Idle Thoughts, this is the second time you have mentioned no-lynch. Would you like to give some reasons as to why a no-lynch on the first night might not be a bad idea.
Personally, I think we need to force people to vote to see what their intentions are, not to mention we have a reasonably good chance of hitting scum even on a random vote. We also get more information out quickly to the town. A no-lynch just gives the Wolves, Vamps and investigators a head start, everyone else has to wait.
I’ve been mulling over my vote on my way to work. The way sachertorte was ready to vote for MHaye based on the fact that he was supposedly scum in a previous game still does not sit well with me - it seems like a sort of meta-gaming to me, and against the spirit of the game - but I suppose that just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s a scum tell. Hmm.
I need coffee before I can vote.
Speaking of voting, we’re now about one day away from the deadline, and I’d like to begin a discussion about role claims. In previous games that I’ve read on the Dope, there usually was a policy of believing all roles claims, at least temporarily, to avoid lynching a power role by accident. Often this would happen at the last minute, leading to flurries of activity at the deadline trying to come up with a second candidate.
Given that this game is different and everyone has a power role, presumably everyone is giong to role claim (including scum, of course). How are we going to handle that? It seems to me that the “believe all role claims” method is simply not going to work in this game, because we’re just going to get a cascading series of “Wait, I’m the [insert role here], don’t lynch me!” until all roles are revealed.
I have no idea what to do about this. Later in the game, of course, we may have more data to work with to evaluate claims, but at the moment we have pretty much nada.
Thoughts?
I was thinking the same thing, especially after witnessing the Day One in the FireFly game. I certainly don’t want to expose any more roles than necessary. There are a couple of ways I thought of, that we might avoid this.
If you are a minor role about to be lynched, sacrifice yourself in order to protect other roles from being revealed.
Choose between the two highest vote getters. Both will claim, but lynch only out of the two. Hopefully we will have chosen the two because of their scumminess, then we choose a lynchee based on the worthiness of their claim.
We don’t lynch today. There are drawbacks as well as merits to not lynching as have been previously discussed.
Of the three choices above, I would prefer to go with the second option or the first option respectively. If for some reason we can’t decide on someone, I won’t vehemently oppose not lynching. I’m not entirely for it, but I can see that it may have it’s place in this game.
I’d quite cheerfully lynch a claimed Freemason today, if I already had reason to believe them scummy. This is because it is the safest roleclaim for today, as the Freemasons have only had the chance to check one person each. I’d be very reluctant to lynch any other claimed role without a counterclaim.
Someone pointed out that even if MHaye was scum in a previous game and town in this game, he would still be motivated to make the statement he did. That is a good point, and one that I had not adequately considered. Sorry. I’ll just re-state that there is a distinction between poor reasoning and scum motivation. Please be aware of the difference, look at my actions yesterday, and see if it makes more sense as a townie trying to get discussion going from basically nothing or scum trying to get a lynch. Quite frankly, I find it funny that I’m being held up to some kind of gold standard of needing rock solid reasoning to vote for someone on Day One. If we stuck to that, no one would ever be able to vote.
As for no-lynch: I can see why this would be tempting. In typical games, town knows that at night a townie will get night killed (or at least targetted). In this game, there is a non-zero chance of scum cross fire. Wolves could hit Undead or Cabal or Town. And Vampire(s) could hit Wolves, Cabal, Town or other Undead. This, I think, is why a no-lynch is more tempting in this setting over the typical set-up. I’m curious about what would happen if town didn’t lynch for several Days. It seems very wrong, but I can see some compelling reasons to do so as well. (see roleclaims below) By going no-lynch we won’t reveal roles to scum and will maximize the chance of cross fire. But we also won’t gain information and important discussions for review later.
On the other hand, I’m tempted for a lynch because that’s one body removed from the game that cannot be turned into a zombie. (At least if I end up dead today, I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing I won’t be zombified 
) This is sort of a weak argument, as it doesn’t change the number of zombifiable corpses in subsequent days. However, a lynch today does bring the endgame sooner, which might be good since we don’t want the number of zombies to get too large. I guess what I’m trying to say is, in typical mafia, a slow game benefits town. However, in this game, a slow game benefits Undead. Therefore a no-lynch is bad from that point of view.
Roleclaims:
ShadowFacts is correct. Roleclaims are going to be a nightmare in this game. I don’t think we can tell people not to roleclaim, but it is a mess that is inevitable and perhaps we should deal with the mess earlier than later? On the other hand, dealing with it earlier might leave us with having more roleclaims than if we waited longer. (I think this roleclaim issue would fall into the “pro” column for a no-lynch today.) As for dealing with the inevitable, I think we’re pretty much stuck with addressing it when the time arises. What we do will be highly dependent on what roles are claimed. I don’t think we can set a policy beforehand. Nor would we want to as that would indicate to scum which roleclaims are most effective.
Really? Quite cheerfully? This just doesn’t sit right with me. Reluctant to lynch an un-counterclaimed role? What if a scum gets lucky and chooses a role that isn’t in the game and claims that? Then you’ve given a free pass to a scum for the duration of the game.
Vote One and Only Wanderers
So if someone claims witch, and their is no counter claim, you would throw them off the ladder, despite the fact that losing a witch means them losing a night action? Get real. There is plenty of time to look at the person’s claim in subsequent days. Without a counterclaim, I would be reluctant to lynch any town role other than freemason, ON THAT DAY. On subsequent days if their role doesn’t pan out, then they are fair game
My problem with this is that the known Freemasons could investigate that person toNight, and say nothing in the morning for a successful investigation, and one Freemason could out one scum tomorrow. I think a one to one trade at this point in the game would be a Good Thing. We can’t do that if we lynch a possible Freemason! :dubious:
No, I’m saying that we have to evaluate the claim and the claimant. I don’t want to have to push a bunch of people against the wall to day until we find a Freemason if that is the only role that people are comfortable lynching. How many roles do we risk exposing that way? A freaking lot!
I don’t disagree, and I have not advocated any such thing. All I am saying is that if I am voting someone for scumminess, and they claim Freemason, that’s not going to change my position, they would instead have to use logic/build a case against someone else. If they claim Seer/Witch etc, then yes, I am most certainly removing my vote, mainly because if it is a falseclaim they will have outed themselves to the real owner of the role. If they are lucky enough to find an unfilled role, well when we ask them what their night/day actions were we can catch them that way.
Couldn’t you just wait a Day?
So, Og forbid, the two highest vote getters end up claiming Vicar and Witch. Better lynch one of em, eh? :dubious:
I think you are correct that setting some kind of one size fits all policy about role claims is a bad idea. However, what do people think about setting a pre-deadline for voting? For example, we could all agree to get our votes in 24 hours hours before the Day ends. That way, we have 24 hours to evaluate and discuss the inevitable role claim.
I am concerned that if we stick with the regular deadline, we will get rushed, last-minute lynches, and that can only benefit scum. It is in their best interests to wait until the last minute to claim, and not give the town adequate time to think it over.
Does anyone see any downsides to this idea?
The result of that is that someone else is pushed to claim, rinse and repeat.
Well, if you’d rather lynch a verifiable pro town role than try and flush out scum, I can totally understand your position coughscum!cough.
Oh sorry, we should only lynch the people who stand up and say “Yes I’m a werewolf”. There’s a strategy that will work. Basically you are advocating a no lynch for today then?
While I appreciate the urge to have people participate - we definitely want that - I just want to put in an early note that we should not get carried away with “lynch lurkers”. Just my two cents, I think power roles tend to participate more, moreso with more powerful the role and the smaller the team. I just haven’t seen this work out especially well in previous games.
What part about verifiable do you not understand?
I never said the plan was foolproof. 
I’m putting ideas out there for consideration. We need to discuss how we are going to deal with the “Everybody Has a Powerrole” issue. It’s not going to be easy to lynch a claimed role like that. But it *will * have to be done. *Everybody * is going to claim something. We have to evaluate the claims instead of taking them on faith like we have done in the past. The old adage of not lynching a claimed role until they are proven a lyar will not hold in this game. It just won’t. The only way we can get around that is to not lynch anybody until the investigative roles turn something up. Then they will have to claim to give us the information. Then we have to evaluate that claim to determine if we have true info or a scum trying to get us to lynch a townie. It’s going to get ugly.