We are currently at 10/17 confirmed players, through posting or pming me.
I got my role PM and am checking in.
And what of those that decided to post less this time around?
I mean, I have a ways to go, until I hit 579 posts over here. :eek:
In any event, I have my role PM.
This probably won’t be news to anyone: I don’t like actually lynching lurkers on Day One (for the info reason you say), but I do like using the threat of lynching lurkers to make sure people actually post something. In a perfect world, everybody would post something substantive, but that never happens. Nothing irritates me more than players who sign up then virtually disappear, coasting through the early days while “louder” players get lynched just because they are actually playing. It’s a peeve of mine.
Do me a favor and DON’T read the Crimson Glyph then.
:smack:
Hey, I had no clue what I Was doing back then. I claim Noob.
I got my role PM and am checking in.
I think that lynch the lurker is a good idea, but it should not be confused with lynch the nonparticipant. A lurker is someone who is reading the thread but not contributing anything meaningful, while a nonparticipant isn’t even reading the thread (granted it isn’t always possible to tell the difference). A nonparticipant should be subbed out if it’s early in the game, or just ignored later on: They’re already as good as dead, so lynching them is like choosing “no lynch”.
A lurker, on the other hand, is making a deliberate decision not to contribute, on the main thread at least. Such a player might, for all anyone knows, still be quite active on the scum boards, and even using anti-Town powers. If we don’t punish lurking, then there’s no incentive for the Scum not to lurk, and there would then be no way we could ever catch them. Note that a lurker may have a significant number of posts, if they’re not relevant to the game: Some folks will try to “hide in plain sight” by constantly talking about the weather.
Of course, this should not be our only criterion for decisions, even on day one: Sometimes people screw up in other ways. And the decision is easiest if nobody lurks to begin with. Remember, we’re all here to have fun, and that’s not going to happen if you don’t play the game. If you don’t think you’ll be able to keep up, or the game is becoming no longer fun for you, please, say so, so the moderator can get a sub for you. Don’t just be silently swept along.
I agree with your definition of a lurker Chronos but on Day 1 I don’t think there is any way to tell the difference between a lurker and a non-participant and so it is a discussion best save until at least Day 2.
Right, we can’t get into the game quite yet.
Should we discuss the current exchange rates of Copper? 
Can’t believe we haven’t dug up this horse yet Digger old pal. better to do it now, rather than later. Also, I get to show off my Mafia themed Sig.
**We are at 12/17 confirmed and are awaiting just 5 confirmations.
The game is most likely going to begin(Day One, that is) on schedule for tomorrow. Plan for this unless I post otherwise.**
Here is the problem: there really isn’t anything interesting in-game to talk about yet, especially since there are no variant rules/roles/whatever to discuss. Heck, even if there’s an investigator, he or she hasn’t yet had a chance to do an investigation, so basically no town player actually has any information about preferable targets.
One thought I had was of using some publically-verifiable randomizer to pick a target for my vote. Say, counting down from the sign-up list, and using the total number of hits in 2 baseball games played on Saturday. Or whatever. (So if there were 20 total hits, you would count down to number 17, then go back to the top and count down to #3, which is me. Oops.)
Anyway, hits in two games is an arbitrary choice on my part - the idea would be to pick something that wouldn’t favor any particular position on the list. Total hits in two games might not be a big enough number - maybe pitch count by the Cubs’ Saturday starting pitcher?
The problem I see with this is that if the randomizer lands on a Town, it gives the scum a perfect excuse for joining in the lynch. On the other hand, if it lands on scum, we might get interesting information based on who suddenly detects a scum tell in someone else’s postings. (On the other other hand, if the randomizer lands on a Town, and some scum makes a slip, then they’d have the ability to distract attention from it by smudging whoever picked up on the slip… bleah I think I’m overthinking this.)
Anyway, I’m sure that this kind of idea has been discussed and attempted before in Mafia games. Thoughts?
Actually I have a decent topic for conversation. It’s a bit metagamey though, so be prepared.
This is a game based on a very definite canon. IIRC from when Mahaloth was talking about doing this, he stated that it would be based on the first two seasons only. Correct me if I’m wrong please. This is basically a game of the survivors of Flight 815 vs the Others. As such, it would be easy to assume certain roles are definately Town and some are not. Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Sun, Jin, Boone, Shannon, that australian pregnent chick who’s name I’m blanking on, Locke, etc etc, while the scum would be people like Ben and that hot doctor chick. The danger with that assumption is that mods have dealth with that issue in the past and thrown a curve ball by switching things up. In the current offboard game for example, the scum are members of the Evil League of Evil, and at least one person who was Town and was killed had an ELE member name from the canon. There are other examples if you look, like Firefly and so on.
So the question we have to ask ourselves is…how did Mahaloth decide to handle it? Did he give the scum cover roles to claim? Did he make some names that you would expect to be Town into Scum(for example, Hurley as scum)? Or did he not take this into consideration at all? If it’s the last, this game is breakable right now with a name claim. Since I don’t like to assume that the mod is an idiot, I’m going to go with one of the first two. Which specifically willl be something we’ll get a better idea of later, when we start killing off scum.
(Oh and Meeko? Don’t ask the mod which one he went with. He won’t tell us.)
I have received my PM.
Checking in here. Guess I’m lucky number 13.
I don’t know this canon at all. Is there a decent summary site that could bring me up to speed in short order? I suspect it won’t matter too much (please not another false doctor, one was enough!), but it might be helpful.
D’oh!
**You are wrong, or I changed my mind if I ever said that.
The game is not based on any particular moment in the canon of the show. In fact, you do not need to know a thing about the show to play the game. Like I said in the opening, Lost was/is just a basic structure to fit the story in.
In the opening post to the game I said it is not really close to the canon of the show. Contradictions between the show and the game may exist, so don’t overanalyze the game and show too much.**
Are you pointing towards a mass claim? ETA: Nanook
That might not be a bad idea. I’ve never watched the show but I would think there is a limited number of names and everyone else is probably generic town. I’ve gotten slammed for trying to divide the town before but with this setup I think it might be useful to divide into named roles and generics. We could quickly see which group is too large and do a majority of our scum hunting/role verifying there.
So how about a mass claim?
I think Mahaloth already has. He has commented on the fact that you won’t need to know anything about the show at all to play. Right?
Which is just as well, because I’ve seen a grand total of 5 minutes of the entire series.
Let’s break out some wine:
WIFOM
It would make perfect sense to me, to MIX up the names. I mean, If we are going so far as to say that prior knowledge is not needed, prior knowledge CAN NOT be relyed on. Some balancing back the other way, might be forcefully put into the game here.
Mahaloth has stated that this game is straight forward, compared to Crimson, BUT, thee are going to be some curveballs, as he stated upthread, in various ways.
OR
He could just leave it as is, as it would mean less work for him. I can only assume, given that this is a THEMED Mafia game, that it can not escape some complexity. The color here is probably going to go far. I haven’t seen the show, but I don’t live under a rock. I know how “great” the show is, I know what it has meant for ABC. – The color is there, and it is complex. Mahaloth would not dare make it harder for himself.
…
I was too busy watching 24 and PrisonBreak. By the time I started to hear about LOST, I heard that a LOT of people (viewers) were lost when it came to LOST.
I think this game will be fun, and I think that Lost will be found on my Netflix queue once this game is over.
The show has a pretty long list of characters – much longer than 17. It would not have been difficult for Mahaloth to give everyone a name.
How would a mass claim help the town at this point or at all? I’m not convinced that it would work to our advantage. If anything, it would give valuable information to the scum (like who would be more like to be a cop, doctor, etc.)
The situation is this: The scum will know which players aren’t scum. Scum with half a brain would realize that since the “character name” information is private, they can claim to be whoever they want or just another generic Joe Hologram and we’d never know the difference.
All the scum would have to do is wait until a feckless townie posts a useful name and then Google something up or post a generic title. Then, they have that person murdered and we’re down a townie. A mass claim is too easily manipulated to be useful to us.
Let’s please not line up like lambs to the slaughter on Day 1.