Good Alive: The Evil Dead forbidden thread

The Game Room
1

Mod Note:
As Chronos and Tom Scud started two threads on the same topic, I have merged the threads. See post #16 for details.

  • Gukumatz,
    Game Room Moderator

Since storyteller hasn’t started this thread yet, I figured I would, since I’m just about bursting from wanting to comment on the game.

First, this is largely moot now that Romanic has taken a walk, but several points there. For one, I’m surprised nobody asked him the obvious question: If “four Scum” came from another game, which one was it? Did that game in fact have four Scum?

For another point, four Scum isn’t actually all that implausible, since game balance doesn’t scale the way most folks think. Assuming that the Scum win condition is the one that most moderators say they’re using (Scum win when they control the vote), then in an all-vanilla game with 4 Scum out of 30 players, Town would have about a 44% chance of winning. Assuming instead that the Scum win condition is the one that most moderators actually use (Scum win when there are equal numbers of Town and Scum), Town’s chances are only about 20%. Now, of course, that’s for an all-vanilla game, and Town has some powers on its side to tip the balance… But then again, Scum probably has some powers on their side, too. So it’d be quite possible to have a game this size with four Scum and still be balanced.

For the third point, Romanic walking was the right move. There was no way he was going to get out of that lynch, which means that him dying was inevitable. The only question was whether to give Town another chance at a lynch in addition to that. And lynching is ultimately how Town wins, so giving the Town a chance at another lynch is a good thing.

Now, then, onto other subjects: Someone (Hal? I don’t feel like looking it up right now) said that “lynch all liars” is a bad policy, since Town needs to lie just as much as Scum does. I can’t disagree more: Town never needs to lie, and doing so hurts Town. It can be prudent sometimes for Town to just keep their mouth shut, for instance on the topic of whether one is a power role or not. But a power role should never claim to not be so, or vice-versa. And any given power role should almost certainly claim (truthfully) eventually. Scum, on the other hand, always need to lie, and catching them out on those lies is one of the most valuable tools available to Town. Townies should absolutely not discard such a valuable tool just for the benefit of other Townies who are playing poorly in the first place.

And NAF’s statements about fishing: I disagree with him about fishing as a Scum tell, but I also define “fishing” much more narrowly than he does. Not all attempts at gaining information are fishing. Fishing is nothing more nor less than trying to find out information about who the power roles are. Once Scum know who a power role is, they don’t need to know more: They deal with all power roles the same way, by preferentially killing them. By contrast, if someone is already known to be a power role, then a Townie usually has an interest in learning more about that role, so asking for more information about a role should not be regarded as Scummy.

2

Mod Note: This post has been superceded as two threads has been merged. See post #16.

Since story didn’t make one, and since I don’t want to be spoiled, and since I have a couple things to say about the current game, and since I’m making this post a bit longer to make sure nothing shows through on preview…

Here’s the thread for unspoiled discussion of the Evil Dead II Mafia game currently ongoing. The game thread is here.

3

So. From a while back, Drain was asking when she was last Town lasting multiple days, and also what the game was where she drew suspicion for casting suspicion on a general group that happened to include one person, and the answer to both is Random Mafia.

Also, on the current question of whether Oy! has outed herself as Not Vanilla Town, I remember a game (Lost, maybe) in which I had pegged Oredigger as a power role or scum based on his asking whether we knew if vanilla townies had individual names; as a vanilla myself, I knew that we did. But it turned out that he’d just forgotten that he had an actual name himself.

4

Mod Note: This post has been superceded since I have merged the two active threads. As Chronos reposted what he posted in his OP (which is now this thread’s OP) I have put the content in a spoiler box to enchance readability.

[spoiler]
I already tried to start this thread, but I don’t think anyone saw it, so I’ll re-post what I said there:
Since storyteller hasn’t started this thread yet, I figured I would, since I’m just about bursting from wanting to comment on the game.

First, this is largely moot now that Romanic has taken a walk, but several points there. For one, I’m surprised nobody asked him the obvious question: If “four Scum” came from another game, which one was it? Did that game in fact have four Scum?

For another point, four Scum isn’t actually all that implausible, since game balance doesn’t scale the way most folks think. Assuming that the Scum win condition is the one that most moderators say they’re using (Scum win when they control the vote), then in an all-vanilla game with 4 Scum out of 30 players, Town would have about a 44% chance of winning. Assuming instead that the Scum win condition is the one that most moderators actually use (Scum win when there are equal numbers of Town and Scum), Town’s chances are only about 20%. Now, of course, that’s for an all-vanilla game, and Town has some powers on its side to tip the balance… But then again, Scum probably has some powers on their side, too. So it’d be quite possible to have a game this size with four Scum and still be balanced.

For the third point, Romanic walking was the right move. There was no way he was going to get out of that lynch, which means that him dying was inevitable. The only question was whether to give Town another chance at a lynch in addition to that. And lynching is ultimately how Town wins, so giving the Town a chance at another lynch is a good thing.

Now, then, onto other subjects: Someone (Hal? I don’t feel like looking it up right now) said that “lynch all liars” is a bad policy, since Town needs to lie just as much as Scum does. I can’t disagree more: Town never needs to lie, and doing so hurts Town. It can be prudent sometimes for Town to just keep their mouth shut, for instance on the topic of whether one is a power role or not. But a power role should never claim to not be so, or vice-versa. And any given power role should almost certainly claim (truthfully) eventually. Scum, on the other hand, always need to lie, and catching them out on those lies is one of the most valuable tools available to Town. Townies should absolutely not discard such a valuable tool just for the benefit of other Townies who are playing poorly in the first place.

And NAF’s statements about fishing: I disagree with him about fishing as a Scum tell, but I also define “fishing” much more narrowly than he does. Not all attempts at gaining information are fishing. Fishing is nothing more nor less than trying to find out information about who the power roles are. Once Scum know who a power role is, they don’t need to know more: They deal with all power roles the same way, by preferentially killing them. By contrast, if someone is already known to be a power role, then a Townie usually has an interest in learning more about that role, so asking for more information about a role should not be regarded as Scummy.[/spoiler]

5

Sorry - didn’t see your thread or I would have just bumped it instead of starting my own.

On the Lynch all Liars thing, both Rysto and Storyteller lied during the name claim in Random Mafia, to avoid claiming obvious Doctor and Cop roles, and if scum hadn’t decided to kill Story for being Story, it might have worked for Story, and it did work for Rysto.

6

I slightly disagree. I’m OK with Town lying if they are in a situation where they never plan on deviating from that lie. For example, In Cecil Pond, if it came to a claim, I would have claimed Vanilla even though I was not. I would have lied and I would have taken that lie all the way to lynch. The reason? I was not lynchable. Claiming such is of no use for Town and would only be a distraction. Sometimes lying to Town is in their best interest.

Also, some lies are OK even if one ends up recanting, as long as it is clearly obvious why the lie existed. Something along the lines of, I told you X, but the truth is Y, because obviously telling everyone publicly Y would help scum way more than Town. These ‘self-explaining’ lies are okay too in my book. The problem is, too many players think it is okay for them to lie in situations where the lie hurts Town.

In Random Mafia, the Town Power roles lied during the mass name claim. This was obviously the correct move and no one questioned their lies or motivation for lying.

7

Wasn’t there a consensus in Random, though, that the Doc and/or Cop should hide their role? So in effect, everyone was claiming “Either I’m so-and-so, or I’m a detective or doctor whose role would be obvious from my name”.

8

Incidentally, in Random, the name-claim COULD have netted Town the Godfather, if the Townies had been paying close attention. :slight_smile:

9

Okay, I disagree with Oy’s decision to full-claim there. Especially with the decision to list all of the abilities.

10

The full-claim I certainly disagree with, but the listing the abilities I could go either way on. On the one hand, he’s certainly Scum’s #1 priority target right now, so it was good for Town to learn as much as they could about him before he died. On the other hand, though, he’d have been better off leaving Scum to wonder whether he was capable of self-protecting.

11

Interesting game so far, with a good set of players.

Big blunder on Romanic’s part, and now Oy has outed herself, the scum must be fairly happy. I don’t think her full claim is a bad idea under the circumstances, as scum still need to worry about a watcher or protector, and the full claim is very convincing. An unresolved claim is always a big distraction for town. Personally, I’d have held back some info while giving enough to assess how powerful my role was.

If Oy’s claim is fake she is playing very well, a couple of her responses since the claim have me pretty convinced.

On lying, my position is townies shouldn’t unless they are very confident the benefits outweigh the risks.

That’s how I see it. Townies generally want to know more about a role so they can assess a claim.

12

Geez, I go on vacation, and you have to start this when I’m not here! [I’ve been known to use several Bruce avatars on various other boards] But most of the fun of the trilogy is spouting quotes from it and miming BC’s various pratfalls, something which doesn’t really translate into the Mafia game, since you have to keep a fairly low profile and thus can’t really post in character (or, at least, I saw very little of that in the LOTR game). Thus, if someone can devise a SD board game which would allow you to post in character like that, I’d probably be all over it. But for me there’s also the endless obsessive scheming and scenario-chewing which would undoubtedly keep me up nights in any event, so perhaps not.

13

Jeeze, it’s pretty empty in here. Oh well I think the set up looks great again it should be a great game I’m bummed to be it out so soon. I was trying to play differently this time to make up for dropping out of the LOTR game by posting all of my thoughts and trying to engage other posters.

I need to find a middle ground.

14

There’s more discussion in the one Tom started. You probably want to head over there.

Mod Note: This has been rendered redundant since I have merged the two threads. I have removed the link.

15

OK, I’m assuming that NAF’s account of the book’s powers is accurate, since even if he’s Scum, any lies would be almost certainly caught. Any guesses on what they do?

Page 1: Dread Curse - To call the dread curse on a victim. This one definitely sounds like it’s bad for the target. Possibly a kill, possibly just something like a phantom vote. But probably not a good idea yet, without more information.
Page 7: Dread Magnetism - To curse a victim with dark attraction. In addition to the lightning-rod possibility, this might also associate the player with some other player somehow. Like, maybe it’s a vote buy, or maybe it’s that the target can’t take any offensive action against the attracted.
Page 13: Dread Visage - To curse a victim with a horrific mask. This might turn the target into a Miller (in which case no Townie should ever use it), or it might be the real lightning-rod power.
Page 22: Dread Fire - To call forth dark fire on a victim Another one that’s probably bad for the victim. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of there being two killing curses in the book.
Page 48: Dread Containment - To hold the knowledge of a victim This sounds like an information-gathering power, which is in general good for Town. Then again, “hold the knowledge” might also mean preventing that person from gaining knowledge.
Page 56: Dread Finger - To curse a thieving victim If there are any thieves in the game, I’m not sure I trust them. It sounds like whatever this one does, it only affects thieves, which would make it a fairly safe power to use.
Page 62: Dread Forgetting - To forget a victim exists I can’t make heads nor tails of this one, but I don’t think I would try it. If this were on a different board, I might think that the target is forcibly put on the reader’s ignore list, but Story doesn’t have the power to do that. It might just be one of the do-nothing powers that were implied to exist.
Page 70: Dread Whisper - To trouble the conscience of a victim Like the finger, it looks like this one only affects non-Town, so it might be another safe one.
Page 84: Dread Darkness - To curse a victim with a shroud of Night Not sure what this one means, either.
Page 99: Dread Resurrection - To call forth a victim from beyond the veil." Pretty clear what this means, but I would expect it to bring the person back as some sort of undead, not as whatever they were before, so a Townie should probably not use this one.

I also wonder if perhaps the mechanism for “reading too much” this game isn’t a set number of pages, but rather that one of the spells is booby-trapped.

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Mod Note:

I have merged Chronos and Tom Scud’s threads on this topic. As the merge tool works chronologically, Chronos’ OP is now the thread OP. While this will confuse readability a bit, we are fortunate that both threads were short.

  • Gukumatz,
    Game Room Moderator
17

I think it’s interesting that they’re mostly ignoring this:

18

If I were playing right now, my major worry wrt NAF would not be that he was scum, but that he was some kind of PFK whose win condition involved holding/using the book a certain number of times.

19

I’m guessing a Martyr dies in someone else’s stead. There are a bunch of interesting roles in the game.

It’s also curious that both NAF and Oy! survived the Night i figured that at least one of them would show up with a case of the deads. I guess the scum want to keep the WIFOM going.

I’m getting a pretty townie read on NAF but then again he normally is very capable of fooling me when he’s scum. I don’t think that a PFK involving the book is very likely just due to the picking up and passing mechanism. Since there is no way to guarantee that you will ever get the book and like NAF was saying best case scenario only 4 people would ever touch it unless they were all killed their first Night in possession.

20

Unless the PFK automatically won any scrum for the book. Just sayin, is all.

As I am not in the game, and therefore not as paranoid, I’m pretty sure NAF is Town.