Mafia, as a game, can only work when the players inside the game abide by a certain kind of fiction. It's not roleplaying, not exactly, but the idea that a mafia game exists inside its own little bubble is what prevents games from degenerating into rampant angleshooting, prevents games from spilling over into other games, and lets us call each other liars without making it a personal attack.
Game integrity being paramount to healthy, fair games, MU places the highest priority on preserving it.
Here's the Spirit of the Game version of OGI, and the reasons we're against OGI influencing a game:
The spirit of the rule regarding OGI is essentially this: no one should ever post anything that isn't about the game that a second player could reasonably make an alignment read based on.
Frequently, it's the second-order effects that OGI has on the game that are so disruptive. Even if you personally see nothing wrong / nothing alignment indicative about asking the game host a question in the thread, or commenting on a player's online activity elsewhere, or making a read based on what someone who's in another game is doing in your game, it's the catastrophic ripple effect that discussing these things in the game thread has on game integrity that's the problem. Players can and will read into your OGI comments, and players will read into those comments, and so on, and suddenly the game is no longer self-contained, no longer actually about the game.
To be clear: Sometimes OGI will influence a read of yours. It happens to everyone. "Man, Person X is posting up a storm in this other game, but is a complete lurker here. Wonder if they randed wolf." That kind of thinking is bound to happen sometimes; it's unavoidable to a certain extent. What is completely unacceptable is publicly bringing up that read in the game thread.
Here's the short version, the quick and dirty "how should I act in a game" version: For the purposes of a game of mafia, everything outside the bubble should be treated (publicly) as if it doesn't exist.
What a player is or isn't doing online (outside of the game), anywhere, doesn't exist.
The game host doesn't exist. (All communication with / about mods should be done privately)
Reports don't exist (if you need to report something, just do it, don't mention it publicly and do not threaten to report someone.) Similarly, infractions and warnings don't exist. If you get one, handle it privately, don't mention it in the game thread.
The exceptions to "the bubble" are a player's previous mafia history / mannerisms / preferences (everything generally covered under the term "meta") excluding ongoing games, and a player alluding to their own real-life status in the context of thread activity levels.
For example, saying you're going to bed, or going to miss the first 24 hours of a day for RL reasons, or that your cat is on fire, are perfectly acceptable statements. (Though MU strongly encourages you to expeditiously assist your cat instead of posting about it in a mafia game.)
When you make such a statement, however, it is required to be alignment agnostic. No one should be able to plausibly read anything about your alignment into anything you say about your RL status.
Respect the bubble. Game integrity is an ideal that only works if everyone in the game actively works to maintain it.
Angleshooting is defined as doing things, or applying rules, in ways they weren't intended in order to gain an advantage in a game. In mafia, a common example of this is using OGI (out of game information) to exert public pressure or influence on the game, to publicly give reads based on OGI, or in more extreme cases, to use information acquired through illegitimate means to covertly influence a game. Angleshooting also covers all intentional uses of any flaws/quirks in the forum software / modbot in order to subvert the spirit of the game.
This definition is purposefully non-specific, because angleshooting is more of a general idea than a specific case. Generally speaking, you know it when you see it, and it can run the gamut from relatively innocent/harmless to malicious and blatant cheating.
A good rule of thumb is if you're attempting to push a game in a particular direction, and your reasons for doing so are not based on what's directly happened in the game, or meta, you're in the danger zone.
Mafia Universe is firmly against angleshooting. If you are unsure if a particular action/read is angleshooting or not, (privately) ask the game host and/or a moderator. If you encounter something in a game that you believe to be angleshooting, report the post and inform the game host, and the moderators and game host will take a look at it.
