MAFIA: The Road to Canterbury - Game Thread

[Mahaloth]

Originally Posted by Inner Stickler

I'm not talking to you, mahaloth.

Heh.

[Visorslash]

Good job Hal. You played very well. Also to the Brotherhood who came very close. You outplayed us too. Good job.

Thanks for the game Story.
Oh, and Good job to Mahaloth as well.

[Babale]

Visorslash, nice job making everyone believe you could unlynch anyone at any time... It was a good play, even if we did make it work in our favor (Don't worry, even if he IS Town, Visor will save him!).

I never did think you had the power, for the record :P

[gnarlycharlie]

congrats Hal! great game. i'd rather have a PFK get the win.

thanks for the game, Story. very creative for a very open game.

Originally Posted by Babale

Yah! I told you to lynch Hal! But noooooo, we new to find Scum, not focus on him!!! Oh well. Also, I thought I should use the spear on Hal, not Ender. Was his protection gone?

Ender, your "troublesome foursome" theory was good, but you made one mistake. Astral couldn't have been picked because he wasn't around at the beginning! Therefore he was no more likely to be Scum than I.

Town made a number of mistakes, my lynch included, but this was pretty bad. i saw that right away since i had excluded Astral from my list of experienced Dopers becuase he didn't start the game.

[Alka Seltzer]

First off, fantastic job with the role claim Hal. That would have been well beyond my writing skills.

Also, hats off to storyteller's inventive setup and excellent game colour.

I dropped out for both in and out of game reasons. I was spending too much time playing a game I wasn't enjoying any more due to the participation problems. Town have almost no chance of winning with so many holes in the game. I kept going until a sub could be found, but it would have been better all round if I'd simply stopped. The vibe I was getting from town was that I was just pissing people off, which was not my intention. I wasn't actually rude to anyone. I definitely won't be signing up to play again. I enjoy the challenge of figuring out the game mechanics and scum-hunting, but I'd be better off following future games as a non-participant.

I see I self-protected on Night one. That leaves me with an odd record in Mafia. Scum and PFK have tried to night kill me five times in total, but have only succeeded twice. Despite that, I did more harm than good for my team, by pushing for fubbleskag to be lynched (it gets worse, as I suspect sinjin may have restored him). After he flipped and I left, I picked Suburban Plankton, Inner Stickler, MHaye and Babale for scum in a PM to storyteller. But really, my confidence in that read was very low, and if I'd remained in the game I could easily have ended up voting anywhere else. Snickers was my only solid town read in the whole game. I wasn't even confident that Stanislaus was town, until MHaye flipped.

[fubbleskag]

well done, Hal.

[Enderw24]

Yeah, I screwed up quite a plethora of times this game. The latest being the whole Astral thingy. That was pretty ridiculously stupid right there.

Can I ask a question? Do you guys think that Town was at a disadvantage this game as compared to other Mafia games? I really have nothing to compare it to, but I believe that we were. Here's a few things that weren't working in our favor:
1) Inactive players. I'm not just talking about those for whom extraordinary circumstances got in the way, but those that weren't regular active contributors.
2) A 95% open setup where Scum knew everything and Town knew almost nothing, and could hide very little.
3) Some pretty weak town powers (The Miller? Who wants to use that?)
4) Two of our most powerful positions (1 investigator and the carpenter) both were lost to Town.

I'm not complaining. Half of the above was just luck of the draw. The others are what they are. It's all just a game.
But I'm wondering if others felt the same way, that town was really odds on to lose this game from the very start.

[Astral Rejection]

I don't think so. We had way more mislynches available than scum had regular lynches. In four correct lynches, scum could lose, but it ended up taking, what, seven mislynches for us to lose?

[Enderw24]

Well yeah, but I'd argue that's the scenario for every mafia game. Scum are vastly outnumbered, and it always takes just a few correct guesses for town to win. I even read somewhere that math indicates that with equally skilled players, you have 50:50 odds when scum = the square root of town.
So in theory, 15:4 is pretty close.

I'm just saying the setup and random happenstances of this game put town at a disadvantage to winning.

[Mosier]

Originally Posted by Enderw24

Well yeah, but I'd argue that's the scenario for every mafia game. Scum are vastly outnumbered, and it always takes just a few correct guesses for town to win. I even read somewhere that math indicates that with equally skilled players, you have 50:50 odds when scum = the square root of town.
So in theory, 15:4 is pretty close.

I'm just saying the setup and random happenstances of this game put town at a disadvantage to winning.

That's just math though, assuming "random" lynches and non-random night kills. The lynches aren't random, because scum influences them. It seems like Mafia can't be won by town through logic or analysis, and must be won with psychology or luck.

[Stanislaus]

Mafia's definitely a social game, not a logical one - although I think you can get a long way by applying logic. But essentially it's about our ability to deceive and to detect deception. Playing online makes it harder for Town, because you don't see people hesitate, flush, smirk, make eye contact with fellow scum or otherwise reveal their emotions.

(On which note, special kudos to MentalGuy who I don't believe anybody even considered might be scum, due to his excellent impersonation of conscientious Townie.)

But you can spot inconsistencies in people's behaviour, or emotional responses to the situation. (I do think Suburban gave himself away by being too defensive at one point, and I'm kicking myself for giving up on that.)

I don't know what the overall record is, but I'm pretty sure Town have won a fair proportion of the games we've played here.

Personally, I'd like to thank story for designing this game. It was an innovative variation on the usual set-up, and fun to play - I got frustrated towards the end, but that's my fault for not being better ( or Scum's/Hal's for being too good!). I think Scum did have one big advantage that they don't normally, which was their unimpeachable role-claims. However, we identified this and in fact, it did cut both ways - Babale did leave himself exposed when visor died (and we should have hammered that) and Suburban couldn't have survived a claim by the time we made them - we would not have believed he'd failed to investigate, or sat on a result for so long.

[Alka Seltzer]

It's very difficult to judge, but I think this setup favoured town if anything. The watcher roles were potentially very powerful, with the ability to self-confirm and semi-confirm several town in one night. A double watch of Visor on night 1 could have potentially given town a large semi-confirmed pool, including The Knight, both watchers, one or more protective roles, The Carpenter and The Canon.

I was slow to see the possibilities in the setup, and I didn't want to point them all out, as I was hoping to assess role claims. Doing something visible was as or more important than the action of the power themselves. For example, a role-block of an investigation would have been a great result. A plain investigation was almost useless by itself, given the issues over trusting the investigator and the possibility of the Cloak being in play. A role-block of an investigator would give two semi-confirmed. (The presence or otherwise of The Memento being key in all this).

[Snickers]

Well, at least town didn't lose. Well played, Hal - nice job, and nice win. And at least someone was certain I was town, so that's a win for me! (Thanks, Alka.)

I protected Stanislaus the night I died. But not because I was certain he was town (although I should probably have been.) Instead, I'd dreamed up this convoluted scenario where he was scum, protected by the cloak (hence fubbleskag's town result) and backed up by a scum gnarlycharlie's investigation claim. Rounding out the scum team in this weird scenario was Mental Guy and someone else - I didn't have a good read on the third; I think I was suspecting MHaye after his reveal (if that came before I died, I forget). Because scum would totally coordinate to that much of a degree, right? And that whole house of cards wouldn't fall apart with any town actions, right? Oh well, one outta four ain't bad, I guess. At least I was able to save a much better player than I, even if my reasoning was all wrong. Such is mafia.

Fun game, story. Thanks!

[sachertorte]

I've been following along (lightly) for the past few weeks. I thought the set-up was fantastic. I was worried about the randomness of the role assignments/who is scum being a potential problem, but that didn't seem to be an issue at all.

I do think Hal being a PFK was a strong possibility that was considered and discarded way too quickly. The game started with 19 players and only 4 were scum. The setup strongly leaned towards another lynch burden for the Town. Town probably should have lynched Hal right away, but once they let him go and got closer to endgame, they were right not to lynch him anymore. I also also think that scum should have been able to kill Hal, and if I missed some way that they could have, they should have. MHaye's rules and win condition analysis was also convincing in my opinion and reveals a potential flaw in the ruleset since it seems like it might be possible for Hal to steal the win and Town to satisfy their win condition as written. I haven't looked at it closely though, but what MHaye posted before looked convincing.

I was also surprised (though I may have simply missed it in my skimming), that there wasn't that much discussion about which scum picked whom. Once Suburban and Inner Stickler were revealed as scum, that led me to wonder who picked Suburban and Inner and who would Suburban and Inner pick as scum. That led me to suspect MentalGuy. Especially towards endgame, MentalGuy looked like the most likely scum pick. It made little sense for scum to pick Ender since Ender was known to be new and therefore a potential liability. Scum would be scared to pick him since Ender's ability to lie and blend in and not make unintentional slips is untested.

I was shocked that the two town investigators both investigated Stanislaus. I vaguely recall there being discussion of splitting the group up to avoid overlap. What happened to that idea? It was a good one!

[Astral Rejection]

I really enjoyed this game, so I'd like to chime in and thank Storyteller as well.

I think we as a board have seriously improved our scum game. I pegged Babale early, ignored it later, and wasn't ever actually in danger of catching scum at any other point. Kudos to the scum team, as well!

[Stanislaus]

It only occurred to me much later, so I didn't bring it up - would it have been good strategy to get the investigators to claim and investigate each other D1/N1?

In the actual game, it would forced Scum into either killing whichever investigator was targeting Suburban - itself a bit of a give-away - or trying to to claim the Cloak was in play/that the investigator was scum. If SP had refused to claim, he would have been trapped in a later mass-claim situation.

In general, it would have given us either 3 semi-confirmed Town (damn that Cloak!); isolated the 1 scum investigator; given at least one out of 2 scum investigators, with the risk that the second would win Town-cred; it would only have failed if all three investigators were scum - but in that case Town would always have been struggling.

[sachertorte]

Originally Posted by Stanislaus

It only occurred to me much later, so I didn't bring it up - would it have been good strategy to get the investigators to claim and investigate each other D1/N1?

Possibly.
Pros: Investigators are likely to be protected after a claim like that, it would be risky for scum to try and kill them.
Cons: Scum know who to put the cloak on. <-- that's a biggie

In my opinion, it would have been best to divide the player list into thirds and assign each investigator (by rolename) to one list. No overlap and very little chance of the cloak having an effect.



Also, I felt from the beginning that the cloak was most powerful in its potential existence rather than its actual use. Look at all the self-damage town did to confirm Stanislaus. Two LYNCHED investigators and one LYNCHED whatever-MHaye was. That was... not worth it.

[Stanislaus]

Yes, one of the ways life was difficult for Town was that we just couldn't trust investigations. We could have countered that by using watching powers more effectively, I think, but it was a non-traditional set-up and we didn't spend enough time thinking about that aspect of it.

I didn't use my power very well. I held on, and held on, until the night visor was killed. Then I protected myself. Because I trusted Babale at that point. Then when it should have been obvious that he couldn't be Town, I didn't push that point hard enough.

[Astral Rejection]

So, in thinking about the game, our scum hunting efforts failed pretty hard, and not for lack of effort or not playing the game.

What could we have done better to find scum? Mental Guy was all but invisible to me, and Inner Stickler was as well. I remember the discussion from my "let's play mafia better" thread, where some were arguing that the game really does come down to chance, if both teams play roughly average games. Is that true? Are scum too hard to find in a well-played game?

I'm hoping to do better next time. I was just about awful at finding scum besides Babale.

[sachertorte]

Originally Posted by Astral Rejection

Mental Guy was all but invisible to me, and Inner Stickler was as well.

Actually, in my opinion, the fact that Mental Guy was invisible to you should have been the biggest indicator that lynching him might be a good idea. Why do you think MentalGuy was invisible to you? Because he WANTED to be invisible to you. The players that "act scummy" are invariably town because townies don't care how they are perceived. I call play like MentalGuy's "clean nosers" and I like them better dead.

Think this game is a very good case study in Town lynching the players "acting scummy" when "acting scummy" is a very vague and not entirely concrete notion. Again, I skimmed, but I never really got why the two investigators were lynched. It seems to me that someone floated a plausible set of events where the investigator could possibly be scum and that was for some reason enough. And yet, those with no evidence either way are allow to skate without much pressure at all.

[sachertorte]

Sorry for all my yammering. I've been following the game with passing interest and had so much to say and no place to say it.

[Inner Stickler]

Originally Posted by Astral Rejection

So, in thinking about the game, our scum hunting efforts failed pretty hard, and not for lack of effort or not playing the game.

What could we have done better to find scum? Mental Guy was all but invisible to me, and Inner Stickler was as well.

Well, when I'm scum, I try to play as much like town as possible. Pretty much every single suggestion I made, I truly believed would be advantageous to town. I do this, despite the fact that I would be making it harder for my team to win, because I can count on town coming up with convoluted reasoning to not do half of the good ideas. (This is not a slam. I get played by scum just as much when I'm town. Scum have a better idea of what general mechanics are in play. Town as a whole does not and can work itself into a tizzy about what's allowed and what's not.)

[Inner Stickler]

Originally Posted by sachertorte

Sorry for all my yammering. I've been following the game with passing interest and had so much to say and no place to say it.

It was killing me that after I died, I assumed there was a thread where you and some other people were kibbitzing and I couldn't find it. My favorite part is the post-mortem and it never lasts as long as I would like it to.

[sachertorte]

Originally Posted by Astral Rejection

I remember the discussion from my "let's play mafia better" thread, where some were arguing that the game really does come down to chance, if both teams play roughly average games. Is that true? Are scum too hard to find in a well-played game?

If I recall correctly, I said in that thread that players need to recognize the strong element of chance in these games that don't get acknowledged enough. My point was players should not stress themselves out too much about being right or wrong since there is a strong element of chance.

[Stanislaus]

My criticism of myself, and Town generally, was that it's more important than we realise to follow-up on cases.

I voted for Suburban, and dropped it. I voted for Inner, and dropped it. I voted for Babale and dropped it.

I also voted for a lot of other people, including fubbles and gnarly for no good reason other than sudden self-doubt. But I did find scum and then drop them way too easily. I think especially we should have seen after TexCat's lynch that Inner was likely scum, and that Suburban's terribly reasoned vote for TexCat made him top candidate to be scum too. But we didn't follow up on it at all.

[sachertorte]

Originally Posted by Stanislaus

I voted for Suburban, and dropped it. I voted for Inner, and dropped it.

Heh. I noticed that too. That and a general feeling that you were atypically all over the place. It made me think you were scum, but with that whole investigation thing I was all WTF?! Super confusing. I even tried convincing myself that you were cloaked (1. you'd be a good scum pick, 2. you'd be a good investigation target), but the MHaye thing put that craziness away.

[Astral Rejection]

Originally Posted by sachertorte

Actually, in my opinion, the fact that Mental Guy was invisible to you should have been the biggest indicator that lynching him might be a good idea. Why do you think MentalGuy was invisible to you? Because he WANTED to be invisible to you. The players that "act scummy" are invariably town because townies don't care how they are perceived. I call play like MentalGuy's "clean nosers" and I like them better dead.

I think my problem was that I tried this reasoning, but on the wrong person. It's why I lynched gnarlycharlie.

[Alka Seltzer]

Yes, that was part of the problem with this game. There were a lot of town players who weren't moving the game forward, so MentalGuy didn't stand out.

stanislaus confused me as well on Day 3, with the voting spree, based on the alignment of unknown players. Before that I though he played very well, but I wasted a lot of effort thinking of him and fubbleskag as potential scum-buddies.

[TexCat]

Originally Posted by TexCat

Are there spoilers available? Was I anywhere close with my guesses on the 4 scum?

Ugh. I guess someone has to be the first to die.

Scum picking their own team is interesting, but you would think that at some point people would realize that scum wouldn't pick me, scum wouldn't advocate for no-lynch (and I firmly believe that would have been best!) At some point the scum wouldn't do that actually means that scum wouldn't do that.

My message to storyteller upon my death.

Who was the original scum and how were they picked after that? Did I miss that somewhere upthread?

And congratulations to Hal! Well played.

[sachertorte]

Originally Posted by Astral Rejection

I think my problem was that I tried this reasoning, but on the wrong person. It's why I lynched gnarlycharlie.

Forgive my cluttered mind, but wasn't gnarlycharlie a claimed investigator? Didn't he 'double up' on Stanislaus after the first investigator claim? That's what I think happened, though I could very well be wrong. But if my memory is correct, that is anything but a clean nose.

[Suburban Plankton]

Originally Posted by TexCat

Who was the original scum and how were they picked after that? Did I miss that somewhere upthread?

MentalGuy was the original Scum. He picked me at random.

I picked Babale. I figured Town would assume Scum would pick 'well known players', so I decided to not do that. Babale seemed to be a competent 'newbie', so I figured he'd be a good choice.

Babale picked Inner Stickler. I assume it was a more or less random choice, given that he hadn't been around long enough to have formed much of an opinion about any of us.

[Astral Rejection]

Originally Posted by sachertorte

Forgive my cluttered mind, but wasn't gnarlycharlie a claimed investigator? Didn't he 'double up' on Stanislaus after the first investigator claim? That's what I think happened, though I could very well be wrong. But if my memory is correct, that is anything but a clean nose.

Yeah, but town never plays a perfect game. Case in point, he was town. Another example: I totally bought Babale self-protecting in a naive misunderstanding of who he should use his power on. I seem to struggle telling the difference between honest if poor decisions by town, and scum making silly plays to ironically avoid attention.

So, while you're right that gnarly's play was sub-optimal, it wouldn't have led me to correctly lynching scum. Babale's play was equally sub-optimal, but I dropped that line of questioning.

I tried just going on how he felt to me (something I rarely do), and got burned. So I was less willing to vote for anybody else by the same reasoning.

[sachertorte]

Originally Posted by Astral Rejection

Yeah, but town never plays a perfect game. Case in point, he was town. Another example: I totally bought Babale self-protecting in a naive misunderstanding of who he should use his power on. I seem to struggle telling the difference between honest if poor decisions by town, and scum making silly plays to ironically avoid attention.

So, while you're right that gnarly's play was sub-optimal, it wouldn't have led me to correctly lynching scum. Babale's play was equally sub-optimal, but I dropped that line of questioning.

I tried just going on how he felt to me (something I rarely do), and got burned. So I was less willing to vote for anybody else by the same reasoning.

You misunderstand. I'm saying that gnarly's play was not designed to make himself invisible (like Mental Guy). His doubling up made him stand out, not disappear into the shadows. Earlier, you had compared MentalGuy and gnarlycharlie and I'm pointing out that gnarlycharlie's play was nothing like MentalGuy's. His 'mistake' made everyone notice him and discuss him. This was an indication of his TOWNNESS not scummyness.

My definition of a 'clean noser' is someone who is avoiding controversy. Someone who doesn't do ANYTHING suspect or wrong. I think 'clean nosers' are scum. My point is that I didn't consider gnarlycharlie a clean noser because his investigation created controversy and spotlight. His nose was not clean.

[Astral Rejection]

Oh, gotcha. I did misunderstand you. Yeah, I should have been more suspicious of MentalGuy. He hadnt voted in an entire day, and posted so little towards the end that he was just totally off my radar. Which, I admit, is a serious hole in my game.

[Stanislaus]

Originally Posted by Alka Seltzer

Yes, that was part of the problem with this game. There were a lot of town players who weren't moving the game forward, so MentalGuy didn't stand out.

stanislaus confused me as well on Day 3, with the voting spree, based on the alignment of unknown players. Before that I though he played very well, but I wasted a lot of effort thinking of him and fubbleskag as potential scum-buddies.

My voting spree was a response to your first para - I felt the game wasn't moving forward, so I tried to get things moving by putting more people under pressure. However, I went too far - there's no pressure in being one of half a dozen votes from the same person.

[gnarlycharlie]

Originally Posted by sachertorte

I was shocked that the two town investigators both investigated Stanislaus. I vaguely recall there being discussion of splitting the group up to avoid overlap. What happened to that idea? It was a good one!

you were stunned? i was flabbergasted. i purposely recommended the other investigators to target within the group that lynched Visor so there wouldn't be a crossover but it didn't happen.

Originally Posted by Stanislaus

It only occurred to me much later, so I didn't bring it up - would it have been good strategy to get the investigators to claim and investigate each other D1/N1?

that didn't occur to me. that would have been interesting.

[Alka Seltzer]

The problem was gnarly, no-one had any reason to trust your suggestion, not knowing your alignment. And even if they did scum could have exploited it by deploying the cloak in that direction, hence my warning. That was the problem with any coordinated investigation strategy. Scum knew which investigators were genuine, so could exploit it better than town.

Originally Posted by Snickers

And at least someone was certain I was town, so that's a win for me! (Thanks, Alka.).

I was only confident after the fubbleskag flip. You found a problem in my case against him, which was a good bit of play with no obvious scum motive. Town works best when we can pool observations and thoughts.

Originally Posted by Stanislaus

My voting spree was a response to your first para - I felt the game wasn't moving forward, so I tried to get things moving by putting more people under pressure.

I tried to encourage participation in other ways, but all I got in return were some pretty lame votes, which I couldn't possibly argue against, forcing me to claim.

We were at cross-purposes this game. I liked your case on Inner Stickler, but let my suspicions of fubbleskag sway me too much when he voted with you. You accused me of defending gnarly, which in a round-about way was true. I had my own night action PM to look at, and knew the claims implicated fubbleskag or no-one.

[sachertorte]

Originally Posted by Alka Seltzer

The problem was gnarly, no-one had any reason to trust your suggestion, not knowing your alignment. And even if they did scum could have exploited it by deploying the cloak in that direction, hence my warning. That was the problem with any coordinated investigation strategy. Scum knew which investigators were genuine, so could exploit it better than town.

This kind of thinking is a huge detriment to the town. Suggestions should be evaluated on their merit and not whether or not the player is Town. Town players have suggested bad ideas plenty of times in the past. Alignment doesn't make the suggestion good or bad. Game after game, Town handcuffs itself because "Scum could do X" or "what if Y happens."

I had my own night action PM to look at, and knew the claims implicated fubbleskag or no-one.

Generally, I would caution players relying on secret information too much. While you may have been right (or wrong) the problem is no one else has that information which makes your actions look more suspicious. Also, I think players tend to over emphasize the importance of their own night action result. I don't know the specifics of your case, but my guess is that given the choice of fubbleskag or no one, the real probability of fubbleskag being guilty was relatively small, but since the data presented itself as fubbleskag or no one, the mind inflates it towards 50-50.

[Stanislaus]

Storyteller - what did you think of the game?

[Alka Seltzer]

Originally Posted by sachertorte

This kind of thinking is a huge detriment to the town. Suggestions should be evaluated on their merit and not whether or not the player is Town. Town players have suggested bad ideas plenty of times in the past. Alignment doesn't make the suggestion good or bad. Game after game, Town handcuffs itself because "Scum could do X" or "what if Y happens."

I think you misunderstand here sachertorte. gnarly tried to direct the other investigators to avoid overlap. That's the part town couldn't trust.

The issue of investigative strategy is separate, and has nothing to do with who proposed it. In theory, it pretty much nulls out. By agreeing an investigation strategy, the risk of overlap is eliminated, but the scum could have deployed the cloak more intelligently. In practise, the investigators weren't acting randomly, so the risk of overlap was higher.

Originally Posted by sachertorte

I don't know the specifics of your case, but my guess is that given the choice of fubbleskag or no one, the real probability of fubbleskag being guilty was relatively small, but since the data presented itself as fubbleskag or no one, the mind inflates it towards 50-50.

No-where did I say the probabilities were equal. The salient point in this case is that fubbleskag changed a detail of his claim after gnarly made his PM public.

[sachertorte]

Originally Posted by Alka Seltzer

I think you misunderstand here sachertorte. gnarly tried to direct the other investigators to avoid overlap. That's the part town couldn't trust.

Trust has nothing to do about it. The idea should have been evaluated independent of who proposed it.

The issue of investigative strategy is separate, and has nothing to do with who proposed it.

I guess I am confused. That's what I was trying to convey.

In theory, it pretty much nulls out. By agreeing an investigation strategy, the risk of overlap is eliminated, but the scum could have deployed the cloak more intelligently.

And my point is that Town tends to get all wound up about what scum might possibly do when the danger as stated is inflated. In this specific case the danger of the investigators hitting a cloaked player was 2/20 (1/10) since one investigator was scum. In the division of labor the chance switched to 2/13 or 2/14 (about 1/7). That isn't a big shift, but Town likes to paralyze itself in fear of what might possibly happen versus what is likely to happen.

In practise, the investigators weren't acting randomly, so the risk of overlap was higher.

I suppose we could simply chalk up the doubling up on investigations to bad luck, but I think you are precisely right here. I may be seeing some confirmation bias on my part, but I have the impression that multiple investigators wind up overlapping more often than one would expect from random investigation. Hence, an even greater motivation to divide and conquer.

No-where did I say the probabilities were equal. The salient point in this case is that fubbleskag changed a detail of his claim after gnarly made his PM public.

I didn't follow everything to great detail. I'm responding to the post where it was stated that you were acting based on your night action PM. My point is that we tend to inflate the importance of our night action results beyond what they realistically mean.

[Enderw24]

So looking back at this game, I think I've learned a few things. First, my votes were shit. I mean absolute rubbish. Even I could look at them and say "holy crap, I'm all over the place."
Part of the reason why is I placed way too much concern on not wanting a tie vote at the end of the night. That never occurred and it really wasn't in danger of a occuring but I kept feeling like I needed to "break a tie" for some reason. I should have just voted how I needed to vote and let the chips fall where they may.
The other part was that I placed too much emphasis on people "acting scummy." It's been mentioned already upthread, but we get lulled into what we *think* scum would sound like, when in reality scum's just hiding in back not causing waves. It's just really hard to separate the lack of concrete participation from the not making waves people.

The other problem is that I kept imagining a scum board where they're all laughing their asses off at us for the boneheaded plays we kept making. It was strange to read through that thread and see that wasn't the case at all.

Overall, though, a fun game. I'd be up for more.

[Astral Rejection]

The other thing I've noticed is that scum seem to plan out their moves way less than town thinks. We're always postulating crazy hypotheses and convoluted scum plays. Generally, they slink about the thread trying not to attract attention, and they kill people they think might turn into problems, not necessarily because of what they're saying in-thread right now. That's something I'm weak at. I always assume there's some grand scheme for why they've killed X on Y day, and in the first 2/3rds of the game, it's because a scum said "Hey, kill Z?" and the other scums say "sure, why not?"

[Pleonast]

I still need a few players for Conspiracy 6.

[Alka Seltzer]

Originally Posted by sachertorte

I suppose we could simply chalk up the doubling up on investigations to bad luck, but I think you are precisely right here. I may be seeing some confirmation bias on my part, but I have the impression that multiple investigators wind up overlapping more often than one would expect from random investigation. Hence, an even greater motivation to divide and conquer.

Stanislaus is a good player who recently won a game as scum, which I think is why both our investigators picked him. Personally, I try not to worry too much about the very town-ey players early in the game, as if actually town there is a good chance they will be night killed. And indeed, in the scum thread they were talking about killing him on Night 1. If they are still alive late in the game I start to wonder why. I'd probably have tried to investigate in a way to extend the voting record, or target a lurker, but I'd have been worried about scum anticipating my strategy and deploying the cloak. In game theory terms, that's why adding a small random element to actions can be beneficial.

Originally Posted by Enderw24

So looking back at this game, I think I've learned a few things. First, my votes were shit. I mean absolute rubbish. Even I could look at them and say "holy crap, I'm all over the place."

Well, you were in good company.

Originally Posted by Enderw24

The other part was that I placed too much emphasis on people "acting scummy." It's been mentioned already upthread, but we get lulled into what we *think* scum would sound like, when in reality scum's just hiding in back not causing waves. It's just really hard to separate the lack of concrete participation from the not making waves people.

I think that's a common failing of town, related to positive confirmation bias. If someone posts something that reads a bit off, it's easy to read everything else in a negative light. Hence the tendancy to lynch the loud.

I try to think in terms of motivation. For example, Kelly joined my wagon after I claimed. That would have been a bold gambit for scum to make, knowing I was town. Similarly, Babale's vote against me stood out as the most likely scum as my wagon. I'd been applying pressure to the other voters, which was a bad reason to vote me, but a reason nonetheless. Babale's vote came out of nowhere, and he was under some pressure of being lynched himself.

Originally Posted by Enderw24

The other problem is that I kept imagining a scum board where they're all laughing their asses off at us for the boneheaded plays we kept making. It was strange to read through that thread and see that wasn't the case at all.

From the scum-boards I've seen, and the one I've played on, scum are usually too busy worrying about their deck of cards collapsing on them to gloat.

Originally Posted by Astral Rejection

The other thing I've noticed is that scum seem to plan out their moves way less than town thinks.

Yes. I think it's due to time pressure, just keeping up with the game is time-consuming enough.