Lord of the Rings Mafia

[Pleonast]

@peekercpa

@Pleonast

peeker was town. :smack: But that doesn’t mean his posting style is not anti-town. And it does not mean he is town this time. peeker can post usefully: 670–simple and to-the-point. Which is unfortunately not like most of his posts.

so you have assumed the arbiter of what is “anti-town” from chronos it appears.

:smack:
peeker, of course I am arbiter of what is anti-town. That’s exactly what every single townie is. Every townie should find something that they think is anti-town (not simply what another tells them is anti-town) and act on that, by voting or using their other powers.

I know you understand that, based on the rest of your post:

ok, let me be very clear then for you. soft fracking claims stink. they run along the lines of don’t dick with me because that would be very bad for town. is there not a lot of scum motivation in that?

and if you want some more lack of subtelty i think ed’s little gambit was a piece of turd. if scum were provided a sample of a vt pm, if in fact they are consistent, was pure genius from a scum stand point. they get to identify a whole bunch of non power town roles and reduce the pile they shoot in. all the while looking like “confirmed vt” while performing this handshake thing. and i see a whole pisspot of scum motivation in that activity.

This is a fine game post (after deleting the irrelevant crap ). Do this more often and no one will be complaining about your posting style. And then vote based on it!

Don’t get bent out of shape when someone else calls something anti-town and acts on that. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing!

[Natlaw]

@cucuy

<snip if all PM are worded differently>
But unless we know this to be true (which we don’t, at this point), then using handshakes to confirm town could be the wrong move if town PMs are not of the same template. But I think the last section of PMs is pretty much identical among both town and scum, so using that part for hashing could prove very useful.

Again I don’t see it: how would the hash of something that is the same for everyone be useful (as you get the same hash as well)?

@Chronos

OK, first of all, special ed’s PM does match USCDiver’s four Ds handshake. This weakens my case on him enough that I will
Unvote USCDiver

I believe it was already pointed out when Astral used this as reason for the unvote that a scum with the same vanilla cover role could have supplied the same amount of Ds

[peekercpa]

@Pleonast

This is a fine game post (after deleting the irrelevant crap ). Do this more often and no one will be complaining about your posting style. And then vote based on it!

<snipped>

well i always heard that the essential no non relevancy gone with the wind went something like this.

there was a war.

tara burned.

scarlett said fuck it tomorrow is another day.

just doesn’t play the same.

hee hee.

[Natlaw]

The people that stood out so far:

SpecialEd & Chronos
Attempt to vanilla role PM handshake because none is posted publically. Since none is posted at all the results aren’t that great depending on if there are different vanilla PM and if the Servants of Darkness have a vanilla role PM that matches.
The only sure things that came out of it was Chronos’ claim and that not everyone has the same worded PM. Chronos first posted the town win condition after which ed tried to get him to reveal if he had a win condition section or not. The question is of course:

@special_ed

It was definitely an anti-Town move until more information was generated.

However, was it Scummy?
:eek:

Ed later posted that he specifically want the vanilla to handshake because confirmed player are worth more even without powers. As scum-with-vanilla-cover-PM it would be a bold, quickly thought-out move to fish for power roles. The section haggle makes it look more suspicious to me but others (Hoopy Frood/Telcontar) also started to handshake later with the SAHM phrase with similar results.

A scum Chronos in that situation might be eager to show that he has the correct win condition. But than later he comes with a claim with something verifiable - he knows the (townie lore-wise) role name of a player. It could also be the name of a cover role scum has to be claimed by another scum with Chronos or a scum knowing a specific town players role name.

Astral Rejection & USCDiver
Collected some of votes for a quick vote/unvote of USCDiver for seeming the same post where the latter joins the handshake. The vote because Astral agrees with Chronos case of agreeing with all handshakes while not all of them matched. Then followed by a quick unvote because on rereading USCDiver also volunteered extra information.

Rereading, USCDiver says that he matches with all mentioned in Telcontar’s post where there is only one who doesn’t match. USCDiver didn’t mention the failed handshake but on the other hand is was a bit of a general agreement at that point that handshake wasn’t working.
Astral blindly joined Chronos’ case (he even mentions he’s third voting and why is that suspect as he read it in another mafia game) then unvotes when he actually checks the post he voted for and finds it not as scummy as remembered.
It think it’s better to keep someone who is willing to review his votes around.

Suburban Plankton
Plankton is currently leading the vote for smudging a lot of people, being wishy-washy about those suspicions and feeling everyone wants to kill him instead just scum/sks.
I don’t think his vote for peeker is bad as others have mentioned, but I agree with the other reasons put forth.

But he has even of an lead that I’ll vote elsewhere:
Peeker
Peeker stood out to me because of his lurker vote for Nanook - on one hand it feels a bit like a joke-poke-vote peeker tends to do but Nanook’s reaction to it was predictable. I don’t see how stirring there helps in anyway to determine his alignment. He still has his vote on him but ignored Nanooks posts afterward (and he seems more suspicious of Pleonast).

Vote peekercpa
If you really want Nanook to participate more, why not actually engage him in discussion?

[Hoopy_Frood]

@Pleonast

@Hoopy_Frood

since a sole claiming mason is useless.

Not true. A sole Mason is still useful to town as a confirmable townie. But not nearly as useful as more Masons.

But how can it be confirmed if it’s the only mason left and no claim has been made previously? If town cannot confirm the number of masons before there is only one left, that mason can never be considered confirmed.

[Suburban_Plankton]

@Natlaw

The people that stood out so far:

<snip>

Suburban Plankton
Plankton is currently leading the vote for smudging a lot of people, being wishy-washy about those suspicions and feeling everyone wants to kill him instead just scum/sks.

<snip>

Bolding mine…
This point keeps coming up, and I touched briefly on it at one point, but I want to say more on it now.
I was being flip. It’s how I am, and it’s how I talk. I realize now (and should have realized then) that there’s no place for flip talk in this game, because every word is dissected a dozen different ways.

I made the statement statement “As far as I know, there are 22 different people in this game who want me dead.” Apparently, this is proof that I’m a Vigilante, because only a Vig would know for a fact that all the other players wanted him dead. Because obviously, if I were Scum I would say “there are probably slightly fewer than 20 people who want me dead”, or if I were Town I would have said “there are a handful of people who want me dead”, right?.

What I meant was “As far as I know, each and every one of the 22 other people in this game might be non-town, and therefore want me dead, if not now then before the end of this game”. It’s exactly the same thing that everyone else is thinking (at least, everyone who isn’t Scum/SK/Mason (because they would only think that of 22-[number of other Masons] people)). But that doesn’t quite roll off the tongue now, does it?
Frankly, it was a ‘slip of the tongue’. A poor choice of phrase that I was hoping would be forgotten as more important items surfaced for people to talk about. But since it’s not going away on its own, I felt compelled at this point to comment on it.

[Pleonast]

@Hoopy_Frood

@Pleonast

Not true. A sole Mason is still useful to town as a confirmable townie. But not nearly as useful as more Masons.

But how can it be confirmed if it’s the only mason left and no claim has been made previously? If town cannot confirm the number of masons before there is only one left, that mason can never be considered confirmed.

This will require some explanation, so if you’re not into Mafia game theory, just skip this post.

Let’s say we have a bloc of one or more players that have claimed Mason. I define Mason as a player who has the same victory condition as every other townie and knows that he and possibly some other players are also townies. That claim is just a claim until one of the bloc is killed and confirmed town by the moderator, then all the players in the bloc are confirmed.

Scum are unlikely to claim Mason, because they risk being counter-claimed by a real Mason. One-for-one trades of townie for scum do not help scum, unless a townie is extremely valuable. A Mason who is only a Mason is not that valuable in most cases.

Unless scum know how many Masons the game started with while the town does not, it’s not generally useful for them to claim to be the lone (last) Mason. There is risk that there is still another one out there.

If everyone knows how many Masons the game started with, it’s even less useful for scum to claim Mason. Either everyone will know all the real Masons are actually dead, or they know the real one can counter-claim. The riskiest situation for town is that the scum know all the real Masons are dead and the town does not know how many there were. Then the false claim has the best chance of working.

Unless there is some reason the Mason knows, I think the best general policy is for a claimed Mason to reveal how many total Masons exist, simply to maximize the risk to Mason-claiming scum. Mileage may vary according to the specific rules, though.

So, given the risks to scum in claiming to be the lonely last Mason, it’s reasonable for the town to accept them as “confirmed”. That puts them in the same pool as players found to be town by an investigator–unlikely to be scum, but don’t forget about godfathers or recruits. It’s almost always better to lynch from the “unconfirmed” pool.

Scum will likely be killing the confirmed pool, so it’s quite possible the claimed Mason can be definitely confirmed by them via Night-kill. If the town manages to remove everyone from the unconfirmed pool without winning the game, then it’s time to relook at the claims. A lone Mason would certainly be a prime subject at that point.

In summary, without prior knowledge of the number of Masons, any claimed Mason should not be lynched until the unconfirmed pool is gone.

(On preview, that’s not as tight as I’d like, but it should get the basic point across.)

[Pleonast]

Suburban Plankton, it’s quite possible that your “slip” is simply as you claim. But some of us feel it might not be. These sort of things can go either way. You can argue about it, but I think such discussion is a waste of time.

If you’re in fact town and are being mislynched, the most pro-town thing you can do is keep looking for anti-town things in other players. Your comments on peeker, for example, are spot-on. Unfortunately, scum can make useful arguments too.

[Telcontar]

@Pleonast

Suburban Plankton, it’s quite possible that your “slip” is simply as you claim. But some of us feel it might not be. These sort of things can go either way. You can argue about it, but I think such discussion is a waste of time.

If you’re in fact town and are being mislynched, the most pro-town thing you can do is keep looking for anti-town things in other players. Your comments on peeker, for example, are spot-on. Unfortunately, scum can make useful arguments too.

I wanted to second this. I certainly think you could be town; there is no smoking gun. You might even be more likely to be town than scum. But at the moment you are looking more like scum than anyone else, to me at least. The best thing you could do to help town is make a good case against another player. It might siphon enough votes off you to save you and, if not, we’ll certainly pay attention to it tomorrow if you flip town.

My concerns at this point:
1.) We have some near lurkers, who i have no read on and have trouble remembering are even playing. We should do a roll call come Dawn to figure out who is uninvolved and why.
2.) If scum had a vanilla PM, Ed could have been making a bold scum-play to gain town cred and find power roles. I’m not sure how probable this is (I’m very far from voting for him), but I’d feel really foolish if I trusted him and it was true.

[Red_Skeezix]

@Natlaw

It think it’s better to keep someone who is willing to review his votes around.

Really, why is that? Does it say any thing about whether that player is town or not?

[Chronos]

I, for one, don’t think that Plankton’s “everyone is out to get me” statement was a slip: That’s just too big a mistake to make. I do think, however, that it reflects an underlying attitude that is not helpful for the game. You do have allies out there; you just don’t necessarily know who they are. Thinking that everyone is out to get you is just as useless as thinking that nobody is, since it gives you no basis on which to make decisions.

[Chipacabra]

Oof, I haven’t been keeping up as much as I should be. I’ll try to take some time to do some detailed study with notes a little later today. (real today, not toDay.)

Meanwhile, some quick thoughts.

At first, I hated Natlaw’s reasoning against peeker. Early votes on Day 1 are a tool to try to get info. Put someone on the spot, see how they (and others) react. It’s what I did in Harry Potter. 95% of the time, the results are boring null tells and you just move on. Sometimes someone flinches. I do have a problem with peeker’s play, but it’s different that Natlaw’s objection; I think peeker should have been doing MORE prod votes. For that matter, I think I should have been doing more prod votes.

But I went back and looked, and noticed that yeah, peeker left that ‘policy’ vote in place, but hasn’t followed up on it. It’s a lone vote, not likely to cause a lynch or mislynch, but still. Bad form.

I’m not sure I’m 100% on board with special ed’s play today, but I’m inclined to believe it’s well-intentioned town play. At least for now, anyway.

I’m also inclined to more or less believe Chronos, for now. I still think there’s more to the story, since (metagame thinking time) this half-mason thing seems like it’s just not enough to bother making a role out of. Possible scenarios: a) Chronos is telling the truth and has kind of a boring role, b) There’s more to the role that Chronos doesn’t think is safe to tell, c) There’s more to the role that Chronos doesn’t know, d) Chronos is lying. I think it’s pretty likely that there IS an Aragorn, because hey, Aragorn. So all that being said, Aragorn just needs to be very careful. One way or another, someone is probably trying to find him, I think.

Pleonast, people use acronyms without explanation all the time; I know I do. Sometimes it just seems so clever and obvious that it seems like it requires no explanation, even if it turns out some people don’t catch on right away just because they don’t think quite the same way. It’s not a scum (or town) tell, it’s just a human nature thing.

Still don’t have quite enough suspicion on any one person to place my vote yet. Most of my reads are ‘probably-town-I-don’t-agree-with’. As I said, need to sit down, take some notes, and read carefully.
NETA: Just as a quick comment, because the post is right there on my screen, Pleonast’s breakdown of mason theory is correct for the general case. Obviously, we can’t be sure if this specific case screws with theory.

[Suburban_Plankton]

@Chronos

I, for one, don’t think that Plankton’s “everyone is out to get me” statement was a slip: That’s just too big a mistake to make. I do think, however, that it reflects an underlying attitude that is not helpful for the game. You do have allies out there; you just don’t necessarily know who they are. Thinking that everyone is out to get you is just as useless as thinking that nobody is, since it gives you no basis on which to make decisions.

So are you saying that I said it on purpose? What motivation could I have for that?

[Chipacabra]

Oh, I do have one more thought. Self-preservation is not a townie virtue! Was Plankton in the Malazan game? Such an attitude would make sense there. Here, no. Just, no. A townie shouldn’t be concerned about staying alive, a townie should be concerned about dying usefully.

In fact, I’m going to put my vote where my mouth is.
Vote Suburban Plankton

I’ll still do the review later today.

[Astral_Rejection]

@Natlaw

In this particular case, you might truly see Peeker as more scummy than Suburban Plankton, although your write-up of posting histories doesn’t make that explicitly clear. However, I did want to point one thing out:

But he has even of an lead that I’ll vote elsewhere

Just because somebody has a lead doesn’t mean you should throw your vote away on somebody else. That does not help town get a feel for how you’re truly leaning, especially as days progress.

Again, that’s just a general sort of comment on the game as a whole. Your vote for Peeker might be honestly intended to reflect your feelings at this moment.

[Inner_Stickler]

The most useful death for a townie, especially a VT is by NK, not lynching, JSYK.

[Meeko]

@Chipacabra

Oh, may as well include a handshake. My win condition sentence, the sentence beginning with “You win” includes three instances of double letters.

**
You win when you destroy Meeko, Peeker and Roosh - in real life?**

[Meeko]

Well, I waded to about halfway into the thread today to catch up.

---

OOG

Not sure about my job, I was just handed more work today, and I have no real clue on what my time frame is. More work, but as of yet, no additional time to do it in.

That being said, I had two seconds to rub together today, and I set it aside to catch up here.

/OOG

---

Special, Peeker and Chronos, at least from the onset, seem to be at equal odds with each other. That is to say, if the game has a third party, I would bet one of them [at least] is a third party. Just seems way too convenient. I’m more inclined to trust Special here, over the other two [and indeed wonder if the other two aren’t both scum] but, for the grand total, it seems like they all want something.

**Special **wants to be verified as vanilla town, but I think he is doing a good, and legitimate town job on it.

Peeker is … well peeker, just with 10000% more SPAM this time around. My God Peeker, tell me I was never THAT bad.

Chronos is … IIRC Chronos is all about trying to cover his ass, before his ass is put out there.

I’m looking hard at the three of you, as much as I can.

---

But I move with a vote, elsewhere.

Pleonast, I have no clue what you are attempting, but with Balls that big, you can’t expect to escape scrutiny.

I’m a Town power role.

**That may do a lot to get Scum to look at you. However, it also means that you get Town looking away from you. **

This is NOT pro-town in the least. At best, it makes you an all to easy target. At best, it would make you a dead townie. I don’t see how this helps Town.

It hurts town, if we buy into it.

I think it is a bit like “Crazy as a Fox”.

But you’ve done it before…

Crazy as a fox that is crying wolf.
I could be wrong. Hell, we could all be wrong.

But you know, I’m taking my chances here that you have [apparently] pulled this trick one too many times, and are just coasting on the good times, back when you did this, and actually were town.

**
Vote Pleo**
I’m not so sure the handshake worked. Is anyone?

I got halfway through reading the game. I’m not going to name claim now. It is way too early for that - If that maneuver will even work.

[Natlaw]

@Red_Skeezix

@Natlaw

It think it’s better to keep someone who is willing to review his votes around.

Really, why is that? Does it say any thing about whether that player is town or not?

No, not directly but it does result in more discussion about the reasons for the vote. In this specific case it made me look more closely at USCDiver and **Chronos **post as well as Astral’s.

I also see what you’re getting at: scum would love being able to convince town to change their vote (although Astral went to review on his own). But that doesn’t mean town cannot make posts in defense to get people to review votes for them. I do agree that besides that you should also making a better case or at least share you thought on others.

@Astral_Rejection

Again, that’s just a general sort of comment on the game as a whole. Your vote for Peeker might be honestly intended to reflect your feelings at this moment.

I don’t think the vote for peeker is a reason Plankton is scummy (as it is for someone else) while I agree with the other ones given. Rather than to repeat those and since I had an unique point why peeker stood out to me, I made that my vote to give it more weight.

[Hoopy_Frood]

@Chipacabra

Oh, I do have one more thought. Self-preservation is not a townie virtue!

Yes it is.

You know you’re town. Therefore, you know if you are lynched town will get a mislynch. Granted, you run the risk of exposing a power role, but you could also nail a scum. Now there are situational exceptions, as there are for almost any scenario in mafia one could come up with, but as a general rule, saving yourself from dying if you’re town is a great thing to do, unless you are intentionally screwing over a power role to do so.

Self preservation is a null tell.