Stop Fakeclaiming as Town!

Type: Views Author: Antihero

This article was posted by Antihero in Mafia Discussion on the 30th of November 2015.

So there have been a bunch of threads about fakeclaiming, and I've mostly been in the "moderate" camp that said town should usually tell the truth except a few circumstances.

I'm not anymore; now I think town should just always tell the truth. Period.

The idea behind this is simple: when it comes to roleclaiming, scum HAVE to lie. Even if they end up claiming Vanilla Townie; they don't actually have a town role PM so they have to make one up. Town don't have the same problem; they actually HAVE a town role pm so they don't need to make one up. Does that sound overly simplistic? I don't think it is, I think people underestimate the utility of being able to remove yourself from the elimination pool with a good claim OR the power to ferret out fakeclaiming scum. When you lie as town you nullify those: you add to the confusion that's ALREADY inherent in an UNINFORMED situation, you keep yourself firmly in the elimination pool because you look really sketchy and the rest of the town isn't going to be able to parse your exact motivation, but most destructively: you contribute to creating a site meta where it's OK for town to fakeclaim and that's just... awful.

Now, I thought of a few counterarguments that people will undoubtedly pull out:

I fakeclaim all the time. Then whoever calls me on fakeclaiming must be scum so I vote them.

Yeah, that's wonderful. :]

Please stay away from me.

But this one time I fakeclaimed as town on this super dooper cool awesome gambit. I totally rocked the game and won after I got finished wrestling a bear and sticking a sparkler up my ass at the same time.

Ok... first off, I really don't believe you OR I don't care enough to actually read the troll game you're going to link me to and tell you why you either lucked out or didn't really help town win. Second, I don't give two shits about whatever isolated incident you want to brag about. I've been here a while and here's how I've seen fakeclaiming go: crap, stinky crap stew, cauldron full of boiling feces.

You know what the common thread of all those are? They're well intentioned gambits trying to do something heroic and they did a LOT of damage. To town!

But I have to claim X role in order to draw the nightkill or avoid the nightkill

Let me stop you right there.

Your second guessing who scum are going to NK is no way to do things, because ultimately it's impossible to reliably "draw" or "avoid" the nightkill. That's because the scum kill is based on a confluence of SO many factors... PR's, reads, leadership, hell sometimes I see scum kill people they just flat out don't like.

Just do your best while you're still alive and afterwards you can hold your head up high knowing you did your best.

but...but...but I HAVE to fakeclaim because otherwise those other idiots are going to lose the game

And we arrive at what I think is the true centre of why town fakeclaim. There's always at least a little bit of an component of narcissism in fakeclaiming town. The underlying philosophy is: you can't tell the rest of the town the truth because those other morons who are beneath you can't be trusted with the truth and you're their only true saviour.

And my answer is: get over yourself.

Mafia is a team game. As either alignment, you HAVE to rely on your team mates. Rhis is true ESPECIALLY as town. You're not the lone badass that's going to single-handedly win the game. That doesn't even exist. 99.999% of town wins are through TEAM effort and there's nothing that disrupts that more than misinformation. Scum already supply enough of that, you don't need to help them.

TL;DR Don't fakeclaim as town.

For real.