(Porting post about Day 1 Elimination Debate on request of
@Winged Cat)
(Reasoning for why we are always annoyed by this debate is at the end)
Preface
Before anything else, I'll explain some terms. Elimination is the term used in this guide for how someone is removed from the thread by votes. A vote is usually active only during the Day Phase that it is placed, and is changed whenever a new vote by the same player is placed. In most cases the person with the most votes is the one eliminated at the end of the Day Phase. Any deaths that are caused by one player targeting another is called either a Night Kill or a Day Kill by the phase it occurs in.
Day 1 Elimination
I will be explaining this now, in full. To start, what it is and what is expected from it.
The biggest expectation for what happens on the Day 1 Elim is that a Town dies.
This is normal. There is not a lot of information yet after all. The purpose of the Day is to gather information, it's a lot like finding puzzle pieces after your brother got into the box. Eventually, you're going to be able to fit a lot of the pieces together to figure out the picture, and as they come together it gets easier for everything to slot in. To continue the metaphor however...
Not every piece is to the same puzzle.
A lot of the information gathered is meaningless, or would be there regardless of the puzzle that is being filled (Greetings between players for example, or memes in a JoJo game) You can't tell if it is or isn't a part of it until things start to come together however, so you have to have keep all that information at hand. (On the same note as this but unrelated to the Elimination Debate(TM) a Mason could be considered akin to if your brother kept a handful of the pieces, and whether they share info or not is like if your brother gave them back)
The first death is the first connecting piece of the puzzle.
Whether it's by Elimination or by Night Kill, the first death is the first concrete connection. Before then you might have had a few piles of similarly coloured pieces but nothing to really extend off of yet. An Elimination is a lot more likely to be a connection in one of those piles, and you can then sort out whether they go to the same shape or if they belong elsewhere. A Night Kill however could be entirely removed from the discussion. This is when you start piecing together as much as you can, before hitting a point where you have to make a different connection to start putting things together in another part of the puzzle.
That's an extended metaphor for the first Day, now I'll explain the various points against it and the reasoning provided against
that.
It is almost certainly going to hit Town.
Tons of reasons for this, Town outnumbering Scum being the least important of them. The point against it is exactly that, we are acting on little information and are going to Eliminate Town. Less Town is bad, simple enough right?
-For why that's okay, there are usually a lot of Town, and gathering information is worth a single death. Mafia is the informed minority against the uninformed majority, and the only way the uninformed majority is going to win is either luck or turning into the
informed majority.
'It doesn't actually gather information.'
Eliminating Town doesn't tell us anyone who is or isn't Town, scum could be on either side of the wagon.
-The people on either side of the final wagon really don't matter all that much, the reasoning they gave for the side they're on is what's important to look at. The speed at how quickly the wagon grew, how many people had their own reasons for joining it, who had no reason at all, those things are what we want to look at for the final wagon.
More importantly however are the other players who were getting wagoned, because the biggest reason why Town is what is normally lynched Day 1 is that most Mafia have support. So look for people who defend others, who intercept inquiries, or people who don't seem to have a lot of reason for leaving their previous vote to raise a wagon higher.
It's better to have information from the night to help decide who to Eliminate.
To cut back to my earlier metaphor, connections that are made without killing people.
-Any investigatives will know what they know, but they aren't very likely to share that information unless it's worth their life, meaning that aside from a select few people everyone will be walking into Town with the same info they had going into Day 1. Mafia are also often capable of gathering information at night, and by virtue of being a mafia, sharing it with each other out of the thread. They don't need to gather info to win, Town does.
The point of the Elimination.
It's pressure. The point of the Elimination is to pressure people into taking stands, making cases (regardless of how good they are) and sharing their thoughts, because whoever we find the least satisfying or useful will be eliminated. The problem with pushing off the Elimination is that
people are selfish.
Without a reason to speak up, a lot of players
won't. It's hard to gather up the puzzle pieces when they're all hidden away and silent, and if people don't have a reason to go try and fit things together they'll hoard their little cardboard pieces like Gollum and his ring.
Why we prefer people to vote.
1: Refusing to join in voting people is often accompanied by not trying to find scum, and kicking back as other people try to do the work. It's a tool, refusing to use it isn't a good sign.
2: Talk vs Action. You can say a lot or you can say a little, people are a lot more likely to rally behind the person who goes out and does stuff than the person who doesn't, which gives us even more information to work with.
3: Votelogs are a very helpful thing for figuring out where people's opinions change without scrolling through the entire thread to figure things out you were probably already sure of.
4: Refusing to make player related stances significantly cuts down on what we can look at for what you are, and for figuring out what other players are when you die.
Why we are annoyed by this Debate.
Because nothing ever comes from it. Maybe if people actually stuck by it when they played it would be less irritating, but they don't end the Day voting 'No Elimination'. It just takes up time and attention that would have been spent gathering information to explain to people why trying to gather information is important, and it is the same thing again and again.
Suggestion.
A few things I want to suggest for you if you really think the Day should end without an Elimination.
1: Don't make a big deal of it early on. Saying "I don't think we should kill anyone today" or something similar like that
at the start of the day is only going to detract from it. If someone is questioning why you aren't voting anyone at the start, claiming to be waiting for a good reason or considering who to vote for is a lot more acceptable.
2: Try to gather info, if you don't want to vote at all at least try to put out some reads on people. You don't have to vote in order to question people.
3: If you are willing to vote still, using the vote system to help incentivize people to answer your questions is an option. If you start asking pointed questions and have a vote attached, people may follow your vote in order to apply 'Pressure'. This is just more info for you to use later on, and having to convince people to get off a wagon can change the answers that are given.
4: Get a good idea of how you feel about the other players, who seems to be Town, who you aren't sure of, and anyone who you feel is not. Our brains are really good at feeding us feelings on things we haven't consciously noticed, so pay attention to that as well.
5: Most importantly,
don't decide right away. The question of 'To Eliminate, or not to Eliminate' is not one that should be decided at the start of the Day. I'd suggest to start considering it about two thirds of the way through the Day, and bring up the
option then if you don't see anyone that is worth lynching. Remember to follow 4 and 2 for this.
6: If you decide on something, don't cave because of pressure. If you change your mind about it, like if you find someone who seems
really suspicious, then that's fine. But dropping it just because others don't like it only says that it wasn't very important to you to begin with.
