nmillar: It pays me to say this, but I agree - there's a lot of fishing going on at the moment.
Yeah but is it fishing from the mafia? As we said, either they're killers and probably distributed amongst the groups, which would mean that they will know during the night everything there is to know, or they are (fewer) cultists, and then would require forum exchanges in order to map out out groups.
I am not certain about what we'd get by doing this mapping now, except for the one thing that interests me : the T members group. I am curious about that, and I would prefer to be clear about it (is there really a 5 members group, for instance, although it'd be probably too obvious to have a mafioso outside these groups and, precisely, vulnerable to this outing), but it's the only thing that interests me. The info about 4 members groups, whether they talk at night or during the day, which race they are, do they have scales or tentacles, interests me not.
Now, if we have killers instead of cultists, concealing our species is silly. The mafia will learn it BEFORE us, that is, during their nightkill decision making. Believing in killers AND considering that species outing is detrimental to town makes no sense.
If we have (fewer) cultists, then maybe they'd have reasons to target specific species first, and would want to identify them now, knowing that they won't have enough info to share when deciding for night actions. This is the case where there could be an potential unknown danger.
Other things,
RWarehall, cultists would forecully switch a player's affiliation, instead of killing him.
Sirprimal, in my firsr game I was violently impatient for the first night and events, and was all lynchlynchlynch on day one, and scummy because of that. I'm taking it into account when reading ixamyakxim's post.
Flubbucket, I was referring to your assumption about mafia numbers, which was a pure killers assumption, as if cultists were completely out of your mind. Generally speaking, I find you scummy because I can't get a feel of how you imagine the setting, sometimes you seem to have one background and mechanism in mind, sometimes another. Rather than someone actually speculating or having an opinion (even in terms of probabilities), you come off as someone hopping from one discourse/belief/taking-in-consideration to the other, which evokes me masks more than the expression of an actual yourself behind it. Of course, your tone doesn't help, as it facilitates plausible deniability a lot.
And the early lesson-on-how-to-join-a-wagon, which sounded more like early behavioural hints to newbie mafiosi than post-wagonning decyphering lessons.
My general concern, again, would be the mafia to win because we are too divided by our species. In that sense, I think we have to be careful about why we choose to not collaborate all together, beyond knee-jerk clanic reflexes. There may be reasons, good ones, but let's also beware of the wrong ones. And, beyond general principles, to assess the practical reasons to conceal this or that info.
I always kinda disagree on the idea that not understanding anything about the setting is more beneficial to town than to mafia. As the other guy was saying : where there is confusion, someone who knows exactly what he wants has all the chances to get it...