So, while there is a case to make that people shouldn't be lynched for breaking the cardinal rules, they still get lynched. It's a circular argument for the why, and below (my own example) is a side effect where the cardinal rule was not obeyed and town lost due to it.
The cardinal rules of mafia are, somehow, cardinal not because they are so horrible noobish by themselves but because they invariably cast the person making said mistake in a bad light for the remainder of the game, sometimes with reason.
Basically, you hand people a stick they will continue to beat you with, adding it to every half decent case they make against you, and since at some point, it will stick to you in people's minds, they'll become uneasy and they'll have to lynch you, and so it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Moreover, the more something is said and the longer you wear the label, the more ugly it becomes in people's minds. Day 1 and 2 mistakes have a long time to fester in games lasting 10 game days, and at times, it is simply very inconvenient to lynch someone at a critical moment just because you can't be sure he's clean thanks to a day 1 or 2 fuck up.
To save everyone the time, especially on day 1, town just lynches you straight away when you break the rule.
For examples where cardinal mistakes do break the game, see Ment's coin toss on whether or not to hammer and my day 1 scum rp (the game where Venge was symp for Dibs and collected his current signature). I was on fire in that game, spotted scum mistakes and still got railroaded by dibs because I less credibility than him thanks to day 1 rp
I maintain I did nothing wrong there apart from making a bit of innocent page 1 fun, but I gave dibs a label to put on me and he used people's unease over me breaking the cardinal rules, despite me giving the town two cases on scum, so that when I finally spotted that he was behaving scummy, he just laughed it away as black/whiting by someone tarred with the scum brush already and escaped to win the game. The simple fact was that he was clean and I wasn't entirely. That works against you.
This post has been edited by Tapper: 24 June 2009 - 07:24 AM