Identifying Power Roles
Prelude:
One of the most pressing problems for mafia in small setups with one or two known power roles…are the power roles. They are villagers who have the power to heavily affect the game, and they have the role to back up their assertion that they are town if they are ever threatened. Their strengths are obvious, but their strengths are also their weakness. They play differently because they know they can assert that they are town at any point, and because they know that mafia want to know who they are so that they can kill the power role. In this article I will explain several ways you can exploit power role’s weaknesses as mafia, in order to find them.
Identifying the power roles:
There are two main ways of identifying power roles, with the exception of mafia PR’s who can gather information. The first is process of elimination. The second method is identifying key behaviors of power roles to identify who is likely a power role. A combination of both used well will lead to success identifying power roles.
The Starting Point: POE
Before the game starts, you should have a channel in mafia chat dedicated to power role hunting. The first post in that chat should just be a copy and pasted list of all the villagers in the game, which you can edit to strike out certain villagers later on in the game or circle them. Your goal should be to strike out a majority of these people for a small game by the end of d2.
Strike Outs:
The most basic way to find the power role(s) is to figure out who isn’t a power role and striking them from that list. This can be achieved in multiple ways. I will focus on two strike out tools.
First Tool: Pressuring Villagers
The first way you can strike out villager from the list is watching how villagers who have a significant chance at going over during a day react. If a power role has a reasonably good chance at going over, chances are they are going to claim, while a VT will probably not claim PR (especially if the PR is a vigilante and or it’s a small game). As a wolf, in small games D1 and D2 you should be focusing on baiting out the PR by pressuring villagers who have a solid chance at being a PR.
Theory: From a theory perspective, it makes sense to focus on pressuring potential power roles D1, while relying on other methods later days. The reason for this is because as mafia, the most optimal way to find a power role is to do it in a way where they don’t actually claim - them claiming may have adverse effects, so while outting a PR d1 is good, it is optimal to indirectly out them and putting a bullet through their skull past D1.
Second Tool: Logic Chains
The second way you can strike out players is using logic chains to figure out whether someone being a PR makes sense or not. I will use the previous game as an example of a logic chain.
In One Step From Eden, no kill happened N1. Jaiden carried the factional kill attacking Icet, which means Jaiden knew that the jail keeper targeted them or icet. In that game, Leafia pressured Jaiden early on D2 and then later started aggressively going after Furtive. We can cross out leafia from being the JK because we can logically conclude that if Leafia was JK they would be suspicious and attacking Jaiden/Icet more aggressively D2, instead of aggressively focusing on Furtive.
In that same game, Furtive was confident that Brad was scum D2, not even focusing on other people. We can logically conclude that they too would be focusing on Jaiden/Icet if they were a jail keeper, rather than focusing on Brad that heavily. In that game’s spec chat, I talked about how I was hesitant to believe they were JK because I did not believe Brad would be sent out to kill. Mafia already knew this information, as mafia you have access to information that will help you make logic chains.
Circling Villagers:
Power roles have a tendency to act different from their fellow villagers. This is why they are often perceived as wolfy because they seem to be acting distinctly different from other villagers. As a wolf, you can use this to find potential power roles. For example, a doctor power role tends to be laid back and let others lead. Prodding such potential targets is an excellent way to figure out if they actually are a power role based on how they react.
I repeat, villagers who act differently from how you would expect them to act have a high chance at being a power role. Use this to figure out who is an actual power role.
I kinda ran out of motivation to expand on this so I’m just going to post it