I disagree wholeheartedly.
I’ve thought it through, and the correct move for a Town Romanic is to remove himself from the game as soon as possible.
I disagree because he is going to be lynched anyway. If he suicide that’s a half-mislynch gone. If he’s lynched that’s a full mislynch. And that’s assuming one anti-Town night kill per night, and with 30 players I would expect a much bloodier game than that.
Well since Ed’s explanation scrolled off the page, and just in general interest of communication, you might consider presenting it as an analogy so people don’t take you literally.
I don’t know that I agree that the analogy is exactly analogous either.
Call me crazy, but if Romanic is going to walk, he better just get on with it. If you are Town Romanic, no one can be sure which is truly better, but if you are going to walk, just get on with it.
We’re losing valuable Day hours speculating on your action. Either walk or just let the lynch go through. Don’t walk away too late. We’ll scramble for a lynch candidate and who knows what will happen.
If you are scum, I don’t care what you do, obviously. We caught you and it’s over for you.
The post that you quoted was on the previous page, too. And besides, I’ve made like 10 posts in a row explaining this. It’s the only thing that I’ve talked about.
@Suburban Plankton:
If I’m understanding his power correctly, Day 1 would continue as normal, only Romanic is gone. We’re learning the true, honest status of a player, and we can bring that to bear on the rest of the group. We’d have until the end of the day to question those who voted for him, and select another lynch target. We can poke those who studiously avoided voting for him as well. And we gain all of this without an intervening night, where scum (and third parties?) can thin our herd. In that light, him walking away would be a pro-town action, and indeed the best action he can make at this point. Assuming he’s town, of course.
Based on all of this, if he’s capable of walking away, I think he should go ahead and do it.
I honestly think we’re quibbling between a potential gain that is less than the margin of error. My vote is going to stay on him until he decides to walk.
Astral: What sort of questions are you planning on floating to people who are or have voted for him if he does hitchhike as advertised? Why not ask them now?
I think you’ve misunderstood. I believe Romanic is scum, and have no questions prepared. I’m responding to Suburban, who claimed that no information would come of Romanic’s death if he was town. I’m explaining that that’s not the case.
I agree with this course of action.
If he’s Scum , he probably doesn’t have the ability to walk away. Though it is an interesting power for Scum to have. Imagine if they were going to be lynched. They could ‘walk away’ late and the second candidate would be lynched instead. In effect, they get to at least take a Townie with them when they are lynched (provided a Town player is 2nd in votes). Not a great deal, but better than just being lynched.
So, we should probably carefully consider our 2nd place candidate.
So this discussion has crystallized something for me. Ever since Cecil Pond, I’ve been wondering if maybe we’ve had the Vig role wrong ever M2 ended. The general assumption around here is that the Vig tends to hurt the Town more than it helps it. I think that the problem isn’t with the role itself – it’s with how the Town has used the role. Way back in M2 we played leash-the-Vig: in addition to the lynch vote, we held a second, unofficial vote and basically forced the Vig to kill the loser of the second vote. Now, the scum ended up winning M2, and the assumption since than seems to have been that leash-the-Vig was a bad idea. Now, I’ll admit that I wasn’t around for the discussions in the wake of M2, but I submit that leash-the-Vig is a really a great idea. It gives the town a second lynch, which is a huge advantage. The main problems with Vigs is the lack of accountability and the fact that power roles never get a chance to claim to save themselves. But if we hold a vote there’s the same accountability that we get from a lynch, plus a power role can claim.
And even better, I’ve just realized that as strategy is not restricted at Night, we can hold the final vote after the results of the Day’s lynch are known.
Now, we don’t even know if we have a Vig. But in case we do, I really think that it would help us to make use of that role as best we can.
(Ok, you can tell me how crazy I am now…)
Roleblockers and redirectors make this strategy risky at best.
Roleblockers can block a Vig if they are targeting a Scum (or a Townie to make that Townie appear Scumish via WiFoM) Redirectors can do as they wish with a Vig in this situation, even a bus driving redirector.
A bus driver would be very bad, but that’s quite a powerful role for scum. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a scum bus driver before. A roleblocker or a redirector is only a problem if the Vig’s identity is known to the scum.
How is a leashed Vig’s identity not known to scum?
The Vig doesn’t have to claim. We just have to vote and trust the Vig to kill the target.
This whole discussion strikes me as being a major diversion.
Really, it doesn’t matter one way or another…Romantic is going to be taken out of the game either way, either by being lynched or leaving.
So those of you who are all on the “BUT IT’S BAD IF HE’S TOWN AND HE LEAVES!!” train…it doesn’t matter. He will probably be lynched ANYWAY.
So we can either wait until he’s lynched at the end of toDay…wherein people will keep discussing and debating over this until they’re blue in the face…
…or he can leave and we can actually focus our attention on other things.
Me, I think it’s for the better if he leaves, myself.
In other words, I agree with Mahaloth’s last post.
If (and I’m increasingly thinking he’s not) Romanic is telling the truth:
If he walks, we find out he is town and then town gets to act.
If we lynch, we find out that he is town, and then scum gets to act.
In this scenario, lynching Romanic is just worse for town than letting him walk.
IF Romanic is telling the truth, his first priority should be to catch another scum and sic us on them as soon as possible. Unlikely, but there you go. Second priority should be to walk in time to let town have a useful discussion about lynch 2.
OK, so I took a break and played Modern Warfare for a while, so I could clear me head. And now that I consider things again, I can see the arguments for Romanic walking away. I’m still not quite certain I *agree *with them, but they do now at least make sense to me, so I’m going to stop arguing the issue.
Of course, it is seeming more and more likely that this whole discussion is moot. If I were a Townie staring at a certain lynch, I’d be trying to help the rest of the Town find the *real *Scum, in hopes that looking at my suspicions could provide some help to them after I was dead. Since Romanic doesn’t seem to be doing anything like that, it’s looking like he is Scum after all; in that case we don’t need to worry about what he “should do”, because he’s not listening to us anyway.
Until proven otherwise, I’m going to now work off the assumption that Romanic is Scum, and leave the “what if” discussions for later. Unfortunately, his mistake was so egregious that I’m not sure we can draw any conclusions by looking at who voted, why they voted, and when they voted, but perhaps something will turn up (either there or elsewhere).
vote: Hal Briston
On review, I’m seeing pre-justifications for future scummy behaviour, negligible contribution to town efforts, and repeated attempts at hiding in humour.
Some examples:
[SPOILER]
Justifying future lies.
Not “we’ve caught a scummer”, but “haha, you’re gonna die”.
To me, it reads like he’s relieved that someone else is in the firing line.
The ‘ass cum’ line looks too perfect to me. A deliberate mistake, perhaps?
Mafia love to hide behind humour, because they don’t have to say anything of substance, and nobody likes lynching the funny guy.
Also, this is a pretty weasely smudge on myself and Normal Phase.
Justifying future edits?
Jokily pretending to be scum, but then making sure that everyone knows it’s a joke?
Scummy as hell.
Neatly sidestepping the discussion at hand to point out something which might be scummy about the guy who everyone else is already voting to lynch, and who is basically guaranteed to leave the game today?
Oh dear, oh dear…[/SPOILER]
Is this normal behaviour?
There’s nothing normal about Hal Briston, but what you point out doesn’t strike me as scummy. We’ve played a lot of games together though, so ymmv.
I happen to wholeheartedly agree with him about lynch-all-liars being a narrow minded policy. I’m fairly sure I prattle on and on about just that topic in the previous version of this game, if memory serves.
Imho this game made the topic of editing into a tempest in a teacup, so I just can’t get behind any of your paranoia there. Again, ymmv.
I don’t know what discussion you’re accusing him of side-stepping, but weighing in that he doesn’t believe Romanic’s claim seems completely topical to me.
All that being said, your gut is your gut and for all I know you’re onto something. I would caution you about soliciting advice on what is normal, because who knows what is going to be motivating the responses you’ll get. Except for my motivations which are, of course, pure as the driven snow.
I had a bout of the 'flu yesterday, so I’ve just done a lot of catching up. I don’t want to rehash things unneccessarily, but here’s where I am just now:
- Romanic’s apparent slip, plus his reluctance to claim, is pretty damning. Even if 4 scum seems pretty low for a 30 player game.
- The eventual claim: an odd role, but I can see the value in it. However, that doesn’t mean anything - cover roles given to scum will almost certainly be based on roles that were considered for the game, but had their part chopped out in the editing room.
- Romanic is almost certainly going to leave the game this Day, and we will get full info on his role and alignment. If this happens through lynching, then we will get precious little info from toDay - a near-unanimous voting record and limited meaningful discussion over the next three days. If it happens through his own volition, we get to regroup and generate more information by putting scrutiny on more players. Yes, mislynches are bad - but all lynches give us information, and the more information we squeeze out of a Day, the better we’re doing.
- No-one should be both voting for Romanic and arguing that he shouldn’t use his power. If you believe he’s got a power to use, unvote him. If Romanic is Town, then the best possible outcome for Scum is that he remains clear lynch-leader for the rest of the Day, with little or no discussion going on. They get to hide in a big pile of votes, and don’t risk coming under much scrutiny for their posts. If he is Town, the best outcome for Town is that he bows out now, allowing us the chance to find actual Scum.
vote Romanic