# \[Mafia game\] The Realm of Phere **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [April 1, 2012, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480 "2012-04-01T15:04:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 20
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/381 "2012-04-09T09:47:49Z")
> [@Askthepizzaguy](#): > > Otherwise, just speak ITS name and you shall have your answer… Err … Phere, Sir? Yahweh? יהוה ? Baʿal Zəbûb? \*\* IT? W T F ?\*\* ---
**Author:** ![Askthepizzaguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askthepizzaguy/32/9405_2.png) [@Askthepizzaguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askthepizzaguy)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/382 "2012-04-09T09:50:13Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > err … Phere, sir? _ **"What do YOU want, pond scum** _\*\*\*?!?"\*\*\* ---
**Author:** ![Normal\_Phase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Normal\_Phase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Normal_Phase)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/383 "2012-04-09T10:47:31Z")
Did you really decide, or was that just poetic license for a regular tie-break in which Mosier gained at least two votes on Astral and one on Gadarene, somehow? ---
**Author:** ![Astral\_Rejection](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/258eb7/32.png) [@Astral\_Rejection](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astral_Rejection)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/384 "2012-04-09T12:26:13Z")
> [@Normal\_Phase](#): > > Did you really decide, or was that just poetic license for a regular tie-break in which Mosier gained at least two votes on Astral and one on Gadarene, somehow? I interpreted those as some kind of power. I guess this means resurrection isn’t a part of the game. ---
**Author:** ![Normal\_Phase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Normal\_Phase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Normal_Phase)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/385 "2012-04-09T12:36:32Z")
Oh never mind, I didn’t even read the post before the update. Three extra votes placed on Mosier by some secret power (and a couple other unadvertised extra votes, one on Mosier and one on Gadarene). Well. Whether this means what it looks like or not, I sort of expect to wake up dead. I guess I should finish what I had to say about MHaye, no? ---
**Author:** ![NAF1138](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naf1138/32/3245_2.png) [@NAF1138](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NAF1138)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/386 "2012-04-09T12:39:14Z")
Yes you should. This game is interesting. I hope I live long enough to figure out what the heck is happening. ---
**Author:** ![Normal\_Phase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Normal\_Phase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Normal_Phase)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/387 "2012-04-09T12:46:22Z")
Well, the color itself says who’s holding the reins of the demon lord, so there’s not really a whole lot to be thought about, is there? ---
**Author:** ![gnarlycharlie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/5f9b8f/32.png) [@gnarlycharlie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnarlycharlie)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/388 "2012-04-09T12:53:02Z")
AWESOME!!! i too want to live long enough to understand this. ---
**Author:** ![Normal\_Phase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Normal\_Phase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Normal_Phase)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/389 "2012-04-09T12:53:58Z")
I mean, unless the traitor player has an enormous amount of vote-altering power to play around with, then that would seem a great deal of effort just to make Astral and/or Gadarene look bad. I could see it being a bit of both if Astral is scum and Gadarene not (in which case Guiri’s got the target on his butt should that slippery bastard actually be town, and not me; and in which case those last couple of votes on Gadarene also need scrutiny _waves at Bob and especially lilflower_), but yeah. Anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Scathach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Scathach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scathach)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/390 "2012-04-09T13:07:44Z")
> [@Normal\_Phase](#): > > Well, the color itself says who’s holding the reins of the demon lord, so there’s not really a whole lot to be thought about, is there? It does? I’ve read it twice now and I don’t see what you’re getting at? ---
**Author:** ![Normal\_Phase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Normal\_Phase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Normal_Phase)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/391 "2012-04-09T13:14:16Z")
All right, Mhaye’s first vote post (on Silver Jan). > [@MHaye](#): > > Some thoughts on Visorslash voters. OK, here’s my base issue. Townies usually do not proceed like this, progressing from “this is a bad badwagon so somebody on it must be scum, let’s look at all of them one by one (and see who’s scummy)”. It would seem a logical thing to do, but it rarely happens, I think because townies usually form their impressions more organically – they see something scummy, they vote for it. It’s scum who so often seem to do it this way instead, top-down instead of bottom-up. > [@](#): > > Firstly, from the pregame chatter I formed an impression that Visorslash likes aggressive play, trash-talks other players (at lest those he is familiar with) and swings hard. His votes, and attacking ATPG, show this approach. > > Weedy’s vote looks to me to be a joke vote based off a comment by Visorslash. It’s since been removed. Well clearly it was a joke vote, but is that worth completely ignoring her otherwise? Weedy is slippery as scum, so I’m always wary. Anyway. > [@](#): > > Silver Jan’s vote seems to be for Visorslash voting for Renata. I don’t consider it well grounded. I note that it has not yet been removed. > Mahaloth’s vote is also unsubstantiated. This may be because Maha has a significant rl issue taking front and centre in his life right now. It _was_ the third vote at the time, but Maha’s been around long enough to know that, and probably didn’t care anyway. No real problem with this so far. > [@](#): > > Septimus’s vote is also poorly grounded. Part of it is based on Visorslash’s [post=14939842]post 105[/post], which is clearly an “I don’t care” response to Normal Phase’s preceding post. It has been removed – see [post=14945043]post 317[/post], in which Septimus describes it as a “placeholder.” > PetW’s vote in post 190 was explained in [post=14942257]post 188[/post], for refusing to answer questions, one of which I interpreted as a bit personal. (I wouldn’t give my age out either, PetW). Likewise, seems accurate. > [@](#): > > I don’t really see anything very suspicious in this except for Silver Jan’s ungrounded vote and my dislike of PetW’s question on ages. I need to review votes on Gadarene as well. I did a fast reread of Silver Jan’s posts made after her vote. but but but – Septimus placed his “placeholder” vote on someone who already had votes, which is unusual to begin with, and didn’t remove it until he was challenged. If Jan and PetW are suspicious for their votes, I fail to see why Septimus should not also be – of all three of them, he is the ONLY one whose posts suggest possible falseness right on their face, instead of by reading into them. So I’m having issues with the honesty of the analysis here already. > [@](#): > > [post=14940985]Post 138[/post]: Categorised her own vote as “having no legs” and claims surprise at the other votes. > [post=14941002]Post 140[/post]: Asks Maha to explain his vote. > [post=14941023]Post 142[/post]: Explains why her vote is still on Visorslash. > [post=14941081]Post 148[/post]: Doesn’t have a handle on Visorslash’s style. > > While Silver Jan seems to have some reasons for her vote, she also admits that the reasons for her vote could just be his style, and that is not a good reason. IMO it smacks of trying too hard to justify something she’s getting a little heat for. > > Vote Silver Jan for now. On the contrary, my impression was that she didn’t much try to justify her vote at all. She gave a half-baked vote for a half-baked reason and kinda left it at that. I just plain do not buy this analysis as accurate. It reads much more plausibly to me as “hey a bunch of townies and maybe a scum or two put crappy votes on Visorslash, and I need a vote – which of those can I argue most plausibly for as being scum?” In other words, scum thinking, not townie thinking. And finally – who the heck uses THIS many words to wind up with such a weak vote? It’s visible effort out of all proportion to the result – it looks contrived. ---
**Author:** ![Normal\_Phase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Normal\_Phase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Normal_Phase)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/392 "2012-04-09T13:15:21Z")
> [@Scathach](#): > > It does? I’ve read it twice now and I don’t see what you’re getting at? Not the write-up’s color, the game description/color/rules/whatever. It describes the traitor as having taken control of the King/Demon Lord, so these are clearly the traitor’s own extra votes, by proxy. ---
**Author:** ![GuiriEnEspana](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc79bd/32.png) [@GuiriEnEspana](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuiriEnEspana)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/393 "2012-04-09T13:18:34Z")
Astral, the extra votes, both visible and hidden, put your concerns about vote shenanigans into a different light. Which were you responsible for, the one on Gadarene or the three on Mosier? As for the Day attacks and protections, I’m bemused by the apparent transparency of Day protectors but not attackers and I note that 3 of the 5 victims had some sort of protection. ---
**Author:** ![Scathach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Scathach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scathach)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/394 "2012-04-09T13:19:07Z")
> [@Normal\_Phase](#): > > Not the write-up’s color, the game description/color/rules/whatever. It describes the traitor as having taken control of the King/Demon Lord, so these are clearly the traitor’s own extra votes, by proxy. Ah, ok. Are you splitting the \*\*Mosier \*\*votes from the extra \*\*Gadarene \*\*vote? I’d actually been assuming that all the extra votes were the result of the “tally-affecting powers”, but the traitor having extra votes does make a certain amount of sense colour-wise I guess. ---
**Author:** ![Normal\_Phase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Normal\_Phase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Normal_Phase)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/395 "2012-04-09T13:23:06Z")
> [@GuiriEnEspana](#): > > Astral, the extra votes, both visible and hidden, put your concerns about vote shenanigans into a different light. Which were you responsible for, the one on Gadarene or the three on Mosier? > > As for the Day attacks and protections, I’m bemused by the apparent transparency of Day protectors but not attackers and I note that 3 of the 5 victims had some sort of protection. Guiri, there were actually four on Mosier – the three visible in the write-up, plus one more. And yeah I’m confused about a lot of that too. ---
**Author:** ![Normal\_Phase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Normal\_Phase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Normal_Phase)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/396 "2012-04-09T13:27:10Z")
> [@Scathach](#): > > Ah, ok. Are you splitting the \*\*Mosier \*\*votes from the extra \*\*Gadarene \*\*vote? I’d actually been assuming that all the extra votes were the result of the “tally-affecting powers”, but the traitor having extra votes does make a certain amount of sense colour-wise I guess. There were a total of five extra votes if I counted right. Three in the write-up on Mosier, attributed to the demon lord and probably belonging to the traitor – if I have to guess, these would be in addition to and separable from his or her public vote. (Part of my reasoning about all this assumes that he would not be able to do this every day, because then almost no scum ever gets lynched on the first try – a buffer that large is too much to ask of any town to produce reliably.) One on Gadarene that only shows up in the final tally. And one on Mosier that only shows up in the final tally. ---
**Author:** ![Scathach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Scathach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scathach)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/397 "2012-04-09T13:37:49Z")
> [@Normal\_Phase](#): > > There were a total of five extra votes if I counted right. Three in the write-up on Mosier, attributed to the demon lord and probably belonging to the traitor – if I have to guess, these would be in addition to and separable from his or her public vote. (Part of my reasoning about all this assumes that he would not be able to do this every day, because then almost no scum ever gets lynched on the first try – a buffer that large is too much to ask of any town to produce reliably.) One on Gadarene that only shows up in the final tally. And one on Mosier that only shows up in the final tally. I actually missed that 3 of the Mosier votes were attributed to AskThePizzaGuy. I agree that the traitor seems like the most plausible explanation for that. Seems like we have to have a reasonable buffer of votes on the lynch leader to ensure no lynch shifting by the Demon Lord. The extra Mosier and extra Gadarene vote were then presumably the tally affecting power/powers. Also, with all the attacks, if we could somehow agree to coordinate them, it could effectively be a second lynch no? Although the lack of accountability in that the attackers names aren’t revealed makes this a bit risky. Given that the Demon Lord definitely does lose HP, is it possible that if everyone concentrated their attacks on him, we could “kill” the Demon Lord. If we did, would that result in the loss of the extra votes for the traitor / negate some other power of the traitor? ---
**Author:** ![GuiriEnEspana](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc79bd/32.png) [@GuiriEnEspana](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuiriEnEspana)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/398 "2012-04-09T13:54:44Z")
> [@Scathach](#): > > Also, with all the attacks, if we could somehow agree to coordinate them, it could effectively be a second lynch no? Do you mean discussing and then deciding on a second lynch candidate in the game thread, hoping a decent number of attackers of the right elements submit a Day action in time to attack the selected player, hoping none of the protectors choose the same target, and that scum couldn’t do anything about it if the target is scum? Or did you have something else in mind? ---
**Author:** ![Scathach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Scathach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scathach)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/399 "2012-04-09T14:02:03Z")
> [@GuiriEnEspana](#): > > Do you mean discussing and then deciding on a second lynch candidate in the game thread, hoping a decent number of attackers of the right elements submit a Day action in time to attack the selected player, hoping none of the protectors choose the same target, and that scum couldn’t do anything about it if the target is scum? Or did you have something else in mind? well it sounds stupid when you put it like that :mad: But yeah essentially that is what I meant. Any protectors who target the same person seem to be revealed, so they’d have to do their own explaining. Obviously, trying to agree on something like this is a game of mafia is like herding cats, so it’s probably unworkable, but the ability to attack is interesting and potentially powerful, particularly if coordinated in some way. ---
**Author:** ![GuiriEnEspana](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc79bd/32.png) [@GuiriEnEspana](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuiriEnEspana)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2012, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480/400 "2012-04-09T14:09:36Z")
I didn’t intend to suggest it was a stupid idea, I was just thinkng through what would need to happen for it to effectively become a second lynch and how feasible that would be. A privately arranged group attack might have a little more success however, in order to get sufficient numbers to cause death, the risk of infiltration is high. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480.md?page=19) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mafia-game-the-realm-of-phere/617480.md?page=21)