Mafia Reunion Day 5

[paulwhoisaghost]

I can’t believe you guys have better things to do on a Friday night.

Here’s the WoW and analysis on Zeriel. I often come to different conclusions than other players, so I suggest you read the posts and see what you think.

D1

@Zeriel

I don’t know if I think it’s enough to vote for this early on Day One, but that’s a heck of a good catch there.

@Zeriel

Will it affect your mental state if I say I hate policy votes so much?

Except for lists. I vote for anyone who makes a list, especially if it’s NAF.

@Zeriel

That seems somewhat asinine. Night Zero was very meta, and in a meta sense if the game’s not fair it’s not a worthwhile game.

@Zeriel

META, mostly: My threshold for early Day One votes is variable. My play style this time around is admittedly still adjusting, because the same things that led me to stop playing (different work environment, kid) are still in play but less so (kid is now in kindergarten, working from home more now). I’m still getting a feel for my own threshold in that regard, which is why I’m not voting yet.

@Zeriel

I concur and I would also consider it (because of the way I consume content on these boards, I would have missed it had it not been pointed out) tantamount to editing in that it limits the audience for what he’s saying.

If it wasn’t kinda meta and innocuous, I’d almost be inclined to FOS it myself, but I’m still deciding how hard I want to come out. I know when I used to play I played hard and aggressive, but I also spent a lot of time watching the back 90% of games as a result. =P

@Zeriel

Half and half. I think “logged in” is a poor indicator, I think “posted elsewhere but not here” is a valid indicator IF and only IF we are decided that we are lynching lurkers, and I think in general I don’t like the post count police.

@Zeriel

I’ve been burned a few too many times by coming out super-aggressive and I’m trying to be more laid back. The volume of posts vs. my available time is not helping the matter. =P

That said, I think I will get on the record…

Stop right there. In a game about information, you don’t avail yourself of free, high-quality information?

vote AngeloftheNorth

I have plenty of patience for lurkers, but this smacks of either affected naivete or unproductive unconcern.

I do still also suspect Colby11, but I want to observe how they react to the ongoing ebb and flow of votes longer before I commit over there. Misphrasing MAY be a scum tell, but actively ignoring information is blatantly anti-town.

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Normal Phase is in a lesser version of the same boat as Colby11, in my book, but he’s also proffered a reasonable explanation for his verbal confusion over what the bad guys are called singly and collectively.

Personally, I think we all should be making an extra effort to be super clear on whether we’re talking about “scum”, “mafia”, or “wolves”. Right now it’s mostly not as important as if (for example) we get to endgame with the two scum teams imbalanced relative to each other, so let’s start forming good habits now.

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I’m actually amused that the Idle Claims thing is so ingrained it’s only been mentioned in a meta sense when explaining what’s happened so far. =P

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I’m with **Plankton **on the “Scum WOULD do that” thing, if “that” is "deliberately mix ‘conventional wisdom’ scum tells with ‘conventional wisdom’ town tells in order to generate as much free WIFOM as possible. Doubly so, I’d think, when we’ve got two scum teams trying to hide from each other as well as from us.

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I’m spending a lot of time thinking about ways the two scum teams could change their play in light of the fact there are two of them, because IIRC this is the first game I’ve been in with more than one true scum team (not counting third parties, or Malazan, natch). I suggest everyone spend some cogitation time on “what would a scum do differently knowing there’s a second scum team that also needs to go” and work from there–ideally, by a later Day at least some of us will have some ideas that might match play patterns in-game that wouldn’t (by virtue of them being kept under our hats until then) be able to be gamed by scum (as I’m sure “third vote is always…” and such are).

@Zeriel

On Day One? Little of each, really. It’s as much (or slightly more) to go on as the minor slips so far, IMHO, and setting up a pattern of “it’s okay to be uninformed or miss things that are handed to you” is definitely not something we should want.

Yeah, I do, because scum do things to appear townie. And this way, you have an pre-set-up “tee hee, I was just SO OVERWHELMED that I MISSED IT” defense to a play that might otherwise be a scum tell. It wouldn’t be the weirdest gambit I’ve seen (or used).

@Zeriel

Well, isn’t that all fuzzy-huggy?

As far as I’m aware, I don’t know you from Adam and vice-versa, but if that was a reason for suspicion over and above anyone’s actual actions, this would be a lot more contentious of a first day.

So that’s yet another anti-town behavior (especially in a game this large). You admit as much as it’s not particularly effective in post 550. Yeah, my vote stays.

Suburban Plankton is doing some yeoman’s work on analysis, and both of his points in 541 are good catches as well.

From my POV, it’s the third thing added in that sealed it. “Scum would never do this thing that I’ve done”. I’ve got a very knee-jerk reaction to someone trying to explain to me what scum would and wouldn’t do, since it proves approximately nothing.

And I’m the cool hippie uncle with the backpacker guitar who smells vaguely like cigars and booze.

Regarding this, I feel like we’re going to have some weird expectations given how just mind-bogglingly huge this game is. I am personally reading and thinking a couple of hours a day and I’m finding that it’s an effort to keep up!

@Zeriel

I think anti-Town behaviors are votable in and of themselves, AND I find that people trying to justify anti-Town behavior are somewhat more often than not scummy.

@Zeriel

I think I may just end up coiling up for an explosion on day 3-4. I tried putting this game into the vote-order-predict-o-matic spreadsheet that’s usually given me some great results in past games, and it’s still a pile of nonsense. =P

@Zeriel

What’s a Plump Udding? ducks

@Zeriel

In keeping with some others, I am unexpectedly going out of town this weekend after work tomorrow. I’m comfortable with my vote, and I’m going to try to keep up with reading the thread, but posting volume will likely diminish.

D1 analysis: By far theDay he posts the most. It’s mostly him describing how he plays or is going to play this game, and some strategy discussion. Votes Angel for not reading the rules. Spends most of the rest of the Day defending that vote. He doesn’t directly address any of the other votes, but gives his opinion when asked. Ends Day with the vote on Angel. “This is me, I’m gonna do me. You do you.”
D2

@Zeriel

I’m honestly feeling the Idle Thoughts thing that’s starting to happen here, but I’m not feeling it enough for a vote. I think he’s been VERY atypically inactive and quiet, and that worries me because I don’t think he does that whether he’s scum OR town.

If he ends up being some kind of weird-rules 3rd Party, I’m going to have SO many I-told-you-so’s.

ahem

I’m going to carry over my vote from Day One. Chewing through what I think the votes and vote timings mean is going to take a while.

vote AngeloftheNorth

@Zeriel

Hmm. Part of the “two scum teams” consideration for me is the idea that people will be able to be significantly less visible with conventional scum tells and PIS–a wolf after all can freely hunt mafia as though they’re town without ever cluttering up the voting record, which has some impact for those of us who primarily (more so on later days) hunt in the voting patterns.

@Zeriel

I’m on board with this plan.

First of all, the reason it behooves us to utilize the multi-lynch as much as we can is simple–it trades “pushing us closer to mislynch” when we screw up in exchange for “we have more kills relative to scum, and we get more information from those kills”. That’s a good trade and it’s better earlier in the game–if we kill one to scum’s two (on average, discounting vig, sk’s, etc) every night, we delay mislynches and endgame, but we lose that crucial critical mass of information that pushes town faster from the early game “looking for slips and tells” phase into the mid-game “investigate the behavioral record” phase, the latter of which is usually where (in my experience) the game is won.

To my way of thinking, we should multi-lynch as early and often as possible until we get our first scum, which in my experience usually shakes out several other likely candidates when there’s some red in the voting record. At that point we can make the strategic decision to multi or not based on available information.

Second of all, it equally (as sach says) behooves us to try to set up the lynches in such a way as to avoid people being able to game the voting record in the guise of making sure we get two kills.

@Zeriel

Not to answer for anyone else but IMHO you painted a really weird WIFOM target on yourself by specifying “scumpower” rather than just “power”.

If you’re town, it’s bizarre–scum might want to kill you to reduce the number of scumpower switches, or they might want to leave you alive in order to maintain WIFOM on the scumpower switches.

Meanwhile, I can’t think of any particular way town benefits from knowing you have a “scum” switch as opposed to just a “switch”–IF you revealed the actual power (and I’m explicitly not saying you should have!) you might have been able to put scum in a kill vs blocker WIFOM especially if your switch blocks a power that the scum might be particularly interested in keeping active, because the other person with that switch (if town, 3P, or oppositely scum-aligned from the revealed power) would have every incentive to keep letting you and only you flip it.

Now that you’re out of the bag this far, it changes the calculus, but not IMHO by much. Anyone better at game theory than I am want to take a crack at it?

If you’re scum, it’s bizarre in even weirder ways and I think I hurt myself trying to figure out why you might have done it.

If you’re lying, well, all bets are off.

FOS Captain Klutz for giving away free previously-secret information that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t actually help town much.

@Zeriel

I don’t think your logic holds. In the state we’re in, a switch claim with no target attached can’t be meaningfully counterclaimed, and it seems like a very safe thing (since it’s not a 100% certainty even if we had all the info) for a scum to admit to owning “a switch”.

Elaborate if you can, but I don’t see any reason in your reasoning to believe a switch claimer is more likely to be town.

@Zeriel

Wait a second.

Okay, so not only do you want to form groups of unconfirmed people who vote as a block, but you want to do so willy-nilly based on people’s feelings?

When the voting record is a prime source of scumhunting, thereby diluting any potential scum tells from votes among 3-4 people any one of whom may or may not be anything?

That’s just superficially (because of your leadup with the switch nonsense) good enough and actually bad enough to merit this next move:

unvote AngeloftheNorth
vote paulwhoisaghost

There’s not a lot of good reason for scum to hunt switch holders qua switch holders, either–we already know some of those switch holders are able to block townie powers, and unless a scum faction holds the mate to a particular switch, killing one switch holder merely gives absolute power to the not-them entity that holds the other one. With no death reveal of switches, as I seem to remember being said, that is a big cup of WIFOM for scum teams to go after in lieu of hunting our power roles.

FOS remains on CaptainKlutz for making an unforced information error, and his defense of same doesn’t hold water to me.
FOS remains on AngeloftheNorth, because of her attempt to set up a way to excuse poor play (Oh, I didn’t read the rules tee hee).

@Zeriel

Excuse nothin’. I explicitly think Idle is more likely than many to flip PFK, I just can’t prove it enough to vote for him with any kind of a coherent case.

This is strikingly Rovian–you accusing me of doing something that will allow me to excuse a bad decision when I have had a vote on you for exactly that same thing.

@Zeriel

This. I used to get voted off relatively early in games in the middle of my mafia career for playing SUPER aggressive and combative. So I stopped doing that.

@Zeriel

My analytic method tends to not produce good results from record analysis until we get at least one scum.

@Zeriel

I believe in the multilynch, and Crys75 has a hinky story with no proof whatsoever.

unvote paulwhoisaghost
vote Crys75

I will look SERIOUS askance at any one-off voters and non-voters who do not elect to move votes in such a way as to ensure we have a multi-lynch today. **Sach **is right–town benefits from it.

D2 Analysis:
Some meat here. Carries over vote on Angel from D1. At least until I propose a hairbrained plan to manipulate the game. Then his vote moves to me. He discusses being pro multilynch. He did not like Crys’s claim at all. Moves his vote off of me and onto Crys. Thinks Idle is PFK. Comments on his spreadsheet failing him this game. I think the biggest unresolved issue that he brings up on D2 other than Crys is CaptainKlutz. I had forgotten all about Captain’s switch claim. How in the world is a claimed scum switch holder still alive? Did even the scum forget about that?
@Bufftabby, “honestly” got dropped in the first sentence of the first post D2.
D3

@Zeriel

In all seriousness, just how many times this game are you going to claim that you can’t be scum because you did something that’s a neutral tell at best?

@Zeriel

Okay, mea culpa. Work has been destroying my time this week, like “meetings running until 6:30+” every day so far. I’ll try to catch back up on Saturday.

@Zeriel

Ugh. Missing any time at all renders this game quickly unmanageable.

A few brief thoughts:
unvote
vote Idle Thoughts

Son, you ALWAYS melt down, and maybe it’s because the first time I saw you do the “bizarre play with loudness” thing you were scum (back in Sekham) but I cannot not see it as scummy.

Angel’s participating, and that’s enough to make me not repeatedly vote her.
Still not particularly convinced by paulwhoisaghost.
The cases on Boozy and Diggit both look interesting.
I’m not sure I really understand the case on Prof P.

He votes for Idle and provides an explanation on the players he previous suspected. It stood out to me that he says “Angel’s participating, and that’s enough to make me not repeatedly vote her.” Wow…. Low bar. Thinks the cases on Boozy and Diggit are interesting which doesn’t really give an opinion. ** “I’m not sure I really understand the case on Prof P.”** But he doesn’t ask any questions. Just leaves it at that for D3 and N3.
D4

@Zeriel

Catching up, was on unexpected work travel in the early part of the week with no opportunity. I’m hoping to have some kind of preliminary vote analysis but I’m also having trouble adapting my model to the idea of two scum teams.

@Zeriel

On initial read of the day:

I was already previously happy with both the multilynch and the Prof as a scum candidate.

vote Prof Pepperwinkle

D4 Analysis: Two posts. I get that real life attacks some times… but we are talking about a span of a week and only 2 posts. Both during Day, nothing at Night. Well, at least he voted. Oh, remember that bolded part about not understanding the Prof case? I guess he figured it out because here he claims he was already happy with the Prof as scum candidate.
D5

@Zeriel

Pretty perversely, I just spent three hours with a goddamn spreadsheet trying to see if the timing of votes in addition to the finals gleaned any more information–spoiler alert, it didn’t. Day 4 MIGHT have provided some insight–had anyone switched off Boozy once it became clear we were going to have a double lynch–but that only could possibly point to HookerChemical as I read it, and frankly I think they switched so early that it was anyone’s vote at that time so it’s not likely to be a subtle attempt at a wolf save.

I’ve been having trouble mustering the effort to slog through this game. The posts are moving way too damn fast for my available free time, and it has resulted in me shutting down–for which I apologize. Probably going to limit my play to 20-or-less player games in the future, though. (not being able to play at work, which I used to do in my heyday, has NOT been helping.)

That all said, we have a solid clue today for a vote, one that I’ve like before but is only more affirmed by Pleo’s actions: vote ProfP

D5 Analysis: 1 post so far, but I’m hoping he comes back.

Wrap Up:
He voted Angel twice. JSGoddess and Boozy voted for Angel on D1, but so did Septimus and Lakai. So D1 vote is a null tell. Vote record aside, D1 is mostly him explaining what to expect from him, which I think is a protown thing to do. It sets up expectations of you, and would bring attention on you if you aren’t behaving that way. Unfortunately he hasn’t been active enough to get a read on whether he is behaving as described. While I think it’s a protown move, I think it’s a null tell, this is the kind of play I wouldn’t hesitate to make as scum if it occurs to me.

He continued her vote on D2, but switched to me because I had some hairbrained idea to reinvent the wheel and turn the game on its head. I took his logic on my idea and his argument against it as a very town play. Him moving his vote to me tells me that he either didn’t feel the Angel train was going anywhere, or was less convinced of her scumminess on D2. He did maintain a FOS, FWIW. Then he moved his vote to Crys because he didn’t believe her claim and warned against one off voters. Normally I wouldn’t find anything scummy about this in and of itself, but his main point against my idea was that it diminished the vote record. His point against one off votes was that we wouldn’t utilize the second lynch, but it also has the effect of diminishing the vote record. He maintained a FOS on me and Angel. From my perspective this is town barking up the wrong tree, everyone knows he was wrong about Angel, I know he’s wrong about me. Jury is still out on Crys.

D3 he votes for Idle Thoughts and only Idle Thoughts, commenting on how Idle always explodes. So much for not diminishing the vote record. Though Zeriel was one of the players who was suspect of Idle early in the game for not behaving the way he usually does. So I think he had better reasons to vote Idle than most. When voting for Idle, Zeriel comments on not understanding the Prof P case. The thing that stood out the most on D3 was his critique of CaptainKlutz’s switch claim. I had forgotten all about that whole issue.

D4 he states that he was already happy with multilynch and the case on Prof P. Though he had not stated he was happy with the case on Prof P until the time of the vote. Odd, not inherently scummy. He may have been skimming or reading and noted that the case made sense to him without actually posting.

D5 his only post so far is that his spreadsheet continues to fail him and he won’t be playing in games this large again. Votes for Prof P again, based on the unmentioned merits of other peoples’ cases on Prof P.

Overall I’m not seeing scum… from what little there is I am reading overwhelmed town grasping at ideas from others that he likes the sound of in absence of his own ability to keep up and participate in a more meaningful manner.

Questions for Zeriel:

1. Crys got your vote on D2. Was that strictly a policy move to attempt multilynch?

2. What points on the case against Prof P do you like, dislike, don’t understand?

3. How do you feel about the cultists? You didn’t buy Crys’s hinky story, but haven’t really commented on them since. How should we handle the situation?

4. You FOS’d CaptainKlutz on D3, but haven’t even mentioned him since… did you forget the whole thing like I did?

5. Pretend for a second that you KNOW I am town, who should I be looking at? Who do you think I can trust?

@CaptainKlutz, I get a twinge when I wonder why you are still alive as a claimed Scumpower switch holder. Why do you think you’ve been spared? What have you been doing with that thing?