Hi, I am primarily letting everyone know that I am indeed here.
There are several players that I have not played with before so some of the things that have jumped out at me might just be from being unfamiliar. For example, I found Baffle jumping on Pleonast for pushing a mass claim a bit suspicious when I did not really consider it a push for a mass claim and the suggestion that was made I did not really find surprising from Pleo. But looking at it from a bit more distance, I can see how someone (especially if they are not that familiar with Pleo) might find it suspicious. So, while I think Baffle may have been trying to drum up support for an arrest candidate, I can see where his fear might have been legitimate. I am not trying to say that I think Pleo is Town, I just think this particular suggestion is something that he would do from either side.
Since I don’t know how the unusual rules will affect the game, I am not advocating a mass claim now, and I don’t know if there will be a point in this game in which I would. I do wonder, however, why Suburban Plankton and Romanic are universally against mass claims. I have found that generally, a mass claim is more of a benefit to Town that it is to the scum team.
I, too, find Wolverines suggestion a bit odd, but I also don’t really see what scum would have to gain by that strategy since they know nothing about the person they would be targeting and don’t even know if they would ever be coming to London.
One last thing. My PC is in the shop right now, so my posting might be sporadic since it will depend on when I can get access to a computer.
That’s OK. I’ve never played Mafia online before but many times offline. I’ve looked at a few Mafia threads here and for some reason decided with this one I’d join. Playing offline, the first arrest is always arbitrary. I’ve been kicked out in the first round before because I had facial hair, seriously. Some of my odd suggestions will probably be coming from my lack of experience playing online.
First, I feel that it gives an advantage to the Scum. They already start the game with a head start as far as information goes. A mass claim gives them even more information. I understand the arguments for mass claims (e.g. WIFOM, information helps Town Power roles), but I still think the net effect is more a benefit to Scum.
Second, I just feel that a mass claim is contrary to the ‘spirit’ of the game. To me, the fun of the game comes from starting with zero information and trying to put together the puzzle piece by piece, and I don’t like the idea that everybody else it putting it together for me. Sure, I still have to figure out who’s lying and who’s telling the truth, but that’s a different game.
It seems that I misunderstood how Arrest Warrants work. My assumption was that a Warrant was valid only on the Day it was issued, the same way Lynch Votes are counted in a ‘normal’ game of Mafia. But it looks like that’s not the case. Once a Warrant is issued, it remains in force. So if the folks in London issue a warrant Today for someone who is in Wellington (or in transit), the target would be safe from being gaoled Today, but would be unable to travel back to London at any future point in the game without suffering the penalty.
This also means that it’s possible to have multiple warrants outstanding for ‘fugitives’ at the same time, and sets up the possibility for multiple gaolings on the same Day. I’m not sure why anyone with an outstanding warrant would choose to travel, but I’m not going to discount the possibility that there might be a valid reason at some point.
As I type this, a question occurs to me. Warrants are issued at Dusk. Normally, they are executed immediately (e.g at Dusk). But if a warrant is issued for a person in another city, it obviously cannot be executed until that person travels back to the city in which the warrant is issued. Travel always ends at Dawn local time. So if a person with an outstanding warrant travels back to the city where the warrant was issued, is the warrant executed immediately upon their arrival (at Dawn), or are they able to hide from the authorities until Dusk? I would assume it’s the former…
Sachertorte: Suppose the people in London issue an arrest warrant for me at Dusk Today, and suppose that after spending the Day in Wellington, I decide to travel back to London. Will I be gaoled immediately upon arrival, or not until Dusk in London?
I think your instinct is wrong. By trying to minimize the risk to us, we’re also allowing scum to minimize their own risk. If everyone does not claim a travel capability, we give an easy out to any scum who travels. Unless you’re advocating that we lynch anyone who travels without an explanation. I could support that stance as an alternative to everyone claiming their travel capability.
Nice smudge there. Worthy of an initial Day One vote: vote Baffle
Exactly backwards. Because there’s fewer of us who can participate, anyone who does not is going to stick out even more. The moderator has even provided us a nice list of who can talk and who can vote.
That is not how balancing a game works. In a balanced game, any mass claim will neither greatly help nor hinder any faction. Unless the moderator gives explicit warning, there shouldn’t be any way for players to break the game.
This is short-sighted. You just said you couldn’t see any drawbacks. Listen to your own head!
Scum gain from Wolverine’s strategy because a no lynch is a cancellation of the town’s lynch power. It is anti-town in almost all circumstances. Warranting a non-present player is more or less a no lynch. If we warranted scum, they could simply avoid ever coming here. If we warranted town, so much the better for them.
sachertorte, does the above indicate that there is no possibility of any “killing at a distance”? For instance, a person with a special ability to set a trap which is then sprung after they travel to another city?
Just to be clear, I don’t actually think this anymore. I did before sach clarified that the roles he posted are just examples. That said, given that travel is the really unique known mechanic in this game, it does make sense to pay really close attention to who is traveling.
On another topic, **Baffle’s **jumping on Pleonast for advocating a mass claim jumped out at me as a mischaracterization of Pleo’s position. However, Pleo has since come out much more forcefully in favor of the mass claim, so Baffle may have seen something I didn’t, and I’m going to let that slide.
Wolverine’s idea of issuing an arrest warrant today for someone in Wellington is a terrible idea. Could’ve been a townie terrible idea, though, so no vote from me right now.
Question for Idle Thoughts: Why did you post your role PM? (Aside from “because I have nothing to hide.”)
We have to get this ball rolling and that last post was the first real scum tell I have seen so far. It’s a small one so I don’t consider this a totally firm vote, but it spends the whole post playing both side.
Baffle is is doing something bad, but maybe not. Pleo is doing something bad, but not really. Wolverine has bad ideas, but might be town. Nothing but fence sitting and playing it safe.
I am advocating a mass claim. Why Baffle felt the need to smudge me instead of simply focusing on the merits of the idea is what’s remarkable about his posts.
Let me do this by rewording your post so you can see what I am thinking and then you can tell me if you think I am misinterpreting anything.
Ahem:
Baffle jumped on Pleo for advocating a mass claim, and that’s suspicious because Pleo didn’t do that and shouldn’t be getting suspicion at all.
But then Pleo turned around and said he did advocate a mass claim, which *is *suspicious so Baffle isn’t as suspicious anymore…or maybe he is, it’s hard to say.
Where am I wrong? Let’s leave aside the conclusions for now.
Well, I don’t see what would compensate us for giving away our power roles to the Scum while they would use their cover roles, which should be decent if the host made a good job. Who do you think the Scum will try to kill first if someone claims investigator, vigilante or even doctor? They certainly won’t be hitting our vanillas after that.
Like I said, we don’t have enough information to know if claiming travel abilities is dangerous or not, and in doubt I will rather side with the generally accepted* mentality saying that giving free information to Scum on day 1 is a bad idea (* generally accepted where I play anyway).
A possible scenario may be that, if all the scums can travel, they might plan to move all to the same city to outnumber us in one place, later in the game, and we wouldn’t be able to get them unless we travel to that location, but this might be hard to achieve if the scum killed our travelers because we mass claimed these abilities.
This may be a stupid scenario, or not, but it shows how we cannot anticipate the result of mass claiming travel on day 1. I don’t know if it would benefit the scum to target travelers, and you shouldn’t know that either, so you’ll have to come up with better reasons to convince me.
I understand this mentality, and it is common even here. There are a few of us who are loud that disagree with it which might give you a different impression.
Not to totally side track the conversation (and if you want we can take this to a separate non game thread), but as a player who has been scum more often than town (I think, I lost a hard count a while back) over the course of dozens of games I don’t think it’s true. What do you think you are giving scum that will actually help them that is not negated by the benefit to town coming out of the dark a bit? The closed setup is much harder on town than scum. We can agree on that right? If so, it would follow then that opening up the set up as much as possible and as quickly as possible would be of greater advantage to town than to scum.
It feels wrong. I get that. I have been fighting this fight for a while and I know that there is a gut level reaction that people can’t seem to shake. But honestly, scum aren’t *generally *helped by the information nearly as much as town is.
The caveat being that there are always exceptions and a human element that will throw off data.
OK, I see where you went wrong there, which was by assuming I find Pleo’s advocating for a mass claim suspicious. Allow me to reword your rewording to what I actually meant. Ahem:
Baffle jumped on Pleo for advocating a mass claim, and that’s suspicious because Pleo didn’t do that. Therefore, Baffle was misrepreseting Pleo.
But then Pleo turned around and said he did advocate a mass claim, so it’s possible that Baffle was not misrepresenting Pleo’s position, since he was right about said position and I was wrong.
What you are characterizing as fence-sitting is actually someone changing their mind in light of new information.
That’s arguable, but I was referring to your statement that “unless the host didn’t do his job…”. If the moderator did do their job, a mass claim won’t give a big advantage to either side. How the moderator balances a mass claim depends on the moderator.
In the case of a mass power claim (which no one is advocating now), scum’s capability of targeting town power roles can be balanced by the town’s ability to coordinate their powers. Don’t underestimate how powerful power roles can be when they have information to direct and coordinate their powers.
Underlining added for emphasis–there’s your problem. It’s not free information. In a mass claim, everyone provides information. Scum either have to provide truthful information (which could eventually be used against them), or they have to lie (which might be uncovered at some point). In either case, once they’ve made a public claim, it restricts their future actions, claims, lies, etc.
Mass claims pose a substantial risk to scum. Please do not disregard that.
Scum can only kill players at the same location. If they all go to Wellington, they can’t kill us here and we can put out warrants so that when they do show up here, they’re arrested on the spot. Sounds like a great way for town to win.
That brings up an interesting possibility–there might be many ways for this game to stalemate if the factions are in different venues and either cannot or will not go to the other.
Pleonast, exactly what sort of claim are you advocating at this point? I know it’s not a power claim; are you proposing we all claim whether or not we are permitted to travel?
