Harry Potter Mafia

[storyteller0910]

Right, let’s do this thing.

@Chronos

1: He was apparently a standard Godfather, meaning that with the investigator dead without having claimed any results, he was effectively vanilla Scum.

There’s been a lot of focus on the “most expendable” part of Chronos first statement (here at post #372), but I want to start with the above.

“He was apparently a standard Godfather.”

Mahaloth has made two public statements, essentially, regarding Skeezix’s role:

(1) in the Dusk post (#340): “Red Skeezix was Lord Voldemort, leader of the Death Eaters, whose mind was impenetrable by magic.”

(2) in the player list after Dawn (#371): “Red Skeezix – Lord Voldemort(Death Eater – Leader and Occlumens)”

So where does Chronos generate the confidence to say that Voldy was “apparently a standard Godfather?” The Occlumens thing certainly suggests a Godfather element, but given that the word “Godfather” was never used it’s not definitive, really. And more importantly, in the role list, Mahaloth describes Voldy’s role with two words: Leader and Occlumens. I, for one, wondered whether the word “Leader” had power-related relevance, since it was listed as separate. Others did, as well. But Chronos, apparently, did not wonder about that. He was comfortable jumping straight to “standard Godfather.” This gives me pause.

This makes him the most expendable member of the Scum team, but there’s still an inclination among players to regard the Godfather as the least expendable Scum. This makes him an excellent candidate for bussing, since it’d give his bussers disproportionately-high credibility for it, but would carry a disproportionately-low cost for Scum.

The “most expendable” thing has already been covered, but I more want to look at this as a whole. This sounds to me like something Chronos has already discussed, doesn’t it? I mean, he’s right - until I read this post I did sort of give slightly higher credibility to those who voted for Skeezix, especially key votes, then is really warranted with the investigator dead. This is because the perspective that Chronos offers here seems to be one that would occur first to Scum, not to Town. From a Town standpoint, *yay, we got the Godfather! * But Scum will have viewed this more closely, perhaps even discussed the situation at more length, and might have come to this conclusion - that with the investigator gone a Godfather is effectively vanilla - such that it was right on the tip of the tongue, as it were.

Of course, there’s plenty of WIFOM here, so I’m not yet willing to attach blame to his early voters (i.e., before he claimed), but I’m also not willing to give them too much credit for it, either.

Then what’s the point of making the observation at all? It seems like Chronos here is trying to paint the entire wagon on Skeezix as a giant Null Tell - hey, can’t blame the early voters, can’t credit them, let’s talk about something else. That seems like a weird way to approach the lynch of any Scum.

So, OK, Chronos gets called on it. He says this (among other things - [post #397]):

It’s my impression that around here, games structured around some canon generally have all of the Scum roles distinct, with (say) one Godfather, one Scum Roleblocker, one Scum Investigator, and one vanilla Scum. And I’m pretty sure that all of the games Mahaloth has moderated have had diverse Scum teams.

This seems like a reach to me. There have been many, many games with all-vanilla Scum teams, or with a vanilla Scum team plus a Godfather. Chronos appeal here to the idea that hey, I thought ALL Scum teams had power roles seems very weak.

So yeah, OK.

vote Chronos