Back in the game thread, I think everyone but Storyteller has now at least checked in briefly.
True, for the Day of the mass claim. But the following Days would have increasing information.
Back to the game that we’re actually nominally discussing, it occurs to me that, even despite the foregone lynch, there’s still a fair bit of discussion going on. Discussion is good for Town, so they’d be well served not to hammer.
Yep. When town can’t discuss at Night, there’s no pro-town reason to end the Day early.
And story is right that lynching a third party is a mislynch, though it might be a useful lynch. Even if the third-party gets an extra kill from being Vig’d instead of lynched, that’s not too bad since scum are at risk of that. And there’ll be not much useful information generated from a near-unanimous lynch.
If they’d brought it up early in the Day, the town might have been able to find a good alternative lynch while leaving the third party to the Vig. I think it’s too late now. (And not including the fact that too many of the players are resistant to any alternative play tactics.)
Well, if the day goes on too long with nothing happening, there’s the danger of losing momentum, having Town players wander off bored, et cetera. But that doesn’t seem to be happening thus far in this game.
I like sach’s straw poll idea, but if they’re going to do it they need to start voting.
I don’t like the idea. It gives scum an input on the Vig’s target. It’s better to let the Vig choose their own target, without influence from unconfirmed players. This is the same reason why the Vig should not, in general, kill the lynch runner-up.
Of course in this game, I’m cheering for the scum, so go for it. 
I’ve never agreed with the notion that lynching a third party is a mislynch. In fact, given the choice between a known Serial Killer and a known Scum, I’d choose to lynch the SK every time. By killing the SK, I’ve eliminated an entire faction of Town-killers, whereas by killing a Scum, I’d only bring Town incrementally closer to eliminating such a faction.
The idea behind calling it a mislynch seems to be that the Town should ideally just let the Scum deal with the SK, and that Town doing it helps the Scum. The problem with that is that Scum will generally decide to just let Town deal with the SK, since Scum doing it helps Town. When there’s a Serial Killer in the game, it’s not a two-faction game any more; it’s a three-faction game, and you can’t treat it as two-faction. And to the extent that there’s any asymmetry at all in those factions, it’s that the Scum and SK are somewhat aligned, since they share goals: Both want to kill confirmed and power roles, both want a minimum of meaningful discussion, both benefit from lots of extra kills. Effectively, an SK is a Scum faction of one, and should be treated like Scum.
At this point, I’m against a straw poll. Just over 2 days isn’t enough time for a decent lynch argument.
I don’t seem to agree with you often, but I do on this – at least in most situations. As scum I do want the town to lynch the SK if the opportunity comes up, no question. I actively try to find PFKs, at that, because going after them is about the only honest thing you can do as a scummer.
But that said – I have several times, as mafia, had the opportunity to night kill a known (to us, not the town) or strongly suspected serial killer. I have done so only once, when making that choice directly won us (the scum) the game. (And even then I had held off for a couple of nights previously.) In every other situation I saw the SK as closer to ally (maybe patsy would be closer to accurate) than threat. And I think that’s usually the case, because the SK has even more motive to go after town power roles and anyone else remotely innocent-looking than the scum do. Theoretically the SK will often hit scum, too, whether by strategy or accident. In practice, most of the time the threat is fairly small.
Yeah, that would have been the game where town lynched Scum four days out of the last five and lost.
With regards to guiding the Vig: The disadvantage of it, of course, is that it introduces anti-Town elements into the decision-making process, as Zeriel points out. But the advantage of it is that it introduces anti-Town elements into the decision-making process. It’s like a lynch: The Scum can either vote in a genuinely Townie manner, in which case it doesn’t matter that they’re Scum, or they can let their alignment and extra knowledge tip the scales a bit, in which case they can be caught in that manipulation. If anything, this is even more true with a Vig, since everyone gets an equal vote in the lynch, but a Vig can weight opinions depending on how much e trusts the various players.
Now, with that said, the Town should not consider the Vig to be obligated to follow the results of the straw poll. In the extreme case, of course, it’s possible that the person picked by the straw poll would be the Vig emself. And even short of that case, the Vig will of course weigh different votes differently, giving extra weight to the opinions of anyone e knows is Town (which, of course, includes es own opinions). But once you accept that the Vig is not obligated to listen to you, giving suggestions can’t fail to be a pro-Town activity.
I completely disagree. If the players vote on it it’s like a second lynch – that’s hugely valuable to the Town. Sure, you give the scum input into who dies, but that’s the town just making the standard trade-off of numbers for information. By your argument the town shouldn’t lynch.
The problem with the Vig killing on their own is that the only piece of information that you get is the victim’s role, plus you run the very high risk of killing a power role without giving them to chance to claim. Vigs should almost never kill on their own; the benefits are near 0.
Lynching is acceptable because the town does not have a better option. If the lynch could be done without input from scum, it would be a much better tool. (I’ve considered a rule set where the voting is secret and only town votes are counted for the lynch. [And the scum votes are used to determine their kill–they don’t get to secretly communicate.]) The Vig’s kill is essentially a lynch in which only townies (just one in this case) decide the outcome.
Just like townies voting to lynch, the Vig does not have perfect information, but unlike the lynch decision, the Vig’s decision is purely town in motivation. It may be better for the Vig to not kill, but that also is a pro-town decision. Will the Vig-voters even consider that option?
Also, do not forget that scum often have powers to disrupt the Vig’s kill, but rarely have powers to disrupt the lynch (other than their own votes). Once scum know the Vig’s target, all sorts of mischief are possible. Protection, watching, misdirecting, etc. That was the original reasoning behind the rule of thumb against publicly directing town power roles.
However, this is not the case in the current game (except that the scum will know not to use their kill or recruitment attempt on the vig’s target).
That’s a good point in general, but not applicable to this game, since it’s an open ruleset and the Scum’s only relevant power is dead. And even if the Scum did still have their roleblocker, it would do them very little good without also knowing (or at least guessing) who the Vig was, which they don’t. And of course, if the Scum have a redirector and know who the Vig is, they can wreak havoc without even knowing who es target is (probably a good argument for not putting a Scum redirector and a vig in the same game).
Still one of my favorite games ever.
In this game, the vig should be shooting anyone who claims vanilla, period. From the start of the game there is 6 true vanillas, 2 sleeping vanillas, 4 scum, and 1 bomber who all might claim vanilla at any given time. That means there are 7/13 who the vig is interested in seeing dead out of anyone who claims vanilla. It’s better than half odds that if the vig only targets those who claim vanilla that they will hit pay dirt at least once. All the while collapsing the space for people to hide amongst the crowd with vanilla claims.
Hi Drain. Rough luck. Any particular reason you tried to blow me up?
Be careful about spoilers.