# Lord of the Rings Mafia **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [August 10, 2010, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867 "2010-08-10T19:56:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 51
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1001 "2010-08-18T22:04:00Z")
> [@](#): > > On suburban: We’re pretty much assuming that the scum have cover roles and vanilla role PMs. So, if he were faking a power role claim, why would he do it badly? It’s more food for thought than anything else. Well, he obviously didn’t _intend_ to do it badly. I’m guessing that their official cover roles were all vanilla, and a vanilla claim isn’t likely to shift votes off of someone who’s already drawing them. Assuming he’s Scum, he needed something with more oomph to do that, so he had to fake up one of his own instead of using one of the safe, pre-written ones. ---
**Author:** ![Gadarene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Gadarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadarene)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1002 "2010-08-18T22:05:54Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > On suburban: We’re pretty much assuming that the scum have cover roles and vanilla role PMs. So, if he were faking a power role claim, why would he do it badly? It’s more food for thought than anything else. > > Well, he obviously didn’t _intend_ to do it badly. I’m guessing that their official cover roles were all vanilla, and a vanilla claim isn’t likely to shift votes off of someone who’s already drawing them. Assuming he’s Scum, he needed something with more oomph to do that, so he had to fake up one of his own instead of using one of the safe, pre-written ones. …And yet you’re voting for **Ed**? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Hoopy\_Frood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hoopy_frood/32/8452_2.png) [@Hoopy\_Frood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hoopy_Frood)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1003 "2010-08-18T22:07:03Z")
> [@Telcontar](#): > > On suburban: We’re pretty much assuming that the scum have cover roles and vanilla role PMs. So, if he were faking a power role claim, why would he do it badly? It’s more food for thought than anything else. How can we assume they were given full cover roles, including powers? Rarely are scum given that. Typically they are given the vanilla PM, and a series of roles that aren’t in the game. From that, it’s up to them to craft the powers as they see fit. Occasionally mods will give color, to prevent disection of roles where people try to match writing styles. And I’ve even seen mutiple mod games have each mod randomly choose which roles they write just to shake things up. But this isn’t a multiple modded game, story and sach just helped balance, according to Mahaloth. It’s possible they helped write the roles, but I doubt it. And he might do it badly because scum might not have had adequate time to craft good cover roles. Typically if town can’t strategize at night, scum can’t do so during the day, because it gives them a noticeable advantage to be able to do so. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1004 "2010-08-18T22:11:26Z")
I’m going to switch my vote back. **unvote MHaye** **vote Suburban Plankton** I was willing to give the claim enough time to provide information that could be confirmed with his death, but I’m no longer convinced the claimed role is plausible. ---
**Author:** ![Chipacabra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e19b73/32.png) [@Chipacabra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chipacabra)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1005 "2010-08-18T22:16:26Z")
OK, time for a big long study of the day. This is probably going to be messy, sorry. I should learn to organize my posts with those nice convenient links to previous posts and stuff. Also, my attempt to organize neatly went in the trash pretty damn quick. This isn’t comprehensive, just some thoughts as I go through. **Peeker** made an early stance in 126 that shit needs to be stirred up, and lurking can’t be permitted. I agree with the stance, but I’m not sure that his actual play has been consistent with that stance. It’s easy to say ‘well, peeker’s being peeker’ but IS peeker being peeker? **Special Ed** ’s question to **Chronos** about a win condition section was, frankly, playing silly buggers. Now that I’ve seen both of them make claims, here’s what I think went down: Special asked a trick question. (There’s no label to mark any particular section as a win condition section.) Chronos answered the question (There’s a section with a win condition, so it’s the win condition section.) Special Ed saw that Chronos’s quoted section matched his own pm, but sprung the trick question trap anyway. This is where everything went off the rails. Chronos’s immediate response in 152 was that either Special was lying, or that Chronos had been outed as non-vanilla. I don’t think this was actually true (and pointed it out) but that cat was out of the bag. In 372, he admitted the slipup and claimed. As I mentioned before, I’m inclined to believe Chronos. Provisionally, anyway. **Red Skeezix** gets in for some early theory discussion, but no focused hunting. Personally, I think he’s gun shy from the HP game. 😃 358, **Suburban** starts to complain about how long the game is taking. In retrospect, this feels consistent with his current investigator claim. Around this point, the thread is just getting too big for me to keep everything straight in my head all at once, heh. 694, Ed throws out a list of canon names. Suburban’s claim happens to be right off that list. If anything, a false claim taken off the list would be a risky move to make. If Special Ed could think of it offhand, so could Mahaloth, so false claiming off the menu seems to me like it would increase the risk of counterclaiming. 849, Ed makes a comment about us lynching the loud. At this point, Suburban was the overwhelming frontrunner, and was hardly a case of lynch the loud. There was only, I think, 3 votes for Ed at the time (The exact number is fuzzy. :/) Right now, my feeling is that Ed is a scum, and had access to a VT role pm, possibly a cover ID or something. He threw out a knowingly vague handshake condition, caught Chronos up in a trick question, and has been stirring shit up to try to find the town power roles. The moment suspicion turned on him, he tried to shake it off as ‘lynch the loud’ well before he was in any real danger of being lynched. Even if I’m wrong about this, the worst case is that we mislynch a VT, which to be honest is par for Day 1. **vote Special Ed** Also, I think that if Ed is scum, there’s a good chance that Suburban Plankton also is. If Ed is town, that does not absolve Suburban. ---
**Author:** ![Gadarene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Gadarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadarene)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1006 "2010-08-18T22:18:38Z")
**Chipacabra:** > [@](#): > > 694, Ed throws out a list of canon names. Suburban’s claim happens to be right off that list. If anything, a false claim taken off the list would be a risky move to make. If Special Ed could think of it offhand, so could Mahaloth, so false claiming off the menu seems to me like it would increase the risk of counterclaiming. [snipped] Seems to ignore entirely the likelihood of cover roles, which seems strange since that’s what we’ve been talking about for the last fifteen posts or so. **FOS Chipacabra** ---
**Author:** ![Gadarene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Gadarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadarene)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1007 "2010-08-18T22:19:53Z")
NETA: **Chip:** [quote] Also, I think that if Ed is scum, there’s a good chance that Suburban Plankton also is. If Ed is town, that does not absolve Suburban. And this feels a whole lot like classic scummy bet-hedging. ---
**Author:** ![Gadarene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Gadarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadarene)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1008 "2010-08-18T22:21:20Z")
…Let’s try that again. NETA(A): **Chip:** > [@](#): > > Also, I think that if Ed is scum, there’s a good chance that Suburban Plankton also is. If Ed is town, that does not absolve Suburban. And this feels a whole lot like classic scummy bet-hedging. ---
**Author:** ![GuiriEnEspana](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc79bd/32.png) [@GuiriEnEspana](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuiriEnEspana)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1009 "2010-08-18T22:22:42Z")
@ **Astral** , I’d poked and prodded you on a number of occasions and thought it was appropriate to express my suspicions. I saw erratic play and conflicting logic but, apart from your initial vote and unvote, not a lot of scum motivation. I did see strong scum motivation for **Special Ed** ’s actions and so voted accordingly. @ **Gadarene** , I had the same feelings about **Suburban** ’s role PM but couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong with it. While the positioning of the win condition is suspect, the lack of reference to Sauron and his minions, replaced by Servants of Darkness, the double mention of Middle-earth being doomed/destroyed, the “feared by all” does make me think he’s attempted to adapt a scum PM to fit a Town role. **Unvote** **Vote Suburban Plankton** ---
**Author:** ![peekercpa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8baadc/32.png) [@peekercpa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peekercpa)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1010 "2010-08-18T22:25:19Z")
> [@Chipacabra](#): > > Also, I think that if Ed is scum, there’s a good chance that Suburban Plankton also is. If Ed is town, that does not absolve Suburban. \ _blink_ so if **ed** is scum that makes **plank** probably scum. and if **ed** is town that means that **plank** can still be scum. so you vote for **ed**. _blink_ ---
**Author:** ![special\_ed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@special\_ed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/special_ed)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1011 "2010-08-18T22:27:29Z")
> [@Hoopy\_Frood](#): > > It’s quite possible Ed was receipt of a PM from the Mod that was meant to go to someone else. For this reason, Ed can’t discuss it. > > Of course, usually this results in substitution or modkill, not post restrictions. (I was in a game where a townie got modkilled due to inadvertent knowledge past the subsitution point. We still rocked that one anyway, though.) > > And although Ed is the type to spam threads with Wikipedia, I don’t think he’s the type to break a game, which is why, assuming he’s telling the truth, he PM’ed the mod first. > > It is quite possible he’s third party, though, and had access to the vanilla PM as part of his power. He might also have a bit of knowledge as to the roles in the game, though, I can’t understand why he’d be restricted on revealing any of that. > > His Glorifindel comments were likely to be bread crumbs of some sort, though I can’t think of anything offhand as to what it means. I thought you’d come to a conclusion close to this. Not about the being 3rd party. And, I did only span the game thread under direct instruction from peeker and with the full knowledge of the moderator Pedecribe and the assistant moderator FlyingCowOfDoom. In fact, they thought it was kinda funny. And, it wasn’t just Wikipedia, there was also the Gettysburg address with one letter removed each time. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1012 "2010-08-18T22:35:03Z")
Quoth **Gadarene** : > [@](#): > > …And yet you’re voting for Ed? I’m suspicious of both of them, and it may well be that they’re both Scum. But I think that **special ed** is the better lynch for toDay, for two reasons, both relating to **Plankton** ’s claimed power. First, there’s less risk involved in killing **ed** , since if he’s telling the truth, he’s only vanilla, but if **Plankton** is telling the truth, he’s quite a powerful power role, that we’d be loathe to use. Second, letting **Plankton** live for now puts information in the game: Even if he’s lying, letting him live toNight could potentially make it completely, unambiguously clear that he’s lying. Quoth **Chipacabra** : > [@](#): > > Also, I think that if Ed is scum, there’s a good chance that Suburban Plankton also is. If Ed is town, that does not absolve Suburban. That’s an argument for lynching **Plankton** instead of **Ed** , but you’re voting for **Ed**. And I don’t see any real connection between the cases on them: Could you spell it out? ---
**Author:** ![Hoopy\_Frood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hoopy_frood/32/8452_2.png) [@Hoopy\_Frood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hoopy_Frood)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1013 "2010-08-18T22:35:45Z")
[quote=“Gadarene, post:1007, topic:549867”] NETA: **Chip:** > [@](#): > > Also, I think that if Ed is scum, there’s a good chance that Suburban Plankton also is. If Ed is town, that does not absolve Suburban. > > And this feels a whole lot like classic scummy bet-hedging. Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Especially since there is no real connection between the two other than they’re the two most likely candidates for lynch toDay. Ed’s behavior, whatever his motivations, have no connection to why people voted Plankton. In fact, the bandwagon on Ed grew quickly because many viewed him as the next best thing after a power-role claim. So really, I don’t understand what this statement is supposed to indicate. In fact, if Ed is town, it’s more reason for Suburban to be scum, because the bandwagon against Ed was joined quickly after the claim. There’s no way Suburban should be absolved if Ed is town, so why bring it up? For now I’m going to **vote: Chipacabra** for weasling. I’ll no doubt end up on one of our leaders, but I can’t let this go unnoticed right now. ---
**Author:** ![special\_ed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@special\_ed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/special_ed)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1014 "2010-08-18T22:36:13Z")
> [@Chipacabra](#): > > 694, Ed throws out a list of canon names. Suburban’s claim happens to be right off that list. If anything, a false claim taken off the list would be a risky move to make. If Special Ed could think of it offhand, so could Mahaloth, so false claiming off the menu seems to me like it would increase the risk of counterclaiming. I didn’t think of it all offhand. I had help from Wikipedia. 😉 > [@Chipacabra](#): > > 849, Ed makes a comment about us lynching the loud. At this point, Suburban was the overwhelming frontrunner, and was hardly a case of lynch the loud. There was only, I think, 3 votes for Ed at the time (The exact number is fuzzy. :/) What you failed to observe at that point was that the vote count was: Suburban (8) - and this was before his role claim Astral (3) Pleo (2) Peeper (2) USCDiver (2) Chronos (1) Ed (1) All of those players with the possible exception of USCDiver were the loud ones up until that point in the game. Given an actual objective look at the data, could you see why I was coming to the conclusion that we were in danger of following a ‘lynch the loud’ strategy? > [@Chipacabra](#): > > Right now, my feeling is that Ed is a scum, and had access to a VT role pm, possibly a cover ID or something. He threw out a knowingly vague handshake condition, caught Chronos up in a trick question, and has been stirring shit up to try to find the town power roles. The moment suspicion turned on him, he tried to shake it off as ‘lynch the loud’ well before he was in any real danger of being lynched. at least your case is plausible. ---
**Author:** ![special\_ed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@special\_ed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/special_ed)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1015 "2010-08-18T22:37:46Z")
> [@GuiriEnEspana](#): > > @ **Astral** , I’d poked and prodded you on a number of occasions and thought it was appropriate to express my suspicions. I saw erratic play and conflicting logic but, apart from your initial vote and unvote, not a lot of scum motivation. I did see strong scum motivation for **Special Ed** ’s actions and so voted accordingly. > > @ **Gadarene** , I had the same feelings about **Suburban** ’s role PM but couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong with it. While the positioning of the win condition is suspect, the lack of reference to Sauron and his minions, replaced by Servants of Darkness, the double mention of Middle-earth being doomed/destroyed, the “feared by all” does make me think he’s attempted to adapt a scum PM to fit a Town role. > > **Unvote** > **Vote Suburban Plankton** Let’s not forget, if Suburban flips Scum, “Plus I was trying to protect my Scumbuddy.” Hey, it’s just as plausible as the case against me, right? ---
**Author:** ![Hoopy\_Frood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hoopy_frood/32/8452_2.png) [@Hoopy\_Frood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hoopy_Frood)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1016 "2010-08-18T22:38:00Z")
Stupid formatting. Oh, and Chronos and peeker also pointed out the other thing I find odd. It’s almost as if Chip is saying that Suburban is scum regardless of Ed, who may be town, but he’s going to vote Ed anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1017 "2010-08-18T22:38:18Z")
NETA: Typo in my previous post. That should be “…that we’d be loathe to **lose** ”. ---
**Author:** ![peekercpa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8baadc/32.png) [@peekercpa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peekercpa)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1018 "2010-08-18T22:44:07Z")
> [@special\_ed](#): > > > [@Hoopy\_Frood](#): > > > > It’s quite possible Ed was receipt of a PM from the Mod that was meant to go to someone else. For this reason, Ed can’t discuss it. > > > > Of course, usually this results in substitution or modkill, not post restrictions. (I was in a game where a townie got modkilled due to inadvertent knowledge past the subsitution point. We still rocked that one anyway, though.) > > > > And although Ed is the type to spam threads with Wikipedia, I don’t think he’s the type to break a game, which is why, assuming he’s telling the truth, he PM’ed the mod first. > > > > It is quite possible he’s third party, though, and had access to the vanilla PM as part of his power. He might also have a bit of knowledge as to the roles in the game, though, I can’t understand why he’d be restricted on revealing any of that. > > > > His Glorifindel comments were likely to be bread crumbs of some sort, though I can’t think of anything offhand as to what it means. > > I thought you’d come to a conclusion close to this. Not about the being 3rd party. > > And, I did only span the game thread under direct instruction from peeker and with the full knowledge of the moderator Pedecribe and the assistant moderator FlyingCowOfDoom. In fact, they thought it was kinda funny. > > And, it wasn’t just Wikipedia, there was also the Gettysburg address with one letter removed each time. ok, i am going to have to come to **ed** ’s defense. he was an outed scum mason. and we (I) thought that scum’s best play would be to just slam the thread with useless information. so he started doing the wiki and gettysburg thing. i am, of course, off thread laughing my ass off. in thread the rest of the folks started getting restless, to say the least. i even think at one point **ed** questioned the validity of the play and I told him to keep it up. so **ed** shouldn’t get any grief for that. the mods were cool with it and i was egging him on so shit blame that one on me, not **ed**. although i have to admit that it was funny as all get out and scum cake walked that one. and the fact that the next Day (?) the mods went and redacted all his posts made it even more hilarious. i mean christ i think he had well over 15 pages of posts just by himself that Day. and pretty much town’s posts were along the lines of make him stop. gosh when we were young it was a hoot. ---
**Author:** ![peekercpa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8baadc/32.png) [@peekercpa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peekercpa)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1019 "2010-08-18T22:52:56Z")
ok, let’s not make this easy. **unvote** **[color=blue]vote chipa[/color** the more i read that post the more it sounds like scum just playing it straight down the middle on a mislynch. now that certainly does not exonerate the other candidates, but let’s see if we get a leader under our belt. especially one that is playing on the low end of participation. kind of right where i would expect scum to try and hide. ---
**Author:** ![peekercpa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8baadc/32.png) [@peekercpa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peekercpa)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867/1020 "2010-08-18T22:54:14Z")
fuck me. **vote chipacabra**. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867.md?page=50) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-mafia/549867.md?page=52)