Well, but so then the question is, how could they be playing so we wouldn’t have killed any of them? Town screwing the pooch up to this point doesn’t, I don’t think, necessitate an assumption that the scum are omnipotent. If we’re going to assume that they’d never screw up, we might as well just quit. Somebody’s scum. That being the case, it seems like a good place to start where there are people blatantly acting contrary to town’s interest.
The alternative is we just randomly start killing the unconfirmed players who have been mildly helpful and mostly uncontroversial. You know, like me, or … you.
I’m quite happy with where my vote is now on pedescribe and think that the case against scuba is also looking decently strong. I could be wrong about scuba (that’s why he’s a number 2), but pedescribe has been pinging me to varying degrees since day 1. depending on whether I’m right about pedescribe, that’ll have serious implications for where my suspicions go next; there would finally be information for vote analysis (he’s come up for lynching several times so there’d be lots of arguments to track), more places to look for bandwagoning, etc. So, though shadow has me seriously scratching my head, I’m not going to suddenly vote for him Today when i have long standing suspicions of other players.
On a slightly more embarrassing level, I can’t recall much about what **shadow **has said and done this game. Like cardinal and diver, he’s been fairly quiet and has made little real impression of me. As I’ve gone through today and looked hard at the “live list”, I’ve begun to fear that the mafia are surviving by just not posting much, leaving us to trip ourselves up. I was planning to read over all of the low posters tonight to see if there were vote patterns. Just based on today, Shadow looks pretty suspicious but I’d like a chance to look at him in context before I FOS him. As it is, i’m about to go to bed and am pretty busy tomorrow morning :-/.
Oh, Meeko: Looks like your quote was from your case against scuba? I agree that scuba is suspicious (he’s my number 2 right now behind pedescribe), though that particular argument didn’t strike me as super telling.
Yeah, that whole thing was the result of piss-poor preview editing while at work. I had typed up a whole post about how Chronos posted he’d claimed fully on Day Three (from his own omnibus post of claims), so where was the statement AllWalker could evaluate, and somehow like I said I missed pretty much an entire day’s worth of posting. That part you quoted was originally me being derisive since the only Chronos statement on day one I found on my first re-read was his one about how obviously he knew he wasn’t scum, which was still semi-ambiguous to me.
Then I read the thread on preview and missed where you guys had done all the work I was trying to do, and done it better, and I didn’t end up deleting the whole thing apparently.
Meh. To restate my position, I’m willing to buy Chronos and story as breadcrumbed. The fact of the way that Allwalker used the same somewhat awkward phrasing both days (“far more likely to be”, verbatim) sticks out to me.
As for anything else, I’m not in favor of mod-killing **pedescribe **until the zero hour toDay. We have to balance effectively getting two lynches today (since he’s a prime candidate) with potentially getting two MISlynches today (if he’s town). I’m not as comfortable with that as some of you apparently are.
The way I see it, we have eight people who are completely uncomfirmed. We can probably confirm one or two more via role-claims (the Doctor definitely, and possibly more depending on name and role). We mod-kill one, lynch another, and then Meeko shoots some toNight. Depending on how many bullets Meeko has left, it’s conceivable that we could finish all of the Scum off right now, and I think it’s pretty likely that we could at least whittle their numbers down. As long as we kill more Scum than Town, we’re in good shape.
The only possibility I’m worried about is that maybe pedescribe was the Doctor. In that case, whatever’s keeping him from posting would also keep him from claiming, and we’d end up killing someone whom we could have confirmed. I think that’s a risk we have to take, though, since it’s the only clear path to victory I see.
I should also note, by the way, that pede’s profile says that he was active on the board less than four hours ago. So it’s not an inability to get online.
You’re asking the wrong question. The question is, why do I not play, when I sign up? And the answer is fright.
Haven’t seen a votecount yet, but I’m hoping that I don’t get modkilled…or lynched, obviously. On the other hand, I am, once again, not at all surprised. I’ll claim tomorrow, or today if the day ends earlier than I thought it did.
storyteller says that he was blocked all three Nights. One of you two is lying, and I’m inclined to trust the guy who’s been actively participating, and who may have been cleared by AllWalker.
Hey man, I’m a town roleblocker. The idea that there is also a scum roleblocker is not exactly a leap. Especially since storyteller admitted to being roleblocked Day 2.
Claims to date:
Chronos – claimed Vanilla Town, possibly confirmed by Allwalker
Meeko – claimed Town Vigilante
Pedescribe – claimed Town Roleblocker; blocked Storyteller on Night 1
Storyteller – claimed Town Detective, possibly confirmed by Allwalker; blocked all 3 nights
non-useful claims
Scuba_Ben – claimed vanilla Town
USCDiver – claimed “I know I’m town” in #1259
No claims
Telcontar
Zeriel
ShadowFacts
Jimmy Chitwood
Cardinal_fang
My thoughts on this list:
If Storyteller is lying about being the Detective, this would be a very good time for the real Detective to show up and shaft Story. But it’s got to be cross-checkable. Until that happens, I’m going to have to trust Storyteller.
There are seven non-claims (including myself), of which likely 3 to 5 are Scum and 1 is likely a Doctor. If we lynch at random, we have roughly even odds to hit Scum. With good analyses, which I openly admit I suck at, we can improve those odds quite a lot.
I fully understand Pedescribe claiming low activity due to fear. I froze up from fear in Sekhmet, and that contributed to people lynching me on Day 3, partly because I didn’t rebut the arguments against me. I came up Town in that game, for what it’s worth.
For now, I am tentatively going to trust Pedescribe, though I’d like to see the full role PM. Unvote Pedescribe
And to turn the spotlight on someone else for a while:
Chronos, the hell? Do you really think the possibility of two role-blockers is so out there?
I provisionally believe pedescribe. But here’s a point.
pedescribe claims to have blocked Shadow Night Two. When there were no kills. There was a block placed on me Night Two, which I know - the rest of you can’t know definitively, but it’s true nonetheless - had nothing to do with the lack of kills.
If ped is telling the truth, and I think he is, that means we have a Pro-Town roleblocker, Vigilante, and two Detectives. My guess right now is that we have no Doctor. Add a Doctor to that mix and the Town becomes so powerful that the Scum would need an army of Power roles to keep up - and we have been told that this is not a power-role heavy game.
So:
No kill on Night Two. Probably no Doctor to explain it. Claimed Pro-Town roleblocker blocked ShadowFacts. Two possibilities to explain the no-kill, then:
The Scum neglected to submit a kill, which is possible, but unlikely; or
Another thought, based on reading storyteller’s post.
If there is a Doctor, or indeed any additional Town power role, this would be a good time to claim.
We have 7 unclaimed players; if one more Townie can be confirmed, we’re down to 6 fully unknowns. We lynch one of them Today, and have 6 or 5 remaining. At that point Meeko can empty the magazine up to his night-kill limit, and see how many Scum he hits. (I note here that I am not asking how many bullets he has, nor how many he can fire on one Night. Meeko has implied that he has at least one bullet remaining, and that he is not restricted to one kill per Night.)
Meeko, what do you think?
If we go this route, I suggest coordinating storyteller’s investigating someone not on Meeko’s target list.
17 players. 2 roleblockers, one on each side, two killers, one on each side, two detectives, both on Town side? Six out of seventeen, and four are on town’s side?
Admittedly I haven’t even the faintest whiff of experience with balancing a Mafia game, but that suggests to me that there would have to be even more power roles on the scum side to balance that out. If (at minimum) four out of twelve or thirteen townies have some kind of power, and yet we’re down, what, six town so far, that’s pretty damn unlucky.
So, for the more experienced players: is this many power roles consistent with a game that isn’t heavy on power roles?
storyteller hit some of the same points. story, I have a problem with your logic. The majority of your post is premised on pedescribe telling the truth. There’s no indication why that is. Having assumed he’s telling the truth, you move on to conclude that there’s probably no doctor, etc. etc., and you vote for ShadowFacts. That’s a house of cards that doesn’t really stand up – you’ve got nothing to justify assumption #1, which is that pedescribe didn’t just make up a story about who he is and who he blocked (since everything he has claimed is based on information available just in this thread, he hasn’t really given us a basis).
A separate question: how exactly does scum having a designated killer in a game work? If ShadowFacts being blocked prevents a kill, what exactly do the other scum do? Does it change every night, or what?
Finally, Scuba, you aren’t really putting the spotlight on me if you don’t have anything tangible to pin on me. If you want me to comment on something I’d be glad to, but at the moment it’s just a naked vote and I’m not sure what purpose it serves.
Also, I feel a bit hesitant to point this out because, to be clear, this is not a means of accusation, but since I know that many of us believe that editing is a major anti-town maneuver, I note that pedescribe edited post number 1311.
Again, it doesn’t, to me, particularly suggest a vast conspiracy or anything, but I know it’s something we talked about earlier.
Jimmy, I’d appreciate your comments on, well, all the other unclaimed players.
As for voting for you – 1, I want to make sure there’s some pressure; 2, I want to make sure I have a vote out in case I fall asleep early again and don’t have a chance to assess people; 3, I wanted to get my vote off of pede.
Kindly make a good case for who’s likely to be Scum, and I’ll do my best to cast a considered vote.
storyteller, here’s a thought for you: As you suggested up-thread, maybe you can’t get a reading on Scum; perhaps you get identical results when you’re blocked as when you investigate Scum. I suggest you consider investigating Chronos as a claimed Townie, to evaluate this possibility. What do you think of this idea?
Great, here we go again. I know I’m probably screwed now that storyteller has accused me (deja vu, anyone?), but I will try not to get railroaded here.
I was NOT blocked on Night Two, I was protected. Here is the PM I received from Mahaloth, in its entirety:
The only way (besides being the Doctor) that pedescribe could have known I was targeted on Night Two is if he was doing the targeting. And since he claimed roleblocker, not Doctor, he must be scum.
Ish. There’s a pretty handy balancing system that a guy who has on this Board quite a bit (JSexton) proposed way back when we were playing the first of these. Broadly speaking, it assigns a point value to every kind of role.
A Detective is worth 4 points; I’m going to assign 4 points for my own role, but only 3.5 for AllWalker’s, since his required him to expend more effort forcing people to say things that would trigger the power. A Compulsory Vigilante is worth 1.5 points, which I’d adjust all the way up to 3 points for the non-Compulsory, multiple-shot version we see here. A role-blocker is worth 2. So assuming no additional power roles (and assuming pedescribe is telling the truth), the Town has approximately 12.5 points worth of power roles.
A vanilla Townie is worth 1 point in this system. Let’s imagine four Scum. That’s 13 Town total, meaning nine vanillas, so 19.5 points total for the Town.
A vanilla Scum is worth 4.5 points. A Scum role-blocker is worth 6.5. Three vanillas plus a role blocker thus come out to 20 points total for the Scum.
That balances nicely.
Suppose three Scum. Now the Town has one extra vanilla, one point. 20.5 points. Two vanilla Scum plus a role-blocker equals 15.5 points - way out of balance. Even a Scum set-up of one vanilla, one role-blocker, and a Godfather (a player who reads as innocent to investigators, worth about 7 points) gets only to 18 points.
Finally, suppose five Scum. Town down to 18.5 points. Four vanilla Scum plus one roleblocker = 24 points - WAY out of balance, even if you substitute in a Doctor for one of the vanilla Townies.
Thus:
Five Scum is incredibly unlikely.
Three Scum is very unlikely, but if there are three Scum there is probably a Godfather.
The most balanced arrangement of roles is that all claimed power roles are as claimed, everyone else is either vanilla or Scum, and there is no Godfather.
It is hypothetically possible that we have additional power role(s), for Scum, and a Godfather.
Well, he’s claimed Jack Shepard, the Towniest name of them all. There has been no counterclaim, so now you’re asking me to believe that Mahaloth initially left out the biggest character in the show from the player list, then assigned it as a Scum cover role.
I think pedescribe is likely telling the truth, and am willing to act on that belief. At some point, we have to make assumptions and act on them, or we’ll never do anything at all.
This tends to vary widely from game to game, but most often the Scum choose a designated killer. A Scum power role (say, a role-blocker) would usually not be able to use his/her power if chosen to be the designated killer. (Thus, if my theory is correct, ShadowFacts is almost certainly not the Scum’s role-blocker, as he was [hypothetically] the designated killer Night Two). The other Scum don’t do anything at all, typically.