I know a good half-dozen card tricks that I like to perform now and then.
My tricks consist of 2 basic methods by which I determine the card that my victim has picked: mathematics and sleight of hand.
How the early stages of the tricks work isn’t important for the analogy though, so let’s skip ahead to where I already know where the victim’s card is on the table (which is analogous to Scum’s perfect knowledge). I don’t need to know what the suit or face value is, just where the card is located ( and Scum don’t need to know roles or role-names, they just need to know that their victim is not Scum).
I then place the victim’s card in such a way that it is grouped together with some other cards in a pile that is distinct from other piles and walk the victim through a series of decisions where s/he has to pick one or more piles on the table. If the victim selects the pile with their card in it, I remove some or all of the piles that they did not pick. If the victim doesn’t select the pile with their card in it, I remove the piles that s/he selected.
Sometimes I get lucky and I don’t have to change the way I treat the victim’s pile selections, but even if I do treat certain selections differently, usually the victim is not paying enough attention to realize that I took away the piles s/he picked the first time, but left the piles s/he picked the second time.
Tying this all back to Mafia…
As soon as macey started getting votes and people questioning those votes, I propose that Hawkeyeop started making his piles of cards on the table, and he knew exactly where I (and anyone else specifically not whipping macey’s ass into the noose was) on the table. As soon as macey was lynched, he put the piles into play.
The “pick a pile” decisions that he has walked us through, I believe, have a primary purpose of sticking a vote on a non-scum player who was not highly involved in macey’s lynch, and a secondary purpose of making it sound reasonable, but the subjective narrative and double standards that scum often include in such a gambit can be exposed from the right perspective, which is usually 20/20 hindsight, but I’m hoping that I don’t have to be lynched in this case.
Is the theory of “Night vote leader = Dead in the Morning” thing even testable in a reliable manner? (I suppose if this amounted to an extra lynch per Day/Night cycle perhaps all parties would be interested in finding out for sure, but still.)
…huh, Blaster Master hasn’t even POSTED in Day/Night 1.
Under what conditions would you replace and/or modkill a player?
Might as well ask for sure so we know what to do with an AWOL player.
The problem with that, of course, is that he’s not really giving us anything to judge him on (as to whether he’s scum or not). I believe that makes him an ideal candidate for Night Lynch Test, like Natlaw already said.
I’ve only played one other game with BLam and he posted a shit-ton every day. So, his nonparticipation seems odd to me.
I do kinda like the idea of testing the night lynch. I’ll see what other people think on this. But for it to work, Blam will need votes. So, I’ll leave mine where it is until we get more feedback on testing it, or until Blam shows up and participates.
I just feel it’s unfair that we are picking apart every post of every person - which lead to outing a Mason on day one. But, people who post nothing have absolutely zero suspicion since there is nothing for us to analyze.
Story, I assume I am so dead I don’t get to post anymore beyond this farewell fluff, right?
Fun playing with you all. Guess I owe Pleonast an apology. Not the first time I’ve been dead freakin’ wrong.
(sings, badly)
Somedaaay, my clue will come
Somedaaay, I’ll catch a scum…
Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week.
PS NAF, for the very first time in my life I was rooting for the Raiders today (to help the Bears get into the playoffs). It felt so wrong, yet oh so right, kind of like wearing women’s clothing. I knew you would be proud. At least your guys did their part.
Same as the game on the offboard site, I’m not adverse to a lynch-a-lurker strategy, as I think it makes it harder for scum to hide by not contributing. The downside to this is that it also makes it easier for scum to defend their votes on a townie.
If nothing better comes up, I will vote to lynch a lurker (i.e. someone who visits the board, but does not participate). Naturally, I’d prefer to have a target that actually did something more scummy.
Uh, Cookies forced picks are pretty standard with this crowd. So their presence is kind of Null since we all know how to play that game. With the level of this group I sure don’t expect Copablanca. But, WIFOM - scum would never do that.
And Nat if you need 'splaining let me know.
Rickie
And I will again chime in with: I know it is the holidays, but sheesh less than five posts seems to be absurd.
Nope, this is my first mafia game. And while it’s a fun discussion and it clears the smoke a bit, I think I just revealed you got smoke and mirrors :rolleyes:
So let’s see I can find scum around the Hawkeyeop and ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies argument (slightly dramatized):
ACT I - Hawkeyeop homes in on ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies
INT CABIN MAKESHIFT STAGE LIVING ROOM, Macey’s hand is lurking at the window, having made no signs after the finger.
P1.262 Our smoke machine opens with a small lynch the lurkers fog
P1.266 Hawk comes with a better plan: find the scum relations in the macey voters
P1.267 This immediately ‘sticks out like a sore thumb’ to Cookies
P1.268 Hawk foreshadows Cookies scum relation
P1.270 Smoke machine now blowing on full strength: Hawks plan is both good and bad, stage flooded in fog
P1.276 Cookies clears some confusing about what is happening with a card trick analogy
P1.279 Smoke machine breaks down, suggests Hawk and Cookies go to therapy while he gets repaired.
P1.291 Hawk uses the cleared stage to present his evidence
P1.298 In a grand finale, Hawk accuses Cookies
P1.303 Disgruntled smoke machine missed it and jealously points out Hawk sang a note wrong
ACT II - ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies takes revenge
INT CABIN MAKESHIFT STAGE LIVING ROOM - faint whispers from Pleonast and Thing Fish are barely heard over bufftabby taunts. Why can’t Deadites stay dead?!
P2.13 Some machine is talking to the director, misses the opening
p2.14 Without smoke, Cookies opens with a bang: Hawk is a scum illusionist!
p2.15 dotchan boos Cookies from the audience
p2.18 Smoke machine still talking to the director (I try to repair the smoke machine, but get him stuck in ACT I, getting a big lynch the lurker fog)
p2.37 Hawk reprises, explaining why there was a missing card pile, why he picked Cookies card
P2.39 Cookies takes Hawks song and sings it to shards
p2.41 Cookies reveals the card trick in all its scumminess (There seems to be a serious defect with the smoke machine, I’ll have to come back to that later)
ACT III: The audience joins in
INT CABIN LIVING ROOM - As a sudden gust of wind stirs the cornfield, everyone is reminded Dusk is approaching fast and vote must be cast soon
(being performed live now)
(end dramatization)
Assuming both are scum: A big scum-would-never-do-that gamble.
-no scum in danger (Thing Fish was vote leader), so I doubt it is an distraction
+So it would be to sacrifice one scum to give the other town credibility.
=Probability: low
Assuming Hawk scum, Cookies town:
+bufftabby’s vote becomes relevant as setup (P1.158)
+Hawk did conveniently leaves out the ‘ignoring macey’ and lurker card piles
+Finds Pleonast scummy, but puts him in the neutral pile (maybe scum already decided to Night kill him?)
+Could be defending Chucara (two votes at the time). Puts him in the neutral pile, even though he thinks macey was not fishing. Suggests if NAF scum, Chucara must be town
+mentioning everyone who responded gives a nice opportunity to put suspicion or false trust on a lot of players
=Probability: medium to high
Assuming Hawk town, Cookies scum:
+Hawk was on Cookies case earlier, but went back to see how Cookies compared to the others to make a better case
+Cookies did look scummier before the macey situation than hawk (imo of course)
If Cookies scum, the card trick is distraction. So let’s look at what he actually says about Hawk:
+During the voting for macey, he was not yet confirmed scum
+Not true, Hawks card trick plan came well into Night One. Cookies made no mention of card piles before that.
=Probability: high
Both town:
+encouraged by dotchan with her drive-by-vote/unvote
+bit early for scum to be sticking out there necks (though they didn’t know bufftabby would get killed)
=Probability: medium
Long post, but I’ll leaning towards Cookies being scum for the untruths in his replies to Hawk. If Hawkeyeop is scum though, it is a devilish plan.
A FOS dotchan for the drive by (un)vote.
I’ll wait with changing my vote until Hawk and Cookies have given the encore.
Besides peeker could suddenly break under the pressure of my vote :).
Bah, I think I read the second Cookies quote wrong. I thought meant he had posted that Hawk was making piles already. But it actually reads that Hawk started plotting after most votes where cast and put it into motion in the Night when it was clear macey was scum.
Sorry Cookies, this reduces your scum probability, now I definitely need that encore to make up my mind :o. Or to look at other candidates…
I know it’s probably bad to mix games, but in the other game we just lynched a guy who was lurking pretty heavily and she turned out scum.
On a side note: Man, it’s hard to keep track of everything if you’re in two games at once, especially if a lot of the players are in both games under the same names.
Sorry I haven’t been about for a couple of days folks.
Thoughts so far. I really didn’t think macey was scum despite his play - this is a lesson to me to stop judging people based on their play style in past games - I think some people are good at it but I’m not. (makes mental note to base decisions only on logic and ignore my ignorant gut)
Never suspected that bufftabby was scum. I can’t guess at who offed her (whether it was a town vig, serial killer or whatever) but the bloody handprint on her forehead’s interesting. You reckon we’ve got an exorcist in our midst trying to drive out the demons?
A small thought…if almost dead scum had made votes before they died will they still count or partially count while they’re not completely dead?
There’s been some speculation about whether or not scum would have tried to save macey yesterDay. I think after what he said they probably thought it more expedient to let him hang. bufftabby pretty much ignored the macey goings on and I wouldn’t be surprised if a few others did the same thing.
I will do a proper reread this evening before voting as this was just done from memory. I don’t have a candidate in mind to vote for just yet which sucks.
And in SDMB all the scum were active posters. I have never seen any evidence that lurkers are more likely to be scum than more robust posters. Player activeness is a product of playing style not alignment, In this case Blaster isn’t even a lurker, he is a non participant. That isn’t a delibrate strategy or at least isn’t one Story would let him get away with. I’m okay with voting for lurkers in order to get them to post more, but lynching lurkers is lazy and counter productive. Blaster could be scum, but we would have the same odds if we just picked a player randomly out of a hat. I think we can do better than that.
Cookies and Hawkeyeop do seem to be going at it pretty strongly. My fear is that they are both Town who have caught onto other townie mistakes. All of this behavior can be explained by Townies trying to play in Town’s best interest. I have to try very hard to remind myself this isn’t a dichotomy. There is also the possibility that one of them might not be Scum or Town, as we may have PFKs.
We’ve got a bit over a calendar day left. I’d like to hear more before deciding on a vote for one of them or someone else.
And, Netlaw, can you be more direct in your approach towards peeker? Are you insinuating something or just being funny?
‘Kay you have a vote on me. Whoppin’ doodle. But just out of curiosity what is your reasoning? I think I have answered your questions. If not what is still outstanding? And if my answers are not sufficient, why not? You keep up with the smoke while I was trying to be, in my own inestimable way, rather frank. You really need to help me out on this one, please.
And, I believe cookies be she. At least the last time that santo checked.
I heard about his scrotum and it sure sounded like someone put some serious whoop ass on it.
On rereading Hawk/Cookies I just made note of his posts as well, his appearance as smoke machine was just dramatization ;).
The real result of my reread of him are in the last two paragraphs of this post.
I still think peekercpa’s fluff is anti-town, but I cannot find anything pro-scum. I do note however, that he responded to the safe question about play style and strategy, but missed (paranoid: dodged) the one about what he thinks of Hawks analysis result (he did post an opinion of Hawks method, but again that is relatively safe content).
He could be waiting for Hawk or Cookies to make a slip and doesn’t want to guide them. On the other hand, he could be waiting for reactions of others to me-too those (covered by his smoke of course).
If I can’t make a choice between Hawk and Cookies, I’ll switch to dotchan I think.
Also still up for testing a Night Lynch of a lurker (Blaster Master being the best candidate if Story doesn’t replace / mod kill him at Dusk).
OK, so maybe voting for a non-participant is not a good strategy. I just hope Blam shows up or gets replaced.
I went back to Day one to see if I could find anyone arguing the lynch of Macey with the hopes that his fellow scum would try to prevent the lynch.
I got Cookies in Post #180 saying that scum wouldn’t do what Macey did. She further defends Macey’s actions in Post #186
Amrussel in post #193 states that he believes that scum would lurk rather than post. And Macey wasn’t lurking so he is not scum. Votes for Rapier. I would find this more suspicions if he voted for someone who had a chance to get more votes than Macey. I believe he was the first to vote for Rapier42 which means that there was very little chance of getting him lynched.
Natlaw’s post #194 seems a bit fishy to me. He is saying that he believes Macey’s actions were scummy, but voted for Peekercpa instead. It seems like a ploy to try to get pressure off of Macey without attracting attention to himself. If Macey did end up getting lynched he could always go back and say that he knew Macey was scummy and even posted it.
I really wish I had more to go off of. There was still plenty of time for the scum to try to save Macey when the board went down. I think the attempts would be more blatant and forceful as night approached. But, I also believe that early on, when the ball first started rolling on Macey, there would be scum hinting at other people - trying to persuade the mob in a different direction without looking scummy.
Hawkeyeop did a pretty good vote analysis back in posts #291 and #298 of yesterDay’s thread. I’m inclined to agree with him on most points. He finds Natlaw both mildly pro-town and mildly pro-scum which I can see his arguements for both. Which puts Natlaw mostly neutral.
Based on yesterday’s voting Cookies defense of Macey:
Unvote BlasterMaster (though I’m willing to revote him at the end of today to test the night lynch theory)
Vote ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies
