Murder By The Book - Ender's Game

I believe it was mentioned earlier that town tend to lurk more often. In my opinion it would be a good idea to target those active members that are acting suspiciously. Logically that should lead to fewer mis-lynches which I see as the greater threat. If we can kill a couple mafia members it will reduce their effectiveness, if we solely target lurkers it will likely only hurt us. Admittedly it would be less damaging than an active mis-lynch but I see it as a death by a thousand cuts scenario.

Nononononono.

No.

The majority of the playerlist are lurking/inactive. They outnumber the active players. Inactive players are wary of saying the wrong thing and ending up in the spotlight, though for fundamentally different reasons.

Inactive town who are new to Mafia don't want to get lynched, which makes sense from their standpoint because they only know one player who's town, right? That, or they have a night action and don't want to draw attention to themselves. However, they are passively working against the town with this philosophy.

Inactive town who are experienced with mafia need to a) go set themselves on fire and b) stop joining games they can't be fucked properly playing.

Lurky/inactive scum want to coast through the game without having to defend themselves, until a point is reached where there's no active town leaders to drag them out into the open. They can sit with their thumbs up their butts all damn game and let No Lynches keep happening, because they'll still win. Town don't have that luxury.

And guess what you need to drag said inactives kicking and screaming into the discussion? Active players. If the active players end up lynching each other, and the mafia kills the rest, the endgame is going to be a fucking chore.

From a utilitarian standpoint where we want to maximise fun (because this is a game oh jesus fucking christ someone kill me I'm being serious about how to have fun), we're better off killing lurkers early, so people actually playing the game get to stay in longer. Having active town and scum alive at endgame makes for more entertaining discussion, too!

Lurking/inactivity stifles discussion. Stifling discussion is anti-town.

By extrapolation, espousing a philosophy which encourages lurking/inactivity (like Granola has done, and I suspect you (Truegreen) of doing now) is anti-town.

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Alternative scenario: We pile onto, say, AgentBlue, until they're at soft lynch. At this point they're either going to say "ok ok jeez I'll participate" and hooray! One less lurker; or, they eat lynch like the sad limp lettuce I'm making them out to be.

We'll be able to continue discussion with one less active player (due to nightkill) instead of two (due to the alternative where we lynched an active player then the mafia nightkilled another one), and either way we get a wagon to analyse. Sounds pretty good by my book!