Best game I ever designed. Biggest disapointment in participation(talk wise) and drop outs(quitter wise).
Still, the group left is pretty good and I think the game is going fine.
Still, I can’t believe that people not only quit, but did it in a, “Yeah…so thanks for the game…bye!” manner.
One Time Pad, is a form of encryption and trivial one to implement and distribute, it would be possible to pass messages throughout the day using an agreed upon method, say the first letter of every sentence or every other sentence in a post to give instructions to fellow scummies. You just set it up on night zero and voila, instant day communication right under the noses of the town players.
The detective claim loophole occurs when there is a specific time that all night actions must be in by, and there is strategy allowed at night. A detective can claim their investigation results after the night actions deadline but before the day begins. This can insure that a detective can get their investigation results out to the greater public before the mod can announce they have been killed but after the scum kill has been submitted, so that scum cannot change their kill target to the detective.
They are both exploits of playing the game in an asynchronous fashion, and I would consider them to be gamesmanship, while others would consider them to be “doing what it takes to win”. So, I don’t frown on their use, but I feel that they diverge from the spirit of the game. But I suspect I’m in a minority in feeling that way.
sorry for the double post.
But before anyone calls me an unrepentant hypocrite. Lurking as a strategy is also poor sportsmanship. I’ve seen the light. No one wants to play a game where no one is discussing anything. That’s why I’ve tried to change my play style to move away from that point. These games where scum lurks, or town lurks are no freaking fun, and why else are we playing them, but to have a little competitive fun?
Interesting idea of instituting a one time pad. I don’t think it would be worth the effort though. I’m of the opinion that Day Talk for Scum is not of great use. I suppose there could be some situations where it would be useful, but if instituting a one time pad, the results could be hilarious. Shoehorning in a few Q’s and Z’s and X’s would be difficult.
Anyway, the one time I was scum we were allowed to talk during the Day and we never did.
I disagree. There are cases where it can be critical IMO.
For example, had scum been able to Day Talk during Scum Pond Kelly would have stood a much better chance of pulling off his fake claim. He could have run his proposed claim post past the rest of the scum and we could have told him about the slips he was making.
Remind me. Didn’t Kelly run his fake claim by the scum at Night, but didn’t stick to the exact concept/wording/plan during the Day?
I was on to that sneaky bastard from the get go. 
There are others, pretty much whenever scum has a power role that generates information as a night action, for example a scum watcher. If they detect say a non-scum visitor, they can turn up the heat on that player maybe get a power role lynch, or at least a claim out there.
As far as how much scum talks during the day, i’ve played in games where the scum thread was more lively than the town thread, and games where no one talked at all in the scum thread. So, that’s more a testament to the particular game setup and the players involved.
I had come up with the role several Days before. What happened was at the last minute I realized that the timing was perfect for Kelly to use that claim. Unfortunately I didn’t fill in the blanks very well for Kelly so he had to make the claim up on his own, and he missed a critical detail that ended up contradicting public information from the mod.
I"m not sure we’ve even had a day where every player had ONE vote in, let alone multiple votes.
I always expect votes flying around in early days.
I guess I should have had peeker in the game instead of help balance it.
As sachertorte suggested, the theme of this game may have drawn in a lot of inexperienced players. They don’t have much to say because they’ve made their votes and don’t see any point in talking about it further, or because they’re confused by the game or the references to older games made by the experienced players.
I’ve never played Mafia and haven’t followed one of our SDMB games for a long time, but I probably would have signed up for this game if I’d seen it in time. If I were playing rather than watching then I don’t think I’d have felt there was much need to talk once a player had attracted a large number of votes. As an observer I’m happy this game has been relatively free of fluff posts, because they make it harder to keep track of things.
To be fair to myself and the players, I actually think the game is going fairly smoothly, despite not having tons of conversation.
I mean, it seems the people that remain are fairly involved. If I’m remember correctly, only HardlySanguine does not have a vote on today(which is weird, actually).
However, I usually expect votes flying around.
I can’t remember many unvotes at all.
I can just kick back and relax.
I wouldn’t read so much into that. Outside of Day 1, most of these votes have been nearly unanimous, and that pretty early. Conversation is always light on “gimme” type votes.
I am absolutely, 100% in shock. I cannot remember the last time that I was so sure that a player was scum. Maybe Greedy Smurf in Apocalypse?
I’m SPOILED, and I thought Chronos was scum
LOL Tom. Nice to see you again, btw.
What was the reason again? Because he assumed Red was the Godfather?
I think I mentioned upthread that we discussed this here in the forbidden thread. I didn’t see much in Chronos’s conclusions that weren’t consistent or discontinuous from what was said here. I guess I had the benefit of seeing this thread though, while people in game only saw what Chronos posted over there. Kind of interesting how that worked out though.
I’m coming to think more and more that it isn’t so much what people do, but the way in which they do it.
It works both ways. After I subbed in, in reading to catch up, I thought tiltawhirl looked vaguely Scummy. I’m beginning to think that a lot of folks just don’t like my playstyle…
As to Storyteller, the way I see it, there are two possibilities:
1: He really is a Mason, and there’s some pro-Town reason for one and only one member of a two-member masonry to have claimed toDay, and there’s also some pro-Town reason for nobody to know what that reason was.
2: He’s lying Scum.
In general, when someone has something to hide, the simplest explanation is that what they have to hide is that they’re Scum.
I very much think that there was an illusory discontinuity in your ‘conclusions’ in the game. Jumping in, they thought your statements looked like you had extra info or had discussed them with other people. The thing is, you had – we discussed it here.
I don’t think that is a good way to look at it. Essentially, I think, there are more reasons to believe storyteller than to not believe him. Town have reasons to hide things too. Scum have little reason to put up the appearance of hiding something. In fact, scum will actively avoid the accusation of hiding something. I can think of several reasons for a single mason claim not wanting to spread it out to two. Namely, protection. If masons get a one shot protect, then they want that focused on a single mason, not two. Furthermore, I am under the impression that storyteller is in communication with the other mason. If so, then storyteller can hide his confirmation in a coded message that the other can use to demonstrate his mason-ness. It looks clean from my perspective.
The fact that you attacked storyteller was the main reason I thought you were Town. I can’t see scum attacking a claimed mason. It’s suicide. But a Townie will do it, if they truly believe the claim is false.
No. First, he assumed that all surviving scum had powers: he said that the Godfather, after the death of the Cop, was the least valuable scum remaining. If the Godfather is the least valuable scum than the other scum must have powers to make them more valuable. That alone is extremely dubious IMO and reeks of PIS. Absent any other information, the default assumption that I would expect is that there is no scum powers other than the Godfather.
Second, he was called on this he explained it by saying that he had been imprecise and that the Godfather was no longer any more valuable than any other scum. However he had previously posted some reasoning based on the assumption that the Godfather was the least valuable scum and this reasoning made no sense based on the assumption that the Godfather was just as valuable as any other scum. This indicated that his explanation was a flat-out lie.
Third, he later offered an alternative explanation that he was under the impression that game here at the SDMB tend to have scum with power roles, in particular Roleblockers and Investigators. This just isn’t true in my experience. Scum power roles other than the Godfather have been extremely rare in the games that I have played here and at IdleMafia. Chronos himself moderated a game here where the scum had no powers roles at all! Furthermore, this explanation directly contradicts the first defence that he offered.
Fourth, he responded to Meeko a bit later on after Meeko wondered whether the scum had a investigator, and maybe that was why the Cop and Doctor had been killed. Chronos said that this was commonly wondered about but that it rarely means that the scum have a detective, once again contradicting himself on the subject of scum power roles.
In addition to all that, when I died I asked Mahaloth a question about the setup, and he answered me. I won’t get into what he told me because that’s a spoiler, but Mahaloth’s answer made two of Chronos’ posts look extremely scummy to me.
Actually, as I explained in the game, when I said “least valuable Scum”, I did in fact mean “All the other Scum are no less valuable, and possibly more so”. And even if the Godfather were the only non-vanilla Scum, my argument still holds: The key is just that the Godfather seem more important than he really is.
And I didn’t say that games here tend to have power-role Scum; I said that games based on some canon tend to have power-role Scum. Which I backed up with examples. The Cecil Pond game I ran is not a counter-example, because it wasn’t based on any canon.
And again, I didn’t contradict myself on the existence of a Scum investigator. I said at first that there might be one, and then I said later that the Scum hitting multiple non-vanillas is not evidence that they have one.