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[QUOTE=Hoopy Frood]
Well, the point is not to hide the strategy. As a general rule, town shouldn’t hide much from each other. Scum starts the game with information. Town starts the game with numerical advantage. Scum try to increase their numerical advantage; town tries to increase their information. When you hide your information and strategies, town cannot benefit from it. Any information you put forth is typically more useful to town than to scum. (Granted, power roles and such have compelling reasons to withhold things until the right time, but that’s the exception.)

QUOTE]

I think you can look at RoOsh and storyteller for two very opposing viewpoints on townies hiding data and outright lying.

RoOsh, if I remember correctly, LOVES townies lying to ‘protect’ information, or a strategy, etc. On the other hand, I’ve seen story go absolutely nuts about lying. He’s fine with keeping information secret, but justifying that information (In the Batman game, for instance, he didn’t tell anyone he was a doc until day 7 or 8). Establishing trust between us is a good reason for not lying; however sometimes information getting out at the wrong time can definitely hurt the town.

It is in our best interest for everyone to share strategies, and keep what you can open (as in, don’t handwave away your reason for voting as ‘well he just is scummy’; try to spell it out). If you are a power role, keep things quiet there…but if you can breadcrumb what you have done (i.e. the detective reasons out something for trusting a person they know now as townie. If the detective dies, we can look back and find that information w/out the detective having to spell it all out.)

As another note, I always find myself a little lost for a vote on day one; the only things you usually have are a minor ping to scumdar, or a townie being the victim of a bandwagon.

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I think you can look at RoOsh and storyteller for two very opposing viewpoints on townies hiding data and outright lying.

RoOsh, if I remember correctly, LOVES townies lying to ‘protect’ information, or a strategy, etc. On the other hand, I’ve seen story go absolutely nuts about lying. He’s fine with keeping information secret, but justifying that information (In the Batman game, for instance, he didn’t tell anyone he was a doc until day 7 or 8). Establishing trust between us is a good reason for not lying; however sometimes information getting out at the wrong time can definitely hurt the town.

It is in our best interest for everyone to share strategies, and keep what you can open (as in, don’t handwave away your reason for voting as ‘well he just is scummy’; try to spell it out). If you are a power role, keep things quiet there…but if you can breadcrumb what you have done (i.e. the detective reasons out something for trusting a person they know now as townie. If the detective dies, we can look back and find that information w/out the detective having to spell it all out.)

As another note, I always find myself a little lost for a vote on day one; the only things you usually have are a minor ping to scumdar, or a townie being the victim of a bandwagon.

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Well, now we have some discussion going! Sorry about the simulpost, anyrose.

With regard to the question of whether we should (as I suggested earlier) be open about our strategies, I believe that we should, but only up to a point. Flexibility and common sense are also important. To take an extreme example, if someone announced that he would always vote for the player with the lowest post count, it would be easy for scum to avoid having that player vote for them. So you want to avoid having rigid rules about who you will vote for, or at least avoid publicizing them. A better permutation of the lurker-lynch strategy would be to say “I will look at the players who are near the bottom of the list in regard to substantive posts and see if any of them seem more suspicious than the others; if not, I will pick one at random”. RyJae also makes an excellent point, that if you just count posts you end up giving twickster as much credit for saying his brain hurts as you give Blaster Master for his thus far surprisingly few but lengthy and informative posts. So, pay attention to who is posting a lot but not saying much.

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.

RyJae, my smudge of twickster was really meant more as a humorous illustration of the paranoid thinking this game inspires than as a serious accusation… but again, we do have to start somewhere, and pointing out that rose had made multiple posts attacking me for jumping on the bandwagon while ignoring the person who started the bandwagon is about as close to a legitimate datum as we’re likely to get this early in the game. But if the more experienced players feel this sort of thing is unhelpful, I will be happy to knock it off; I have read over a few games quickly and one very carefully, but I am still a newbie.

anyrose asks if it is necessarily scummy to switch votes. I think the answer is that it depends. On Day One, as BlaM points out, sticking rigidly to one’s original (purportedly) random vote could actually be perceived as scummy. Since most would agree that providing information about your thinking is pro-town, therefore getting a vote on record early, before all the relevant data is available to analyze, is also pro-town, therefore changing your vote later based on that data can’t logically be automatically seen as anti-town. What does tend to raise people’s scumdar is when a vote is switched very close to the deadline without a convincing reason, especially when that vote switch affects the outcome of the vote. For example, in Simpletown, people were suspicious of ** Nanook** for Days after his last-minute vote switch nearly saved the Lead Assassin’s life, even though he had a good excuse (last-minute role claim).

And in response to BlaM’s suggestion in post #150, I will now clarify that my vote on anyrose was in fact random and not based on any florophobia.

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:dubious: that’s a relief?? :smiley:

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Hmmm, threatened by Blaster Master on my first day. Note to self: it’s much easier to feel smart while reading this game than while playing it.

[QUOTE=Blaster Master]
I’m sorry, but this doesn’t make sense. It is not reasonable to suspect that the person voting for oneself is necessarily more likely to be scum
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.

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 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?

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True. When I employ lynch-the-lurker, I don’t go straight off of post counts. I take the amount of content into consideration. Fluff posts don’t count for much, so if I notice someone posting a lot, but saying little, I’ll still peg them as a lurker. (So far, though, no one has a particularly high fluff-to-substance ratio.) Also, even though fluiddruid hasn’t posted yet, she’s not a candidate for lurker at this point, because complete non-posting often times results from real-life or connection issues.

And Blaster currently is sitting around the median as far as post counts go. I do agree that he puts a lot of context in his posts (I haven’t noticed a fluff from him since the Day began), so he tends to be on the lower end of the higher post counts.

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

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Why would you think that? A random vote portends nothing. Since people don’t tend to stick with random votes by the end of the Day, without good reason, I can’t see a compelling reason for scum to add bias to a random vote by not randomly voting one of their own. In fact, they might intentionally random vote one of their own just because someone might expect them not to, in which case there’s now a WIFOM situation. A scum “randomly” votes for scum; the first scum dies; you are now going to absolve the other scum because scum wouldn’t vote for each other? Bad strategy. Very bad strategy. Especially since scum have been known to throw other scum under the bus just to gain townie cred. So that adds even another motivation for a phony random vote on another scum.

Random votes are null tells. A scum is just as likely to random vote another scum as he is town (within the appropriate proportions of each to the overall pool), or if he isn’t, there really isn’t a way to determine the motivation during the early game anyway.

So for now, view random votes as nothing else but a insignificant and likely meaningless part of a vote history for a player.

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CoG888 - Please provide an update of the votinig sitch, thanks

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  1. This game is not all noobs. It’s newbie friendly. This means it’s likely to be a fairly basic setup and will contain many newbies. There are very roughly a third true newbies, a third haven’t played much, and a third significantly experienced. It actually makes for a good balance, IMO.

  2. You really need to stop editing. The mod has even mentioned it. This is twice now that you’ve done it. Editing is against the rules. You can disagree with the no-edit policy, but you still have to obey it to play in the game. If you make a typo, deal with it. We all make typoes. If you screw something up, clarify it in a follow-up post. But for the love of Cecil–don’t edit! It looks suspicious, it’s against the rules, and it will draw attention to you, whether you want it to or not. You really don’t want to get modkilled this early in the game. You will hurt either side you belong to by decreasing their numbers with no informational benefit.

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Well, this game is newbs-welcome, not newbs-only. I’ve been playing for a few months, but Blaster Master is an old pro. Editing, no matter what the reason, is gonna get you some badd juju from our mod, I’ll wager. We’re not just being mean or pedantic when we advise you to stop. I would hate for you to get mod-killed, seeing as how that basically gives those scummy bastards an extra kill (provided that you are Town). Let’s not go down that road please.

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Which actually raises the question:

What happens in the case of a mod-kill?

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It’s a bit more nuanced than that. A single random vote, in and of itself, doesn’t necessary cause anyone to say anything. The point is, an honest townie WILL vote randomly, but scum will NOT vote randomly. This will generate useful information (as I think my vote evaluations in Simpletown demonstrated perfectly, as MindWanderer was easily picked out when compared to RyJae and MadTheSwine).

Further, while a single random vote won’t necessarily prompt a response, if they’re random, they WILL cluster in some way which WILL necessitate a response. It will also raise other questions: Was it genuine randomness, townie prodding, or scummy wagon-jumping?

Either way, the important point is it gets people posting, it generates voting initial voting records (even if it’s a low signal ratio), it establishes patterns, and most importantly, it forces scum to make choices. That is, it’s always preferable to make scum make the choices that we present them, than the other way around.

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This is an important point that I think was washed out by the fact that I was scum in the Recruitment game, and that I decided it was counter-productive to mention it in Simpletown. Defensiveness is intuitively a scum tell, but it’s generally a null tell. EVERYONE wants to live, whether scum or town, so there’s no way to differentiate scum or town based purely upon defensiveness.

That said, there is a sort of tone that goes along with defensiveness that is very hard to duplicate and often a slight indicator of towniness. I think bufftabby vs. RoOsh in Simpletown is a good example. I think Drain Bead vs. me in Recruitment is a good example. I think the Day 2 fiasco in M2 is an example.

Bottom line, anyrose has been defensive thus far, but that’s all we can say. Both scum or town in the same situation would be motivated to be defensive, thus it’s impossible based purely on that to make any sort of guess at her alignment.

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

176

A point about lying and hiding information. I’m not in agreeance with either of them (surprise, surprise). In general, a lying townie is a bad thing, but there ARE a few cases where it is the best thing to do. A good example of that was the Bishop saying he was a Priest in the Recruitment game. That said, lying is generally, as in 99/100, a bad idea for townies, so don’t do it unless you’ve given a LOT of thought to what it means, not only in what they’ll be forced to believe as a consequence, but what they’ll think when you’re found out to be a liar.

Similarly, it’s generally a good idea to protect some information, but even hiding things like Doctor tells can sometimes be against the town’s interest. For instance, in the Pirates game, there was a tell that our most valuable role was between two people, and I made a point of pointing it out. I figured that, first, the scum would probably see it anyway, and second, it would force the scum to take a stab at those people, and the important role would self-protect, and the other was probably scum. Sure, it was risky, but the result was that the scum DID take a stab at them, and killed the secret scum instead of the important power role. I like to think my play there was at least partially responsible for that. So, again, those sorts of things are generally anti-town, but it is important to think about the consequences.

The important lesson here is, hidden information can always be revealed later with little difference (except possibly questions about timing), a lie cannot be undone.

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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.”.

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!

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I think what we’re saying (I am, anyway, can’t speak for BlaM) is that it is ok to be defensive. The tone of a defense is really where the information lies, but newbs often jump on defensiveness as a scum tell, especially if it seems out of proportion to the situation. See the lynching of poor CapnPitt in recruitment (in which buff votes wrongly and learns a valuable lesson).

BlaM referred to the difference between the tones of mine and RoOsh’s defensiveness during the endgame of Simpletown, and he’s absolutely correct. His tone of defensiveness, as well as the tone of his attacks on me, are what really convinced me correctly as to his scummitude, and I spent the last 3 Days attempting to convince the Town of this. That example definitely also shows how difficult tone can be to define. Not that I’m asking you to research these, situations, but they are definitely available for you revierw and edification.

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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?

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Well, if you’re vanilla town, you have to keep reminding yourself that it doesn’t matter if you die - the point is to help the Town win. So obviously you want to lynch scum, not yourself, since you know you’re town, but your death as such is essentially meaningless except as numbers go - and Town can afford to lose people more than it can afford to lose information. And recall, the Town does get information when it lynches a townie. On the other hand, if you’re not vanilla town and have some kind of power role, your death is a much bigger blow to the Town and you should obviously prevent it if you can. Of course, if you’re scum you’re going to be a lot more upset about dying just because there’s a lot less scum than town.