Bookwyrm627: Everyone is playing the quiet game, and scum can manipulate the lynch if we don't start talking. So I try talking about something, and multiple people comment along the lines of "hey, lets not talk about that, talking about that will help scum. Lets scum hunt instead". The only actionable suggestion for scum hunting that I've seen is to try voting for people to get them to speak up (credit to CSPVG for listing suspects, and someone else mentioned voting specifically).
Here's my question for you then Trent: What shall we talk about instead of the setup of the game?
Followup question: When did I start bringing up possible roles (except as examples to illustrate some other point I was trying to make)?
More general question:
1) Who is willing to straight up claim town?
2) Who is willing to work together to start applying pressure?
For me, the answer to both of the general questions is "I am".
Talking about the setup and mechanics wouldn't be a bad thing on a later date, once we've gotten a chance to get a better feel for things and can make more educated guesses. I'm more interested in seeing reasoning and votes, getting people to commit their thoughts that can cause scum to slip up.
That even can extend to lists too. A list of names is ok, but explanations allow for greater conversation. Why is this person on your list? What makes them stand out?
As for your questions:
1) Everyone is willing to straight up claim town, no one is stupid enough to claim Mafia.
2)....Define work together. I'm going to apply pressure with my votes to the people I think are scummy, but I'm not going to jump on some conga line of going from one person to another, that doesn't really get us anywhere.
Bookwyrm627: Town doesn't know their targets; I seem to recall a lot of people complaining about the early role sharing of the two cops last game, but people didn't lynch them because cops give information. Imagine how things might have gone if yogsloth and/or CSVPG had been lynched day 1 and 2.
That doesn't mean it was still a smart move. What saved them was enough variables that no one was willing to take a risk if they weren't even going to find out if the person was telling the truth or not.
Bookwyrm627: Who else needs role information to win?
Town does. You said it yourself, "Scum want to know what roles are on the town side so they can Night Kill them and deprive town of the knowledge the roles bring". Maybe I only think this because I haven't learned differently yet, but town needs to figure out role information even more than Scum, because Scum already have a list of people to work on killing and just want to know where to start.
Here's the thing, the town can survive without power roles. In fact they have gotten to endgame and won while either losing investigative roles early, or having them be simply ineffective.
But here's the thing, if the power roles exposed themselves, then they are automatically ineffective. Lack of NK causes doubt about the truthfulness of their claim, they get blocked, NK'd, or Hell Mafia could counter-claim and then it's a real mess.
But honestly, the town DOESN'T need to figure out role information. It's the kind of thing that shouldn't be thrown around willy nilly, because there isn't much benefit to know right out of the bat until it's actually needed. Does seem pretty damn fishy to say though, extremely fishy.