So... not talking about the game specifics for this round per se.
I've had to take a very high-level approach to Mafia in the past but never really dove into it, since I admin on a place where games are run regularly. One thing was that people regularly talk smack, so we tend to be looser on behavior in the Mafia forum and let the Mafia mods take ownership since they understand the context / play style better and the non-Mafia mods only intervene on rare occasion.
Watching it unfold here.... lots of the commentary (besides being really wordy) seems unnecessarily antagonistic on some level. Is that just part of the game style? I am seeing that maybe the "smack" talk is a way to get people to issue tells about their identities in the game or is just part of the fun.
But I'm a little confused because at least one member seems to be actually pissed off. Maybe I am just wrong. It's really hard to tell who is just playing the game and who is taking the conversation seriously and actually getting mad.
Anyway, am I right about how a lot of the heat is actually just part of the conventions of play? So there's no reason to be pissed off or threatening folks for real, aside from being yet another play strategy? Trying to figure out how to parse this. Maybe I am just misreading who is actually mad and you're all playing.
EDIT: Oh, and if you need to wait until the current game ends to comment, feel free. I don't want to get anyone accidentally killed off.
So specifically for me, the verbal abuse was supposed to communicate confidence in my own position while taking the rug out from theirs. I was playing a very heavy control style, where I wanted people afraid to question me. It's very difficult to stand up to someone that's punishing everyone that does so - but not so much if you're truly town. None of the mafia could reverse my momentum without bring an enormous amount of attention to themselves. Since I was (over)confident in my ability to point myself in the right direction, I was working under the assumption I was making it difficult for them.
It's also a way to elicit tells. For example, if ESC had have not got into a vitriolic exchange with me, instead opting to focus on trying to improve town's chances, that would have made me change my mind. A scum jumps at any chance to post high profile stuff without actually having to hunt. So exchanging insults is an easy trap for them to fall into, which also sets them up to have a higher level of activity from then on out (since it's weird if they can post constantly to shit talk but not to actually play the game). For whatever reason, ESC did return my shit-talk, and he decided to tunnel RB and I instead of focusing on expanding his reads beyond the conflict. I'm still confused as to what his character is and how he works, but his behaviour fit my profile so I tunneled him. It'd be unsportsmanlike if it weren't a game about... well... unsportsmanship XD.
Finally, I was also using it to change my tone from one end of the spectrum to the other. This stops people getting comfortable with a read on me. I don't want to be confirmed town or I'll get NKed, but I don't want to limit myself to just bluster. If I'm constantly shifting gears I'm more difficult to read and it's more difficult for mafia to plot my trajectory and subtly influence it.
IMO it has a place in the game, and honestly, playing mafia, it's allowed me to more intuitively understand why people abuse each other IRL. No insult is without intention, even if that intention is so habitual the insulter doesn't know why they did it.
I was actually really shocked when I saw someone being super aggressive day one and iirc correctly I called them out on it because I couldn't see how shitting up the water was in any way townish. But I was missing the trees for the forest. They had very good reasons for doing so and they were confirmed town very quickly.
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