Role Call
Premise
Role Calling relies on the idea that good honest townspeople have nothing to hide, while the evil roles have everything to hide. Thus, townspeople will tell the truth to people they trust, while evil will tell lies to their enemies.
Secondly, this strategy also relies on the town, collectively or from a single town leader, to be able to cross dead and proven roles off the list to determine which role claim by an evil role is impossible. An easy way to do this is to write out all the roles in a list, while expanding on each category. An example is shown below
Godfather----------------------------------------------------Godfather Support Mafia------------------------------------------------Blackmailer/Consigliere/Consort Killing Mafia------------------------------------------------Mafioso/Disguiser/Godfather Sheriff------------------------------------------------------Sheriff Doctor-------------------------------------------------------Doctor Mayor--------------------------------------------------------Mayor Veteran------------------------------------------------------Veteran Power Role------------------turns into this----------------- Mayor/Mason Leader/Veteran/Jailor Power Role---------------------------------------------------Mayor/Mason Leader/Veteran/Jailor Protective Town----------------------------------------------Bodyguard/Doctor/Escort/Bus Driver Investigative Town-------------------------------------------Sheriff/Lookout/Detective/Investigator Town Core----------------------------------------------------Citizen/Sheriff/Doctor/Mason Random Town--------------------------------------------------Town Neutral Killer-----------------------------------------------Arsonist/Serial Killer/Mass Murderer Benign Neutral-----------------------------------------------Survivor/Amnesiac/Jester/Executioner
Applicable Situations
The
The first thing WIFOM applies to essentially anything that requires decision making in Mafia; it is the backbone of deceit in the game. Various examples include:
- Doctor – Deciding who to heal at night
- A confirmed Sheriff is known to everyone in the game and requests to be healed at night. Surely, the Mafia knowing this would waste an attack attempting to kill a player under the protection of a Doctor, hence the logical conclusion for the Mafia is attack anyone but the Sheriff. Similarly therefore the most logical player for the Doctor to protect is also anyone but the Sheriff. However, WIFOM comes into play when the Mafia realise this and instead opt to attack the Sheriff; however the Doctor could anticipate this and still protect the Sheriff and so on, the circular logic continues.
- Mafia – Deciding who to kill
- A known Town member is accusing a fellow Mafia member. By killing this player at night the Mafia can expect to draw attention to that member even more as it appears as though that player is trying to save themselves from the accusations of that specific player. However, from the towns perspective it could look like the mafia has killed the player to make it look like the accused player was guilty, thus absolving them. Furthermore the town could further predict that in which case the accused player would be guilty and so the circular logic continues.
- Vigilante – Deciding who to shoot
- A certain player has been acting continually not unlike a Jester. This player could in fact be a Jester, in which case killing them could be very beneficial towards the town so as to not waste a lynch or be misdirected. However, it is not uncommon for Town Roles to act as Jesters in order to try and avoid being killed by the Mafia, in which case killing them would be disastrous for the town. Furthermore, it could also be a Scum attempting to act like a Jester to keep attention away from themselves in which case it would once again be beneficial to kill them and thus the circular logic continues.
Advantages
- WIFOM can greatly benefit any strategy involved in the game and through proper applications of these mind games can lead to landslide victories for players that use it well.
- WIFOM greatly increases the pacing of the game, usually leading to more successful kills and heals.
- WIFOM provides more ways to catch the Mafia out in a lie yet also provides them with more outs.
