I understand that this is your first game. The way I like to put it is that this game pits the scums information advantage against the town’s numerical advantage. Each Day, we need to make sure the information we gain from a lynch plus the probability of a correct lynch and it’s numerical gain out paces the probability of an incorrect lynch and it’s numerical loss.
So, it’s important to have discussion because discussion creates information by providing accountability and behavior patterns. So, I don’t hold anything against new players who don’t have many observations, but please do ask question, provide thoughts, and such. Certainly you can guess at the sorts of roles we may have, or back-up/question some logic that is presented, etc.
Essentially, yes. And it’s good that you have some Chaos theory and programming background, because that’s where I got the idea for PRH. Basically, in any random data set that is sufficiently large, there is a high probability of repetition and correlation. However, intuitively, random seems to imply an even distribution. The example I like to give, assuming you don’t have any almost unavoidable a priori bias, is to take a pencil and make random dots, then compare that pattern to several true random dot distributions. They will likely look distinctly different. You can do the same with a random list of numbers or such.
Of course, this becomes much more subtle in these circumstances, considering it’s a much higher dimensionality, but IME, it’s a phenomenon that tends to hold true, even if only with hind sight.
Wait, joke? Three games is plenty of expirience! That plus,
(greyscale)
hoping(?) for a shortening mechanic, which always seems to bite town in the butt (from what I’ve watched), and
maybe confirming a weird PM, makes me Vote Koldanar
for now. That and my excessive parinoia. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to build me some tiger traps and a moat.
To take this another way, are you a WoW player? There used to be (and still is) so much bitching about the drops from bosses in that game and how they’re not “random”. Even though odds are somewhere someone will get 8 sets of warrior armor in a row. (Though of course the game is using Pseudo, but still). I see your point.
In other news, we seem to be dominating this game yet. Guys contribute! It took me a little while to warm up, but by all means post. The more you do it the more comfortable you’ll be. And if you’re scum, don’t worry. The lynching will be painless, promise
Thanks for responding, I agree that conversation is the key to gaining information and ultimately victory. One of the tasks I’ve seen in other games that I’ve read that I think I will try to fill is the more mathematical analysis of voting history and participation and other quantitative aspects. I’ve got a mathematical background so I think I will be useful in that context. However, I don’t know alot about randomness and information theory or chaos so I don’t have much to add on that subject.
Yes, at this point a mass-role claim is decidedly to the town’s detriment. Each power role is faced with the dilemma of outting himself to the scum versus later being called a liar when he tries to utilize his role. The only danger to scum is if they try to be clever and claim non-vanilla, they run the risk of outting themselves. Chances are, at this point, a mass role-claim would end up with 16 people claiming vanilla, and when we later encounter someone who recants it, do we follow the lynch all liars protocol or do to believe them on the assumption they had pro-town motivation to lie?
In general, unless we have a way to verify claims and reason to believe they provide a greater advantage in the open (say, they cut the unconfirmed pool by a large margin), it’s not to our advantage.
I know I plan to. Trying to go back and find a specific post after these threads get as long as I have seen them get would be a pain and very time consumptive.
Don’t worry, I have plenty of experience and lots of fields of mathematics, and I love to do play around with numbers related to the game. My one point of caution though is that simply posting mathematical analysis really isn’t as informative as you might think. For instance, I may use PRH when I have no real suspicions, but it’s not something that can be used to lynch someone on it’s own, because it could simply be a statistical anamoly.
The key point to watch for is motivation. Any player, regardless of his alignment, could do an action that’s helpful to the town or hurtful to the town. Obviously, pro-town players want to help the town, but they could also be following faulty logic. Similarly, scum want to look pro-town, but they really want to hurt it, so it’s entirely possible that they would do either as well. Whenever analyzing someone’s actions, always look at the underlying motivation and not the action itself. Disagreement on logic, strategy, math, or whatever is usually a null tell, but motivation is always present, and can be extracted given sufficient information on an individual’s behavior.
Ah but, of those three, one I was the victim of a pile on by scum, another I died at the end of day one thanks to a Day-killer, and the other was the only game I lasted longer than the end of the first Day. I’m not claiming newb anymore, but I’ve but scrached the surface yet.
Nope, not hoping. But clarification is good; if we didn’t know that the day is fixed, we might be thinking a large amount of people would end the day, claims would happen when they don’t need to, etc. It’s better for the town to have this information now.
Err, how does this confirm a weird PM? What I was stating was basically, does a closed format game standardly include one scum that isn’t vanilla scum.
It means Finger of Suspicion. It is more like an unofficial vote to let someone know you’re suspicious of them. Some people like to formalize it by going “FOS on Player X”. Generally, I don’t bother because that seems a little tacky to me, and if my suspicions aren’t patently obvious, then I’m not doing a good job of explaining myself.
The point where it is potentially useful is in discerning genuine suspicion and smudges (the latter being a term specific to our group of players). The primary difference is, suspicion is when you’re actually express suspicion. A smudge is usually a statement that paints someone in a bad light as if to put suspicion on that player without actually expressing suspicion oneself. It’s often, but by no means always, an attempt by scum to direct town suspicion and voting while attempting to not be tied back to it.
I’m under the impression that it means they’ll be watching the game with interest, but will neither participate nor sub. Of course, I could be mistaken…
It’s possible there’s a Godfather type role that cannot be detected by the detective, assuming even the latter exists. But, I don’t think it’s anything to really be worried about at this point, because if he does exist, the detective won’t be able to find him. It will only really be a concern if we reach a point where everyone is confirmed town and the game isn’t over, which means one of the investigations must be false. Until we reach such a point, there really isn’t any discernable difference in assuming there is or is not one.
It is possible there are other scum roles, but most of the rest are either a bit more complex or rather esoteric, so the Godfather is the only one I’d have any real reason to believe might actually be present.
I don’t think I ever seen a game that has something other than a godfather type or vanilla scum. Are there other scary beasties that could potentially be out there?
Hah of course! Check out Mafia on Wikipedia; there’s a good list of non-standard roles there. Or lurk the offboard game done by RoOsh and watch that too.
