Lord of the Rings Mafia

[Drain_Bead]

@Pleonast

The problem I’m having is that the unexplained use of “SAHM” implies that MHaye had explained and used it in some other venue beforehand. Like a scum thread. I am definitely marking this as a slip (his explanation does not allay my suspicion), worthy of a vote, although I currently have a more suspicious target.

Oh, FTLOG.* Someone uses a silly acronym you don’t like and you call it a slip? It was a headscratcher for me too, but look at it this way…why would the Scum be referring to SAHM on the Scum board? Wouldn’t they just say…“we” or “us”? Pathetic all around.

For the love of God. Please don’t say this one’s voteworthy too.

[Hoopy_Frood]

NETA:

“Some of us want him to tell more because we feel it’s in town’s best interest to the player name.”

Me fail English? That’s unpossible!

What that sentence was trying to convey, is that we feel it’s in town’s best interest to reveal the role that Chronos was given extra information about. (Not the player name, though.)

[Pleonast]

@Drain_Bead

@Pleonast

The problem I’m having is that the unexplained use of “SAHM” implies that MHaye had explained and used it in some other venue beforehand. Like a scum thread. I am definitely marking this as a slip (his explanation does not allay my suspicion), worthy of a vote, although I currently have a more suspicious target.

Oh, FTLOG.* Someone uses a silly acronym you don’t like and you call it a slip? It was a headscratcher for me too, but look at it this way…why would the Scum be referring to SAHM on the Scum board? Wouldn’t they just say…“we” or “us”? Pathetic all around.
For the love of God. Please don’t say this one’s voteworthy too.

You are misrepresenting my complaint. I have nothing against the acronym. What bothers me is that it was used without explanation. People generally explain new terms when they first use them. MHaye did not. I think that means he had already used it (and explained it) somewhere else.

I see two possibilities.

1. MHaye used a acronym no else had used before without any kind of explanation.
2. MHaye used a acronym which was in use in another thread.

I think the second is much more likely and it’s a pretty clear slip. The only reason I’m not voting for him is because this moderator is only allowing us to vote for one player at a time (despite the fact that multi-voting is clearing a superior voting system ).

[Astral_Rejection]

@Hoopy_Frood

Bad ideas are not scummy. Period. Bad ideas actively embraced after all the downsides have been hashed out and outweigh the upsides are generally anti-town, and usually amount to a null tell with maybe slight scum-tell leanings.

But opening discussion on an idea is not scummy at all. I don’t agree with Pleo’s idea, for reasons that have already been mentioned, but his bringing it up as a point of discussion is not scummy. It’s not even anti-town. There was a while on here and Idle’s board where people would be lynched for bad ideas. These people were inevitably almost always town.

My inexperience at this game is getting the best of me. You’re right, opening discussion isn’t scummy. You and Pleo have convinced me. For the record, I still think it’s a bad idea, but it’s not a bad idea to bring it up in the first place.

Unvote Pleonast

[peekercpa]

i don’t think mazalan is a good game to study. unless you are reading the 1000+ pms and probably twice that many posts on the off board threads. but even then the wincon was so twisted that it merely shows you how wiggly some folks are.

a good example would be ragnorak on giraffe. that one will show you how scum coordinate without really coordinating.

i also personally like the second smasher brother’s game on idle’s site. kind of shows you how masons and confirmed townies can work together.

[special_ed]

My alignment is as would be expected given my role name

[Gadarene]

@peekercpa

i don’t think mazalan is a good game to study. unless you are reading the 1000+ pms and probably twice that many posts on the off board threads. but even then the wincon was so twisted that it merely shows you how wiggly some folks are.

It might not have been a good game to study, but it was fun as hell to read after the fact.

[peekercpa]

@Gadarene

@peekercpa

i don’t think mazalan is a good game to study. unless you are reading the 1000+ pms and probably twice that many posts on the off board threads. but even then the wincon was so twisted that it merely shows you how wiggly some folks are.

It might not have been a good game to study, but it was fun as hell to read after the fact.

jeebus, you must have patience like no one else if you ploughed through all of that. creeping sakes, just keeping up with the pms and different boards from an individual standpoint was pretty much a full time endeavor.

plus not knowing how to pm cookies, cometothedarksidewehavecookies, darkcookies, darkside, jeebuswhatisherpmnameagain and cometothedarkside was tedious as all hell. this is an inside joke btw.

[peekercpa]

cool. new topic.

my alignment is consistent with my role name.

[Chronos]

My alignment is consistent with my role name also.

And to expand/clarify a bit on an earlier statement, if, by Wednesday, I haven’t thought of a compelling reason not to tell the role name I know, I’ll do so.

[Pleonast]

I find it very interesting that players are going forward with stating “my alignment is consistent with my role name” when it feels like we’ve had very little discussion about it.

One of the reasons that players have brought up against name claiming is that scum might be searching for specific roles. I think that criticism applies equally well to this claim. For example, how would someone with the “Boromir” role claim? Is he canonically a good guy or a bad guy? I can see arguments on both sides by Tolkien scholars. There’s no easy answer.

Most players will be able to truthfully state “my alignment is consistent with my role name”. Unfortunately, it’s quite possible that the roles scum are looking for are borderline roles or roles that are not consistent. We will basically be outing them with this sort of claim.

While I’m undecided on the issue of name claiming, consistency claiming looks like a loser to me. What is the upside?

[Suburban_Plankton]

Pleonast came in with his last post as I was composing one asking the same basic question:

How is this “role consistency” question supposed to be helpful? I really can’t imagine anyone admitting that their role is not consistent with canon, because doing so seems contrary to long-term survival (whether by Town, Scum, or Other Parties). So after everyone announces that their role names are consistent, what are we supposed to do with that information?

[Hoopy_Frood]

@Pleonast

Most players will be able to truthfully state “my alignment is consistent with my role name”. Unfortunately, it’s quite possible that the roles scum are looking for are borderline roles or roles that are not consistent. We will basically be outing them with this sort of claim.

And why would scum be looking for that? I can’t think of a game where scum cared who of the non-scum they killed from that type of approach. Any non-scum player who dies typically furthers their win condition of controlling the vote. Are you suggesting that scum additional requirements on that? Usually “must kill/tag/etc. certain types of people” roles are the domain of third parties. Or do you think that roles with ambiguous and/or contrary to canon alignments are more apt to be power roles?

I feel the potential information gain for town in knowing how roles align with canon will create more useful datapoints for town than scum. And I fear scum more than 3rd parties as a general rule, because scum typically need win-stealing 3rd parties gone just as much as we do, which means even if we happen to help a 3rd party, it’s less dangerous than helping scum. Because while we can expect scum to aid us in taking out dangerous 3rd parties if it prevents their own loss, the flipside whereby a 3rd party will aid us against scum in a way other than numbers is less likely.

[special_ed]

@Pleonast

While I’m undecided on the issue of name claiming, consistency claiming looks like a loser to me. What is the upside?

I’m less concerned about the borderline players. I could see Boromir being consistent with either Town or 3rd party.
Here are my thoughts on some of the names, if the names follow canon. This is by no means exhaustive or authoritative, but I like making lists)

** Town names:**
All of the Fellowship, (even Boromir though he could be 3rd party)
All Hobbits (even Stoor Hobbits, with the exception of Smeagol)
All Elves
All Dwarves
All Ents
Bill the Donkey
Tom Bombadil
Denethor (or maybe he is recruitable)
Elfhelm
Eomer
Eowyn
Erkenbrand
Faramir
Forlong the Fat
Gamling
Gandalf
Goldberry
Grimbold
Halbarad
Hurin
Imrahil
Shadowfax
Theodred
Theoden

Scum names:
All Ring Wraiths
All Orcs, Trolls, Wargs, Urak-hai, Balrogs, etc
Grima (maybe 3rd party)
Sauron
Sarumon
Shelob (maybe 3rd party)
(If you add in movie characters, Lurtz, Sahrku

3rd Party names
Gollum
Old Man Willow
Radagast (maybe Town)

** The following characters at one time possessed The One Ring:**
Sauron (prior to LotR)
Isuldur (not in LotR)
Smeagol/Gollum
Bilbo Baggins
Frodo Baggins
Tom Bombadil
Samwise Gamgee

** The following characters possessed or used a Palantir**
Aragorn
Denethor
Gandalf
Peregrin Took
Sarumon
Sauron

I see 2 potential Upsides to a name claim.

1. If we have a name investigator and there seems to be consensus or disagreement that role name does indicate alignment.

2. If Chronos does eventually release his information and we have reason to trust him, then we might have a better idea if we can trust what he thinks indicates a Town alignment, and confirm a Town player.
   And now, back to Chronos

@Chronos, I forget if you mentioned it, but was this information given to you in your role PM or by another means? I seem to think you’ve implied it was part of your role PM, but I want to be clear that it isn’t perhaps a Day action of another player that resulted in you getting this information.

[special_ed]

@Suburban_Plankton

Pleonast came in with his last post as I was composing one asking the same basic question:

How is this “role consistency” question supposed to be helpful? I really can’t imagine anyone admitting that their role is not consistent with canon, because doing so seems contrary to long-term survival (whether by Town, Scum, or Other Parties). So after everyone announces that their role names are consistent, what are we supposed to do with that information?

If the names truly are **not **consistent, then someone might say that. I certainly would. It could be useful information for Town, especially if we have a name investigator (which admittedly is rare). We might know soon enough anyway if, for example Frodo is killed and flips Scum.

[GuiriEnEspana]

@Astral_Rejection

@GuiriEnEspana

/Snipped
I understand it’s Day 1 and your first game but what’s up with this? You voted USCDiver based on the case presented by Chronos which makes the assumption that USCDiver is scum with access to a sample PM. You then unvote based on a comment made by USCDiver 300 posts earlier which seems town to you - which happens to be the post others are voting him for.

If you were happy to vote for him based on the assumption that he had access to a sample PM, why are you now happy to unvote him because he used information plausibly from that same sample PM to further the handshake effort? Something’s not right here.

I found Chronos’ case against USCDiver compelling, so I voted for USCDiver. Let me repost it here:[…]
When I read it, I paid most attention to the paragraph starting with “The scenario I’m seeing.” I missed the part asking folks to verify his 4 Ds. So later, I went back to check out the post in question (I can’t just blindly trust Chronos, after all) and saw that USCDiver did, in fact, make an effort to add to the handshaking business. Bam, unvote, although it still seems sketchy to me.

/snip

This doesn’t answer my question, if you were happy to assume USC was scum with access to a false PM when you made your vote, how does the fact that he made an effort to add to the handshaking (which a scum with a false PM could easily have done) 300 posts earlier make him worth an unvote? What made you go back and check out the post in question after you’d placed your vote?

@Astral_Rejection

My inexperience at this game is getting the best of me. You’re right, opening discussion isn’t scummy. You and Pleo have convinced me. For the record, I still think it’s a bad idea, but it’s not a bad idea to bring it up in the first place.

Unvote Pleonast

/snip & bleach

Previously you’d stated:

@Astral_Rejection

I’m currently voting for Pleo for a number of reasons. His claim is one part of it. I find his suggestion that the fellowship claim terrible too. He can dismiss his statements with two quick sentences at the end saying he can see a downside for it, but he put a lot of effort into that post. That indicates to me that he was hoping somebody would take it seriously and consider it. And that has scum written all over it.

/snip & bold

What happened to your other reasons for voting Pleo?

[Pleonast]

I’m not convinced that players without consistent name and alignment will be third party. Examples,
Boromir: town faction with difficult canonical alignment, who can be recruited by scum.
Saruman: town faction with bad guy canonical alignment, whose death gives scum a bonus.

Furthermore, if we’re going to go the route of making claims based on our names, I think it would be better simply to do name claim. What argument can be made for consistency claim that doesn’t also support a name claim? At least with a name claim, we force scum to take risks. A name consistency claim places no risks on scum.

[Pleonast]

@Pleonast

I’m not convinced that players without consistent name and alignment will be third party. Examples,
Boromir: town faction with difficult canonical alignment, who can be recruited by scum.
Saruman: town faction with bad guy canonical alignment, whose death gives scum a bonus.

Furthermore, if we’re going to go the route of making claims based on our names, I think it would be better simply to do name claim. What argument can be made for consistency claim that doesn’t also support a name claim? At least with a name claim, we force scum to take risks. A name consistency claim places no risks on scum.

That was in response to Hoopy Frood.

[special_ed]

NETA, my spoilers failed to mention that Gandalf and Galadriel (and Aragorn in the movie)were offered The One Ring, but refused it.

Also, Boromir and Deagol briefly held The One Ring as well, but did not wear it.

[special_ed]

@Pleonast

Furthermore, if we’re going to go the route of making claims based on our names, I think it would be better simply to do name claim. What argument can be made for consistency claim that doesn’t also support a name claim? At least with a name claim, we force scum to take risks. A name consistency claim places no risks on scum.

We add the risk of identifying specific roles to Scum and/or 3rd party who might need to know who is which role, not just that they align.

We’ve been through that