Normally, in Mafia, both the scum and the masons know who is in their group from the start. Only the scum can communicate in private, however.
I should point out, though, that in this game the Mafia have not yet had the chance to talk in private, so we should not be looking for any sort of coordinated strategy from them until the second Day.
I’ll throw my assumptions and guesses out there . Since sach has said this is a “back to basics” game, I find it likely that there is 1 doc and 1 cop. There may or may not be masons, but if someone claims mason I’ll likely believe him, as a “basic” game would not have scum knowing whether or not there are masons (and scum knowing that masons do not exist would be the only way I could see scum claiming mason early in the game… late-game m5 style masongate is certainly a possibility).
I’ll also guess four scum, probably with a godfather type role, as a godfather role is pretty standard in basic games. 3 seems unlikely, and 5 seems to me somewhat possible, but not probable.
And again, taking sach at his word, I don’t think we’ll see any type of crazy roles here, so someone claiming one would be met by suspicion by me.
So… those are my guesses based on what sach said, and the games I’ve played before. I certainly won’t be wedded to these assumptions as the game progresses, but if we’re discussing reactions to potential role claims, those assumptions are what I’ll base my decisions on for now.
Also, I’d guess a vig or serial killer is likely. Maybe both. Probably just one or the other (based on the relatively small population we have here). I may be wildly guessing, but I’d think a SK is more likely than a vig if only one of them exists (if only because I hate the vig role… it’s useless and annoying).
I guess we’ll examine the body count tomorrow to determine the liklihood of either.
I just meant that no scum is going to lynch scum and no mason will lynch mason narrowing down the field of probability to vanilla town folk, the opposite group and power roles, considerably increasing the odds of lynching a power role. No coordination required.
Bolding mine.
Thats a dangerous assumption to make, and if you look at past games is in fact false. storyteller more or less single handedly won M2 for the scum by throwing other scum under the bus repeatedly, even leading the charge against a few. In so doing, he built up huge amounts of town cred, which let the scum coast to victory.
I’m not sure who these “people” are who have said anything resembling the argument you are dismissing here, never mind being “so sure” of it. Please provide examples of people who have tried to argue this point or, if you can’t, admit that you have created a blatant and very flammable strawman.
This, however, is a very good point and cannot be reiterated enough, IMO.
This is an important point, and one on which I’m having difficulty adequately explaining my perspective. In an open setup game, scum know the risks involved with false claims, particularly since they can key on getting reads for certain power roles. In a closed game, they don’t have that advantage. Further, they always have to concern themselves with believability. That is, if they’re concerned with self-preservation, the primary point of a false claim is that the town buys it, thus making a claim we’re unlikely to believe will put them under greater scrutiny.
For example, even if it’s possible that we’d have two doctors, it’s unlikely a scum would make a claim that would require or imply that, because we’re more likely to question it sooner. What happens if there really ARE two doctors and they both counter-claim, we’d see three showing up, and there’s NO WAY we’d believe that.
This is where the town can use this lack of information to our advantage. By not knowing exactly what roles are out there, the scum have to look a lot harder to find the reads they need to find the power roles. Further, if a there is a pro-town power role that seems less likely (say, a role-blocker, or something) they have much more leeway in using their power because the scum are less likely to be keying on finding those roles.
You’re right, nothing is completely confirmable in a closed setup, even masons; however, they’re not completely unconfirmable either. You have to remember, that any claim made by scum will be made based upon their motivations and the risks involved. The risk includes how likely WE are to buy it, so if we establish an steady expectation of the role distribution, then the scum will also know that any significant deviation from that will either be met with greater scrutiny, which increases risk, or will risk giving away additional information.
As such, a mason isn’t completely confirmable, because we don’t know if they exist or not. However, I think it’s very plausible that they exist, and I imagine the scum will come to the same conclusion. As such, scum are highly unlikely to claim that. Similarly, it’s highly plausible that a doctor exists, therefore the risk is not significantly distinguishable from a game where it’s known that there is a doctor. In either case, by establishing our expectations on role distributions, we can set limits on the sorts of claims we’re likely to encounter
I think fluid’s point here, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that one of the other risks of making a claim of a power role is that it has to be consistent with the behavior of that player. For instance, part of a claim from a detective usually includes who he investigated. We could go back and compare those investigations to the Day in context and see if they make sense. Post hoc reasoning for investigations just doesn’t have the same feel to it. So, if it happens later in the game, there’ll potentially be damning evidence behind them, if it happens early, they’ll be forced to play in a box that will eventually fall apart on them.
My first sentence probably could have been worded better. However, since you asked.
Post 280
Post 257
That one admittedly goes the other way to my point, but nevertheless it shows that people have in mind the potential at least for what would be fairly hardcore bastard moddery.
Here’s the point of my math. You’re calculating one value and attributing it to another. What you’re calculating is the chance of hitting a power role at random, but you’re attributing that value to the probability of a claim being true (which is probability of a particular role given that claim). Obviously, this is not the same value because the roles that would make certain claims varies based upon the claim.
For instance, going on my estimate, the probability of hitting vanilla town at random is 0.4375, but the probability that someone claiming to be the doctor is vanilla town is MUCH lower (probably close to zero), based on the assumption that it is detrimental to the town for vanilla townies to claim power roles. Thus, the two do not describe the same entity.
For the math inclined:
Let r[sub]d[/sub] represent the collective number of doctors and detectives (for simplicities sake, based on my assumptions, that value is 2). You’re calculating p(r[sub]d[/sub]) = Σ(r[sub]i[/sub] = r[sub]d[/sub]) / n ~= 0.125, this is correct, but the value you’re actually concerned with is p(r[sub]i[/sub]|c[sub]i,r[/sub]). I can drag out further why they’re not equal, but it should be obvious, so I’ll be lazy.
FTR, the answer to both of your questions is yes. So, yes, this may lead to power roles being likely to be led to a lynch, but if a power role get’s lynched without claiming, it’s either because it was a speed lynch, or he played poorly.
Nanook quoted this of you, menocchio. I may be a bit lazy but this stood out a bit.
I doubt we have exotic roles. I doubt we have 2 doctors. I doubt we have 0 doctors. Assumptions are in play based on the description of the game, but this looks like a post by you trying to cast doubt on the simple set-up described by sach, while trying to be a little wishy-washy and playing it safe by saying “I agree with the general assumption, but we shouldn’t assume it at the same time!”
I’ll take the mod at his word for now. No exotic roles. That post by you menocchio just strikes me as odd and a bit of blowing smoke around. Maybe I’m trying to justify my vote for you, but it bugs me nonetheless.
Do you still find my discussion with Sitnam aimless? If so, I’m curious as to why, because we have a very fundamental difference in approach to the game.
I’m not sure I understand your point here. This isn’t a game of perfect information. It’s not a simple game of a set of established scum tells, and a set of established power role tells, then just press go. This game is all about inferences, using imperfect information, and sometimes just a good gamble or blind luck.
I’m not saying that determining motivations is easy, or even always possible, but it is something that you can infer from behavioral patterns. I try to look at each action and imagine myself doing that as both pro-town and scum. For each one, I ask myself why I would do that? What’s the benefit? What’s the cost? Faced with those values, would I do that? Based on what I know about that person, do I think he’d do that?
Really, this game is a lot like poker. Sure, there’s established tells for when someone has a big hand, like betting big, but if your opponent’s bets are always correlated to the strength of his hand… how easy would it be to clean him out? I once heard a famous poker pro say (I can’t remember who), that an amateur plays his own cards, an experienced player players what he thinks his opponent’s cards are, and a pro plays what he think his opponent thinks his cards are. This game isn’t much different, because it doesn’t take a lot of experience to realize there’s certain behaviors that are just obviously scummy.
Yeah, I would say that’s an understatement. Just to lay it all out, this is what you said:
…and this is your evidence when called on it:
and
I’m sorry, but I think you broadly mischaracterized the other side of the argument.
You doubt, but you can’t know. If Sach wanted us to understand that there were 1 Doctor and 1 Detective and 2 Masons and Nothing else, he would have told us so. The veil of secrecy over the power roles means that we can’t truly assume anything outside of the dead. Given that we are working behind a fog, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there was something more than simple among the Simpletown elite.
I can’t really by trying to confuse anybody anyway, since this is just general strategy chatter and no one is role-claiming anything right now.
Obviously I disagree. I worded my original statement poorly, I’ll concede that. But there’s no doubt in my mind that there’s so weird ideas about power roles and claiming floating around. What I’m most curious about is why you’re on me so hard about this. Do you think Sach is being a bastard mod with this game, claiming its a back to basics game and then adding non-basic roles? Or are you just riding me for the sake of riding me?
That wasn’t the intended point of my post (hardcore bastard moddery). I was merely trying to suggest that scum claiming any role would potentially be risky for them since they wouldn’t know if that role existed and could be counter claimed. They then run the risk of getting lynched first on a 50/50 type play or getting lynched second if the first lynchee’s role is confirmed. This in the abscence of a very compelling argument that there are two doctors, two inspectors, etc. Unless it’s a Mason type claim in which case they run the risk of a real Mason, if there are any, just saying no you aren’t. From what I’ve read in other games their seems to be at least some general concensus that a one for one trade is typically beneficial to the town (if this last is incorrect, please feel free to correct my impression).
Actually I agree with you. Barring a masongate type situation(a situation that developed in an offboard game with 4 people each claiming to be a mason group of 2, one scum and one mason), role claims in this specific game are probably going to be true with a fairly high margin.
And yes, one for one trades are generally quite good for town. It’s a simple numbers game. Town’s advantage is in numbers, scum in information. A one for one trade favors the side with the numerical advantage more or less by definition. There may be specific situations where that is not the case, such as lynch or lose or specific, super power roles, but the vast majority of the time it’s true.
I’m on you about it because I believe that mischaracterizing other players’ statements is a classic scum tactic. Scum have a problem: they have to try to get townies lynched, but in order to do so they have to convince other townies that their target is scum when s/he is not. One way to do that is to twist a townie’s statements to make them sound scummy and/or to erect a strawman and call that strawman scummy. I believe that your statement that I quoted was a strawman, and I asked you to provide evidence for it. I didn’t find your evidence particularly convincing, and I wanted to be clear about why I felt that way.
And no, I do not think sach is being a bastard mod and adding non-basic roles. I absolutely think this is a vanilla game and discussion of exotic roles is not productive. It seems to me that no one has been seriously suggesting that there are exotic roles that we should plan for, which is why your statement stuck out to me. What I’ve been discussing is how to deal with role claims, most specifically the expected claims of Doctor, Detective (see my earlier example), etc. I’ve been asking if we should treat them differently than in games with an open set-up, and I think we’ve had some quality discussion on the issue.
You’re right that that would be a scum tell, except I’m not calling for anyone’s head based on those sorts of comments. In fact, I probably never would call for someone’s head on those grounds. I think I’ve made it clear that I follow the idea of looking at the motivation, not the action. A disagreement in strategy or in ideas does not say scum to me, so I wouldn’t vote for someone based on it.