Mafia: Simpletown

[Blaster_Master]

@Sitnam

A new day dawns on Simpleton. The evenings fog rolls from the hills, the cock stretches it’s neck and begins to crow, the children wipe the sleep from their innocent eyes, and Blaster Master calls for my death.

The official town sign outta read:

Simpleton, pop. 16 You will never find a more retched hive of scum and cut throat bastards.

This is my first game and I can’t wait.

I agree with Blaster Masters assertion that at least a random lynch will give us some information so I’ve randomly selected:

Vote Blaster Master

@Sitnam

Yeah I know, I was just getting into the spirit of the game. I’ve gotten a chance to read the whole thread and for a truly random guess I’m going with:

Unvote Blaster Master
Vote Queen of Town

As others have already pointed out, the first is an example of an OMGUS vote. That, in and of itself, is a null tell, as it’d not be beyond expectation that a new mafia player would throw such a vote and, in fact, this is fairly common behavior.

With that in mind, this vote was quickly called out for what it was, and it wasn’t long before the second quote came along. In this quote, you specifically state that you’re “getting into the spirit of the game”. Then you confess that the following vote will be “truly random”.

First of all, you admit that you lied. Further, you are confessing that you agree with my logic that random votes are good, but this also comes AFTER the fact that I specifically stated that unreasoned votes would be looked at with greater scrutiny. IOW, this looks more like a knee-jerk reaction to being called out on a vote and backing out of it and that the “getting into the spirit of the game” was simply an excuse.

[Euryphaessa]

@pedescribe

Queen of Town is striking me as suspicious. She’s posted more than her share of fluff (correct me if I’m wrong, but name thing, and blackberry thing), and I haven’t really seen anything substantial, except ‘trust peekercpa’. I may switch my vote.

The blackberry thing wasn’t me, that was peekercpa, wasn’t it? Not sure what you’re referring to with the “name thing”.

[Euryphaessa]

Also, I didn’t really say “trust peekercpa”. I said I personally was giving him the benefit of the doubt until I had a better reason to be suspicious. I’d hardly call that an endorsement.

[Blaster_Master]

@Queen of Town

I don’t think peekercpa is trying to cover for being scum with his eager-beaver posting, it seems to me more like he doesn’t want to be lurky. I would tend to think he was being scummy if all he was doing was throwing suspicion around (which it does seem like he’s doing, but I’ll attribute it to zeal, as others have), but he’s also making fluffy sorts of posts about his evening plans and his coding issues. That doesn’t strike me in as something that he would do in an attempt to draw suspicion away from himself, which makes me think there’s not a lot of premeditation. In the absence of more compelling evidence I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Wha…!? This looks mighty suspicious to me. It looks like you cannot decide between whether to want to cozy up to peekercpa or if you want to smudge him. You specifically state that he would be scummy if all he was doing was throwing suspicion around, but then go on to say that that’s precisely what he’s doing. So, which is it? Evaluating motivations doesn’t mean you pick one at random, it means you try to figure out which one is more likely. You’re blatantly contradicting your own reasoning from one sentence to the next.

If you find that behavior suspicious, why are you willing to give him the benefit of the doubt? What kind of compelling evidence do you expect? Evidence on Day One often fallicious and often slim, so why the need to find further evidence.

The motivation here seems to be that you know he’s pro-town. Now, there’s only two ways I think are likely that you’d have that sort of information. The first being that you’re scum, thus you know that anyone that isn’t scum is pro-town, and you’d want to look good by defending a pro-town player. The second being that you’re a mason, and you’re being a little over-zealous in your defense. Unfortunately, I can’t find enough to determine which one is more likely. Either way, I would definitely like a better explanation out of you.

[ShadowFacts]

@pedescribe

I can’t put my finger on it, but Shadowfax is acting slightly different today. Maybe fewer people are asking questions, or maybe he’s revising his strategy to avoid looking skummy. I’m still suspicious, but…
Ah, whatever. It’s the first day, it won’t turn into a bandwagon (famous last words)
Vote Shadowfax

color removed by me

Just FTR, it’s ShadowFacts. “I am not a horse, I am a man.”

While I’m here, I’ll ask: If I am in fact revising my strategy to avoid looking scummy, then presumably I was looking scummy before, so what did you find scummy about me prior to the alleged revision?

[Blaster_Master]

@Queen of Town

Also, I didn’t really say “trust peekercpa”. I said I personally was giving him the benefit of the doubt until I had a better reason to be suspicious. I’d hardly call that an endorsement.

No, it’s not a blatant “I trust peekercpa”, but it definitely does not appear to be from an objective, non-biased perspective. It is, in fact, a pretty good example of the opposite of a smudge. Now, considering that I can’t remember if we coined a word for the opposite of a smudge, I’m going to pick one right now, and if we do have one, someone please remind me. Thus, I’ll call this a snuggle of peekercpa.

[MindWanderer]

These are things I find “interesting” that peekercpa has said:

@peekercpa

Just a heads up. On the weekend I am pretty much limited to posting from my Blackberry so they may not be as substantial as if I was at my normal computer. I’ll try to keep them at least as coherent as tdn’s.

Soon after, she votes against Queen of Town for merely following a strategy that many others had followed of voting randomly.

@peekercpa

Don’t like random. Sounds like an accusation with no accountability.

Vote Queen of Town

Next she makes an allegation against Ice Cream Man for waiting a bit to see what happens. I think a strategy of random voting + changing if the situation changes is appropriate. But waiting when the deadline is still a week away waiting seems fine. This time she doesn’t vote or even FOS, just spread allegations.

@peekercpa

Upthread Ice Cream Man makes a statement along the lines of (blackberry coding curses) waiting to see where the votes accumulate before he votes sounds kind of scummy to me.

We can win this thing right now if we lynch everyone but me.

If you don’t agree, then die scum, die.

Now she thinks about changing votes.

@peekercpa

Now that I think about it I am inclined to move my vote to Ice Cream Man. But no way I am trying to code that change on this flippin’ Blackberry.

And to Koldanar and pedescribe if I am too aggressive so be it. This is the first game I have ever played so my “unique” style is what it is.

Oh and BTW, yes I am an “aggressive” townie trying to avenge NAF’s murder.

Anyway, if rehashed all her posts it’d be to long, so I’ll summarize from here:

Suspicions and/or voting against:

1. Queen of Town (voted)
2. Ice Cream Man
3. WF Tomba (voted, replaced QoT vote)
4. MadTheSwine (comes up with a barely explainable vote for him, replaced WF Tomba)

After Saturday she started to go into lurk mode a bit more. But it seems to me to be a strategy of confusion and not-random but barely supported allegations and votes.

Second, fluiddruid has given no real scumtell that I notice, except perhaps being a bit of a lurker. So I will

Unvote fluiddruid

Vote peekercpa

[ShadowFacts]

@Blaster Master

Thus, I’ll call this a snuggle of peekercpa.

That’s awesome

Maybe it’s because pedescribe voted for me, but I’m seeing this exchange from the other side. Call it a snuggle or what have you, **QoT **definitely did not say “trust peekercpa” and for pedescribe to say that she did is disingenuous. It’s a scummy kind of paraphrasing, and the use of single quotes,

@pedescribe

…I haven’t really seen anything substantial, except ‘trust peekercpa’…

while not as bad as actual quotes, is potentially misleading.

[Sitnam]

@Blaster Master

First of all, you admit that you lied.

If you want to tattoo the Mafia ‘scarlet letter’ on my forehead for my first post, which was quickly retracted once I was able to read the 4 pages the thread had already, go ahead.

@Blaster Master

Further, you are confessing that you agree with my logic that random votes are good, but this also comes AFTER the fact that I specifically stated that unreasoned votes would be looked at with greater scrutiny.

Hanging Queen of Town for no reason would be a mistake. My one vote isn’t going to hang her. I was agreeing with the first part in that at least accusations gets the town folk talking. I can change my vote at anytime and I will do, mayhaps around Wednesday when I get a chance to hear everyone out.

@Blaster Master

IOW, this looks more like a knee-jerk reaction to being called out on a vote and backing out of it and that the “getting into the spirit of the game” was simply an excuse.

The very first post of this entire game was a call to hang me. Excuse a rookie for feeling threatened.

[MindWanderer]

well ok, my color skills are lacking:

Unvote fluiddruid

Vote peekercpa

[ShadowFacts]

@MindWanderer

well ok, my color skills are lacking:

As are your bolding skills…

[Blaster_Master]

@Sitnam

I’ve been thinking about a person claiming a power role to avoid a band wagon kill (one especially uninformed as our first lynch). It’s my understanding that roles are rare, baring any mason’s (I know what they are, just not how they play out), we’ll have just one doctor and detective (or about two similar roles), if we’re unfortunate enough to lynch one of those the first turn town is serious trouble. What precautions does town usually take so this doesn’t happen? If it does, how can we make the best of it? Granted it looks like a 1/8 chance of lynching a town power role, the odds being twice as likely that we’ve picked scum that’s then claiming to be a power role for town. The reason we’d even lend any credence to his/her claim at all is we think such a power role might exist, we still just don’t know. I see these as the five likely outcomes of a power claim to avoid a lynch:

The person about to be lynched says they are in a pro town power role and are either telling the truth (12.5% of that I guessing, yet will still then not outlast the night) or:

  1.) Someone else stands up and says no, because THEY are the role and are not lying.

  2.) Someone else stands up and says no, because THEY say they are the role and are lying.  (a ballsy strategy that only pays off if both are scum, which will ultimately provide a massive tell in later days)

  3.) No one else stands up because person actually in said role is scared of being night killed.

  4.) No one else stands up because the role claimed doesn't actually exist and so no one can honestly counter claim.

The odds for #4 cannot be determined but I see them as unlikely (this game was claimed to be pretty vanilla), the chance #3 happens is very very good in the beginning (and since its the best outcome for town, the essence of my conclusion), and if #1 happens and we lynch the first guy (town or no, killing all liars seems like a solid policy) we’ll then know if the person lynched is the actual power role that was claimed. If so, the counter claimer is a dead man, a town power role for one early scum (I’m including lying townies) is a high casualty rate but I believe near acceptable.

The odds of picking scum or a townie that’s lying is so much greater than actually lynching someone whose honest in claiming a power role that can’t actually be proven that I see no rational alternative.

We have to lynch in spite of power role claim, if only to keep the good guys honest and the bad guys shitting their pants.

These situations, while intuitive, do not reflect reality. The probability of a person claiming a power role being truthful is not equal to the distribution of that role through the town as a whole. There’s three posibilities:

1. The person is telling the truth: The truth value here is obvious. Let’s say n[sub]0[/sub] is the number of players, n[sub]r[/sub] is the number of role r that actually exist in the game, c[sub]r[/sub] is a claim of role r, and i is the player. Thus, while p(r[sub]i[/sub]) = n[sub]r[/sub] / n[sub]0[/sub], the truth value is actually T(c[sub]r[/sub] | r[sub]i[/sub]) = 1 because we know that c[sub]r[/sub] = r[sub]i[/sub].

2. The person is lying scum: The truth value is also obvious here, the probability is the same, but T(c[sub]r[/sub] | r[sub]i[/sub]) = 0 because we know that c[sub]r[/sub] != r[sub]i[/sub].

3. The person is lying, but is pro-town: This is just monumentally stupid. FOA, he’ll convince the person ACTUALLY having that role that he’s scum, which will make the real role either claim, or just mark him up as scum. It will also potentially get the real roll to out himself by expressing doubt of the claim. And it will CERTAINLY get him lynched when the real role dies. There is a case to be made for a more valuable role possibly pretending to be a lesser role to try to protect himself, but a vanilla doing this is so harmful to the town that it either won’t be done, or it’s so damaging, that it throws out the modelling anyway, so I’ll ignore it as a possibility.

Thus, we can model the truthiness of a claim as follows: T(c[sub]r[/sub]) = Σ(i=1, n, T(c[sub]r[/sub] | r[sub]i[/sub])) which reduces to T(c[sub]r[/sub]) = n[sub]r[/sub] / (n[sub]r[/sub] + n[sub]s[/sub]). This is demonstratably larger than p(r[sub]i[/sub]) = n[sub]r[/sub] / n[sub]0[/sub] because the denominator is the number of players minus the vanilla townies, which is necessarily smaller than the total number of players.

Further, this doesn’t take into account the simple fact that a pro-town role has greater motivation to claim that particular role to save his life, while a scum has a lesser motivation because it will likely lead to him losing cover, thus a better model would be T(c[sub]r[/sub]) = n[sub]r[/sub] / (m[sub]r[/sub]n[sub]r[/sub] + m[sub]s[/sub]n[sub]s[/sub]), where m is the motivation. Thus, because m[sub]r[/sub] >> m[sub]s[/sub], it follows that T(c[sub]r[/sub]) → 1.

For the non-mathematically inclined, basically, the chance that a major power role claim is a lie is low because there’s little motivation for scum to claim it because it gains them little, and is cover easily blown.

[ShadowFacts]

@Blaster Master

For the non-mathematically inclined, basically, the chance that a major power role claim is a lie is low because there’s little motivation for scum to claim it because it gains them little, and is cover easily blown.

I am one of those non-mathematically inclined and to be honest it would take me a great deal of time and attention to understand your equations, so I have a question: does your formula take into account in some way that scum could claim a role that doesn’t actually exist in this game without being counter-claimed?

[Euryphaessa]

@Blaster Master

Wha…!? This looks mighty suspicious to me. It looks like you cannot decide between whether to want to cozy up to peekercpa or if you want to smudge him. You specifically state that he would be scummy if all he was doing was throwing suspicion around, but then go on to say that that’s precisely what he’s doing. So, which is it? Evaluating motivations doesn’t mean you pick one at random, it means you try to figure out which one is more likely. You’re blatantly contradicting your own reasoning from one sentence to the next.

If you find that behavior suspicious, why are you willing to give him the benefit of the doubt? What kind of compelling evidence do you expect? Evidence on Day One often fallicious and often slim, so why the need to find further evidence.

The motivation here seems to be that you know he’s pro-town. Now, there’s only two ways I think are likely that you’d have that sort of information. The first being that you’re scum, thus you know that anyone that isn’t scum is pro-town, and you’d want to look good by defending a pro-town player. The second being that you’re a mason, and you’re being a little over-zealous in your defense. Unfortunately, I can’t find enough to determine which one is more likely. Either way, I would definitely like a better explanation out of you.

Okay, my sentence as structured was unclear. I said:

“I would tend to think he was being scummy if all he was doing was throwing suspicion around (which it does seem like he’s doing, but I’ll attribute it to zeal, as others have), but he’s also making fluffy sorts of posts about his evening plans and his coding issues.”

How it was meant to be read is:

“I would tend to think he was being scummy if all he was doing was throwing suspicion around, but he’s also making fluffy sorts of posts about his evening plans and his coding issues. I’ll attribute his throwing suspicion around to zeal, as others have.”

I understand it first read like I meant that it seemed to me like all he was doing was throwing suspicion around, which I then immediately contradicted. That was not my intention. I was acknowledging that it appeared that he was throwing suspicion around, but I then gave a reason why I didn’t think this was scum tell (ie his fluffier posts that do not, to me, serve the Mafia any purpose).

I’m not quite sure what, if any, compelling evidence will arise, but I’m not going to jump on him on Day One when there hasn’t been any real development in the game. I was giving my two cents worth because other players were providing their reasons why they thought he was suspicious.

The motivation here is that I have no real idea what he, or anyone else, is on Day One. I’m the sort of person that gives benefit of the doubt; perhaps that inclination is unwise in Mafia.

[MadTheSwine]

@ShadowFacts

I am one of those non-mathematically inclined and to be honest it would take me a great deal of time and attention to understand your equations, so I have a question: does your formula take into account in some way that scum could claim a role that doesn’t actually exist in this game without being counter-claimed?

I always skip over BM’s math,it does little good.

i will Unvote Ice Cream Man since my vote was influenced by wrong info.

[peekercpa]

I am he btw. And you better not let the missus know if Queen of town really meant to snuggle me.

[peekercpa]

@ShadowFacts

I am one of those non-mathematically inclined and to be honest it would take me a great deal of time and attention to understand your equations, so I have a question: does your formula take into account in some way that scum could claim a role that doesn’t actually exist in this game without being counter-claimed?

I certainly can’t follow the math but the logic fits. And since this is a closed game set up there is no way of scum knowing what roles might or might not exist in this particular game. Therefore, any claim will carry a risk that that role might very well be present and can be counter claimed.

[Sitnam]

@Blaster Master

For the non-mathematically inclined, basically, the chance that a major power role claim is a lie is low because there’s little motivation for scum to claim it because it gains them little,

Except it may win over townie fence sitters Thursday morning.

@Blaster Master

and is cover easily blown.

By who? The actual power role that wants to be killed the first night?

In my hasty calculations I did leave out the 3 expected masons. Making it slightly more likely that we lynch a good guy. Since Masons must already know who they are there has to be pack mentality there as well, which in itself appears to the average joe as scummy.

[Ice_Cream_Man]

@Sitnam

By who? The actual power role that wants to be killed the first night?

Well, if they weren’t killed during the night that might be a pretty big indication. Actually, maybe not after just one night. I could see the scum trying to use that to make us doubt a role claimer and lynch them. But after several nights it’d be pretty damning.

[MindWanderer]

Bah, I had no idea peekercpa was a guy. Err sorry about that. :smack: