newest mafia.gg player has seen someone say "DOC POG!" when no one dies one night. I'm the sure the meaning behind this is simple to understand for experienced players, but newer players may not understand the intent behind it. But the question is... is the Doc saving someone always a good thing? In this guide, I hope to help you learn when a "doc pog" is not actually beneficial.

I'll be exploring a few concepts in this guide:

1. What do players mean when they say "doc pog"?
2. How do protective roles work within a setup?
3. When should you be hesitant about visiting as a protective role?
4. What is odd/even parity and how does it work?
5. What is the meteor and how does it work?

## What is a "doc pog"?

So, what exactly do players mean when they fill the chat with a chorus of "doc pog"? In essence, they are congratulating the Doctor for successfully saving someone. Doctor is one of the many protective roles that exist on mafia.gg. A protective role's main purpose is to save players, in order to prevent them from dying, or to simply otherwise discourage the mafia from killing them. For example, Doctor can save a chosen player from a night kill every night. The chosen player, if attempted to be killed, will survive. However, all protective roles work differently from each other. Trapper, rather than saving a chosen player, will kill anyone who visits the players they choose each night. This means that Trapper does not actually save players from being killed, but still fulfills its role as a protective, as it discourages the mafia from killing specific players.

## How do protective roles work?

Protective roles can be added to a setup for a variety of desired reasons. The main reason is to be able to protect investigative roles like Cop when they claim, so that they don't immediately die and can continue checking players to find out if they are mafia or not. The longer the investigative role lives, the higher of a chance town has to win, as they will receive more information that allows them to determine who the mafia are. The existence of a protective role allows towny players to stay alive. This means that, when a mafia player who acts very towny doesn't die, there is a reason for that, and town won't instantly vote them out. The existence of a protective role also makes mafia choose who they kill more carefully. If they kill someone who the protective role might save, no one will die, and they will have lost their kill for that night. It also puts emphasis on the mafia trying to hunt for who the protective role is, as their death means that the mafia can kill anyone they want freely.

When a protective role can infinitely protect an investigative role, such as a Doctor and a Cop both existing within a setup, a breaking strategy known as *Follow the Cop* exists. This strategy allows the Cop to be able to check as many people as they need, as they can't die unless the Doctor dies. In many setups, this is considered overpowered, and is weakened by a role such as Hooker to make things more fair for the mafia. However, in some setups such as Janitorial, Follow the Cop is a desired interaction. When Follow the Cop exists, many players will sometimes take the suboptimal route, protecting a random player instead of the Cop, who they should be protecting, in an effort to try to "pog". It is not recommended to do this; the Cop is more important to save than any random Villager, or equally unimportant role. More about this will be explained below.

## When should a protective role *not* visit?

ABC is a wonderful example of when a protective role should not, in fact, visit anyone. Within the setup, Follow the Cop exists. As such, if the Cop outs on day 1, as they optimally should, the Bodyguard can infinitely protect it until it dies. However, in ABC, it is highly recommended that you **do not visit night 1 as the Bodyguard**. Why? Plenty of reasons. First of all, saving a player brings the setup into even parity. More about this is explained below, but in short, odd parity is always better for town than even parity. This is not as much as an issue while the Cop is alive (also explained below), but if town doesn't play optimally, it will be quite detrimental. Secondly, Bodyguard essentially only has two uses: the first time it saves someone, the killer dies instead; the second time, the Bodyguard dies instead. If the Bodyguard wastes one of their uses on the first night, because the power of Busboy and Jekyll together prevents a mafia from being killed by the Bodyguard, not only will no one die instead of what would probably just be a Goof, but Follow the Cop will not last as long due to the Bodyguard being able to die earlier on, allowing the Cop to only get 2 checks instead of what could have been 3 or even more. Some might counter this by saying *But I might have saved the Cop on night 1! Surely that was worth wasting a use?* To respond to this I would agree, yes, Cop getting only two checks in is better than Cop dying on the first night. However, the odds of saving the Cop are incredibly slim. If you manage to save someone, there is only a 1 in 6 chance that they were the Cop. And that's not even including the fact that you have the possibility to save the Announcer, outting your role to the mafia, which brings me to my final reason. Accidentally visiting the Announcer night 1 as the Bodyguard reveals your role as Bodyguard to the mafia. The only visiting roles in the setup are the mafia night kill, Jekyll, Cop, and Bodyguard, of course. The mafia know that you obviously aren't mafia, and if you don't claim Cop, you are outted to be the Bodyguard. This is highly suboptimal, as what could allow the Cop to get many checks if Jekyll is voted off day 1 will turn into Cop only getting 3 checks because they will kill you on night 2. In some other setups, visiting randomly on night 1 as a Bodyguard is perfectly acceptable, as killing a mafia member is worth losing one of your uses. However, because a mafia cannot die to you night 1 in ABC, visiting night 1 is highly suboptimal.

Another setup where you should be hesitant of visiting night 1 as the protective role is Uncertainty. Here, Follow the Cop exists yet again. However, if you visit the Grandpa night 1 as the Doctor, they will learn your role and kill you the next night, destroying the strategy and ultimately ending up with the Cop dead. Of course, saving a player here will bring town into even parity, which will help bring you back into odd parity if the Bomb manages to kill a mafia member. However, if the mafia are playing optimally, the Consiglieres shouldn't convert until after the Bomb is dead, so this doesn't matter anyway. Both teams should be playing optimally, so in order for you to give town an advantage, you should play your part as the Doctor.

Guardian as a role in general should never try to visit random players to save. Guardian dies instead of the player they choose, so no one will even know who you saved, who is confirmed town, first of all. Secondly, it is not worth it for a claimable, important power role to die saving a highly ccable, unimportant Villager. It's just not a good trade.

On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes it is **highly recommended** to visit randomly night 1 as the setup's protective role. Janitorial, mentioned earlier, is one of such setups. The Doctor managing to save the night kill night 1 is considered so game breaking that a variant of the setup, MafiaJJanitorial, was created in order to render it impossible. The Doctor saving someone night 1 prevents the Janitor from using their power, and as such prevents town from the disinformation of who the clean was, confirming their Cop as *not* Janicop and preventing town from not knowing whether the Miller is alive or not.

## What is odd or even parity?

I've mentioned odd and even parity a few times throughout this guide. So, what exactly is it? Simply put, odd parity is when an odd number of players are alive, and even parity is when an even number of players are alive. Even parity tends to benefit mafia more, as their are more players for them to miscondemn. Odd parity brings town into CYLO (condemn or you lose), while even parity brings town into MYLO (miscondemn and you lose); two players die every phase: one from being killed at night, and one from being condemned, keeping the existence of odd or even parity the same until some outside factor alters it. The only exception to even parity benefiting mafia and odd parity benefiting town is if some sort of extra kill power exists. For example, a Hitman who is holding a gun can shoot and kill a player to change whether odd or even parity exists. Rifleman can do the same thing in the same way. Because of this, a Hitman will tend to hold onto their gun in even parity to keep its existence, and shoot in odd parity. In the same way, a Rifleman is recommended to shoot someone before they die in even parity to bring the game into odd parity. The only other main factors that influences whether odd or even parity can exist is town ncing (voting no one), mafia nking (killing no one), and one or more Dons. Don changes which parity exists when it dies, due to counting twice towards the mafia's majority. (Kingpin does not change it, as it counts three times.) Speaking of ncing and nking, the reason why MYLO is more harmful to town than CYLO is mostly because town cannot simply nc (no condemn) to bring themselves into CYLO, as the mafia will simply nk (no kill) back, unless mafia have an incentive to kill, like a living Cop. (Mafia not killing gives them less chance to kill the Cop and will make them more likely to lose the game.) This is all assuming Punish Initiators is an enabled setting, which is what most hosts use. This brings me into the final concept of this guide...

## What is the meteor in mafia.gg?

The meteor is a fancy term for one team completely dies and the other team wins. You may be asking *Why the heck would you want this to happen?* The meteor prevents a stalemate from occurring by town contantly ncing and mafia constantly nking, each waiting for the other to make a move. If this happens too many times, a system message will appear saying "You need to vote someone to condemn/kill today/tonight, or else town/mafia will lose!" If town ncs again or mafia nks again here, depending on which is being punished, all members of their alignment will die, thus causing the other team to win.

The setting that allows you to modify the meteor is called **deadlock prevention**. You can choose which type of deadlock prevention you would like to use between 4 options:

1. **Punish Randomly:** *After 5 or 6 rounds of indecision, a meteor will strike.* The default setting, makes it random which party will be punished.
2. **Punish Initiators:** *After 5 rounds of indecision, a meteor will strike.* The most common setting. Punishes whichever team votes no one first.
3. **Punish Responders:** *After 6 rounds of indecision, a meteor will strike.* Punishes the team that *didn't* choose to vote no one first. Rarely used, as it seems odd to punish someone for the other team's actions.
4. **Disable Meteor:** *The game will run indefinitely in case of an endless indecision.* Disables the meteor entirely. Useful if you want to to make it so the mafia is not forced to kill anyone, which is useful for a scenario such as a majority of town being Bombs and the mafia no longer having any living Ninjas to protect themselves against them.

The entire concept of odd parity benefiting town and even parity benefiting mafia assumes Punish Initiators is being used as a setting. Otherwise, if, say, Punish Randomly was being used, town can simply nc in MYLO to hope that RNG will be in their favor, forcing mafia to kill and bringing town into a much-preferred CYLO.

## Conclusion

I hope this guide taught you some knowledge about how protective roles work and when you should choose not to save someone as one. Thank you for reading!