Mafia: The Conspiracy

[Blaster_Master]

@sachertorte

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.

I don’t buy this. You posted at least oncebetween OAOW’s vote (181) and your vote (256), and you made no reference to him being scum in a previous game in your voting post either. In fact, having played with him previously, you should have known that he wasn’t

You do correctly state that there is a difference between poor reasoning and scum motivation; however, you can’t simply say it is poorly reasoned, therefore it could be either. The scum motivation behind this vote is obvious; however, the potential for townie motivation is distinctly lacking in my view here.

Meanwhile, what MHaye said is clearly a null tell, even without knowledge from previous games. If he’s a townie, he’s offering good advice (precisely against this sort of spurious reasoning). If he’s scum, he’s trying to either appear townie, or discourage people from voting for his fellow scum that were scum in a previous game.

Thus, I’m also suspicious of OAOW. After admitting that you’re playing in four games simultaneously, it’s fair to assume that A) You are at least somewhat experienced and B) You WANT us to know you’re experienced. This sort of knowledge about your experience makes you appear indispensible to the town, while simultaneously making to a potential target for the scum, ESPECIALLY if your target turns out to BE scum. Further, knowing this, as at least a moderately experienced player, you should know that what MHaye said is a null tell BUT could easily be twisted to APPEAR as a scum tell under the guise of Day One.

Hence, I’d theorize it is not unlikely that BOTH OAOW and sachetorte are scum, but probably not working together. While I’m inclined to believe sachetorte is more likely to be a more dangerous solo scum, I think OAOW is more likely to actually BE scum. However, IIRC, OAOW has no votes, while sachetorte has some, so I’m happy to put my vote on him.

Vote sachetorte

[Blaster_Master]

@Pygmy Rugger

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:

Here’s a simple plan, which I would like to put up for discussion with regard to a mason claim. We don’t lynch him, but advise that EVERY mason then do their secret handshake with him that Night (or are the handshakes Day? that would make it even BETTER). If he’s telling the truth, no one counters, and we’ve now got a confirmed mason WITH the indentity of every other mason. If he’s lying, we ask one of the masons to carefully, with LOTS of previewing to make sure two don’t simul-post, counter-claim. Thus, we lynch the original claimant.

Now, before it gets asked, let’s say we have a counter-claimant, and then another person claims to ALSO be a mason, and then VERIFIES the original claimer… we ask for someone else to also counter-claim, else we lynch the counter-claimant.

Thus, AFAICT, we’d get, at worst, a 1-1 trade from probably the weakest pro-town role.

[Blaster_Master]

@amrussell

If you let the scum know that a Vicar claim gets a reprieve, you are *guaranteeing * yourself a Vicar claim. If you let them know that it won’t work, you’re deterring them. If we have to sort out a Vicar claim toMorrow, we’ll end up outing the Vicar or outing the Seer, or leaving scum alive and posting. That’s an advantage to the scum which, if one is about to be lynched anyhow, they would be fools not to take. Our best strategy is to deter the claim.

In our best case scenario, there are what? 3 Wolves, 2 Cabal, 2 Undead, as absolute minimums. So if we get a Vicar claim, it’s a 1/22=4.5% chance we’ve got a real Vicar and a 7/22=31.8% chance we’ve got a lying scum. If there are 9 scum, it’s around 40%. Those are pretty good odds, especially considering the alternative.

I’m sorry, but this is just plain a bad idea. The Vicar is our only real weapon against the zombie invasion, and a powerful one at that. Could we potentially let a claiming scum live a Day or more longer? Yes, but that’s not such a big deal.

Plus, unless I’m missing something, I’m not really sure why the Vicar wouldn’t counter-claim a false Vicar claim. The zombies are a threat to EVERYONE, including the werewolves and vampires, meanwhile, his powers really only affect the winning conditions of the necromancer. Meanwhile, the necromancer has no way of killing him. IOW, his death hurts the town’s, vampires’, and wolves’ chances of winning, but is otherwise no different than a confirmed townie to each faction, whom the scum don’t need to worry about until it’s near end-game.

Now, obviously, the Vicar shouldn’t claim now, because he COULD be targetted by a vampire as long as he’s hidden which would save us a death. But certainly that minor advantage is worth catching guaranteed scum… no?

If I’m wrong on that, someone PLEASE point out what I missed.

[MHaye]

My head is killing me right now, and between that and the ibuprofen its getting hard to think.

The one player who stood out with bad ideas Today - head and shoulders above everyone else - was amrussell. Not once but twice he tried to get the town to set rules and protocols to deal with a possible problem situation.

His proposal to automatically lynch players making gallows claims of Witch or Vicar ignored any real question of the downside. While the chance of trying to lynch one is not high, the downside of lynching one is. The loss of a Vicar frees the Necromancer from a restraint, while the loss of the first Witch reduces their effectiveness and reduces or eliminates a barrier to the Cabal winning.

The earlier one is in post [post=9028722]217[/post]. In it amr proposes we give protown roles orders, because we want to most efficiently utilise protective resources. However, giving orders to power roles is at once fruitless and dangerous. Fruitless because no matter how hard we try, we cannot get executive oversight of the PMs the roleholders actually write (and thus cannot be sure they’ll follow orders), and dangerous because it allows scum (of whatever flavour we have here) to influence those orders.

The coordination idea failed on the rocks of the incompatibility between what the roles do, fortunately. But with both ideas coming from the same source, I’m going to :-

Vote amrussell.

[MHaye]

@Blaster Master

Here’s a simple plan, which I would like to put up for discussion with regard to a mason claim. We don’t lynch him, but advise that EVERY mason then do their secret handshake with him that Night (or are the handshakes Day? that would make it even BETTER)

Mason handshakes are a Day action.

[Idle_Thoughts]

@CatinaSuit

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.

Because everyone who is Town has a power role. And since we’re more likely to hit Town than Scum on the first few Days, I actually wouldn’t mind waiting for more info.

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.

In a normal game, I’d agree with you and in THIS game, I agree with you past Day One.
QUOTE=CatinaSuit]
**Idle Thoughts ** - for bringing up no-lynch, mass role claims and the odd (IMHO) vote on Zoggie
[/QUOTE]

Odd? I fully explained it and pretty clearly in that post. I can’t think of what you aren’t understanding but suit yourself.
Anyway, I’m not convinced about OAOW’s being suspicious for what she said but I did raise my eyebrows at amrussell. I fear this will be a lot like NAF/Kats game, though, with too much heat on people will make everyone claim eventually and then scum just picks Town off one by one.

[Blaster_Master]

@MHaye

My head is killing me right now, and between that and the ibuprofen its getting hard to think.

The one player who stood out with bad ideas Today - head and shoulders above everyone else - was amrussell. Not once but twice he tried to get the town to set rules and protocols to deal with a possible problem situation.

His proposal to automatically lynch players making gallows claims of Witch or Vicar ignored any real question of the downside. While the chance of trying to lynch one is not high, the downside of lynching one is. The loss of a Vicar frees the Necromancer from a restraint, while the loss of the first Witch reduces their effectiveness and reduces or eliminates a barrier to the Cabal winning.

The earlier one is in post [post=9028722]217[/post]. In it amr proposes we give protown roles orders, because we want to most efficiently utilise protective resources. However, giving orders to power roles is at once fruitless and dangerous. Fruitless because no matter how hard we try, we cannot get executive oversight of the PMs the roleholders actually write (and thus cannot be sure they’ll follow orders), and dangerous because it allows scum (of whatever flavour we have here) to influence those orders.

The coordination idea failed on the rocks of the incompatibility between what the roles do, fortunately. But with both ideas coming from the same source, I’m going to :-

Vote amrussell.

[Color Removed]

I absolutely agree that his ideas are illogical and anti-town; however, I’m torn as to the motivation. I agree with everything, except that I haven’t heard his responses to my thoughts on why we shouldn’t lynch a claimed witch and why I think it’s an unlikely scum claim AND that I actually believe the Vicar is similarly TOO valuable to give up and potentially counter-claimable.

amrussell, if I don’t see a satisfactory response from you on those topics, I may reconsider my vote

[fluiddruid]

@Blaster Master

IMO, someone who deliberately doesn’t post is playing outside the spirit of the game; however, posting somewhat less than you probably normally would is within the spirit.

Exactly. Obviously we need participation but, in the last game, I got criticized for being a low participant… but I just couldn’t think of substantive things to say! People were criticized for lurking or fluff, but frankly I thought a lot of the analysis was pretty much circle jerking and burying people in volume (which really benefits scum more than anyone).

[Blaster_Master]

@MHaye

Mason handshakes are a Day action.

I thought so… then all the masons have to do is wait until as late in the Day as they can (unless they’ll miss the deadline) and be ready to use the handshake for if/when someone claims mason. If you’re a mason and you already used it, I hope there’s still at least one out there who hasn’t today. And, if it’s too late, they can always just do it first thing the next Day.

[Blaster_Master]

@Idle Thoughts

Because everyone who is Town has a power role. And since we’re more likely to hit Town than Scum on the first few Days, I actually wouldn’t mind waiting for more info.

Huh? Don’t make me start making convoluted IT posts (Information Theory, silly ) about how that doesn’t make sense.

Yes, “everyone” has a power role, but not all power roles are created equal. We only have a handful that would be devastating to lose, and we can also NOT lynch them, and just feed them some rope in the meantime while we pursue others.

I was willing to accept that you might have been just throwing ideas out there for discussion, but this sort of defense doesn’t sit well with me AT ALL. It looks like you’re trying to have your cake and eat it too.

[Drain_Bead]

Okay, back from Vegas. I’ll have a chance to catch up with the thread tomorrow morning/afternoon. As is, I’m barely caught up with my other Mafia game, and I have the last vestiges of a hangover to sleep off.

[nesta]

@amrussell

Having said that early votes were good, I’m going to:

vote nesta

Despite being active in the thread, I count only one substantive post, in regards to mass role claims (Post 177). Even this is a bit fence-sitty, arguing that a mass roleclaim would probably work, but wouldn’t be any fun. Since then, we’ve had two posts about a previous game, with no other contribution.

I’ve been busier in RL than I’d hoped I would be, but I’m hoping this is a temporary thing. My evenings are mostly free, though, so I should be able to get some more substansive posts in. I guess I’ll have to be a little like Blaster Master for a bit and brain dump when I get a chance.

[nesta]

@Idle Thoughts

I’m usually one that thinks no-lynch is bad, but in this game I dunno if it’s completely bad for Day One. Any after, yeah. But not Day One so much.

I’m tempted to FOS those who propose a no-lynch because it’s usually such a bad idea even though it sounds attractive during an information-poor Day 1. In this game I’ve been going back and forth, though, because the alignment of the lynchee is the most important information gained and that is delayed now.

After giving it some thought I think it’s still best to lynch someone Day 1 because we do gain the information for Day 2 of where people voted and why, and even though we can’t see how this ultimately turned out for a bit, just the accountability of why people voted is more information than we would have if a no-lynch vote was seriously considered. As soon as we accept a no-lynch vote as valid it gives the scum an easy way to not put their neck on the line.

So mark me down against a no-lynch.

[nesta]

@ShadowFacts

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?

I think this is something we shouldn’t dismiss out of hand just because coordination is hard. I don’t think we’re going to get everyone to vote before the early deadline every time, but I think it’s best if we all try to do it. The last minute vote switching after a role claim usually isn’t very well thought out so the more time we have to work things out the better.

[Rysto]

@Blaster Master

The zombies are a threat to EVERYONE, including the werewolves and vampires, meanwhile, his powers really only affect the winning conditions of the necromancer. Meanwhile, the necromancer has no way of killing him. IOW, his death hurts the town’s, vampires’, and wolves’ chances of winning, but is otherwise no different than a confirmed townie to each faction, whom the scum don’t need to worry about until it’s near end-game.

Now, obviously, the Vicar shouldn’t claim now, because he COULD be targetted by a vampire as long as he’s hidden which would save us a death. But certainly that minor advantage is worth catching guaranteed scum… no?

Aren’t the Vampire and the Necromancer on the same side, even though they have no means of communication and don’t know who each other are? They’re both Undead.

[Santo_Rugger]

@Blaster Master

<snip>

If I’m wrong on that, someone PLEASE point out what I missed.

I agree with most of that post, except the Vampire(s) and the Necromancer(s) are on the same team.

[Santo_Rugger]

@Blaster Master

[Bolding Mine]

This was something that I think is important, but no one seemed to emphasize. That is, the Vicar doesn’t just get to play chicken; his advantage will grow each Night. That is, it’s not a 1/d chance of blocking a zombification, it’s an n/(d-z) chance, where n is the number of Days and d is the number of dead and z is the number of zombies.

plugging ears

LALALALALALALALALALLALALALLLAAALALLA

[Santo_Rugger]

@amrussell

Witches play as a team, so I don’t expect any real Witches to be losing any close votes toDay.<snip>

There are only two other Witches that would be able to influence this.

And you’re right, it will take time to verify a Detective, just as it would a Seer, or a Coroner, or to a lesser extent a Freemason. So what? How do we verify a Witch claim? Certainly not through other Witches.

Through the absence of a counter claim

Further on preview: are you thinking of the same Detective I am, or do you mean Seer/Investigating Witch?

My apologies, I misread it as them finding the identity of a person -killed- the previous night.

[Rysto]

@Pygmy Rugger

Through the absence of a counter claim

You want a witch to counter-claim a false witch claim? That’s not a good trade!

[Santo_Rugger]

@Rysto

You want a witch to counter-claim a false witch claim? That’s not a good trade!

So you’d rather lynch all claimed witches, like amr? Do you have a better idea?

IMO, a witch trade for scum is better than falsly lynching a real witch, with no trade.

I’ve been wondering… would lynching three Wolves be worth outing two or three (all) witches and possibly lynching one (in other words, make two witches claim if there’s a counter claim)?

The biggest downside I can see is that you could possibly out two witches by finding the real witch, and only outing one scum.

goes back to the drawing board