I thought that gnarlycharlie answered you, with this post:
Which is why I did not answer you, and you showed no sign of being unsatisfied by this answer.
The level cap was referring to level 5 being the maximum level a player can reach in this game, and my comment about making a mod was a joke, as Normal Phase said. Precisely it was a wink to D&D computer games typically being modified by players, to get over the built-in level cap.
I don’t think there’s much more to say about this post of mine, unless you think that joking, at that point, was inappropriate/scummy.
Where is the bold part coming from? I don’t recall having seen a game where the scums were not allowed to speak privately during the Day. This possibility would never come up in my analysis, since typically the scums have a quick topic, a private message or can simply chat (IM, MSN Messenger, whatever), and they’re not time restricted at all.
However, you are considering [if I understand you correctly] that KellyCriterion is not likely Scum, unless he’s unable to speak with his scum partners. What difference would it make if he’s Scum and unable to discuss with his partners?
And you need to explain why this possibility, scums being unable to discuss during the Day, comes up in your analysis. Have you played a game where such a rule existed?
I have played in a game where scum could only talk at night, don’t ask which one because I can’t remember at the moment.
I am very unsure about my vote on **Kelly **at the moment. He is doing almost the same thing I have done in a different game, assuming other VT’s would understand him.
Oh, what to do, really if I am not happy with my vote now then I should unvote.
Unvote KellyCriterion
@ Romanic, I have nothing against jokes but as I said before you must be either Scum or a Town Power role, why would you reveal that information so early? And now you have said that you can get to level 5 in this game. I think that if you are scum, you made a tiny mistake and if you are Town then you made a bigger mistake, either way I find it anti-Town.
Obviously I don’t know. Six of us could be doctors with identical PMs. It’s not remotely likely. Here are the real questions I’d like you to answer. You posted a vanilla PM. You suggested that others might have the same one, the clear intent being that they confirm your own by saying so outright and/or unvoting you. What did you intend to accomplish, if that had happened? What role(s) did you think townies whose hashes did not match should think? What did you think the scum would think? Why was disguising a vanilla role claim important to you?
Each Mod makes their own rules, but the standard operating procedure here is to give them accounts on a separate board where they can talk. It is fairly common to only allow the scum to talk privately at Night (but allowing communication any time is not unusual either).
If Kelly is scum and in contact with his partners, then I think they would have convinced him that the “hash-tag” post was not a good thing to do. If Kelly is scum and not in contact with his partners, then he may not have realized what a bad idea it was. So, I think his actions are slightly more likely (as scum) if scum are not allowed to communicate with each other during the Day, but I find it unlikely to be something done by scum either way.
I can’t believe you already forgot “Emilio” AND “Fat Tony” in Mafia X. Bad Pizza. Or maybe that’s just repressed memory.
I’m going to spoiler tag some of the “culture” discussion, because I think it’s interesting and can’t resist commenting, but it really is tangential to the game otherwise (besides ATPG trying to make himself understood).
[spoiler]
This foreign land also has day phases of only 24-48 hours, which is the biggest single variable that affects behavior, I think. There’s just not enough time in 24 hours to get a feel for how someone is playing. Votes on average are justified much more thinly (if at all) there than here, and that is tolerated. It means that scum-hunting, too, must adapt. I think I’ve commented a few times in the past on how playing there has affected my play here (in many ways for the better).
It’s mostly just that we have so much more to go on here. Instead of trying to work up a whole bogus case on three sentences from someone, you might have five or six posts to work with. The days being longer are significantly more eventful in themselves, plus the culture strongly encourages people to say what’s on their minds. The cases are no different than what you might find at the .org on day five … with the exception that there is zero moderator-result data to go on. So think day five of a no-reveals vanilla game.
I agree about the rigidity. Players who break the mold around here (think peeker, Pleonast, sometimes Special Ed) are frequently punished for doing so. But there is scope for clever play if you know the culture well enough and can calibrate yourself to it. I’m thinking of all-but-confirmed Special Ed in a recent game at idlemafia dropping a BS vote on me (whom he did NOT think was scum) just to see who would take the bait: two scum promptly did, plop plop.
(snip)
REALLY? Heh.
(snip)
I agree with this, and it often leads to a lot of frustration for me both places. I like to make my own cases, and when people don’t follow and my targets go blithely on with their lives knowing they can afford to ignore me, it makes me crazy. However, there is next to no scope here to say “I want two more votes on Scummy McScumster pls” and have it happen without negative result for you or the people who vote with you. There, a few players have license to pull it off.
I’m not sure the way we do it here is worse, to be honest. With a higher proportion of scum, often fewer players per game (and thus shorter games), and fewer mislynches, there’s not a lot of room for error. Too much of that sort of thing and you start letting the scum get away with stuff that it would be bad for the town to let them get away with. The games here tend to be closer to the bone, faster.[/spoiler]
About Kelly, I just want to say (my underline):
Compensation is exactly what he is being accused of, with this hash thing. The result he seemed to be aiming for is something that would benefit the scum only, as far as I can see. Even its failure risks townies (in the discussion) saying somethign stupid that would give away to the scum their status as power role or not. I do see one potential signpost in his favor, that he brought up the handshaking SO early, when there was as yet no reason to think he would be the default bandwagon, and therefore no reason to have thought through a compensation strategy. That one thing does argue a bit for townie screw-up. But I still can’t see what he was trying to do, if he is town. I’d like him to answer my questions.
It’s actually not that rare around here. My last game as scum (with Pleonast and Inner Stickler) we couldn’t talk during the Day. Maybe 20% of games are like that.
I see where Mental Guy is coming from, don’t entirely agree, but think it’s largely a moot point if there is in fact no information on scum day-talking status in this particular game.
I believe your explanation about why you gave pedescribe/Trepa a pass, but this is a bad vote. Romanic didn’t reveal anything, you could have checked before voting on it, and “either way I find it anti-Town” makes my teeth itch.
Woohoo, I can actually contribute to this question! As I mentioned in my first post, before I braved signing up for my first game, I spent ages reading old Mafia game threads here, and I do indeed recall the “scum can’t talk privately during the Day” rule cropping up now and then. Here’s some references:
I disagree with this. The hash-tag post was a GREAT thing to do, if the scum were convinced that Kelly was going down and wanted to make use of that, plus a fake or cover-role PM, to try to get the town to give up information. It’s Kelly bringing up handshaking much earlier that speaks a little bit against that idea, not that the idea itself was bad for scum.
I don’t know about “great”, but you are right that it makes more sense from a standpoint of getting compensation. I was thinking of the more straightforward goal of trying to save Kelly.
Just read through the most recent posts. I don’t have time for a full analysis right now, but wanted to throw my $.02 in that KellyCriterion’s behavior is reading like a flailing newbie right now. The question is: flailing newb town or flailing newb scum? I’m leaning town, actually. I’m going to re-evaluate my vote when I read more carefully at lunch, but for now I thought it might be useful to put my current state of mind on the record.
I should also mention that my other suspect so far was Askthepizzaguy, but I find his answers to my (and others’) questions plausible. Despite his obvious Mafia Ego :p, my suspicions of him have been mostly alleviated for the moment.
Count me as another one who’s not happy with Kelly’s attempt at handshaking. I know Pizza’s tried to argue that it’s the sort of egregious error that only the innocent can make, but as several other people realised Kelly’s intent was to get a number of vanillas to identify themselves as such by matching the hash-tag. That sounds to me like quite a tasty scum ploy, had we gone for it. I suppose the argument is that the attempt was so clumsy that it couldn’t possibly be a scum plan but it’s not in fact impossible for scum to make mistakes.
I’m not, though I may move it back. I’d like to look at those first handshaking posts again; if anyone has a link handy it would be helpful.
unvote vote: Septimus
Because having looked at it again, I very much agree with ATPG’s assessment of Septimus’ vote post on him. I have issues with it on its content, but the vote is for its style. It looks very carefully constructed, and that is both characteristic of scum at times (it’s a tendency of my own I have to fight constantly when I’m not town) and uncharacteristic of Septimus as a townie.
Check it out: [spoiler]
[/spoiler]
Note the formal language (“relevant to reiterate”), and the rhetorical flourishes and transitions in the first section and last paragraph – the middle section does feel more genuine – (“thus”, “but”, “that … makes my decision easy:”, and of course the big rhetorical question itself). It looks like Septimus has put most of this post together very, very carefully, which leads me to believe that the ground is feeling shaky under his feet otherwise.
Ok Pizza, you definitely have a different playstyle than what I’ve come across in my games. Just one comment of yours sits funny with me :
This is you commenting on pedescribe’s note :
[QUOTE=Askthepizzaguy]
[QUOTE=pedescribe]
Players feel compelled to defend votes on themselves, and it seems pressure voting would be less effective, not more, on someone who already has votes (since they were already provoked).
[/quote]
Respectfully disagree, I don’t see it that way. Not in my experience. Now, after some time has passed and their fate seems inevitable, then yeah, the pressure will have no effect.
[/quote]
You honestly don’t expect someone to fight back on a day one vote? Getting information out there is the most important thing on day one. I reacted as I always would; defending myself. You presented no reply until quite a few posts later. I do, however, understand that you are presenting pressure on day one, which also gets information out there. Why couldn’t you have said that sooner?
To those I smudged earlier, I apologize. I was combining strategy with specific names, and that was not a good move for town.
I’m not sure how I feel about the case against Kelly right now; as Shadow noted, he is flailing about. I really don’t know whether it’s the last ditch efforts of a new scum, or the last ditch efforts of a townie. Either way, bringing a vanilla PM into the discussion wasn’t the correct way to handle this. My gut tells me he’s town, and new, and reaching for the nearest piece of dry land he can reach. I need more time to think on this.
[oog : I will be away from my machine until LATE tonight, or maybe early tomorrow. I’m going to get what I can in before I leave work today]
