Doperville Mafia - New Players Welcome!

[anyrose]

I did not sign on to be the sacreficial lamb, here, people.

[Zsofia]

Who’s sacrificing you? Last I heard you had two whole random votes.

[The_Unkempt_One]

@anyrose

I’m supposed to not be defensive? Who knew!

I was thinking the same thing. At this point I am not sure if you are scum or town, but I don’t think that defending yourself in the manner that you have is a tell one way or another.

In reading back through the thread, I read this from **Thing Fish ** in post #142

@Thing Fish

General tip for newbies: when you are trying to defend yourself against a lynch, especially when the people voting for you will freely admit that they have no real compelling reason for doing so, it is generally better not to get drawn into arguing about your case, but to find someone else that you can make a better case for lynching (this would mean not just OMGUSing).

Does this really make the most sense? It seems to me that this strategy would be best for scum who have been voted for. If you are innocent, plead your case. If you are scum, you can easily try to focus attention elsewhere because you know who else is scum.

[Zsofia]

How do you plead your case when it boils down to “But I’m town! Really!” I mean, further on there will be more voting history to hash over and such, but at this point what can you say but “But I’m town!”

[The_Unkempt_One]

And after posting that, I see that people have already been discussing the topic while I was writing my post.

Late the the party again…

[anyrose]

Is a simple majority necessary for a lynching, or is it a minimum number of votes?

[Zsofia]

It’s a plurality, and it happens on Thursday. Please note that it is Monday now.

[Blaster_Master]

@Thing Fish

I defer to your mathematical expertise, and now that I think about it what you say makes sense. What I was vaguely thinking was that, assuming everyone votes randomly except that scum avoid voting for each other, a town player would know that a scum player would have a slightly higher chance of voting for her than a town player would…but you’re right, it’s not kosher to work backwards and assume that a player who voted for you is necessarily more likely to be scum…I think…twickster, got any aspirin?? I suppose you could argue that since scum want to see town lynched, voting for a town player who already had a vote on her could be seen as more suspicious than casting the first vote…hmm, now I’m arguing against myself.

It may be fair to say scum are more likely to vote for a townie, but even if that is true, it is an implication and not an equivalence, thus it is logically invalid to say that a vote on a townie is more likely to be made by scum, even if the first part is true.

The part that gets me is, you get an OMGUS vote from her, which is expected, and rather than explain that your vote is essentially random (which you now claim it is), you attempt to paint her defensiveness as scummy, and then smudge twickster in the process when she’d already justified her vote as random. You were attacking her as if your vote was based on information, which is was not, and then you act like it’s scummy that she doesn’t like you jumping on her. Then you tell her not to defend herself, but to find someone else she finds scummy, when few other people have posted anything of consequence, so there’s not really anything TO find scummy.

As for the rest of your post, I deny the charges. I didn’t tell her not to defend herself, I pointed out for the benefit of the masses that (quoting myself):
General tip for newbies: when you are trying to defend yourself against a lynch, especially when the people voting for you will freely admit that they have no real compelling reason for doing so, it is generally better not to get drawn into arguing about your case, but to find someone else that you can make a better case for lynching (this would mean not just OMGUSing). (end quote)

I find this misleading as well. This sort of “tip to newbies” seems to imply that you have experience, but then you’ve also said in other posts that you’ve only followed along a few times, so you’re still a newbie. Which way is it?

Further, if she DOES call you out for having no case, and you admit to it, which you didn’t do until I called you on it, the onus is on you to either MAKE a case or remove your vote because you don’t have one. But expecting someone to ignore baseless votes and go looking elsewhere just doesn’t make sense. In fact, I view cases like that as brushing under the rug, like “Yeah, I may be scummy, but look here, this guy is WAY scummier than me! Don’t scrutinize me anymore because I’m afraid of what yo might find.”

As both town and scum, I find it enormously frustrating when I’m being picked out as looking scummy, but no one can give me a justification as for why. You can see this frustration from me as a towning in Simpletown, and as scum in Batman. Thus, I submit that NOT looking elsewhere is most likely a null tell as well.

I believe this is generally accepted as good strategy, and would be interested in hearing anything you have to say to the contrary. I should have been clearer and stated that I didn’t mean she shouldn’t defend herself at all, just that she shouldn’t make defending herself the sole focus of all her posts, especially when the vote against her was random. Admittedly, I hadn’t yet explicitly stated that my vote on her was random, nor had I explicitly stated that the case of “when the people voting for you will freely admit that they have no real compelling reason for doing so” applied here, but I think that both should have been fairly obvious to any fair-minded observer. In addition, while advising her to try making cases against other scum, I clearly said that I realized this was a near-impossible task at this stage of the game. So I don’t think I can be fairly accused of motivation transference (nice phrase, btw) here. Granting that her OMGUS vote against me is a reasonable move at this point in the game, what would you have her do, simply restate her OMGUS reasoning over and over rather than analyze the posts of others in preparation for her Day 2 vote?

The point is, you made a case and you got a response from her. You expect her to make a case and then look elsewhere, meanwhile, you’ve made a random vote, gotten a reasonable response that counters your initial vote, and you failed to either make more of a case to maintain your vote, or unvote and look elsewhere. As such, her suspicion on you is legitimate. As I said, the onus is now on you to either further your case, or unvote, but instead you seem to be attempting to shift that responsibility onto her to find someone scummy, while you’re chasing a null tell.

Either way, I finish this suspicious enough that I’m willing to loose my random vote against Koldanar and put it on you.

Unvote Koldanar
Vote Thing Fish

[Oredigger77]

@Thing Fish

Oredigger, I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at with your post #146, but you appear to be accusing me of doing just that, and I would disagree. Obviously, since I have no good reason for my vote on anyrose, it’s going to be very hard for her to rebut said reasoning! But on Day One, nobody really has any good reason to vote for anyone else or not; the point is to use the random and quasi-random votes, and people’s reactions to them, as a starting point for discussion, which in a game like this may include going over a lot of basic strategy and etiquette points, which I submit is exactly what I have been doing.

Why yes it did seem to be what you were trying to do and I was just pointing it out. You’re right about getting peoples reaction to thing is what is important at this place in the game and there is no doubt about it you are surely getting the most reactions. It just seems to me that while most people are discussing strategy and why we should follow a particular one, you are trying to get reactions through your accusations. At this point I have no opinions just trying to point out the obvious and hope someone smart picks up a pattern.

[Blaster_Master]

@anyrose

I thought this game was all noobs? some of you ‘talk’ like you’ve been playing for years

Some of us have been playing for a while. I’ve been playing for about a year and a half or so (my first game being M2 that started early last year, I think), and I’ve played in several games and hosted one.
And I hate to reitterate this, but I don’t want you to have to be subbed out. I trust your probably honest in that you only editted to correct spelling, but it can still leave lingering doubt, particularly for those of us who haven’t seen you around much in other threads. I promise you, I won’t think less of you if you have some grammar or spelling mistakes, because I know you aren’t editting. If you really feel the need to edit for clarity, just make another post and correct it that way.

The thing is, in a previous game, an editted post WAS used to attempt to conceal a slip up by scum (look up Mafia V: Cult of Sekham, or just read about it in the thread about “must reads” in Mafia games). In a live game, you can’t unsay things. Even on this board, someone can read what you posted between when you posted it and when you edit it (as what happened in the cited case), and then you have a case where the post history is changed, which isn’t fair. Slips are legitimate part of gameplay and can be used by either side effectively, to either find scum, or for scum to frame townies.

So,

[The_Unkempt_One]

@Blaster Master

snip

The part that gets me is, you get an OMGUS vote from her, which is expected, and rather than explain that your vote is essentially random (which you now claim it is), you attempt to paint her defensiveness as scummy, and then smudge twickster in the process when she’d already justified her vote as random. You were attacking her as if your vote was based on information, which is was not, and then you act like it’s scummy that she doesn’t like you jumping on her. Then you tell her not to defend herself, but to find someone else she finds scummy, when few other people have posted anything of consequence, so there’s not really anything TO find scummy.

I find this misleading as well. This sort of “tip to newbies” seems to imply that you have experience, but then you’ve also said in other posts that you’ve only followed along a few times, so you’re still a newbie. Which way is it?

snip

Bolding mine.

I picked up on this as well, in post # 183.

fos on Thing Fish

[Blaster_Master]

@Koldanar

More than that, I think some people just generally assume that, if you are town, and a finger points your way, you should be blase (how do I do the accent in there?) about it, shrug it off, and move on, because “Of course, I AM town.”.

You mean like “blasé”? To do that, I use Alt + 130 (on the numpad).

My very first game, I lurked a little. A scum spotted that, put me out there, and led a bandwagon all over myself. I was trying to be defensive the whole time, and people kept jumping on me for it. It seems always that a natural human reaction to someone being defensive is thinking they’re covering it up. So thats why BlaM discusses it as a null-tell, even though we think the other way. So no, go ahead and defend yourself. And if you are scum, please let something slip!

This is another important point I’ve kind of glossed over. You’ll see some things discussed as scum tells, or townie tells. When I use the term null tell, I’m saying it’s something that that person is pretty much equally likely to do whether he’s scum or town, so it’s not worth a whole lot. The important point to notice is motivation, as scum have different motivation than town. But in a case where someone is being attacked, scum and town share the same motivation to not be lynched, as self-preservation, thus that defensiveness offers no way to differentiate the motivation, and thus no way to use it to determine if that person is town or scum.

I can make a longer post about motivation if people are interested, but I think it’s something that just doesn’t make a lot of sense outside of the context, so… yeah.

[Blaster_Master]

@Hoopy Frood

But why not? Why would scum not consider voting for another scum if it came up from a random generator? Random votes don’t mean much, and are unlikely to lead to a bandwagon based on rationale, so is it simply because there’s a slight chance that the distribution will fall on one person multiple times and scum are less apt to let that happen for fear that random voting becomes a rationale-based bandwagon? Or the flipside, scum might vote for someone who’s already been voted for and claim it’s random when it isn’t? I can understand either of those points, but it doesn’t strike me as being very good strategy for scum to employ from where I’m looking at it. Has it been a commonly employed tactic in the past?

This is more a practice of theory than a theory of practice, but I’ll try to explain my train of thought. Any townie (except for masons) at the start of the game know only one piece of information, their own role. Thus, ANY initial vote they make is purely random. I prefer to enforce this by making them truly random, so townies don’t inadvertantly mess up true randomness with some wagon joining or avoidance. However, scum will NOT vote randomly. They have information, because they know who is and is not scum. Thus, even if they DO use random.org to make their vote, the worst we get is 100% noise on votes, but a vote that will potentially show a motivational conflict.

However, there also lies the possibility that the scum will not use random.org, in which case he will chose, at some level, whether or not he’s voting for a fellow scum or a townie. This is an example of what I like to refer to as “Pseudo-Random” (please reference my posts in previous games about my Pseudo-Random Hypothesis). Basically, because it is made with some bit of information, and an attempt to appear random relative to that, it will result in patterns that are decidedly NOT random, but only made to appear so.

Now, this is something that is very difficult to explain in how, but I HAVE used it effectively to find scum in previous games. Simpletown is a good example (as it pinpointed MindWanderer). I also used it in the Pirates game to find Gadarene.

I’m willing to do some more discussion of PRH as well, if anyone is interested, but it’s a bit math intensive and not really useful until we’ve built up patterns that can be analyzed with it in mind, so… yeah.

[peekercpa]

@Blaster Master

I can make a longer post about motivation if people are interested, but I think it’s something that just doesn’t make a lot of sense outside of the context, so… yeah.

I wouldn’t mind at least a recap of your Simpletown views regarding this subject. It kind of made sense but my brain was not easily able to get wrapped around it totally - I mean look at who I ultimately voted for. Maybe taking the class over would be helpful.

The math, on the other hand, don’t bother as far as I am concerned. When it comes to your approach it is as comprehensible to me as, say, Mandarin Chinese. I mean it’s kind of fascinating but I don’t understand a lick of it and heck I am a CPA so it’s not like numbers are foreign animals to me.

[Hoopy_Frood]

@Blaster Master

This is more a practice of theory than a theory of practice, but I’ll try to explain my train of thought. Any townie (except for masons) at the start of the game know only one piece of information, their own role. Thus, ANY initial vote they make is purely random. I prefer to enforce this by making them truly random, so townies don’t inadvertantly mess up true randomness with some wagon joining or avoidance. However, scum will NOT vote randomly. They have information, because they know who is and is not scum. Thus, even if they DO use random.org to make their vote, the worst we get is 100% noise on votes, but a vote that will potentially show a motivational conflict.

However, there also lies the possibility that the scum will not use random.org, in which case he will chose, at some level, whether or not he’s voting for a fellow scum or a townie. This is an example of what I like to refer to as “Pseudo-Random” (please reference my posts in previous games about my Pseudo-Random Hypothesis). Basically, because it is made with some bit of information, and an attempt to appear random relative to that, it will result in patterns that are decidedly NOT random, but only made to appear so.

Now, this is something that is very difficult to explain in how, but I HAVE used it effectively to find scum in previous games. Simpletown is a good example (as it pinpointed MindWanderer). I also used it in the Pirates game to find Gadarene.

I’m willing to do some more discussion of PRH as well, if anyone is interested, but it’s a bit math intensive and not really useful until we’ve built up patterns that can be analyzed with it in mind, so… yeah.

I think I’m beginning to understand the rationale. I’ll have to mull it over to truly grasp the nuances of the various outcomes. Just two more questions (and understand, I’m not trying to be annoying or provocative or anything; I really do like to understand the various strategies so I can see how they work with my style of play and to see if I can maybe improve on them, point out their flaws, or use them to possibly pick up on something others have missed):

1. How do Mason types, with their extra knowledge, fit in to doing random voting? Are they always going to maintain a truly random vote? Is it wise for them to do so? If they don’t can they cause a skew in the town vs. scum random voting and muck things up? When they are revealed as Masons, does that color their random votes from Day One?

2. Would you advocate a “mass random vote” on Day 1 before any rationale-based votes are cast? I don’t think it’s ever been done (at least, I’ve never seen it discussed in any game I’ve looked through), but I’d expect it might be an interesting way to start the game, and would establish a voting record for everybody.

[Amblydoper]

Vote Count
**anyrose - 2 ** (twickster, Thing Fish)
**fluiddruid - 1 ** (peekercepa)
cckerberos - 1 (RyJae)
**Oredigger77 - 1 ** (cckerberos)
**The Unkempt One - 1 ** (bufftabby)
**bufftabby - 1 ** (Zsofia)
**Thing Fish - 1 ** (anyrose, Blaster Master)

Not Voting
Oredigger77, Hoppy Frood, fluiddruid, Koldanar, The Unkempt One

@Hoopy Frood

Which actually raises the question:
What happens in the case of a mod-kill?

The mod-kill will replace the kill for that day. But no one is going to do anything to get mod-killed, right? RIGHT?

@anyrose

Is a simple majority necessary for a lynching, or is it a minimum number of votes?

Zsofia is correct. whoever has the most votes at the deadline gets the noose.

[bufftabby]

I haven’t really found anything necessarily scummy going on, but I think enough discussion has taken place that I can go ahead and remove my random vote, pending further developments. I’m pretty sure I can come up with an actual educated guess by Thursday!

unvote The Unkempt One

(I’m pretty unkempt myself. I mean, I am a crazy cat lady of sorts. We’re not really known for our impeccable tidiness.)

[bufftabby]

fluiddruid, hello hello hello, is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me, is there anyone at home?

Sorry, guys. Started the karaoke early. But I’m quite curious where she is.

[peekercpa]

This one is solely from my limited knowlege so I’ll muck it up then someone smarter than me can feel free to correct or fill in. And although I don’t want to get deep down in the calculations BlasterMaster’s PRH statement is very valid at a layperson’s level.

One would think that for a population of fourteen that if everything was totally equal and truly random that each of us would end up with one vote. At least that is the mind set that I come from. However, truly random is going to be more bell shaped with a couple of unfortunates getting multiple votes while some get none. Therefore, take what would be predicted and see where that “bell” gets flattened or spiked. Figure out why and who and you have a scum manipulating the results.

It’s kind of like those poor souls at the casinos tracking red versus black and betting on what is perceived is a trend. You don’t get to stay in a penthouse and have your own private Lear doing that long term. Well you may get to stay in the penthouse depending on how much you lose.

And if I totally mutilated this discussion/point I am willing to be educated. I got a 26 on my first college stat class test and promptly dropped.

[RyJae]

Yeah I guess I should remove my random vote as well, and place the dreaded third vote on the only person that even remotely did anything to ping me in anyway so far. (see my post #148 )

So not a random vote this time, but subject to change as the day wears on and more comes out. So for the dreaded number 3 vote. (Our Mods math was incorrect this be #3 not #2)
unvote cckerberos

vote Thing Fish