Not when I have a unique Detective PM I can show people less than a minute after Role PMs are sent out. The problem here was the unique PM, and would have been a problem no matter what setup was used.


Wouldn't have mattered if Mafia had Townie PMs, which was my natural conclusion. I operated on the assumption that he was a Mafia cooperating as a Townie, as I did with every unconfirmed Townie.


Okay, well your color was very poorly used. We could say you "coincidentally" stated that I was shot, on the night I was actually shot, except it's not a coincidence because you knew I was shot. It was a very poor choice, intentional or otherwise. When "color" is representative of the actual events in the game, it's no longer just color.

Naming characters who haven't died is always a bad idea. Even if it hadn't been indicative of what happened, which it was, it can still influence the game.


Put simply, no. The invincible Detective is why the game was so close, which is a good indication of balance in the first place.

This game would have been horrifically Town-dominated if the normal Detective was used, since roles would have been revealed. I'd have claimed myself with the Detective PM, confirmed my identity enough to ensure the Nurse targets me. My identity would have been confirmed further when Inferno, my public ally, was killed. Knowing for a fact the identity of every person I killed would have given me a goldmine of behavioral analysis to use, as I couldn't be sure how many Mafia were remaining until we neared the end of the game.

The only way Mafia might have won is if they randomly hit the Nurse, in which case the game goes from being Town-dominated to Mafia-dominated. Since I'd have made sure the Nurse knew not to expose themselves to anyone else, it would have been completely random. Maybe Aristocrat would have randomly gotten Nurse, then Town lost. Maybe Leeroy randomly got Nurse, then Town won.

Taking a good deal of randomness out of which side wins or loses makes the gameplay more meaningful, and more importantly, more consistently balanced.


Because of an obvious Detective role PM, and no Mafia counterclaims.


I'd have been more eager to claim, I'd have been one of the first people hit no matter what happened. I'd have claimed myself and gotten Nurse protection.


Far from it, there was nothing reckless about my actions. I had to setup the entire reveal process through Inferno, to make sure my role was confirmed enough that Mafia couldn't get me lynched. If there was a Nurse, I'd have simply claimed myself out of necessity and brute forced the Mafia to death.


That's why Devourer put a once-per-week restriction on the role generator, and created a log to show when people use it


I agree, and to extend on that, the difference between how much players care about the game. Some people sign-up but go inactive, but there's also people who don't actually care about winning. For example, Wing Zero won't vote to lynch people he likes even if it's in his team's best interests. This detracts from the game, and ironically makes it less enjoyable for those same people.

If we can figure out a good way to play Mafia anonymously, it'd improve these issues to a considerable degree.


Impossible, since every Townie remaining had been investigated and was in communications with one another. They all knew who was Town at that point.

If the Mafia were going to get me lynched, they needed to do it early in the game. They had enough opportunities. If I had been Mafia, this game would have been over pretty quickly, as there were simply too many ways to exploit the heavily-inactive Town.

Once the inactive players had been eliminated, the Mafia had no way of stopping us.

Also, at the point Sacrieur was being lynched, there were 7 players remaining. If I had been Mafia, then we'd have won the lynch vote 4 against 3, since I wouldn't have killed any other Mafia.


That never happened, I told him that I knew who they were, and named them. It'd be hard not to know who they are when I'd already investigated all the other players remaining.

The whole structure of the game is designed so that it would actually be disadvantageous for the Detective to claim publicly, because this effectively hands the mafia the following advantages:

1) They don't have to waste a hit on the Detective to find out who he is (this was remedied by using a proxy).
2) They can attempt to figure out who the Detective plans on verifying.
3) They can easily counter-claim either publicly or privately and get the Detective lynched.

The third point in particular stood out the most: Azrael couldn't find any mafia at first, so he was lynching townspersons. All the mafia had to do was wait for Azrael to lead a lynch against an innocent player and they have one free vote against Azrael, as well as being able to PM as many townies as they'd need saying they're the real Detective and they verified the townie's innocence last night.

There certainly was no verification that Azrael was the Detective; he could have used the exact same strategy as a mafia player and wouldn't have even needed to change anything he did until the day Sacrieur was lynched (because they would have won on that day by lynching a townie).

The game should have been over when the Detective was found so early on, as it's completely in the mafia's favor when they find out who the Detective is, unless the Detective already has a large network. This game should have been won by the mafia when they found Azrael on Day 2, and their lack of activity/organization is what made them lose, not the fact that this wasn't a Nurse-always-protecting-Detective setup as opposed to an invincible Detective.

If there were a Nurse and Detective on a no-reveal game and the Detective claimed and there was no counter-claim, it would have been the exact same play: the mafia won't waste a hit on the Detective because the Nurse will be protecting him.

I think that the game would have turned out differently if the mafia had counter-claimed detective early on. If that had happened, the townspeople wouldn't have known whether to trust lil-inferno (and Azrael) or not.

For me, I honestly wasn't sure if I could trust Azrael at first. But once lil-inferno died and the pastebin confirmed Azrael, I decided to follow Azrael's plan of laying low. If Azrael had not found me before the day he and Roy created the fake argument, I would have surely voted for one of them, drawing suspicion to myself.

Fun fact: that was a real argument. Azrael blindly accused me of being mafia, claiming he investigated me and got that result. I immediately concluded that he was mafia (because I knew he was lying about his investigation results) and we got into a legitimate tiff in the thread from there.

Later on, we had a conversation which convinced both of us there was a reasonable chance neither of us were mafia, so we backed out from voting on each other. The plan from there was to get me suspected of being investigated as town-aligned so that the mafia would eliminate me, which would prove to Azrael that I was indeed town-aligned as well as prevent someone actually in his network from getting eliminated.

Had the mafia actually approached me claiming to be the Detective before that conversation, I probably would have remained against Azrael and inadvertently handed the game to the mafia.