Lord of the Rings Mafia

[peekercpa]

** mod question: are story and sach co mods or did they merely help in the design of this game?**

[special_ed]

So, some things we’ve been able to determine so far.

1. I’m either Town or Scum (the possibility of neither hasn’t really been discussed, but let me throw it out there.

2. Chronos is either lying or telling the truth (or maybe he’s doing some of both.)

3. Peeper posts a lot and contributes a little other than “pot stirring.” He also likes to draw attention to his “pot stirring”

4. Some people post more than others.

5. A name claim is either good or bad.

6. Names might follow canon or might now.

I think most everything else (es, I probably missed something) is debatable.

[Gadarene]

Does anyone have a name that doesn’t follow canon?

[Suburban_Plankton]

@cucuy

@Suburban_Plankton

Not a whole lot of action overnight, as to be expected, but there are a couple items that caught my interest in the last 12 hours or so…

**cucuy **finally appeared among us, but has yet to really contribute anything. He makes a couple statements in post 449 about handshaking and confirming roles, but those two issues had already been pretty much talked out long before that point. Then comes back a little later to chime in on a discussion about previous Mafia games. But he still hasn’t contributed anything of substance to this game. Not that it tells us anything, but it’s somewhat disappointing.

Am I wrong to ask how mechanics of the game are being addressed? This is the first time I’ve played in a game where this kind of discussion was going on, and I want to learn as much as I can. Each game I play gives me more insight into how to be a better participant.

If you’re calling me out for being late to the party, I can understand that. But just so you know, I don’t have a lot of time to spend on a computer. I log on in the evenings because I don’t have access at work, and I like to read the latest posts before making an opinion. The fact that Day 1 is usually a lot of meta-gaming, and talk about game mechanics is one of the best parts of mafia.

But just what kind of participation are you asking?

@Suburban_Plankton

FTR, I do think it’s probably best for Chronos to keep silent at this point, but i very much diskile ed’s reasoning.

So now you want some players to shut up and others to speak up… I’m confused.

I was indeed ‘calling you out’, not just for being late to the party, but by being late and then making several posts that had nothing of substance in them. As has been pointed out, lurking is often seen as a ‘scum tactic’; posting nothing but ‘fluff’ is even more suspicious.

@cucuy

@Suburban_Plankton

I pulled it out of thin air, I suppose because it’s one of those ‘nice round numbers’.

I suppose I could have picked 8, which was the median number of posts per poster at the time (assuming both my counting and Excel skills are up to snuff). That would have raised the number of ‘non-participatory’ posters to either 11 or 12, depending on whether or not we’re counting ‘less than’ or ‘less than or equal to’.

I’m not convinced this is the way to proceed, tallying post counts to determine the validity of each participant. As it stands now, peeker has five times your number of posts; does that make him a better player, or better participant? Or worse, less scummy that the rest of us?

At the time I posted that, there were a number of players who had contributed very little to the discussion. The intent of my statement was to bring that fact to light, in hopes that those players would contribute more. We can’t make any informed decisions without people making posts for us to base those decisions off of, and frankly the game is much less fun when there are only a handful of people participating.

On the other end of the spectrum: as I write this post the top three contributors have as many posts between them as the other 20 players combined. One of those happens to be peekercpa. I have already mentioned that I don’t care for his posting style; I think there’s way too much fluff. That may just be his posting style, or it may be indicative that he’s trying to ‘muddy the waters’, which would definitely be ‘anti-Town’ behavior.

So in answer to your implied question “Exactly how many posts do I think each player should be making?” The answer is “Enough posts, and with enough substance, that I don’t think you’re trying to hide anything, and not so many that I think you’re trying to create confusion.” I hope that clears things up.

I think the biggest problem right now is that we’re still in ‘mid-morning’ on Day 1, so there’s not a whole lot else to talk about. Once we get through the first full Day/Night cycle, the discussions will hopefully be a lot more focused, because we’ll have a couple kills (or maybe more, or less, either of which result will tell us something about the structure of the game), we might get some information from Power roles, and we can start looking for real inconsistencies in players postings. That’s when the real fun will begin.

[Suburban_Plankton]

@Gadarene

Does anyone have a name that doesn’t follow canon?

You don’t seriously expect an answer to that question, do you?

[Gadarene]

@Suburban_Plankton

@Gadarene

Does anyone have a name that doesn’t follow canon?

You don’t seriously expect an answer to that question, do you?

I mean, I dunno. I don’t expect someone to say, “my character was good-aligned in the LOTR Universe, and I’m scum mwahahahahaha!!”, no. At the same time, though, if anyone who’s Town has a name of a character that doesn’t appear in the canon anywhere, for example, then that’s something that it would probably be helpful for us to know, and I don’t see how it benefits scum one way or the other.

Some kind of confirmation that we’re operating in a fixed, bounded universe of canon characters would also help Town by limiting scum’s ability to make fake name-claims.

[Suburban_Plankton]

@special_ed

So, some things we’ve been able to determine so far.

1. I’m either Town or Scum (the possibility of neither hasn’t really been discussed, but let me throw it out there.

2. Chronos is either lying or telling the truth (or maybe he’s doing some of both.)

3. Peeper posts a lot and contributes a little other than “pot stirring.” He also likes to draw attention to his “pot stirring”

4. Some people post more than others.

5. A name claim is either good or bad.

6. Names might follow canon or might now.

I think most everything else (es, I probably missed something) is debatable.

One of these things is not like the other.

Items 1,2,4,5 and 6 are factual statements.
Item 3 is subjective.

I posted earlier about a string of posts between **peekercpa **and special ed that struck me as possibly having some hidden meaning. This post very much strikes me the same way.

[Suburban_Plankton]

@Gadarene

@Suburban_Plankton

You don’t seriously expect an answer to that question, do you?

I mean, I dunno. I don’t expect someone to say, “my character was good-aligned in the LOTR Universe, and I’m scum mwahahahahaha!!”, no. At the same time, though, if anyone who’s Town has a name of a character that doesn’t appear in the canon anywhere, for example, then that’s something that it would probably be helpful for us to know, and I don’t see how it benefits scum one way or the other.

Some kind of confirmation that we’re operating in a fixed, bounded universe of canon characters would also help Town by limiting scum’s ability to make fake name-claims.

I don’t see how this could be useful at all. For one thing, any non-canon identites would turn this into a “Not Quite Lord of the Rings Mafia”, and would make the entire idea of character identities invalid. And if it were established that non-canon names were even a possibility, then the scum would have an endless supply of cover identities to choose from. I think we can safely assume that all identities are found within the canon, because there would simply be no point to it otherwise.

Gadarene, this is the second time you’ve asked for people to reveal character names (the first being post 470). Is there some reason you seem so eager to have a list of character names, especially considering that you admit to having “only a passing knowledge with the canon”? (Post 421)

[Gadarene]

@Suburban_Plankton

I think we can safely assume that all identities are found within the canon, because there would simply be no point to it otherwise.

Well, special ed seems to question that assumption.

Gadarene, this is the second time you’ve asked for people to reveal character names (the first being post 470). Is there some reason you seem so eager to have a list of character names, especially considering that you admit to having “only a passing knowledge with the canon”? (Post 421)

Seriously? I haven’t asked anyone to reveal character names this time (“yes, my name appears in the canon” is, um, not at all the same thing). As for post #470, I stand by my question there. I still believe it would benefit Town for Chronos to name the role he claims to know about, and to my recollection nobody has identified any downside (at most, a few posters have said that they think it’s pointless because it would neither benefit nor hurt us). Hardly equivalent to being “eager to have a list of character names.” :rolleyes:

And I may have only a passing knowledge with the canon, but Wikipedia is my friend.

[Gadarene]

NETA: And I’ve been a consistent opponent of the idea of a mass name-claim since it was first raised.

So there.

[peekercpa]

@Suburban_Plankton

On the other end of the spectrum: as I write this post the top three contributors have as many posts between them as the other 20 players combined. One of those happens to be peekercpa. I have already mentioned that I don’t care for his posting style; I think there’s way too much fluff. That may just be his posting style, or it may be indicative that he’s trying to ‘muddy the waters’, which would definitely be ‘anti-Town’ behavior.

<snipped>

fracking get in line.

i make a half ass comment about name claims. which to be honest is about the most pointless thing that i can imagine (guess folks don’t get my sense of humor).

i had a whole bunch of tongue in cheek back and forth regarding the handshake nonsense. which for the life of me makes little to no sense. as others have noted it has about and equal failure rate as it does a success rate.

fucking gadaren (i think) brings up some ring comments. which based on canon would seem to align but it was the first i had heard about it in this specific game. then he starts talking about gollum. which ones again is canonical but is not necessarily a conclusive leap.

then we have chronos pulling some half ass semi mason claim. which for the life of me i don’t get.

we got a little sidetrack between what consitutes a section versus a paragraph versus neither.

we’ve got fracking pleo coming out of nowhere with a magic bag power claim.

and you expect me to not say anything?

i guess the only question i have is why the rest of the folks don’t have as many posts as ed and i do. jeebus there have been enough topics to weigh in on to this point that everyone should be writing the book.

and if you think that is muddying the water you seriously need to get rid of my ass. because as things start to clarify, for me, it is only going to get a hell of a lot lengthier.

[special_ed]

@Suburban_Plankton

@special_ed

So, some things we’ve been able to determine so far.

1. I’m either Town or Scum (the possibility of neither hasn’t really been discussed, but let me throw it out there.

2. Chronos is either lying or telling the truth (or maybe he’s doing some of both.)

3. Peeper posts a lot and contributes a little other than “pot stirring.” He also likes to draw attention to his “pot stirring”

4. Some people post more than others.

5. A name claim is either good or bad.

6. Names might follow canon or might now.

I think most everything else (es, I probably missed something) is debatable.

One of these things is not like the other.

Items 1,2,4,5 and 6 are factual statements.
Item 3 is subjective.

I posted earlier about a string of posts between **peekercpa **and special ed that struck me as possibly having some hidden meaning. This post very much strikes me the same way.

A gold star to you on the fact/opinion lesson. You’d might be surprised how many of my students struggle with that concept.

Also, you’re in the lead for the SMDB Meeko award for the most paranoid poster. I think, what might be more interesting than looking for hidden meaning in an exchange between peeper and myself is to look for hidden meaning by taking all of my posts, looking for the character that corresponds to 3 times the post number minus 17, and trying to reverse hash that into the grand Scum plan for Day 1.

[special_ed]

@Gadarene

@Suburban_Plankton

I think we can safely assume that all identities are found within the canon, because there would simply be no point to it otherwise.

Well, special ed seems to question that assumption.

Either I misspoke or you misunderstood me. Can you cite where I make a statement like that?

For the record, While I do think that the names will most likely come from within the canon (there are enough of them), I do not necessarily feel that a name will give an alignment. It’s quite possible, and maybe even likely, but it is not a forgone conclusion.

I think, in general, it is good for us to keep in mind that making an assumption can be dangerous.

[peekercpa]

@Gadarene

Does anyone have a name that doesn’t follow canon?

quick question are you asking whether someone has a name that is not in canon or a name that might be counter to canon.

because the first i can understand. if someone claims batman i will call bullshit. if it is the second then i can’t see how anyone would answer this question.

yeh, you see i am sauron but i have decided to place nice this game doesn’t fly too far.

[Mahaloth]

@peekercpa

** mod question: are story and sach co mods or did they merely help in the design of this game?**

Just design.

[Suburban_Plankton]

@special_ed

A gold star to you on the fact/opinion lesson. You’d might be surprised how many of my students struggle with that concept.

Also, you’re in the lead for the SMDB Meeko award for the most paranoid poster. I think, what might be more interesting than looking for hidden meaning in an exchange between peeper and myself is to look for hidden meaning by taking all of my posts, looking for the character that corresponds to 3 times the post number minus 17, and trying to reverse hash that into the grand Scum plan for Day 1.

Thank you. Logic was always one of my favorite subjects

As for being paranoid, of that I am guilty as charged. Can you blame me? As far as I know, there are 22 different people in this game who want me dead.

BTW, your Post #508 contains 1198 characters (and that’s *including *the quote and formatting characters). (508 * 3) - 17 = 1507. I fear something does not compute…or is that just what you ***want ***us to think?!? hmmm? :dubious:

[Gadarene]

@peekercpa

@Gadarene

Does anyone have a name that doesn’t follow canon?

quick question are you asking whether someone has a name that is not in canon or a name that might be counter to canon.

I was asking the first. And it was in direct response to Ed’s statement that “Names might follow canon or might not” (which should answer the question Ed poses to me in his most recent post).

And how in the world is it suspicious to speculate that a Mafia game set in the Lord of the Rings universe, hot on the heels of a Mafia game set in the Harry Potter universe, might have the One Ring (a central part – perhaps the central part – of the canon) as an ingame mechanism in the same way that the Golden Snitch (a far less central part of that canon) was an ingame mechanism in that game?

[Telcontar]

Two (as best I can determine) unrelated points:
1.) One of the few reasons to have a real night zero is to allow players who can only talk a night a chance to speak before day 1. That we had a night zero, which threw off the game schedule causing an overlong day 1, might suggest that scum can’t talk during the day. Not sure if that affects anything.
2.) I’ve been growing increasingly suspicious of suburban plankton. He has been smudging a surprising number of players, often for fairly innocuous reasons. If he were scum, this could be a series of attempts to see what kind of cases float. Of course, it could also be vigorous scum hunting but, as it is Day 1, I’m going to be a tad bold and vote based on it. Below are some examples:

@Suburban_Plankton

@Chronos

And does anyone have any thoughts on USCDiver matching all of the handshakes, or are we waiting for him to weigh in on it first?

I had said earlier (Post 379) that I was somewhat, but not terribly, suspicious. The more I go over it, the more it doesn’t add up. Given that there is (almost) certainly more than one PM floating about, it didn’t concern me much one way or the other whether or not anyone’s PM met some, all, or none of the conditions. But thinking some more about it, it seems very unlikely that anyone’s would match ***all ***of the conditions set.

I think it would be a rather bone-headed play for scum to make such a claim, especially after all of the discussion we’ve had on the subject, so it doesn’t immediately mark **USCDiver **as scum for me. But I have a hard time believing it’s a true statement, and I can’t figure out why a townie would lie about that, either. Call me increasingly suspicious at this point.

I also can’t figure out **Chronos **claim. He says it’s because he “inadvertently gave out enough information for Scum to deduce that I’m nonvanilla”. I didn’t deduce that from the discussion. What I got from that discussion was that either **Chronos **or special ed were lying, or maybe both, or perhaps neither, given not all of the PMs were worded the same. He didn’t “out himself” at all, in my opinion.

And I can’t see how it helps the town to have this information out now. We know that he has ‘information’, but it would be bad to tell us now, and if he should die without having a chance to reveal it that “would not particularly cripple the Town”…so what’s the point in telling us anything, other than to make himself the primary target for a Night Kill?

Hitting USCDiver and Chronos.

@Suburban_Plankton

Not a whole lot of action overnight, as to be expected, but there are a couple items that caught my interest in the last 12 hours or so…

**cucuy **finally appeared among us, but has yet to really contribute anything. He makes a couple statements in post 449 about handshaking and confirming roles, but those two issues had already been pretty much talked out long before that point. Then comes back a little later to chime in on a discussion about previous Mafia games. But he still hasn’t contributed anything of substance to this game. Not that it tells us anything, but it’s somewhat disappointing.

The exchange between **peekercpa **and special ed from about posts 460-465 was even more bizarre than normal for this thread. If I were the paranoid type, I’d wonder if there wasn’t some sort of coded message in there…

wait, I am the paranoid type…but I’m not sure I’m *that *paranoid…yet…

However, I am having a bit of trouble with peeker, as it seems once again that the chaff to wheat ratio is getting quite high. Now, by his own admission he likes to stir the pot (Post 457)…I just wonder if his pot stirring is a good thing for the town at this point.

Now, I’m not ‘sure’ of anything at this point. In the past 48 hours I’ve had three or four different people ping my radar; I suspect in the next 5 days there’ll be about 20 more that do the same. But as has been pointed out, we need people talking…

Which brings up my last point. By my count we still have 9 players with 5 or fewer posts since the beginning of Night 0 (and I’m including the 'I got the PM" posts in that number). There’s a good chance that there’s scum in there somewhere, but half of those people *must *be Town. They need to start contributing. That’s too many lurkers.

**cucuy **, **peekercpa **and special ed.

@Suburban_Plankton

@special_ed

I would hesitate to follow this approach. It’s quite possible that Chronos must find and kill a specific character (Gollum must find and kill Sam and Frodo) or some type of recruitment (Grima can recruit Theoden)

I had a bit of a hard time with this statement (ed’s reply, just to clarify). **Chronos **had told us “The role name is of an unambiguously good-aligned character, so I trust that that person is Town.”, so I wondered why ed was talking about killing and recruitment. If Chronos is Town with a power role, then he’s not likely to be killing Frodo. And if he’s scum (or 3rd party), then I’d think getting him to reveal the role (as Gadarene suggests) would be a positive thing; if Frodo then turned up dead Tomorrow morning, we’d have a pretty good idea where to start looking for his killer.

FTR, I do think it’s probably best for Chronos to keep silent at this point, but i very much diskile ed’s reasoning.

Special Ed again

@Suburban_Plankton

@Gadarene

Does anyone have a name that doesn’t follow canon?

You don’t seriously expect an answer to that question, do you?

Attacking a perfectly reasonable question.

My concern is that Suburban Plankton has raised the level of suspicion against almost half the players in the game, while not actually casting a vote and going on record. It’s what I did as scum, because helped town kill itself while keeping my hands clean.

So,
Vote Suburban Plankton
Oh, my read on the various major events:
1.) Special Ed is being Special Ed. This doesn’t indicate whether he is town or scum
2.) Peeker is being Peeker. Same
3.) Chronos was clumsy, but I’m inclined to trust him for the moment. If he’s still alive in a few days I’ll A.) be surprised and B.) reconsider.
4.) Pleonast’s claim is currently meaningless. Let the scum and the doctor figure out what to do with it.

[special_ed]

@Telcontar

Two (as best I can determine) unrelated points:
1.) One of the few reasons to have a real night zero is to allow players who can only talk a night a chance to speak before day 1. That we had a night zero, which threw off the game schedule causing an overlong day 1, might suggest that scum can’t talk during the day. Not sure if that affects anything.

I too am suspicious of SP for the smudging which I’ve brught up mostly in relation to myself.

However, as to the Night 0. Some moderators use it to allow players top confirm. It makes sure everyone is here and ready before we get started on thh game itself.

Does anyone recall the Scum’s talking ability in Mahloth’s previous games?

I think Lost, Weird Wild West, Harry Potter. Did I miss any?

[peekercpa]

@special_ed

Also, you’re in the lead for the SMDB Meeko award for the most paranoid poster. I think, what might be more interesting than looking for hidden meaning in an exchange between peeper and myself is to look for hidden meaning by taking all of my posts, looking for the character that corresponds to 3 times the post number minus 17, and trying to reverse hash that into the grand Scum plan for Day 1.

you fucking bastard.

you told me you would never let that out.

how will i ever trust you again?