International Mafia

The Game Room
181

No, the part you left out was the argument against an immediate reveal. The reason you don’t address it, I assume, is because you don’t actually have any kind of counter-argument. I have to assume this because you have yet to give anything approaching a decent case to the contrary.

How many times have I heard scum say that? Not that townies are immune to this particular cop-out, of course. But it’s a first mark against you in my book.

Again, you have yet to justify the notion that we desperately need to do a travel-reveal straight away, so how can it possibly be anti-town to wait and see if those who cannot yet speak have any useful points to make on the subject?

182

Let’s revisit it then, if you wish.

Yes, this is your argument against a mass travel claim. You think the risks are not worth the benefits. I do. As you say, at this stage it’s impossible to say who’s right.

To paraphrase: “we disagree on how to play the game, therefore you’re suspicious of me”. That’s not a useful argument.

And what else do you want to wait on the other venue to speak about? Whether or not we decide to do a mass travel claim, we need to decide among the players here.

If it’s neutral and marginal, then there’s no reason not to do it. If the sole reason you don’t think it’s wise to do it is because the game may not be balanced, well let’s find out:

Dear moderator, is this game balanced?

183

Perhaps. And perhaps not.

184

:smiley: Perhaps I am the only moderator with enough hubris to claim my games are balanced.

185

What is your actual argument, though?

Eh? I’m saying it makes sense to wait in this particular case, because this is the first day, the decision to reveal is irreversible, and there’s no pressing reason to do it now.

I’ve not said we should make it a policy to wait on other issues.

186

**When you get a second, could we get a vote count?

Please and thank you.**

187

Seriously? There haven’t been very many votes at all. I can count them on one paw.

T0:00 post #80
Baffle(1) : Pleonast(128)
ShadowFacts(1): NAF1138(131)
Pleonast(0): [del]Astral Rejection(158 - 180)[/del]

188

Yes seriously.

It’s important to have an official record that everyone can see. Doubly so when we are 48 real life hours into the game and there haven’t been many votes at all.

189

Oh, and, thanks again. :slight_smile:

Forgot my manners there for a second.

190

I like the format of the official vote count. Thanks Sach!

191

For the record, Astral, and not that it means much of anything, every time that I’m aware of that Pleonast has claimed something out the gate (whether magic bag or outright roleclaim), he’s been Town.

192

I don’t think there is any protown benefit. But I also don’t think that Town players always play in a protown manner. I consider Wolverine’s suggestion a colossally bad idea. Scum players don’t tend to suggest colossally bad ideas because they tend to think about how things are going to be perceived more. Colossally bad ideas are an easy thing for scum to jump on, though. Now that I think about it, I guess this is sort of an extension of Drain Bead’s “players who point out PIS’s are scum” theory, though I don’t really have solid evidence to cite in support of my reasoning like she does hers.

I think “no way” is a bit strong for almost anything in mafia, but I do find it highly unlikely. I have mentioned that in theory this means scum could give themselves cover by suggesting really bad things for town, but in practice it doesn’t happen. I especially think it unlikely if Wolverine is really a newbie to online play.

You may be right that it is best to limit the amount of travel as much as possible, but I will give you what my thought process was.

First it was based on some assumptions.

  1. We have power roles in the game. I think this is a pretty safe assumption.
  2. For the power roles to use their powers on a player, they must be in the same city as the player. I am assuming this because murders and arrests can only occur in the city a player is in.
  3. There will be times that power roles must travel to use their powers to the most benefit.

If these assumptions are correct then the scum can look at the list of travellers and know who is likely to be a power role, since they know who the scum are.

You are right that if we increase the pool of travellers that it does make it harder to pick out the scum as well as making it harder for the scum to pick out the power roles. I think that if we do try to keep travel to a minimum then we are essentially trading some power roles for scum. This could possibly be a good trade, though. I don’t really know, which is why I asked for comment from other players.

193

Posting right before bed is never a good idea. Two P names, that’s all I got.

I agree with that actually, I just don’t like taking anyone’s word that they’re new to the game, it’s such an easy way to get out of mistakes. I don’t think it’s a big enough thing for a vote, just something I’ll be keeping in the back of my mind as the game progresses.

194

I have two related things to comment on, mostly referencing the following quotes:

The first comment is, why don’t people seem to read my entire posts? Idle, in the post you quoted, linked to, and bolded a portion of, I am clearly stating the opposite of what you call me “foolhardy” and “wrong/false/mistaken/what-have-you” for saying. Look, the conclusion of what I was saying is right there: “it is possible that there are Vanillas who can travel, making travel currently a null tell.” Hello, is this thing on? Did you just not read the rest of my post or what? Pleonast did pretty much the same thing (without the namecalling), and I already made a point to clarify it.

But, if I can get back to your claim, Idle, my reading of your reasons for claiming are:

  1. This is how you “tend to play sometimes.”
  2. People seemed to be suspicious of travelers (e.g. yourself), so you claimed vanilla to reduce that suspicion.

Did I miss any other reason? If not, I find these to be extremely unsatisfactory reasons for claiming. A big part of the job of Vanilla players, which you claim to be, is to be cannon fodder for scum kills. You’ve just eliminated that function of your role to reduce suspicion on yourself, when you had not even garnered a single vote.

Vote Idle Thoughts

195

I realized after I went to bed that my vote poses a conundrum due to** Idle’s** traveling. I want to vote for him (for the reasons stated above), but even if everyone else agrees with me, we cannot gaol him toDay as he is off gallivanting in NZ. Therefore, we get no information from a gaoling toDay. That’s obviously bad. On the other hand, not voting for people just because they are out of reach essentially gives them a pass, which is also bad.

So, what’s the optimum strategy?

I think my play here is going to have to be to vote for someone else who is London before the Day is out. But for now I’ll leave the vote on Idle in the hopes of generating some conversation, as well as to give our friends in Wellington something to think about when they get their turn.

196

ShadowFacts, I’ve gotten burned by this enough that I have to bring it up. In two games, I decried a player for unnecessarily giving the Scum info. In both of those games, the person who did it was Town. Personally, I think Idle’s reason for claiming was valid, although I can understand not seeing it that way. It’s similar to the debate we have every now and then on Day One as to whether or not Millers should claim. Some people say yes, some say no. Idle was given a role that was going to draw attention (and suspicion) from the get-go–I agree with him that the proper pro-Town move for someone with his role is to put the fire out ASAP and move on to actually finding Scum, rather than being a distraction. And if it gives the Scum one less person in the pool as they attempt to find power roles, so be it. Had he said nothing, I can guarantee you that if I were Scum I’d be leaving him alive anyway, thinking that eventually the Town would kill him because of the bias against travel that many people seem to have in this game. It’s quite possible that the Scum in this game would be thinking along similar lines.

197

OK, you’re an experienced player and your past experience may have some bearing here, so I will consider your position further. But I want to address the “bias against travel that many people seem to have in this game.” Where is this bias? Idle’s evidence for said bias was quotes by me stating the opposite position. Certainly a couple of people have said that travelers should be scrutinized and questioned for the reasons for their travel, but I don’t think that’s bias, it’s smart play. So, has anyone actually said that people who travel are automatically suspicious? I’ve gone through the game and pulled every quote I could find that was relevant to the subject. Here they are, with bolding mine:

Who “came out guns blazing to lynch all travelers?” As far as I can see, only two people have said anything remotely close to that - **Suburban Plankton ** (a traveler) and MentalGuy, and those are not exactly guns blazing (see quotes above). Other people, myself included, have said that travel is not currently grounds for immediate suspicion, just something to pay attention to. So, yes, there has been a lot of discussion around traveling, as should be expected, but I’m not seeing a bias.

198

We have information that we can all reveal, whose revelation does not pose a significant risk to town power roles, and whose revelation forces scum to make a claim that they will have to stick to. We know there’s little risk to town power roles because of moderator statements that the sample roles are only examples, not general rules. And because we have two claims of roles without powers, except for travelling.

That’s reasonable, although I disagree it’s the best course of action.

Not just “P”, “Pl”. I sometimes get confused when I read quickly. :smack:

You need to go back and reread what I said in my role claim post, because I was agreeing with you, including the part about travelling not necessarily being a scum tell (“those thoughts were disturbed”…).

I know some players are eager to lynch over it, but some of us really do think that revealing information early is more helpful than hurtful to town. And it should be obvious that lynching because of this fundamental disagreement on game philosophy is not helpful to town.

This something that everyone needs to think about and then discuss.

My general rule of thumb is to always vote for who you think is most likely to be scum. But I am also a proponent of more information early. Forfeiting an arrest by voting someone who is not currently arrestable is not immediately useful.

My inclination is that you should first vote who you think is scummiest, but switch to someone who can actually be arrested before the end of the Day.

199

Catching up on the last day and a half of posts…real life suddenly intruded and knocked things for a loop. Here are some thoughts that I’ve had floating around since Wednesday morning…

Regarding Travel

Who needs to travel? Certainly Vanilla Town have no need to travel. Since they have no abilities, it doesn’t matter which city they are in when they don’t use them. I’d say that certain Town Power roles might need to travel, in order to be most effective. Investigators might need to ‘follow’ their prospective targets. Protectors might need to relocate in order to protect, and role-blockers in order to block the right target. And I think that Scum might need to travel, in order to make sure they have a precsnece in both cities in order to maximize their killing abilities, and also to counteract Town powers.

If we were to adopt a policy to restrict travel to only those players for whom it was necessary, we would effectively ground all of our Vanilla Townies. Anyone on a plane would either be Scum or Power. Since the Town can’t tell the difference, and the Scum can, that would be a ‘bad thing’. I would argue that some amount of travel by ‘Vanilla’ townies is necessary, in order to help hide our Power Roles from Scum. Now the question becomes: how much travel is necessary and how much is too much? Unfortunately, I’m afraid I don’t have the answer to that one yet.

Ultimately, I think that travel, while it is unique in its functionality, is really no different than any other mechanism in the game. If the game is well balanced, then it should be a null-tell. Now since this is a new and therefore untested mechanism, it might be more likely that it is *not *as well balanced as the mods would like…but in that case the scales could shift either way, and there’s no way to tell right now which way that is. I think that we need to consider when and why a person is traveling, not just the fact that they are traveling. It is a factor in considering a person’s alignment, but in and of itself I think it’s no more important than any other factor.

Regarding “we are essentially playing two separate mafia games”

I don’t think this is the right way to look at things. It sort of looks that way, but it really isn’t. For one thing, travel assures us that the player base in each city is not constant. More importantly, there is a single win condition for each faction. It is not possible to “Win London” or “Win Wellington”. On the contrary, that can be a dangerous way to look at things.

If we treat this as 2 separate games, then the Town must “win” both in order to win the game. Scum only has to “win” one side, and then wait for attrition to take out the other. Say that the good people of Wellington manage after a few days to identify and arrest all of the criminals in their city. At that point, they’ve “won”. except they haven’t. They don’t know that everyone left in Wellington is Town. All they know is that the game is not over. They must continue playing, which generally means continuing to arrest more people (who in this case will all be Town). While the game is still being played out in London, the people in Wellington are unwittingly helping the Scum by continuing to whittle down town numbers.

Now obviously, the actual situation is more complicated. It’s possible that everyone in Wellington can be confirmed (by a Masonry, by investigative roles, etc.). In that case, they could vote “no lynch” every Day and ride out the storm until things are settled in London. But it’s likely that not every person in the city will be “absolutely confirmed”, and the natural tendency is to continue hunting Scum until the game is over. Even if we wind up with a city populated only by Townies, I think it’s going to be hard to convince all of them of this fact. The natural tendency is going to be to continue eliminating “unknowns” until the game is over.

Looking at the game objectively, it *might *be possible, or even desirable, to play this as two separate games. But we aren’t looking at it objectively. We’re inside the game, and we must consider that most people are not going to take the “best possible course of action” most of the time.

Regarding mass claims

There is a suggestion that we all claim whether or not we can travel. This is supposedly a ‘safe’ claim, because it is assumed that travel ability has no relation to alignment or power status.

In this case, my question is: “what’s the point?” The idea of making a mass claim is to provide information to help the Town’s cause. What information is the Town going to get from this? The only thing I can see is that it will force the Scum to “lock themselves in” regarding travel. But since travel ability is assumed to be a null-tell, then the Scum have no reason at all to lie about it. They only “lock themselves in” to the truth.

There might be some value in knowing that Person X cannot travel, so we know that he will be in London for the entire game, while Person Y might be able to move around. This could help our Power roles with strategy. But it will help Scum in the same way, and since they don’t have the added challenge of needing to figure out what side everyone is on, I think any advantage here would belong to Scum.

If such a claim provides any useful information, I think it’s more useful to Scum. And if it doesn’t provide any useful information (which is my personal opinion), then it’s pointless. And in any case, it’s premature to make any decision before 9 of the players in this game are even allowed to post. By the time Dawn hits in Wellington, and then the people there have time to hash out the issue, we’re going to be 2 weeks into this game. By that point, the landscape may be so different that this discussion is moot.

200

Good discussion, Plankton.

I think you missed one critical detail. Town will have a strong indication that scum are locally extinct if there are no Night kills. It’s not definite of course, but I think that if there are no Night kills, barring additional information, it’ll be better to have no arrest the next Day. Or put a warrant on a player at the other venue. If a Night kill happens later, we can react to that after it happens.