Opening

So you just joined a mafia game? Cool!
But do you know how it works? No? Then read here.

Now you can't make excuse of "I don't know how any of these works" anymore when you play it (and roll mafia)!

So now you know how the game works, you're ready to play! Yay!
How about some tips to help you become a better player?
There are countless ways of playing mafia, either as town or as scum.
Mafia is an evolving game, where players learn from their mistakes and be better. Thus, there is no specific "tells" that is guaranteed to work every time.
But still, some tips still are quite effective.

Proper Mindset

1. Always remember that Mafia is a team game!

To be honest, this is probably the only major thing you need to remember when playing mafia.
So yeah. Mafia is a team game. What does that have to do with playing Mafia?

Everything.

Whether you are aligned with town or mafia, you have other players who shares the same alignment with you. (Except for third parties, of course.)
As town, you can not lynch mafia by yourself. You need other players to agree with your points and follow you (and eventually voting who you're voting).
As mafia, while it is possible to win a game solely by yourself, working together with your partners and plan something devious that fools town can help you win easier.

2. Play to your win condition

This is basically from point 1. But this by itself is very important too.
Forum mafia isn't something that comes and goes around quickly.
Designing setups takes effort and time. Recruiting players takes time.
Moderating the game takes considerable amount of effort, and playing the game takes responsibility and dedication.
By your one act of gamethrowing, you are destroying all the efforts invested in the game.
Don't do that.

Playing as Town

You rolled town. Your condition is to eliminate all scum. Sweet! Now what do you do?

1. Use your vote

Vote is your only weapon to kill off scum during the day most of the time. Because of that, vote serves multiple purposes.
First of all, vote is used to lynch someone. Hah. We all know that. So let's move on.
Secondly, vote can be used to pressure someone and/or garner reactions. How does that work?
During the day, what scum is afraid of is being lynched, because scum being lynched decrease the chance of scum winning.
Vote and wagon someone to pressure someone. Lot of time, the target's alignment becoems pretty obvious just by looking at the flailing.

Your vote should be active all the time. You shouldn't be wasting your vote by voting yourself or having it lingering around the "Not Voting" section.
Doing so is basically stabbing yourself with the sword or fighting unarmed battle in armed Arena.

2. Be involved.

AKA Do not lurk.
Lurking denies the information used by people to read you. If people find reading you difficult via lack of context, the paranoia and eventually suspicion will follow you. Soon enough, you're probably gonna eat rope by wagon led by town most of the time with happy scums cheering at the sideway.
Try to stay active and involved, even if you have zero clues of what is going on. Poke and prod. Question. Use your vote. Take a stance.
Let other knows what your stance and why.

3. Be brave, fight hard

The common misconception among newer town players is this:
"Town's win condition is to lynch scum. If my death contributes to town win, then so be it."

Don't do that. Being defeatist will taint the information and future analysis.
You thought you were a mislynchbait so you allowed people to lynch you. This is the common scenario after such mislynch.

Townie: Hey you, why were you on this wagon?
Scum: He asked for it (Or variant of this line of excuses) :shrug:
Townie: Oh ok.

Also, another common misconception is that your townflip will make people respect/consider your reads more.
The credit by flip however only adds so much. All it proves is that your thought process were genuine.
All it takes for players to ignore your reads is: "Meh. He was just a bad player."
Push your reads while you are alive. If people are not considering your reads, either your reads are dead wrong, scums are doing their best to discredit you, or... you are just not that persuasive. Work on that.

By not fighting hard, you are giving scums excuses to lynch you. Fight till the end. Don't give up. Make scums fight for your lynch.

Playing as Mafia

You rolled scum. Your win condition is to dupe the hell out of the poor miserable town.

1. Deny town from the extra information

Town scumhunts with information. Your job is to deny the information.
The method of denying information are vary.
You could self-hammer when you're run up to L-1 to cut off the discussion.
You could spread the mist and mislead the town to the wrong direction.
You could fake the interactions to taint your association with other players.
You could also lurk. Strategically.
Do what you can to stay town from venturing to the right track.

2. Bus strategically.

One of the mafia's favorite methods to mislead town is bussing/distancing.
Bussing taints your association with your partners, and if done right, you could be even "cleared" from being mafia with your partner who was just lynched yesterday.

However, one of the major mistakes that newbscum makes is bussing without any further consideration just because lolbussing.

You don't need to bus your partner when your partner is being widely townread. Just let him take the towncred. Don't give him suspicion that he doesn't need to get.

Also, if you're gonna bus, make it look natural. Progress natrually. Townreading your partner and all of the sudden scumreading him will gather you some suspicion.
And make it strong and convicting. Either bus hard or go home.

3. Bring town to apathy.

Apathy is the town's worst enemy. Also it is easy for town to catch one. Why not abuse it?
Get on pointless one-versus-one wall battle! (If you can handle it, that is.) Stall the game! Discredit town's stances again and again!
Also, here's a hint. "Autowin" strategy makes town lazy!

Game opening

Now that you guys know how your alignment works, let's talk about some basic game openings.
There are two types of game openers: RVS and RQS.

1. RVS

RVS stands for Random Voting Stage. This is the most commonly used openings in mafia game.
During RVS, players vote others for silly reasons. Sounds useless, eh? Nope.
What RVS do is to generate discussion. Votes piles, wagons are created, reactions are garnered, etc.
However, one thing you should remember as town is that you do not want to linger on RVS too long. While RVS can be fun and lulzy, if it continues for too long, the game thread will turn into one giant facebook chat page.
When there's a sign that RVS is no longer needed (e.g. someone gets wagoned and started clawing each other), that's probably a good sign that you should move on.

2. RQS

RQS stands for Random Questioning Stage. This is not as popular as RVS and some people just hate this.
The reason is that while voting generates wagons and reactions, the questions just don't quite achieve the same result as RVS.
So if you want to pull off RQS, make sure that you ask the questions that will help you scumhunt. (e.g. "Which car brand do you like the most?" won't help you find scum.)

Commonly Used Abbreviations

L-n: n is a number. L-n means that the player is n votes away from being lynched. (Lynch minus n)

WIFOM: Wine In Front of Me. It's a movie reference. It also means a circular logic such as "Why would A do this as scum? Oooh but then he could do that as scum just to make me think that he wouldn't do that as town..." etc.

MyLo/LyLo: Mislynch or Lose/Lynch or Lose. Mislynch or Lose is a situation when town mislynches they will lose. Lynch or Lose is a situation when town must lynch (correctly) or they will lose. The difference is that most of the time MyLo can be passed via no lynching.

AtE: Means Appeal To Emotion. It is used to win a point without using a logic. Example: "DUDE I'M TOWN WHY ARE YOU STILL TRYING TO LYNCH ME I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE WANT TO LYNCH ME WHEN I'M TOWN LIKE THIS WAAAAAAHHH"

IIoA: Not commonly used anymore but it does mean "Information Instead of Analysis". Basically someone posts a huge post and it contains the stated facts instead of his opinions.

RIP: Rest in Peace. Also known as Requiscat in Pace. People sometimes say this when player is killed.

Closing

Of course, there are a LOT of other ways to play your alignment. Reverse psychology can be used, the "tell-immune" tells can be created, WIFOM, etc.
But I think this is enough to get the newbies started, at least.

Also, if you feel like reading more, you can always search Mafiascum Wiki to read more strategies, articles, etc.

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