Mafia: Mutiny on the SS Incorrigible

The Game Room
301

I would love to post more than I am, but I am adapting my play style. When I was working I would sort of check in on the game off and on throughout the day because I was always at a computer, and post as I had thoughts.

Now I have to sort of catch up in blocks and digest and respond. I honestly thought I would have more to say when I did my last catch up. I didn’t, so I decided to blow something up and see what happened. It’s a touch selfish, but I don’t think it’s all that harmful.

I haven’t decided what I think about you yet NP. But I don’t think I will vote for you today.

I am also not going to vote for Idle, probably not Natlaw, and absolutely not IS.

Although I thought fluid’s response to my claim was interesting, I don’t have anything to match it to so she is on the fence for me too.

That and my last vote are as much as I know for now.

302

oh and

vote peeker

His posts don’t feel like him as town to me.

303

To clarify, since in hindsight I think it will be misread, when I said:

We’re still just ultimately disagreeing on how this whole four-vote process works.

I meant in strategic and game terms; I recognize that the nuts and bolts of placing individual votes four separate times has been acknowledged to work. I get what Idle was on about in this regard because it was my original assumption that you had to place all four votes at once, too, and it seems odd to me to place a lot of separate votes that don’t yet count. I don’t see how that serves Town to let people place non-counting votes here and there. If you want to replace one I don’t see a problem, but leaving an insufficient number of votes seems peculiar to me, since it only seems likely to cause errors and confusion.

304

(parts trimmed and bolded)

This reasoning cannot be truthful. Stickler didn’t claim until after you voted.

305

I like how as I am writing that I don’t have anything to go with fluid’s reaction to my claim she posts a whole post of justifications that I don’t like.

Thanks fluid.

vote fluiddruid

306

Huh, you’re right. I admit I get Idle Thoughts and Inner Stickler a bit mixed up (just due to how I process names), but thank you for calling me on this. I remember reading his claim this morning and I must have gotten mixed up.

Understandable if you want to lynch me for it but, in all honesty, it was a mistake.

Elaborate, please.

307

Day One Vote Count

All Votes by Voting Player
Hal Briston => fluiddruid (74), TexCat (74), peekercpa (74), Mahaloth (74).
fluiddruid => Natlaw (286), peekercpa (286), Mahaloth (286), Red Skeezix (286).
TexCat => Hal Briston (241), Idle Thoughts (241).
peekercpa => [del]Normal Phase (65-126)[/del], [del]Stanislaus (65-126)[/del], [del]fubbleskag (65-126)[/del], [del]Normal Phase (126-275)[/del], [del]Hal Briston (126-275)[/del], [del]Drain Bead (126-275)[/del], Idle Thoughts (237), Inner Stickler (275), Hal Briston (276), peekercpa (276).
Mahaloth => Hal Briston (284), Idle Thoughts (284), peekercpa (284), glowacks (284).
Inner Stickler => Hal Briston (223), Crackrat (223), [del]Idle Thoughts (223-287)[/del], Normal Phase (223), Drain Bead (287).
Red Skeezix => Hal Briston (173), [del]Idle Thoughts (244-289)[/del], [del]Inner Stickler (244-289)[/del], fluiddruid (289), Stanislaus (289), Drain Bead (289).
glowacks => Idle Thoughts (291), Hal Briston (291), NAF1138 (291), Drain Bead (291).
Natlaw => [del]Inner Stickler (254-294)[/del], Idle Thoughts (255), Hal Briston (267), peekercpa (267), fluiddruid (294).
Normal Phase => [del]NAF1138 (72-92)[/del], [del]Stanislaus (72-92)[/del], [del]peekercpa (72-92)[/del], [del]Drain Bead (72-92)[/del], Drain Bead (258), Crackrat (261).
fubbleskag => no votes.
Crackrat => Inner Stickler (279).
Stanislaus => no votes.
Drain Bead => no votes.
Idle Thoughts => peekercpa (235), Red Skeezix (235), [del]Inner Stickler (235-288)[/del], Natlaw (235).
NAF1138 => glowacks (299), peekercpa (302), fluiddruid (305).

Net Votes
Hal Briston (6) <= peekercpa, Mahaloth, Inner Stickler, Red Skeezix, glowacks, Natlaw.
peekercpa (5) <= Hal Briston, fluiddruid, peekercpa, Mahaloth, Natlaw.
Idle Thoughts (4) <= peekercpa, Mahaloth, glowacks, Natlaw.
fluiddruid (3) <= Hal Briston, Red Skeezix, Natlaw.
Drain Bead (3) <= Inner Stickler, Red Skeezix, glowacks.
Mahaloth (2) <= Hal Briston, fluiddruid.
TexCat (1) <= Hal Briston.
Natlaw (1) <= fluiddruid.
Red Skeezix (1) <= fluiddruid.
Inner Stickler (1) <= peekercpa.
glowacks (1) <= Mahaloth.
Crackrat (1) <= Inner Stickler.
Normal Phase (1) <= Inner Stickler.
Stanislaus (1) <= Red Skeezix.
NAF1138 (1) <= glowacks.

With 16 players eligible to vote, 8 votes are needed to space. With these votes, no one will be spaced.

While I try to be careful, please let me know if I have any votes wrong. I’m not going to place “uncounted” votes in the net votes table, since they are no more valid than a vote not made.

308

Holy crap, have these past couple of days gone by in a blink. Time for some catching up…

No joke at all – but more of a misconception. I’m not quite sure why, but I went into this thinking that the officer roles were (for lack of a better term) predetermined, and that scum were going to be getting one of them. Bad logic on my part, but that’s where the idea came from.

Since I just did a catch-up reading of the thread (basically skimming+), I’ll see about making more reasoned voted after a more careful read-through.

I would say that one vote (or two…or three…) is basically a FOS in this game – at least it works the same way. It’s saying “This may not officially count (yet!), but I’m putting it on record that I’ve got my eye on you, bub”.

(Bolding mine) – I’ve never heard that expression before. I hope to never hear it again.

309

**vote stanislaus ** for not having voted yet. Why you and not others…I don’t have a good reason but it was going to be someone who hadn’t voted so it might as well be you. Crap vote, yes, but finding 4 votes on Day 1 is surprisingly hard.

Fluid, I will get back to you in a bit. I only had a second at the computer.

310

I don’t get the logic that someone claiming a role of Hacker, Cracker, or Commissar is less likely to be scum. There is nothing about those claims that makes one think that the claimant is actually Loyal. Since everyone is assumed to claim Loyal, claiming Loyal Hacker is the same as just claiming Hacker, which in itself does not in anyway imply Loyal. Additionally, absolutely everyone can claim Hacker or Commissar, then refuse to use their power because they don’t see the point of using up a (potentially) one-use power just to prove they have it. The only thing I’ve heard to counter this is “we shouldn’t lynch a claimed town power”, but if that’s a legitimate defense I’d imagine that anyone having lots of votes thrown their way would make the same claim.

As to your defense of your cracker claim, you just state that I might be wrong. I give logical reasoning behind why your claim, if true, has the potential to hurt the town, you just state the power is overrated. How useful the role is does not in any way affect the fact that blabbing about it can (from my perspective) only hurt the town tactically. If you can provide a good reason that letting everyone know you’re a cracker helps the town tactically, I could reconsider.

Yes, I’m mainly talking about tactics and not so much about motives. I’m applying analytical reasoning, as that’s my strong point. Trying to determine motives is my weak point. Feel free to search my posts here regarding my neurobiological condition (high functioning autism/Asperger syndrome): here’s a link to such a search. If it’s seriously a scum approach to take out people who make bad arguments, I can’t defend myself any better than making a meta-game argument that I’m acting completely normal for who I am. I cannot be expected to have the ability to tease out motives, but I can be expected to find faults in people’s logic. I’m playing this game partly to try to develop the former, but at the outset it’s going to be hard.

So I guess I have to ask: Am I just taking too logical a view of things? Am I seriously off-base by suggesting that people who are acting irrationally are more likely to be scum? How does acting irrationally benefit the town? Being as this is my first Mafia game, maybe I’m just missing something of critical importance; if that’s the case, I’ll need it spelled out rather explicitly. I personally see people assigning scummy intent for things that I only see as being irrational, so perhaps I am lumping too many things into the category of “irrationality that implies scummy intent” and have not learned the difference between town irrationality and scum irrationality.

Under different voting rules, there might even be a point to not automatically assigning scummy motives to irrational behavior, but these voting rules are far from typical. With a vote minimum, not voting increases the chance of a no-lynch. With forced multi-voting, we’re going to have to vote for people we’re less than confident of. Combined, that means looking for the smallest things. By saying that I don’t have enough to base my votes on, you are implicitly suggesting that a no-lynch is an acceptable option.

I certainly don’t blame you (or Mahaloth) for voting for me, as it sounds like my position is atypical and/or typical of scum and you need to find people to vote for. If I’m going to get votes because of an inability to see motives and a tendency to logically analyze things, I can’t defend myself any more than pointing to my board history of claiming an autism spectrum disorder.

–

As to my grammar on my voting of Idle, I was including the vote on peeker with the one on RS even though, as Idle points out, they were for completely different reasons. I failed to grasp until re-reading that Idle was more concerned about peeker’s sneaky attempt to make it look like there were 4 votes when there really weren’t; I didn’t see this as a problem myself, but I understand where he’s coming from on that. However, the vote on RS for what amounts to inertia still bugs me, as does the thought that his claim means anything.

When I have more time I’ll go over more carefully what’s happening with the case on fluiddruid, but I barely have enough time to compose these responses.

311

Unvote Inner Stickler based on his claim.

I don’t think it’s useful to interpret two votes as thinking that two people are necessarily scum. If I believe, for instance that X is likely scum, and Y is likely scum, but I know (somehow) that they can’t BOTH be scum then I would vote for both of them and hope that the other voters will help make that determination. Since everyone must make four votes, it’s extremely unlikely that anyone will be voting for 4 scum.

312

I kind of expected these - I’ve not been able to get to the computer much in the last 36 hours. (I post from work and I was off-site Tuesday.) Hopefully I’ll be able to rectify that.

As to making “safe” posts - I could go the NAF route and make “dangerous” ones if you like! Most of my posts have come in the early game when I tried to get discussion going by talking strategy. I find that works better for me than throwing out random votes really early in the Day. The plan was to come back and sift through the discussion later, looking for scum - which I’m doing, but a bit later than intended.

In truth, the strategy discussion fizzled out, but I was struck by who was prepared to engage in that and who wasn’t that interested. Natlaw and Normal Phase really got their teeth into the whole Doctor Dance discussion - even though it came to nothing. That inclines me ever so slightly to think of them as Town, because publicly working through the complex implications of the rules to find the best town strategy is a) time-consuming and b) makes you outline what you think is pro-town. Similarly, I think it likely that scum would try to stay out of that discussion, because they’re not actually that interested in divining the best strategy for town.

Alternatively, some people just like talking about strategy/rules manipulation and others really don’t. We certainly got more discussion (and votes) when the role-claims started flying. On those:

NAF: I can see good Town reasons for doing this (other than the stated goal of making the claim). It makes it harder for him to be put in the brig, because anyone who does so has to explain what they make of his claim. So that maximises his chances of using his role. That said, a Scum Cracker NAF wouldn’t want a Townie Cap’n/Security team brigging him either. However, this is a move which drew attention and as there was little suggestion of him being brigged I’m inclined to think he might be Town.

Inner Stickler: I’m inclined to believe this, in the absence of a counter-claim. If there are two separate sets of Mate’s that will give scum a loophole to false-claim but for now I’m inclined to trust the claim.

Idle Thoughts: I’m less inclined to believe this claim. As he pointed out, he had three votes on him, which made him the vote leader. So there’s a certain amount of pressure there. We’ve already got one Town power-role claim on the table, which our officer-roles may or may not be factoring into their plans of action. Adding another one complicates their decision process unneccessarily. Secondly, Idle hammers his claim for all he’s worth:

As noted, claiming Hacker doesn’t make you more likely to be Loyal than just claiming Loyal. But Idle’s using the threat of our losing his powers to drive away suspicion of him. It comes across as an attempt to push buttons that frankly, didn’t need to pushed. It’s possible to talk your way out of votes, rather than reach for the claim immediately. And from a self-preservation point of view, claiming a power-role in a game with no Doc doesn’t actually increase your life expectancy terribly far if you are Town. (And in the last quote, the wording of “the fact that I could really be a Town Hacker” seems a little off. Shouldn’t it be the fact that “I am really a Town Hacker”?)

So

vote idle 5/10 confidence.

Also, this post makes me wonder:

I think there’s an outside chance Idle isn’t the Hacker. If only because he’s banging on so much about how he definitely is.

Other votes: I disagree with fluid about her defence of Idle, and especially about her scattergun vote on everyone who voted for him, but I don’t think that makes her likely to be scum. I don’t think Hal needs any more encouragement to rethink his votes (and I’m not sure that making four weak votes very early in Day One and then not being around should be enough to make someone vote leader).

…out of time. Will be back this evening.

313

That’s not really the issue (and you cut out the portion where I discussed the possibility of Idle not being scum, and how that also wasn’t defended). I myself voted in a similar manner.

It just reeks of guilt by association to me, without actually thinking it through. My vote was for a group of people who I felt were/are participating in an ill-defined and ill-defended bandwagon. As I get new information, I’ll revise my votes of course, but it was my intent to call out this behavior and to indicate my belief that one or several people in that group were scum. You have to vote four times, so this seems like a good reason to me.

I don’t see how the same logic applies to a situation with me and Idle. We’re not performing the same behavior (as in my example). I have no particular reason to know if Idle is scum or not – though I’m inclined to think not – but I objected to the votes that were cast for poor (nor no) reasons in reasonably quick succession. That’s not Idle’s point that I’m echoing - it’s my own point.

In other words, if Idle is scum, why would spacing me be beneficial? If I’m scum, why is lynching Idle beneficial? Frankly, I don’t think either one tells us particularly much about the other, and I don’t think it’s being thought through. There’s no reason to say ‘one of you is likely scum’ because then the scenarios don’t work:

  • He’s scum, I’m not. Then why would my defense of him matter? At that point it’s just a bad judgement call from me; it doesn’t link him to me at all.

  • I’m scum, he’s not. That doesn’t make a lot of sense either. I’m going to stick my neck out and garner some predictable OMGUS votes to what end? To give away a potential gimme on a town power role in a risky exchange for … what? At best, a little street cred at the cost of a lot of attention?

This is why I’m positing that it only makes sense to assume we’re both scum (which also doesn’t make a lot of sense to me); I don’t see the group logic applying here. If I’m wrong, tell me where.

314

I agree that I could have stated my reason a bit better and not have quoted his other votes, but it should be pretty clear I voted him because of his vote for me for claiming loyal but not NAF for claiming loyal cracker.

I later asked him to clarify his vote here:

See my previous quote where “I defended my vote” after his claim: 1) the claim does not effect the reason I voted him 2) I still wanted to hear more about why he voted me.

Here you say that people not unvoting means at least one of them is scum. Then you vote for most (all?) of the people with an Idle vote. So to be not scummy in your eyes people should have unvoted him just because of his claim.
Yes, you listed other reasons in the <snip> but you ultimate reasons to vote is because not unvoting.

315

I should have clarified: My post wasn’t so much in regards to you and Idle, specifically, but just that in general, the multi-vote means that it is likely that there will be votes for groups of 4 which:

  1. Probably contain people who are scum.
  2. Contain pairs of people who can’t BOTH be scum.
316

And? So what? What’s your point?
That doesn’t mean kill off a power role just because it COULD be scummy.

It very well COULD be Town, too. Why aren’t you giving any leverage to that?
You’re only basing your vote on the fact that it COULD be scummy.

Doesn’t the fact that it COULD be Town make it even? :rolleyes:

317

Holy crap glowacks, after that last post I take it back. I don’t think you are scum at all.

unvote glowacks Post more thoughts on why the unvote and fluid vote in a bit. Mafia posts take too damn long to compose.

318

I’m having a rough day and reading for comprehension is not happening. I managed enough for this:

unvote: Crackrat for erasing 99% of my original rationale for voting him.

But that’s it. See you tomorrow.

319

Unvote Red Skeezix

320

being new at this (and possibly, not very good at it), I’m struggling to find a balance between inactivity and relying too heavily on everyone else’s logic to form my own opinions on who is and isn’t likely to be scum. so apologies in advance if these votes seem weak or border-line ‘me too’ votes.

I don’t see any value in Idle’s claim, but further his own vote reasoning seems slightly weak to me, and the protests of his received votes seem desperate and flimsy. peekercpa seems to be purposely appearing to contribute to the thread while only being disruptive. likewise, I find NAF’s posts overly combative.

vote Idle Thoughts
vote peekercpa
vote NAF1138
vote Drain Bead