# Lost Mafia/Werewolf/Psychopath **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [June 10, 2009, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337 "2009-06-10T15:43:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 101
**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:** [July 21, 2009, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2001 "2009-07-21T20:16:58Z")
Oh, also: Quoth **Jimmy** : > [@](#): > > He wasn’t. And it doesn’t make any sense for me to lie in that direction no matter where you think my interests lie. It does make sense. If my program is accurate, at least, then **Diver** being Scum implies that you’re Scum, so you’d want us to think he wasn’t. Quoth **Meeko** : > [@](#): > > Is it possible to lose tonight, with the NK ? Only if the game started with five Scum, or they have some other trick up their sleeve, but if that’s the case, then there’s nothing we can do about it, and **Mahaloth** would presumably have declared the game over right now. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2009, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2002 "2009-07-21T20:32:58Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Oh, also: > Quoth **Jimmy** :It does make sense. If my program is accurate, at least, then **Diver** being Scum implies that you’re Scum, so you’d want us to think he wasn’t. Yes, that’s true. And I voted for him to force a tie and risk both of us, so that we could go to a smoke monster scenario, which I expected to happen, so that I could come back and report that he was town when he was really scum. ---
**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:** [July 21, 2009, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2003 "2009-07-21T20:42:12Z")
I was thinking more along the lines of, you voted him because if a Scum was going to die anyway, then the other one might as well gain some Townie cred in the process. And then you didn’t break the tie because for you, at least (or for **Diver** , of course), breaking the tie would be suicide. And then when the smoke monster scenario came up, you decided then that you’d better lie. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2009, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2004 "2009-07-21T21:01:46Z")
Fair enough; it seems obvious to me, though, that if that was our thinking, **Diver** would have voted for me, not the other way around. But I guess that’s your call. In other news: 1. it occurs to me that if we lynched **Zeriel** for a perfect information slip about **Diver** , it should have occurred to somebody that we might take that as an indication that what **Zeriel** said about **Diver** (which was that he was town) should have carried some weight. Obviously I didn’t think of it, but then, I’m an idiot. 2. Speaking of perfect information, [QUOTE=Telcontar] Can we lynch the smoke monster next? It ate a townie! [/QUOTE] At least, I _said_ he was a townie. Thanks for that immediate measure of trust, I guess. Does my word carry that much persuasive force in these parts suddenly? ---
**Author:** ![Telcontar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3bc359/32.png) [@Telcontar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telcontar)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2009, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2005 "2009-07-21T22:20:51Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > Fair enough; it seems obvious to me, though, that if that was our thinking, **Diver** would have voted for me, not the other way around. But I guess that’s your call. > > In other news: > > 1. it occurs to me that if we lynched **Zeriel** for a perfect information slip about **Diver** , it should have occurred to somebody that we might take that as an indication that what **Zeriel** said about **Diver** (which was that he was town) should have carried some weight. Obviously I didn’t think of it, but then, I’m an idiot. :smack: It actually isn’t a perfectly decisive argument, but it would have been persuasive. If only you or he had made it 7 hours ago. > [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > 1. Speaking of perfect information, > > At least, I _said_ he was a townie. Thanks for that immediate measure of trust, I guess. Does my word carry that much persuasive force in these parts suddenly? True, i was neglecting the possibility that you were a low down dirty deceiver. I promise to never do it again :). ---
**Author:** ![Telcontar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3bc359/32.png) [@Telcontar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telcontar)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2009, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2006 "2009-07-21T22:21:51Z")
It hurts that I can’t edit that to fix the Jayne quote. The sacrifices i make for you people. ---
**Author:** ![Meeko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e495f1/32.png) [@Meeko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meeko)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2009, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2007 "2009-07-21T23:09:17Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > Yes, it would have been better. We could have lost the game immediately. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Meeko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e495f1/32.png) [@Meeko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meeko)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2009, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2008 "2009-07-21T23:12:59Z")
And those of us who did not vote for Diver, now have another reason to be happy. And those of us who did not vote for Jimmy, now have another reason to be mad. I’m willing to bet, that there is another PIS slip somewhere. I’m not one to go into a haystack for a needle. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2009, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2009 "2009-07-21T23:15:26Z")
I can’t figure out what you’re talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Meeko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e495f1/32.png) [@Meeko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meeko)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2010 "2009-07-22T00:19:07Z")
Can we learn anything from the amount of vote shifting, or lack thereof? \*\*Should we look at the three people who voted for Diver? \*\* ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2011 "2009-07-22T00:24:44Z")
Could you please tell me what you were talking about? ---
**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:** [July 22, 2009, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2012 "2009-07-22T00:30:51Z")
> [@](#): > > Should we look at the three people who voted for Diver? That obviously depends on what we think of **Jimmy**. If **Jimmy** is Scum, then absolutely the folks who voted for **Diver** look suspicious, but if he’s not, then it doesn’t mean anything. ---
**Author:** ![cardinal\_fang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardinal_fang/32/15316_2.png) [@cardinal\_fang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cardinal_fang)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2013 "2009-07-22T00:40:27Z")
I suppose this is our punishment for voting a tie. A player is killed but we get no (or weird) information out of it. Well-played, **Mahaloth**. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![cardinal\_fang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardinal_fang/32/15316_2.png) [@cardinal\_fang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cardinal_fang)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2014 "2009-07-22T01:12:23Z")
OK, allow me to speculate and attempt to inject something useful. This is a metagamey question for Mafia mods or those with mod insight. Why the elaborate tie-breaking mechanics? **Chronos** states the obvious [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11362350&postcount=1985). It could well be that **Mahaloth** was just spinning additional _Lost_ colour for the fun of it, and the result was (essentially) a coin flip. My question is, though: does this say anything about **Jimmy** ’s and **Diver** ’s alignment? I am thinking that if was Scum/Scum or Town/Town, **Mahaloth** might not care if a random roll decided the lynch, but he might not be happy about letting it decide a Town/Scum scenario with the game on the line (or close to it). At the very least, the principals having to provide some sort of input washes his hands of the random element. Note: I am not implying anything about **Jimmy** ’s (or **Diver** ’s) alignment. As **Chronos** mentioned, we essentially don’t know any more now than we did at the start of the day. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2015 "2009-07-22T01:44:54Z")
We went through the whole tiebreaking conversation in the first couple of days. **Mahaloth** was playing coy from the very beginning with regard to what happened with a tie. First he said “if there’s a tie… you’ll see.” Then he demonstrated how to ask the mod a question in bold and green by using the example question “what happens in case of a tie?” And at some point we asked and got an unsatisfactory response. Given all of this, I thought that the fact that town didn’t want to risk getting screwed with in a tie was well-worn ground. My take on it is that **Mahaloth** had a particular fun idea about what to do with a tie from the very beginning (since according to [internet](http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/The_Monster) the smoke monster is kind of a big deal) and tried to give us fair warning. **storyteller** ’s [post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11250113&postcount=451) right in the middle of our fear-of-tie discussion sums it up pretty well. I think at that point we were pretty much expecting a wacky tiebreaker, and I guess it just got lost (oh shit look at me) in the (are you ready) fog of the gameplay since then. ---
**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:** [July 22, 2009, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2016 "2009-07-22T01:52:11Z")
> [@](#): > > Note: I am not implying anything about Jimmy’s (or Diver’s) alignment. Except you are: **Jimmy** Town but **Diver** Scum isn’t possible, but **Jimmy** Scum but **Diver** Town is. So by implying that they were different alignment, you’re effectively implying that **Jimmy** is Scum. I’m not sure I buy the underlying argument, but if you do, that’s where it logically leads. I might also add that if we had known about this mechanic beforehand, it would have been a lot better deterrent than an ominous “We’ll see”. Here I was thinking that the worst that could happen was that the Scum got to break the tie, but this is in at least some ways worse: Information is critical in this game, and everyone takes for granted finding out what players were when they die. ---
**Author:** ![cardinal\_fang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardinal_fang/32/15316_2.png) [@cardinal\_fang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cardinal_fang)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2017 "2009-07-22T01:58:30Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Except you are: **Jimmy** Town but **Diver** Scum isn’t possible, but **Jimmy** Scum but **Diver** Town is. So by implying that they were different alignment, you’re effectively implying that **Jimmy** is Scum. I’m not sure I buy the underlying argument, but if you do, that’s where it logically leads. > > [snip] Underlining mine. Why do you say that? ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2018 "2009-07-22T02:01:07Z")
It was a good enough deterrent for the first few nights, at least. I just thought everyone generally assumed a tie was bad for town. Seems reasonable enough to me. Generally speaking, what are the possibilities? Scum can break tie: bad Who dies determined randomly: bad Neither dies: bad Both die: neutral? I guess; could be good, could be bad. Last person to vote to make the tie dies: bad Someone dies at random: bad Just because the way that it was bad was unexpected doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have known it was bonecrushingly dense to take the one thing we had control of and cede control. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2019 "2009-07-22T02:03:58Z")
**fang** - I think what he meant was that it would be really fucked up behavior for me to tell you all **Diver** was town if he was scum, which is pretty reasonable. I mean, assuming that I’m at any level a rational actor, you can safely conclude that I don’t think it’s a good idea, if I’m town, to lie about what **Diver** was. I mean, a good town player wouldn’t take information that only he was privy to and manipulate and mislead the rest of town just to serve some kind of inscrutable selfish design, right? ---
**Author:** ![cardinal\_fang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardinal_fang/32/15316_2.png) [@cardinal\_fang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cardinal_fang)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337/2020 "2009-07-22T02:11:59Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > **fang** - I think what he meant was that it would be really fucked up behavior for me to tell you all **Diver** was town if he was scum, which is pretty reasonable. > > I mean, assuming that I’m at any level a rational actor, you can safely conclude that I don’t think it’s a good idea, if I’m town, to lie about what **Diver** was. I mean, a good town player wouldn’t take information that only he was privy to and manipulate and mislead the rest of town just to serve some kind of inscrutable selfish design, right? I get that part, but I have no idea what happened with the smoke, how you came to know what you did, and if the information you were given is accurate in the first place. Note: If it needs saying, I am not fishing for more info – please don’t elaborate and risk a modkill, etc. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337.md?page=100) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lost-mafia-werewolf-psychopath/499337.md?page=102)