The Pinocchio Problem: When Should a Townie Lie?

By Azrael

Once upon a time, the world of mafia believed implicitly in a golden rule: lynch all liars (LAL). But as time rolled on, rogue analysts and daredevils demonstrated decisively that LAL should not be considered an immutable law. Deceit and cunning are not only the province of the mafia, but sometimes of the town.

But with the knowledge that exceptions to LAL exist, came a troubling question: when should townies lie? And when shouldn’t they?

Examples of townie lies sending the town’s plans awry are increasingly common, and all too often have ended in cataclysmic failure. There have been fake daykills that risked forcing players into claiming unilaterally, false mason claims that cost the town the game, players who false-claimed immunity to NKs only to be vigged, townies who false-claimed investigations in order to get someone lynched, and townies who tweaked their role claims in order to make them more convincing, only to be caught out in the end and lynched for their deceit.

By contrast, the category of townie lies that have ended in success is more difficult to recall, and seldom have as high a payoff.

Gambits that elicit reactions from other players have been one of the most effective variety…so long as they are contrived carefully enough that you won’t end up being speared at the point of a lynch (see World Dom 2). More often than not, that is precisely what will happen when the town discovers a lie or gambit, and that is precisely as it should be, in general. As a result, it is absolutely necessary that townies consider the consequences of their lie: if it could lead to a player being false-cleared or mislynched it is probably a much better idea to keep things simple and honest.

The best and safest rule is that a townie should only lie or gambit when there is absolutely nothing to be lost by doing so.

When might that be the case?

Such cases will be rare and far between: and typically they will involve lies or gambit from players who can prove their town alignment, and thereby guarantee that they won’t be lynched. In most cases, a successful townie lie isn’t a bald-faced lie, but simply a gambit that relies on some degree of deceit, on not everything being as simple as it seems. Sometimes, an analyst might feign an activity that will lead players to attack them on a poor, faulty basis. If they have a method of proving that the attacks were baseless, or of proving their alignment definitively, there is a good chance that the town will acquire some useful information.

For instance, in Cartoon Mafia, a mini-game by Aurorasparrow, Cropcircles faked a daykill directed at me; a risky gambit that could easily have backfired. Unbeknownst to him, I was in fact a real townie daykiller, and he had put me in the dilemma of whether I should in fact fire my own retaliatory daykill back at him before being daykilled. At the time, I was unsure of whether Cropcircles’ kill was legitimate, but he was also one of the town’s prime suspects. I was torn: to kill, or not to kill?

Instead, I opted to feign a daykill of my own at Cropcircles in retaliation. The gambit had several advantages. It did not misrepresent my actual abilities, it could provoke additional reactions, and it had the chance of exposing whether Cropcircles’ kill was real or not before the mod arrived. If I was dead because of Cropcircles’ ability, the gambit would do no harm and the town would learn that I was the town’s true daykiller, not Cropcircles, and lynch him. Or, if it exposed his gambit, the town would gain information on one of its prime suspects and on other players through their reactions. The risk in that case was minimal, but it offered a chance of nabbing scum.

Another example of a pro-town gambit with minimal risk, a fictional situation rather than an anecdote from an actual game, involves a cop-cleared night communicator role who has the ability to allow two other players (not including himself) to talk during the night for the remainder of the game. In this scenario, the town’s cop has come out and confirmed the alignment of the night communicator, a vanilla townie, and the mafia RBer, who is due to be lynched at the end of the day. But the town’s doctor is dead, and the cop is unlikely to see the light of day again.

With just one or two more successful investigations, the town might be able to clear some of its prime suspects and steal a win from the jaws of defeat. But the cop is very likely to die before she can share any more results.

The night communicator is unclaimed. He decides that his best move will be to target the cop and the vanilla townie the following night, and allow the vanilla townie to learn the cop’s investigation results before the cop is killed.

But in addition to that move, the communicator has another option. He can false-claim the ability to “counteract” the impending kill on the cop in the coming night. Because he is cop-cleared, this gambit is very unlikely to result in his lynch. It is also a wonderful half-truth, because by giving the cop’s night result to the vanilla townie, he has “counteracted” the power of the kill to prevent the investigation from going through. If he makes this statement convincingly, he may succeed in attracting the mafia’s fire the following night, giving the cop the opportunity to share two more investigation results with the vanilla townie before dying. At worst, the mafia disbelieve him and fire at the cop anyways. At best, the town gets an extra investigation.

Most of the time, opportunities like those above will be rare, the exceptions to the rule, and require creativity and careful thought to fine-tune. In the vast majority of cases, townies should never lie, and use gambits only sparingly. LAL is not an immutable law, but it is a very useful tool, and it is undermined when players attempt to abuse the new-found leniency in its application.

At the end of the day, townies ought to be able to trust their fellow townies. Whenever you come up with a gambit, always make sure that whatever course you are contemplating does not risk destroying that trust, or turning it against the town. When in doubt, play it safe. Discretion is often the better part of valor, and boys with long noses are very prone to find their necks within the noose.

Good luck and happy hunting,

-Azrael