At the heart of it, Mafia is a game of lying. There is a group of people, some of them are lying and some are telling the truth. Your job is to figure out who is lying, and if you are doing the lying, to convince the rest of the group that you are telling the truth. In addition, Mafia is not for the faint-hearted or overly emotional. While not occurring every game, sometimes people can get into very heated arguments with one another. People can get very emotional playing Mafia, as it is a high-intensity endeavour. That being said, playing Mafia is an excellent way for developing thick skin, improving your patience, and making yourself a stronger person mentally.
Town
As Town, you must remember that your objective is to find and kill Mafia, not to find and worship confirmed Town players. Mafia are playing the stalling game, thus common heuristics of Mafia can be split into two broad categories:
A. Survival
Hiding/Blending in
Posting long but contentless posts
Lurking
Indecision
Not wanting to point fingers
Avoiding responsibility
Apathy about who is lynched
B. Pushing their agenda
Promoting confusion
Avoiding contributing new ideas (ie. rehashing old ideas to try and look useful)
Making a big deal about nothing
Cherrypicking town mistakes while ignoring contributions
OK, so you think you've found a Mafia member. That's great, but how do you convince the rest of Town? For all they know, you're Mafioso. Town benefits from clarity, transparency, and direction. Try to contribute to these goals in whatever way possible to helpe establish your innocence.
This is forum Mafia, so there is a permanent record of everything said. Everytime a player dies, their alignment is revealed. Go back and re-read all of their posts with this new information in mind. Who were they trying to deflect attention from? Did they bandwagon their vote?
Don’t babble, don't spam. Many players are afraid that if they are seen as being even slightly inactive, they'll be accused of being Mafia. If you speak without having a clear goal in mind, you impede the town and decrease everyone else’s productivity. This paralyses town analysis and decision-making and allows Mafia to hide in the chaos. You don’t have to be a super-active poster to prove your innocence or be useful to the town.
On voting: Don't casually throw a vote around. Just like your posting, make sure your voting is also deliberate. Your vote should convincingly express your opinion and intimidate the mafia. Votes are not be something to be ignored. If you are not using a vote to express that player X is 100% Mafia, you should be using it to draw out information. You may be surprised how well votes force people to talk. Seeing how people react to your vote also gives you an indication of what bandwagons people are willing to jump on. This game uses Plurality Lynch, in which the player with the most votes is lynched, and doesn't require an overall majority vote. Similar to what I said before, there is a record of every day's voting. When someone flips, re-read the vote list to see who voted for them. If someone flips scum, look for fellow Mafia members that may have voted elsewhere to try to save their buddy, or have jumped on the bandwagon to look innocent.
If the die were in your favour, and you rolled a blue role, the general knee-jerk reaction is that you are too important to the town to risk being lynched or shot by the Mafia. This can cause people with blue roles to lurk and exhibit posts that suggest fear. However, a good player with a blue role will appear exactly like he is a townie, though this is not easy to do. Regular townies should avoid directing blue roles, as it gives Mafia information. Remember that Mafia have access to Roleblockers who can mess with blues, and Bombers that can take out multiple blues.
This should be very obvious, but never roleclaim as a blue. It does nothing for town, and you've just stuck a very large "shoot me" sign on your back. Exceptions are Veterans - claiming you took a hit during the night is fine as Mafia usually have that information already. Claiming you shot player X as a Vigilante, when you have no more bullets left is also good, especially if you hit a red, as you're giving information that Mafia can't punish.
Mafia
Mafia should read all of the above to see what to avoid doing.
At the start of the game, you possess the information advantage over Town. Don't give this up lightly, as information can come back to haunt you when Town start piecing things together. When you are about to reveal a piece of information (such as a role claim, hit claim, etc.), you should ask yourself how this claim benefits your agenda. If your claim casts suspicion on a player or doubt on a situation, while making you appear like you are trying to figure things out, then by all means claim. However, if you are not currently under heavy suspicion and your only answer is “it makes me look pro-town”, it is probably not a good idea to reveal the information.
In many games, the weakness of a Mafia team can be traced to the decision-making process with regard to defending teammates. When attacked, many Mafia will usually react on the fly without thinking things through. They may not be able to accurately judge how much support an accusation may get, and thus are not quick enough to decide what is the best course of action. This is a mistake you want to avoid. Before giving your opinion on one of your fellow Mafia members, assess the presented case. Do not mindlessly jump in and defend or waver over an indefensible accusation, as it may implicate you in a future lynch. On the other extreme, do not simply sit there and watch a teammate die if the case is weak.
What if you're the one in the spotlight? There is never a concrete or easy way to avoid getting lynched. Nevertheless, be calm and logical when defending yourself against accusations. Don’t immediately accuse your attacker for voting you. More often than not, a person will get lynched for overreacting to the accusations. Remember that you do not need to convince everyone (including your attacker) that you are innocent, just enough people to save yourself from being lynched.
You're Mafia and you need to kill, but you have limited KP every night. You should prioritise your kills in this order:
1. Posters that are making sense and are on the right track
2. Blue roles (especially DTs and Medics)
3. Confirmed townies (as in, Town members who have publicly proved their innocence)
As this is the first game on TBT and with many newbies, I omitted an entry that should have been #2: Town members that are known to be dangerous analysts. Obviously with no game history on TBT, nobody knows what anyone else is capable of. Also remember that you can sacrifice fellow Mafia, but you better have a solid game plan in place.
So how should you post as Mafia? You want to keep the town confused while avoiding responsibility for it. When deciding how and what to post, you need to consider how the town is doing and react accordingly. Is the town being dominated by aggressive players, active posters, thoughtful posters, or inquisitive posters? Are the players generally cooperating on figuring things out, or is there a lot of tension and drama in the thread? The more things go the town’s way, the more important it is to intervene and cloud the thread. When the town is allowed to focus on one or two key topics at a time (without the same points being repeated over and over), then the town is in a strong place. Lack of doubt, inflammatory posting, and strong town leadership is incredibly dangerous. Many times, Town is not destroyed by direct Mafia intervention, but by sheeping and a lack of critical thinking. When the town tends to base their accusations off of flawed assumptions, you must simply punish them by feeding their conviction in their own misconceptions.
