I can't remember... Is wanting to lynch newbies a town tell or a scumtell? If I can't remember that probably means it is neither.
But really I think it was a tow tell cause mafia wouldn't want to risk the wrath of town being upset that you would want to lynch a newbie. I think robs came up with that and it turned out it was generally correct.
Robz wanted to lynch a newbie in M10, my first game. We lynched him for it because we thought it was scummy. I was town, so was he.
Since then, we've always given newbies a pass early in the game, and due to that, there's always been a "play up your newbieness" thing for newbie scum.
Ah, I'm not sure I agree. We often give newbie town passes because newbie town does some stuff that is really hard to fake as newbie scum (see: Roadrunner in thsi game). I think we manage to catch newbie scum fairly often. "Playing up newbieness"is often mentioned, but can you point me to a single game where that was a thing?
I know I did it once, where I had a newish player and we had him play it up. I don't know if it worked, but I rarely lose, so I'll assume it did.
I disagree with you on RR -- all of his "newbie" stuff feels incredibly fake to me. It's just not possible for someone to be this unaware of how mafia works if they've played before, even if only IRL.
Let me tell you a story. We played Mafia with a blonde, overweight, too-American Alaskan woman. This was in Turkey. The cop woke up on the night, pointed at someone, and went to sleep
The pointing had no effect, it was purely symbolic. Many people cheated. I rarely played. The doctor picked someone to save after the Mafia killed someone. There were no switched, nor a SK. So that's my story, what's yours?