Yes, although I’m not sure how to explain it any more clearly than I did before.
I agree with all of this. Maybe I’m not understanding your point. Isn’t what you describe pretty much the only way to play this game? You try to determine motivations by making inferences from behavior. I thought you were saying we should ignore behavior.
Not being BlaM, I can’t speak for him, but I know we discussed this a bit in the last game too. I think his whole point of view (and I know he’ll correct me if I’m wrong), which I definitely feel is worth considering, is that a single behavior has several possible motivations. Although in the last game, he presented this argument to deflect suspicion from the newb Boss, I still think it’s a good idea. Using the example from the last game: the Boss killed on Night One instead of recruiting. Many people said, “oh that’s a newb mistake: obviously this Boss is a newb.” While that did turn out to be the case, it’s still worthwhile to note that it could just as easily have been an experienced player using a newb move to deflect attention from themselves. One must consider all possible motivations behind a behavior to properly analyze it, rather than just the most obvious possible motivation. That’s really where “null tells” come into play as well.The behavior: the newb frothing at the mouth. The most obvious possible motivation: a scum effort to be Townie, gone a bit overboard. Another possibility: an over-eager newb Townie. Given that both possibilities seem to have about an equal chance, one would want to examine other behavior in both lights, and see which possible motivation is more consistent with this other behavior. Without any other proof, over-eagerness is a null tell, especially from a newb.
(color removed by me)
I’ve already asked MadTheSwine about this vote in part, but I’d like to take a closer look and examine each part in turn.
Early lurking
IMO, this is a good reason to vote for someone when they are engaging in that behavior. I posted a list of substantive post counts (post 177), which had zuma at 0 posts. IIRC, I voted for zuma myself in that same post, but moved it once he started participating. At that time, you had 1 substantive post, so hardly better. Since that time, zuma has recorded 9 more substantive posts to 4 more for you (including this vote and your reply to me when I asked you about it). So, this reason seems…ironic, to say the least.
Switching votes 3 times
This is what I asked you about earlier. Specifically, I asked you what about it was scummy and you said, “Not sure that it is,but they sure came in rapid sucession.Just raised a flag.” Is it the number of vote switches, the timing, or both? It seems to me that the general consensus here is that we should be voting early, and switching as needed, rather than waiting to the last minute. I certainly think that is the best strategy. So why is 3 vote switches a good reason to vote for someone?
“Dreaded” 3rd vote
This is a meme that has been discussed often before in various games. For those who may not have heard of it before, the 3rd vote on someone has sometimes been seen as a scum tell, because it signals the beginning of a bandwagon. In other words, opportunistic scum will place the third vote on someone that 2 townies have already voted for in order to get something started against that person without initiating the voting themselves. Personally, I think this is a garbage reason to vote for someone because the 3rd vote “rule” is fairly well-known - it’s almost a cliche at this point - and vote order doesn’t really tell us anything by itself. A drive-by third vote with no reason whatsoever? Maybe that might merit a second look, but Mad is using vote order by itself here as a reason to vote for someone.
So, I realize it’s Day One and we’ve not got a lot to go on, but I think the reasons for this vote don’t hold up (at best).
I’ve stated before that randomly lynching someone the first day is poor strategy, in accordance with that I’ve made a rational decision I stand behind. I’ve been reading every ones posts very carefully for suspicious scum tells and I’ve developed a short list of people I think could be scum. All told, the information isn’t solid enough for me to reach any conclusion I’d be comfortable with so some other criteria is needed for my lynch vote. This is my first game of Mafia, but I’ve played Diplomacy quite a few times and the games are remarkably similar. Whether the background is a fictional town with murders or a battle map of Europe the essence of the Online game is the same, discussion. I reached a decision early in my Diplomacy playing days that no matter what ‘out of the gate’ strategy you have, no matter what battle plans or country you play, one bit of advice is an absolute tautology ‘you cannot cooperate with someone who doesn’t participate’. I’ve attacked Germany’s usual ally Russia and I’ve attacked Italy’s solid ally Austria in the first day simply because they never wrote me back and it’s never been a mistake. To find out who’s been quiet I’ve counted the number of posts since this game has started leaving out only those posts that corrected coding mistakes and these are my results:
(as of post #342)
Blaster Master 37
bufftaby 10
Ice Cream Man 13
Zuma 16
predescribe 16
WF Tomba 11
koldanar 15
MindWanderer 10
Queen of Town 12
MadTheSwine 7
Nanook of the North Shore 12
Shadowfacts 22
Menocchio 11
peekercpa 46
Sitnam 14
fluiddruid 10
I make no claim that quantity equals quality and so I went back and looked at MadThe Swine’s posts and these aren’t excepts, this is MadTheSwine’s entire contribution in three days:
Post #122 “Hehe, I was thinking the same thing BM. That said, HI Everyone! I’m back from my mafia sabbatical,time for a nice relaxing game of mafia .”
Post #131 “That does seem odd.I also thought asking for examples of mistakes is scummy.
Vote Ice Cream Man”
Post #190 "My fault for not checking upthread for validation of your statement,three pages in I didn’t think it was necessary. I had already conisidered voting for Ice Cream before with his “mistakes” post and your “fuck up” helped make my decision.
Strange how you fuck up and then vote for me because I believed what you said.
Post #193 “OH MY GOD!!! YOU SUCK!! It’s a you vote fer me,I vote fer you thing. So there!”
Post #255 "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.
Post #325 Vote Zuma
With his early lurking,switching votes three times and casting the dreaded 3rd vote for Mennochio
Post #336 "Not sure that it is,but they sure came in rapid sucession.Just raised a flag.
Many will state that lurking is a sign of scumminess, I am still unconvinced. However, this game relies completely on participation, participation I see lacking in MadTheSwine. The day isn’t over, many people have buisy lives, computers breakdown, I believe these are all valid excuses but wear thin. It’s difficult to time posting a conclusion, do it too early and said person doesn’t really get a chance to speak, do it too late and it appears you’ve jumped on some kind of band wagon. I don’t think 3 days is too early and since I’m the only one that has a standing vote for MadTheSwine there’s no band wagon.
I make it known that I have no particular suspicion of MadTheSwine’s scumminess or lack thereof, I simply want to contribute to prodding people to play the game they signed up for.
unvote Queen of Town
vote MadTheSwine
This is very apt and something that we need to consider very carefully. Any time we seem utterly sure of something, we probably are being overzealous.
There are an awful lot of cases where the old chestnuts like “lynch liars” just don’t work out, and we should be pushing people to post analysis to defend their votes that examine the issue from all sides, not just catchphrases like this.
Another example from the last game: Pleonast claimed Priest. The Detective later claimed he was not a Priest. There was a big push to lynch one of them ASAP. Well, it turned out they were both Town and both had positions that made sense. Sure, Pleonast lied, but he was the Bishop - a recruitable role if they used the Capo, and arguably one of the better roles to snag. If he had claimed Bishop when threatened with lynching, this power would have been rendered useless. He did the right thing by claiming Priest, which had similar powers other than that. Drain Bead, the Detective, was being cautious and thought perhaps she had hit a scum (scum could reveal a random role) so she brought it up. In the end, though, both players made the correct play and both were Town, but it ended up being a huge distraction at minimum and several votes were cast for both of them.
Now, that was a strange case. People caught in lies should indeed be carefully examined. But it illustrates that there are no (or very few) absolute single behavior scum tells and really what the game comes down to is looking at the “big picture”. That’s hard to do now, but as the game goes on, things get intense and it’s important that we commit ourselves to strong analysis and observation. Modding, I saw that most votes were being cast on the strongest and loudest players, which didn’t include the Boss they were hunting for.
I agree with this, except that “lynch all liars” is not supposed to be a scum tell. It’s an anti-lying policy. It rests on the assumption that lying is always bad for Town no matter who does it. I think that’s a fair assumption in any non-recruiting game, and I’m 98% sure we don’t have recruitment here, since our mod has expressed distaste for it.
This sort of lynching strategy–using the threat of lynching to enforce pro-town behavior–is probably more useful early in the game than voting based on suspicion, since suspicions are so likely to be wrong in the early phase. I’m thinking about switching to a lynch-lurkers policy before the day is up. It’s not that I no longer suspect Blaster Master, it’s just that I am starting to think that suspicion is a poor guide in the early stages of the game.
To change the subject, I’d like to point out that our current top vote-getter, Menocchio, has received two of his four votes at random. We’re sort of cruising toward a random lynch there. On the other hand, our voting is very spread-out, so at least we’re not being stampeded. I like the way this game is going so far.
Q: Do scum know each other already?
A: As is standard practice, the scum PM included a list of fellow scum.
Examining each part in turn is silly,there is rarely a single post that screams scum. Put a few together and ya might have something.
There is a difference, IMO, between lurking and not posting a lot,those of you that have played with me before know i’m not a prolific poster. What concerned me with zuma is that he had not posted until he was called on it, then showed up. Do I vote for someone for just lurking?Usually not.
The timing,as I said before. Let’s have a look at the votes.
Post 205-votes for ShadowFacts (interesting)
Post 207(5 minutes later)- unvotes ShadowFacts votes Koldenar.
Less than 4 hours later, Post 217-Unvotes Koldenar votes Mennochio
People are obviously gonna vote 3 or more times a Day at some point(which I intend to do shortly),but 3 times in 4 hours?
I have seen the 3rd vote work several times,even after it had become “cliche”.
What is it you said about mischaracterizing other players statements?
ShadowFacts Post 319-“I’m on you about it because I believe that mischaracterizing other players’ statements is a classic scum tactic.”
I am NOT using the 3rd vote by itself to vote.I gave other reasons along with it.
For that reason, and the fact that zuma voted for you, and you now seem to be staunchly defending him makes me think you are scum. Good cover, if it works.
unvote zuma
** VoteShadowFacts**
That’s a nice OMGUS vote, about which I will respond to the quote above, because you misinterpreted what I was saying. I did not mean that the 3rd vote was the only reason you voted for zuma (obviously, I think, since I just spent time discussing 2 other reasons). A fuller quote shows the context:
So, what I meant (and said) was that your “dreaded 3rd vote” reason was about the vote order only. Perhaps you were thrown off track by my using “by itself” instead of “only”. I was not saying that the “dreaded 3rd vote” was your only reason. Again, I think that is pretty obvious given my long post addressing your other two reasons.
So, I did not mischaracterize your vote post - you misunderstood. Despite your selective quoting, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that the misunderstanding was not intentional.
Oh, I forgot to address this. The whole point of my post was examining your entire case against zuma, which I believe I demonstrated to be not a whole lot. I just did it piece by piece for the sake of clarity. This is a ridiculous criticism.
1 - Blaster Master (WF Tomba)
2 - WF Tomba (Ice Cream Man, pedescribe)
1 - MadTheSwine (Sitnam)
1 - ShadowFacts (MadTheSwine)
4 - Menocchio (fluiddruid, bufftabby, zuma, ShadowFacts)
2 - peekercpa (Koldanar, Mind Wanderer)
2 - Sitnam (Blaster Master, Nanook of the North Shore)
2 - fluiddruid (Queen of Town, Menocchio)
You didn’t demonstrate diddly-squat.Are you seriously saying my points about zuma are unfounded?
I find it interesting that this is what you choose to address, so before I answer your question, let me ask you two others that I feel need to be resolved:
Now, on to your question:
No, I am not saying that your points about zuma are “unfounded” - I’ve never said that, so please don’t put words in my mouth. What I did say was: “I think the reasons for this vote don’t hold up (at best).” Another way to put that would be that I think your reasons are weak. Please see my original post for detailed explanations for why I think that.
Yes, you are absolutely right. Any action by a poster must be examined in context, in order to judge which of the several possible motivations for it is most likely. I think that this is what most players are generally doing, though, even if they don’t say it clearly. If that’s the gist of Blaster Master’s point, then I agree but I don’t see what’s so revolutionary about it.
Furthermore, in this part of the game virtually any motivation is plausible. If I were scum now, I would be trying not to make use of my extra information at all. The best scum strategy, to me, would seem to be to try to forget that one is scum. Late in the game, if the Town is doing well, this may become impossible, and then the Mafia are forced to show their hand. But right now the best Mafia strategy is no strategy at all.
The only thing about that strategy that I would think would be difficult is trying to convincingly feign suspicion. That’s why Blaster Master’s post in response to Sitnam set off alarm bells in my head–it sounded like feigned suspicion to me, not genuine suspicion. Maybe my nose is out of tune, I don’t know. But that’s why I voted for him, and I remain suspicious of him for that reason.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking this over and I’ve decided that trying to determine motivation, or indeed any form of suspicion-based voting (that is, any vote based on who you think is scum) is so unreliable at this point in the game that, as I said in my previous post, it’s better to use lynch votes to discourage behavior that makes the Town’s job harder. So I have decided to switch to a lynch-lurkers policy for now. I will vote for the poster who I think has contributed the least to the game up to now. Again, this is not because I think that person is more likely to be in the Mafia. It’s because that person is making the Town’s job harder, no matter which side they are on.
Unfortunately, bufftabby, that person is you.
Unvote Blaster Master
[color=blueVote bufftabby[/color]
Ahem.
Vote buffabby
There seems to be a lot of bizarre debating going on over very subtle topics. Figuring out motivations from behaviors is all well and good, but it helps to have a concrete situation in mind. Without that it just seems like talk to fill up the pages.
Voting against lurkers makes sense, but one thing I wanted to bring up is the opposite situation. How often is a really active poster that’s making many FOSs and votes a scum vs. townie? I think you have to look at the substance and the “style” of the posts as a whole to decide, and my thinking in voting for peekercpa involved some of those “style” aspects as well as considering the perspective on both sides of the fence.
One thing I’ve realized already about mafia games is players can use rules of thumb for good or for evil so to speak. You can apply the rule to find mafia, or use the rule as a something to avoid on the other hand. It seems like the stock market, which has had many different rules of thumb at different points in time. If people start buying companies that are suspected of being acquired (say Yahoo being bought by Microsoft), that will start being incorporated into the pricing so that even a suspicion of being bought out brings prices up.
Likewise, I think in mafia, there are probably certain fundamentals that are always true, but also, there are situational rules of thumb that may still be valid while others are well known and now invalid or less useful.
Real life intrudes. My daughter has to have her appendix taken out in an hour or so. I will try to check in during the night but will not make any guarantees.
Guys, I’m really sorry and as you all may have noticed, I haven’t posted much since the start. Well RL has intruded, and I won’t really be free again until Sunday at some point (sach, if this is an issue let me know). I can check in and read some, but I won’t be able to keep up till then, as it’s the next day I have some time to spare.
So you are unvoting the person you are actually most suspicious of, in favor of someone who is slightly lurky on Day One when it is most difficult to find suspicious behavior?
Sure, I’ve been a bit lurky. But I don’t have anything to say at this point. I’ve not seen anything I feel to be suspicious. Sure, I could go wild, peekercpa-style, and vote all over the place. Or I could wait until I see something that I actually find suspicious. I choose to do the latter, and I’m not sure how you see that as “making the Town’s job harder”. But, hey, like I said the first time you voted for me, go for it. [Crazyperson]I’ll show you all when I’m dead!!! Aaaargh![/crazyperson]
I agree with WF Tomba.
Unvote fluiddruid
Vote bufftabby
I just went back looked through. There’s very little of substance there. Not much general strategy chatter, and absolutely no discussion of today’s vote, outside of a random vote for me, after stating that you didn’t like random votes.
I think fluiddruid is showing some serious confirmation bias throughout, but at least she’s in the mix and out there hunting.