Absolute Tells: Behaviors that are alignment indicative for all or nearly all players. Such behaviors are rumored to exist.
Alignment: The team a player is on. Some common alignments are Town, Mafia, 3rd Party, and Cult
Alignment Indicative (AI): Not to be confused with Ellibereth’s “AI” tool for finding player specific tells. Player behaviors can give hints about whether they are town or not.
Appeal to Emotion (AtE): The nature of the game, itself, leads to appeals to emotion in all alignments. The simplest forms are appeals to fear. “If you lynch me, Town will lose.” But appeals to emotion are hardly limited to simple forms. Although AtE is considered a scum tell by some mafia players, players of all alignments invoke AtE at times.
Bandwagon: More than one player votes for the same player to be lynched.
Breadcrumb: A veiled reference to a player’s alignment, role, or night action results. Breadcrumbs are usually (but not always) subtle and designed to be missed by other players until either the crumbing player points them out when they claim, or when a player with a PR dies and the rest of the players in the game go back and look for hints about who they targeted at night.
Bussing: When scum players distance themselves from a team member, usually by helping to get the teammate lynched.
Cult: A third party team that attempts to recruit other players into their team. The cult usually wins when it is the largest faction in the game.
Day Abilities: In some games, a player(s) has abilities that resolve during the game day. Examples of day actions include day kills, neighborize and many other actions that are more common during the night phase of games.
Day Phase: The game thread is open and players discuss who looks scummy and vote. The day phase usually ends with a player being lynched.
Faction: A team of player who share the same alignment and win condition.
Finger of Suspicion (FOS): A semi-formal declaration of suspicion another player is not town. It is a less strong declaration than a vote.
Groupscum: A non-town faction consisting of at least two players. Also sometimes referred to as an Informed faction. The Groupscum team know its members (with some role exceptions). Mafia and Werewolf teams are examples of Groupscum
Hammer: The vote on a bandwagon, which puts the number of votes to 50% +1. This is usually the final vote in games using majority lynch rules.
Innocent: A generic investigative action’s non-incriminating result.
ISO: Looking at all of a single player’s posts out of game context. Most mafia forums have search tools that make isoing a player relatively easy.
Lynch: Most game days end with a player being lynched. In Majority Lynch games, the first player to reach 50% +1 votes is lynched. In Plurality lynches, the player with the most votes at deadline is lynched. In hybrid games, the day will end early if some is voted by a majority of players, and if that doesn’t happen before deadline then the player with the most votes is lynched.
Lynch All Liars (LAL): Some players take the stance that all lies are scummy and advocate for immediate lynch of any player who is caught in a lie. Other players take a more nuanced approach to lies.
Lynch-or-Lose (LYLO): A day phase when the town players must lynch scum or immediately lose the game. This usually takes place when the number of scum players is two less than the number of town at the start of the day phase, provided there is no way for town to prevent a kill during the night (e.g., no doctor or roleblocker or similar role alive)
Mislynch-and-Lose (MYLO): A day phase when town players will lose if they lynch town, but have one more day if the players choose not to lynch. This usually takes place when the number of scum players is three less than town at the start of the day phase, provided there is no way for town to prevent a kill during the night (e.g., no doctor or roleblocker or similar role alive)
Multiball: a game with more than one scum faction.
Night Phase: During this phase, the game thread is closed. Players who have night actions send the game moderator their night actions. Actions are resolved based on the moderator’s rules. Night actions include kills, protections, investigations, blocks, and others.
Non-Alignment Indicative (NAI): Some game behaviors don’t give hints about a player’s alignment.
Random Question Stage (RQS): Less common than RVS, RQS is an alternate way of beginning to generate game content so players can form reads. Someone posts a list of semi-innocuous questions for other players to answer. Common RQS questions include favorite role and/or alignment, time zone, expected frequency of posting during the game, opinions on “Lynch All Liars”, etc.
Random Voting Stage (RVS): During the early stage of the game, there is little or no information available upon which to base reads. Random votes with no reasons or silly reasons give other players something to react to, and those reactions can be alignment indicative.
Relative Tells: Some game behaviors (such as AtE) can be alignment indicative for some players, and not indicative for others.
Role Madness: a game with no (or at most one) vanilla town roles. They are so-named because a multitude of power roles make night action results confusing, and make the overall game a little crazy.
Scum: another term for the informed minority team(s) and/or third party players with a wincondition that isn’t compatible with Town winning the game, also.
Scumhunt: The act of looking for scummy behaviors and votes. Usually town players scumhunt and scum players pretend to scumhunt.
Third Party (or indie): An independent faction consisting of one player. Serial killers, Survivors and Jesters are examples of third parties.
Town: The uninformed majority. Town players (with some role exceptions) don’t know who the other town players are.
Townhunt: The act of looking for unequivocally town behaviors and votes. Some players townhunt instead of (or as well as) scumhunt. Townhunting can lead to finding scum players by process of elimination.
Vote: A formal declaration of intent to lynch another player. Usually the player with the most votes is lynched.
Win Condition: The terms by which a faction wins the game. For town, this usually consists of eliminating all of the Groupscum faction(s) and third parties with a hostile win conditon, such as “Last Man Standing”.
X-Shot: A role limitation. Instead of being able to perform an action every night (or day as the case may be), the player is only able to perform the action for a set number of times. 1- and 2- shot abilities are the most common variants.
This list will never be complete!