And then, we’ve got everyone claiming a good name.
How does this help us differentiate between between who is lying and who is telling the truth?
Interesting.
Did Peeker just Sparta-Cuss us out?
I’ll echo what I said earlier, I am against any sort of a mass claim. Why? A couple reasons:
-
I think it’s contrary to the ‘spirit of the game’. I think enough has been said on this subject in the past that I’m not going to elaborate unless someone wants me to.
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The Mod has told us it’s a waste of time
Now, **Mahaloth **might be wrong…maybe the game *is *breakable. But knowing at least some of his history, I’m willing to bet he’s right, and if he’s wrong, and the game is breakable, I’d really prefer not to break it.
In my opinion, the only reason to do a name claim is so that we can try to divine something from the names (or from the ‘goodness/badness’ of the name, or the canon from which it comes, or anything else). And if that information actually tells us anything, then the game is most certainly ‘breakable’. I don’t think Mahaloth would be that careless, so there is no point to such a claim. The fact that people will take such information and try to find patterns in it, even though we know no such patterns exist, is another reason not to do it. It will become a distraction, both my good-meaning Townies who can’t stop analyzing, and by bad-meaning Scum who will try to use the information to sow confusion.
A question for those of you who have considerably more Mafia experience than I:
How many times have you seen a ‘successful’ mass claim early in the game? Define ‘successful’ as either ‘one in which everyone actually participated’, or as ‘one which actually benefited town’…or both.
NETA: My comments about mass claims are intended to refer to ‘early-game’ claims only. In the latter stages of a game, there may very well be cases where a mass claim is worthwhile.
Snipped.
At once I like this idea.
But then I thought about it. Canons aren’t equal. Star Trek has had had numerous reboots, iterations, and movies. To say nothing about the Characters.
Mystery Science Theater has at most 8-10 characters.
I just feel that this would tie Town down more than Scum.
Town would offer MST3K [Well look at that, someone has]. The natural assumption would then be to look at the Heroes of that Canon [Hotel of Heroes after all]. This would IMMEDIATELY narrow the pool down to Joel or Mike. Some people could remember Dr.Forester and Pearl and suggest that they be considered as well, to say nothing of the 'bots. But again, I don’t think you can shout MST3K and have people knee jerk to the earthside half of canon.
Scum would offer Star Trek.
One of the two corners to be painted in, is a lot bigger than the other.
Also A Canon Claim would encourage a quick skip over to Cafe Society at best, or a to Wikipedia at worst. **I fear Canon claiming is a Scum-led Distraction wet dream. **
I remember for the LOST game, I looked at the LOST wiki for a long time understanding my role, and others. Time over there was time not spent here.
Then again, Sawyer should perhaps not speak of Lost. – I think Maha got burned bad by that experience – something we should all remember in this, and in all games.
NETA : It occurs to me, that LOST might not have been Maha’s … Can’t remember now. [And frankly, after Vigging Hurley, I would rather forget.]
Mahaloth made the game breakable after all. We just need to look for all the folks still sitting in their hotel rooms. 
I’m opposed to the name claiming, as I’ve stated in every game (whether I was scum or not) because I feel it’s against the spirit of the game, and I trust the moderator to have taken the necessary precautions.
These are my own pants, I just don’t see the benefit to your plan. Either scum lie, or they don’t have to lie; either way, town learns nothing while scum learns something. Even if what they learn is marginal, it’s a non-zero amount of knowledge that we’ve sent them in a gift basket.
We had a long conversation about giving away knowledge at the beginning of International mafia, so I’ll go ahead and address that now too: I’m not opposed to risky plays that may have pro-town benefits. A mass claim may indeed be the right play in the future. Other plays that involve exposing information may be the right play in the future. I’m opposed to them now, on Day 1.
There is some reasoning here I don’t follow:
For example, take the “name claim may reveal power role” - this is untrue. I have a very cool, very popular hero name. Yet, I am vanilla. I assume there are other vanilla townies with similarly cool/well-known hero names, so we (meaning vanilla townies with cool names) know “cool name==power role” doesn’t hold up. Therefore I assume people advancing this argument are not vanilla townies with cool names.
Secondly, take the “canon claim may limit tie Town down”. Assuming that Idle Thoughts is not lying, my hero name comes from a much much larger canon. We only have 18 players - so even if Idle Thoughts is lying and comes from the same canon I do, it is a canon well large enough to handle 18 players. If he isn’t lying, there are at least 2 canons in play and likely more - again, more than enough options for the number of players.
I don’t see, then, how a canon claim limits anything, especially since hero name “well-knowness” alone is not indicative of any role.
I won’t say that I think a claim of any sort is necessarily the right move at this point, but I will say that I am suspicious of arguments assuming there is some name==role relationship when some players must know there is no such such relationship.
If everyone would just start with a default assumption that everyone is vanilla town until proven guilty or otherwise, we could avoid this whole being compelled to claim vanilla out of the gate thing.
This would help scum a LOT, wouldn’t it? It creates a lot of space for them, and gives vanilla townies …bumpkis.
What would it give scum?
I don’t think so…I start every game with the default assumption that each player is Town. Where I differ from what Cookies said is that for me that assumption doesn’t stay “until proven guilty or otherwise”, but rather “until I have sufficient evidence to the contrary” (though I suspect this may be what Cookies actually meant).
Obviously not everyone is Vanilla Town. But how can you start with the assumption that any player is anything else?
I disagree with Cookies’ conclusion, though. Even if everyone assumes everyone else is Town, that’s all it is…an assumption. There will always be players who claim Vanilla anyway: because they want the Town to “know” they’re Vanilla, or because they want to provide WIFOM, or because they’re Scum trying to provide a false front…
I don’t think any of it matters anyway…absent any other evidence it’s just a null tell.
The entire approach seems to be one or two degrees off of full alert. Give an inch, they take a mile.
It’s just semantics. Whether you assume everyone is scum and then they have to earn their way off of that list by acting like a townie, or you assume everyone is town and then some fall from grace.
And yes, in a world where nothing is proven until it comes out of the Mod’s mouth, Plankton’s paraphrase works just as well as what I said.
The point I’m trying to make, perhaps poorly, is that we already have 2 vanilla claims. Who knows if they’re truthful, but it becomes a slippery slope towards everyone just claiming to be vanilla town and then we’re right back to square one. Well, I should say we’d be back to square one save one assumption that could safely be made at that point: lies would have definitely been told to get us there. If there’s a lie-detector role, that might actually be useful, but who knows if we do.
Unforced vanilla claims now ring strategically hollow to me (which is progress, they used to annoy me) pretty much like the way early smarmy statements of implicit or explicit townieness used to ring. I prefer there to be good reasons to claim, and serving up weak wifom to the scum doesn’t really meet that bar. I also would rather avoid any Newbies eagerly joining in with vanilla claims without realizing the trade-offs and consequences whether they’re lying or not.
“Lynch all liars” and “shrink the unknown pool” are memes that I’d like to see discussed before we start getting vanilla claims out of nowhere, not after.
OK, I’ll add my 2 yen on that!
“Lynch all liars” - I tend to favor lynching a liar, even though I can understand why a town may feel lying is necessary.
“Shrink the unknown pool” - I don’t know what this means exactly. Could you explain?
I’ve followed a couple of mafia games, but some of the more “inside” lingo, etc. is still lost on me.
The unknown pool are the town players (and any third parties, be they win-stealing 3rd parties or win-sharing 3rd parties) about which the scum don’t know anything other than their not being scum.
At any given time, depending on the context of the game, scum have to decide whether to try and kill players outside the pool (someone who has claimed, or been exposed by a scum tracker/investigator) or within the pool. All other things being equal, the larger the unknown pool, the better the chance that scum will shoot into it and hit a vanilla player. Now, admittedly all other things are not equal, and a vanilla player who is a good scum-hunter can be a bigger loss than a vanilla player who is not a good scum-hunter.
I’ll spare you all the railing against non-participation, because I’m confident we won’t be suffering from that this game. Right guys?
If I weren’t a kinder, gentler Ed, I’d probably bitch slap you right now.
However, even a kinder, gentler Ed gets drunk sometimes and bitchslaps those he loves
oh, what the hell
bitchslap
I’ll let others more sober explain.
I’m rather certain you have no idea as to what "shrink the power role pool’ means either.
special ed,
What the fuck is your problem? You’d “bitch slap” me?
You sound like the typical internet tough guy nerd - you don’t know me and I don’t know you, so I suggest you back the fuck down from your cockrocket if you can’t interact socially with some common goddamn decency.
hehehe