Mafia - Game in progress [Edited title]

[ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies]

Work ensues. Should be able to participate more tomorrow.

[USCDiver]

@DiggitCamara

I see several reasons why it would be good for town:

1. Town has at least some players whom they can trust
2. The pool of players from whom to choose has been reduced for the investigator, making him/her more effective
3. A Doctor might have a suitable pool of players whom (s)he’d protect during Night

If there still was a townie nightkiller (s)he wouldn’t have to worry about killing some townies, at least. But that point is obviously moot.

I honestly don’t see a downside to this.

The downside is that having 2-3 confirmed Town out of 24 players is not as useful as having 2-3 confirmed Town out of 10 players. Sure the Doctor can play WIFOM with Scum, but if the Masons are not in any more danger than any other Townie why should they claim now?

[USCDiver]

@choie

Is it really impossible for scum to claim Masons and bewilder Town? How do we know who’s who?

No it isn’t impossible, but at this point in the game if we get two competing Mason claims, we simply lynch one of them. If we get a Scum and the other is still alive the following Morning we lynch him next. If we get a Real Mason we lynch the other two clowns next. Like I said, Scum trade two for two and we have, at worst, lynched a townie unnecessarily. This early in the game that one mislynch is worth the trade; later in the game, say at lynch or lose, it becomes more of a dicey subject. (For a truly bizarre Double Mason claim see Mafia: Sekham from WAY back in the day. Scum were convinced they were near losing and town was incredibly lost. It was weird being Town and not having a clue what was going on when that happened and then reading the Scum boards later where they were taking about conceding the Game. Town won in a three man game at the end)

[DiggitCamara]

@USCDiver

The downside is that having 2-3 confirmed Town out of 24 players is not as useful as having 2-3 confirmed Town out of 10 players. Sure the Doctor can play WIFOM with Scum, but if the Masons are not in any more danger than any other Townie why should they claim now?

Right. But in past games I’ve seen Scum being pretty good at ferreting out the Investigator or the Doctor. If we have 3 or more confirmed Town now they’ll have to target them pretty soon at Night; else they get to have the 2-3 confirmed Town out of 10 scenario you’re talking about.

At the same time both the Investigator and the Doctor get a much better chance to stay alive (they only have to worry about being lynched for the next couple of Days). The Investigator gets to publish his/her results and those results are more interesting (because they’d add to the already confirmed Masons)

[orthohedron]

Can we get a vote tally for day two so far?

[Stanislaus]

First of all,

vote Babale

He had my vote yesterday; reasons here:

[spoiler]

@Stanislaus

1. Over-elaborate explanations when questioned are a scum tell I’ve seen work a lot;
2. His vote for Chucara which essentially blamed Chucara for other people’s (pizza’s) subsequent votes smacks of a manufactured case;
3. His unvote for Chucara after he was called on it smacks of scum backing away from a problem.

[/spoiler] Being absent due to time-pressure is a null tell, but with nor reason to unvote, I’m going to try to be more disciplined and stick with suspicions from Day to Day.

Secondly, I’ve been reading over toDay, and there’s been a marked contrast with yesterDay in terms of participation and content. I’m just as guilty as anyone, but we’ve got substantially fewer posts so there’s a lot less to go on.

However, what we do have is even thinner than it appears, because the majority of it is discussions about messages and grammar and formatting and very little of it is about building cases. It’snot really until Diggit shows up and starts a) multi-voting and b) collecting votes that we really get anywhere near Mafia play.

How much of this is really coincidence? Certainly, with fewer votes flying around there’s less pressure on Scum to get involved and make cases. In fact, the endless discussions about the Barn messages are exactly the kind of thing Scum want. So I’m going to:

vote choie

because despite her high postcount today, she has stuck resolutely to the ramifications of the Barn and avoided even voting.

I’ll skip over her first few posts (because we should discuss the messages to some extent) and jump in here:

@choie

So there’s plenty of WIFOM in looking too carefully at the lack of capitalization and/or punctuation in that last message. Not saying it’s meaningless, but it also means it’s kind of a null tell. For example, did I mention my job on purpose (pro editor) to make it seem less likely that I wrote that final message? I have no doubt some may think so. (Ooh I really wanted to write, “You might think that; I couldn’t possibly comment.” I have House of Cards on the brain these days.)

This is a lot of words to say basically very little - it’s WIFOM, it’s not meaningless, it’s a null tell. That last two are a contradiction, of course.

I’m also curious if Astral is just as dubious at everyone else now that others are doing way more questioning of Pleo’s first post than I ever did. I never doubted it’s from Pleonast myself.

Wee bit of smudging on the person who questioned her motives there.

And I just realized that while story said the Barn messages can be formatted however the writer wants them, I don’t think s/he said whether that blue text was part of the writer’s formatting or story’s own (now that “The Butcher” has been revealed to be the Town Vig).

If it’s not asking for too much info, story, was the blue text your formatting, or the writer’s?

@choie

True, but story described the writing as “in white paint.” If the message was color-coded by Pleo, shouldn’t the description have said “in white and blue paint” instead?

There is a >90% chance I’m overthinking this. I just wanted to ask story to be sure.

More focus on formatting - a lot of effort on something that’s just not that material.

@choie

I understand we may all be overthinking (yeah, that’s newsworthy: Mafia Players in Overthinking Shocker!) but I just want to stress that the only reason I’m asking for this to be clarified is that if it was Pleo, and if anyone can ask for his or her name (or some other identifier) in blue, then we shouldn’t assume that the font color means anything, because Scum would obviously take advantage of our natural inclination to trust blue text.

Not that Pleonast wasn’t Town, because obviously he was. But even if he weren’t, he could have used blue. And if we didn’t ask these questions of story we’d be wondering if this meant the writer was Town or not.

I’m getting a headache.

And again - with the second admission of overthinking. Self-awareness that one’s play is anti-Town is a slight scum-tell - they know they’re doing something they shouldn’t and think it’s as obvious to everyone else as it is to them. (If only!) It’s also something of a pre-emptive defence.

@choie

By the way, as a pro tip to y’all who may not have noticed this phenomenon, forum mods and admins know that one of the most common things sockpuppets do, when they try to create alternate personas, is write as if they’re barely literate. It’s a way of covering their real writing style. So you get a lot of people writing like e.e. cummings or using L33T or teen textspeak or they use lots of emoticons/LOLspeak and so on. (Look at folks like umkay or any other of the myriad of socks the SDMB has had.) My guess that’s what the “wolf’s” thing was about.

So if you want my considered opinion, the apostrophe is either a) a simple typo (y’know, like everyone does… except me, of course. Especially since the game allows for editing, hallelujah!) or b) a wolf hiding his writing style. Null tell, as I’ve said before.

Another lengthy post, giving us lots of detail on something that means, ultimately, nothing one way or the other. I know choie’s a writer and therefore naturally expressive when she posts, but this still seems like a lot of attention being focused on trivia.

Then, after a long, long post going through the pros and cons of Mason claiming, we get this.

@choie

Sigh. I just know people are gonna ding me for saying a whole lot of nothing. .

And by golly, I am one of those people! Again, self-awareness about what she’s doing, and a pre-emptive defence.

So in sum:

1. Posting a lot about relative trivia;
2. Failing to make cases;
3. Pre-emptively defending 1) above, as if she knows she’s doing something she shouldn’t.

[Johnny_Bravo]

@DiggitCamara

So, I singled out three players who immediately harped on the grammatic content of the message. My guess is: the Scum conclave wrote it specifically to have us looking for any player whose grammar is less than perfect to single them out for a lynch. Therefore, any and all who pointed out the grammar errors quickly would be left out of lynching consideration.

This is a terrible reason to vote. If the error was on purpose (and I still don’t really see the profit in that), then it was pretty good Doper bait. The barn would have to be something like “male circumcision/cat declawing is a moral mandate” or “real chili has beans” to get a better response.

Laying suspicion on Dopers for being pedantic is like laying suspicion on fish for being wet.

Vote DiggitCamara

[Enderw24]

So I disagree with most everything DiggitCamara has said today. But I’m not voting for him because I don’t think he’s scum. At least, not yet. What I see is him taking an unpopular or unconventional opinion and seeing it through to the best of his ability. I don’t think Town has to move in lockstep and I don’t think that me disagreeing with someone necessarily means they must be on the opposite team as me.

Stanislaus has made a pretty convincing case on Choie, though. She’s asking questions that are either plainly in the rules or were clarified by Storyteller this very Day, posing them as “what if…” hypotheticals when we clearly have the answer already. Her posts ask us to keep diving back into the barn messages when they’re just one very small component of what we’re supposed to be doing: hunting scum.

vote choie

[Johnny_Bravo]

Here is my count. I couldn’t figure out how to strikethrough so I did the unvote for Choie in red. Any miscounts are purely accidental etc etc.

Six Votes
DiggitCamara (Silverjan - 761) (Mahaloth - 763) (TexCat - 764) (Dizzymrslizzy - 765) (Johnny Bravo - 787) (Enderw24 - 788)

Two Votes
Choie (Guri - 712) (Diggit - 758,768) (Stanislaus - 786)

One Vote
Silverjan (Guri - 712)
Texcat (Guri - 712)
**Chucara **(TexCat - 733)
**Suburban Plankton **(Diggit - 758)
Babale (Stanislaus - 786)

[Stanislaus]

You’ve credited Ender’s vote for choie to Diggit - it should be 5-3, not 6-2:

Five Votes
DiggitCamara (Silverjan - 761) (Mahaloth - 763) (TexCat - 764) (Dizzymrslizzy - 765) (Johnny Bravo - 787)

Three Votes
Choie (Guri - 712) (Diggit - 758,768) (Stanislaus - 786) (Enderw24 - 788)

One Vote
Silverjan (Guri - 712)
Texcat (Guri - 712)
**Chucara **(TexCat - 733)
**Suburban Plankton **(Diggit - 758)
Babale (Stanislaus - 786)
[/QUOTE]

[Johnny_Bravo]

Dangit. Thanks for the catch. I’m not sure how I managed that.

[DiggitCamara]

So, since Thursday is the deadline for this Day’s lynch, I guess I have to make an effort to stop my lynching bandwagon and give us time to discuss other candidates.

I am the author of the second message. I am a member of a masonic group. I obviously know the meaning of the acronyms but I think they’re a pretty good way to identify the other masons. I’ll tell you this: the T in OWT stands for “Three”. The second T in TTW stands for “third”.

I’ll gladly answer any questions you have about my role.

[Enderw24]

Interesting.

DiggitCamara, do you have knowledge of the identities of any other Masons in this game? Do you have an outside board available for discussions?

[Mahaloth]

Unvote

[choie]

Uh yeah, I’m talking about the Barn because there’s nothing else to talk about. That’s all anyone’s been talking about. All you people voting me are talking about is me talking about the Barn. Kinda funny and recursive.

Anyway, if Diggit is one of three Masons, I presume s/he’s more important than I am as vanilla, so you might as well vote me off if no one else finds anyone else scummy. Personally I think Guiri is hella scummy after his behavior in the last round. But anyway, just to get this over with,

vote choie
vote Guiri

Me because I’m a better vote than Diggit if s/he can genuinely provide info, and also because I’m not paying attention very well and apparently my misreading and asking questions* because I’m inexperienced is turning me into a distraction.

Guiri for hounding me constantly and basically turning Town against someone he almost certainly knows is Town.

See you on the flip side. I gotta say there’s a special irony that my last novel had a werewolf hero, and I’m now being lynched for the first time in my Mafia history – and this misjustice is likely being led by a bunch of werewolves. (The sequel has plenty of bad werewolves in it, so I’ll have the last laugh!)

• But I still wish story would answer that question about the blue color. Once I’m gone and you find everyone coloring their Barn messages blue or red to fuck with your minds, just remember I asked about this and shake your heads in shame for thinking this was a dumb question.

[DiggitCamara]

@Enderw24

Interesting.

DiggitCamara, do you have knowledge of the identities of any other Masons in this game? Do you have an outside board available for discussions?

Yes, I do know who they are.

No, we don’t have an outside board available for discussion. Hence the Barn message.

[DiggitCamara]

@storyteller0910

**I don’t normally like to wade into discussions like these, but since it’s basically administrative I’ll just say:

If you choose to post a message, you can do anything you want with it with regard to formatting and color as long as you stay within the word count.**

*underlining by me

@choie

(snipped)

• But I still wish story would answer that question about the blue color. Once I’m gone and you find everyone coloring their Barn messages blue or red to fuck with your minds, just remember I asked about this and shake your heads in shame for thinking this was a dumb question.

I think **storyteller **answered that some time ago…

[choie]

@DiggitCamara

*underlining by me
I think **storyteller **answered that some time ago…

FFS I know that, but then why did s/he say that it was written in white paint? Why not white and blue? Sue me, I don’t like unreliable narrators.

All I wanted was a clarification. Other people were confused about this too. I don’t think it was too much to ask of the moderator to clarify whether just anyone is allowed to use the blue and red colors endemic to the gameplay.

(Frankly if I were story and someone posting a barn message said “hey color my signature blue!” I’d have colored it with a different shade of blue, just to screw with their patently obvious attempt to make us think they’re Town. :))

[Mahaloth]

Vote choie

Hard to describe the reasoning on this. Basically:

The self-vote

first-time getting lynched comment

the overall “bitter” vibe of that last post

=

Me thinking this is a scum pretending to be a desperate to not die town. The frustration could come from choie’s first lynch actually happening as scum.

[USCDiver]

@choie

FFS I know that, but then why did s/he say that it was written in white paint? Why not white and blue? Sue me, I don’t like unreliable narrators.

Then you should read more closely. The Dawn color included a line by “Stanislaus” saying, “Where did someone find blue paint in medieval Craptown?”

I think your obsession with this minor point which has clearly been explained is strange. Sure we will have to look at an coloring of future barn posts with suspicion but this one is almost assuredly genuine given Pleo’s Town flip.

The self vote though is what’s pushing me over the edge from strange to scummy.

Vote choie