Usually a paragraph or two about how much you hate lurkers, every 4-5 pages, gets you past D1.

Mostly trying to work out who is what.

Lynch lurkers.

##VOTE Balki Bartokomous
##VOTE Fluminator

Like, in the scenario about being astronauts or whatever, would this be a substantive post:

"Today I left the landing site and collected some interesting rock samples"

??

No. It's not a roleplay in that sense, Jamie.

The storyline is only ever for flavour.

Day 1 is mostly nonsense.

Then someone dies/does not die.

And town players can then start to work our patterns/motivations. That's when the substance really begins.

At least that's the hope. It's often a personality contest.

Oh Jamie, I hope you haven't invested in a cosplay costume for this :)

What's the point of the storyline then? I would prefer if people stayed in-character.

I declare here and now that I intend to remain in-character for the entire match.

Then we could easily pick out who is what character.
And there would be no game.

Well, no, because the martians would *pretend* to be astronauts, wouldn't they?

Think about it.

If you're mafua, you want to blend in to town; not loudly proclaim your mafua character.

If you're a town PR, you don't want to proclaim your character and risk getting killed.

If you're a vanilla townie, by all means put on a character if you wish -- but will that help town catch Mafia, or will it hinder town?

The decision...is yours!

For some reason my phone autocorrects Mafia to mafua.

No idea why.

What I mean by "in character" is that all my posts would be in the context of someone in the scenario, on Mars, so I'd make reference to space-related stuff. You know, rocket boosters and Jeffries tubes and solar radiation and so on.

Otherwise it's all a bit pointless, surely.

I would caution you that calling attention to yourself like that will be interpreted as "scummy" by some and may get you killed.

/Vanilla townie, 100% guaranteed! (tm)

Again, then, what's the point in all the scenario stuff at the start? I quite liked the idea of that when I saw it.

You guys are currently making me want to take my name off the list.

I have no interest in playing a game that is a personality contest, due to my unappealing personality ;-)

People will make jokes about the scenario. Mods will use flavor when writing up the "death" posts. Some ascribe meaning to their flavor posts.

For example, I took over for captainmeme last game. He had posted a couple Mark Watley quotes from the movie The Martian so others might think he had been assigned the town role of Investigator, also named Mark Watley for the game.

Those types of (hopefully subtle but not too subtle) dropped clues can be useful as the game progresses.

Jump in, have fun, and play how you want to play. There's no right or wrong way, no matter what the others will say. They're just trying to manipulate you (or others) if they do.

There's scope for you to play like that of you want to.

Try it. Play :)

Typically though, during the Day, try to figure out who is scum or town by making cases against them and voting accordingly. During the Night, put together a list of reads and post them in case you are night-killed so the town can try to make inferences from your dying thoughts.

Ok, turning to gameplay skillz, would I be right in assuming that the main means of deducing who is town and who is mafia (if you're town and don't have the ability to communicate other than in the thread) is by analysing voting patterns?

Vote analysis is important, but it is insufficient. Players typically provide some justification for their votes. In conjunction with the actual, final vote tallies, you can learn a lot.

Look for "scumslips" (kind of like Freudian slips) which may be clues to which players are mafioso. And don't discount looking for townies as well. Some people become "towncleared" so you can then trust them a bit more than others. Towncleared players might be wrong in their judgments, but you can trust their intentions.

And hope there's not a Chaqa, guak, Maniac scumteam.

Hope Captainmeme is on the opposite team to yo- crap, nevermind. ;)

Analyse other people's cases and see if you think their logic is believable & correct - if you think they're being insincere, that's a good pointer.

I would've played my first mafia game here in roleplay had I not been assigned a mafia role. People have done it a few times in the past (Vash used to do this, I think) and it's pretty fun if done properly.

There will be no scum this game because screw you all

Did I say that out loud? Disregard that