Chronos, I can buy your explanation for waiting for reactions.
But as far as the First Mason thing goes, to me it still looks like:
We have a potential plan with some pitfalls and dangers. Maybe people won’t cooperate unless the First Mason reveals. Maybe the First Mason might have to claim later, or might be identified by the Wolves. In all these circumstances, the worst that can happen is that the First Mason gets outed.
So we could ask the First Mason to try to lay low and stay out of the tie, in which case, again, the worst case scenario is that the First Mason’s cover gets blown. We could see if, in fact, a critical number of players insist on the First Mason revealing before going along with the plan. We could allow for the possibility that some massive scum slip might make the first lynch victim obvious and put the whole plan on hold until Tomorrow. Or we could just have the First Mason reveal and bring the worst possible case scenario on ourselves right away. It’s real hard for me to imagine that a smart player like you could have trouble deciding which of these is the better idea.
Because, prior to septimus’ pointing out the flaw, it appeared that this plan involved:
A 100% chance of catching the Alpha Wolf, at the cost of at most one mislynch of a Townie, who would have the opportunity to claim if he or she was a power role. In addition, there would be about a 25% chance of catching TWO wolves.
The Wolves identifying the First Mason and narrowing the candidates for the other two down to a field of about ten players.
A 1 in 16 chance of lynching the Seer, and a 1 in 16 chance of lynching the Doctor.
That seems to me like a great deal for Town! Chronos’ revised plan was indeed slightly superior, but the tone of your criticism seemed much less “here are some kinks, can we work them out?” and more like an attempt to shoot the idea down entirely.
Please note: the ruleset below is complete. There are no hidden mechanics, roles, factions, or rules.
Game Basics
Players will be randomly assigned a role (see below) and receive a Private Message (PM) with that role assignment. You are free to copy and paste your Role PM and any subsequent communications from the moderator, or lie about same, to your heart’s content.
THE DAY -
The game will start with Day One, which will begin whenever all players have confirmed receipt of their Role PM. During Day One, players may discuss whatever they choose and vote for anyone they choose. Day One will end at noon Eastern Standard Time on Monday, July 27; subsequent Days will last exactly five real life days. All Days are considered to end exactly at the appointed time, even if I’m not able to post the official “Day’s End” post at that time.
At the end of the Day, whichever player has the most votes will be “lynched” (see the Roles post for how ties are resolved). The lynched player is removed from the game and may no longer vote, take action, or participate in the discussion beyond a brief, non-substantive goodbye post. The player’s role and alignment will be revealed at this time.
You may vote for only one player at a time. In order for a vote to count, it must be in blue font, like so: vote storyteller0910
If you wish to change your vote, you must first “unvote” using red font: unvote storyteller0910, before placing your new vote. If you do not do this, your new vote will not count.
Importantly, the Werewolves are not permitted to engage in strategic discussion on their offsite forum during the Day cycle.
THE NIGHT -
Nights will last two real-life days, and like Days, will officially end at the appointed time even if I’m not around to say so. No voting is permitted during the Night, and conversation in the main thread must be fluff only – no substantive discussion of game matters, strategy, role claims, or the like.
During the Night, the Werewolves will convene and choose one Town player to kill. Absent intervention, that player will die at the end of the Night. That player is removed from the game and may no longer vote, take action, or participate in the discussion beyond a brief, non-substantive goodbye post. The player’s role and alignment will be revealed at this time.
Also, during the Night, the two Town power roles with active powers – the Seer and the Guardian – may act by sending a PM to the moderator (that’s me!) with the name of a target. Actions not used are lost. Win Conditions
The Werewolves win if at the beginning of any Day or Night, the number of Werewolves is greater than half the number of living players.
The Town wins if at the beginning of any Day or Night, all Werewolves are dead. Miscellaneous Rules
No recruitment or changes of alignment will occur at any time.
There are no in-game powers or mechanics whatsoever that affect the vote count in any way; if there is an apparent irregularity in the vote count, it is the result of moderator error. Which is going to happen, people, so be ready.
All public reveals by the moderator are 100% accurate in all cases.
Post editing is not forbidden by the rules of the game. Other players may frown upon post editing – it may even get you lynched – but the moderator will not intervene in any case of post editing.
Please participate. Active participation – several posts per Day, and voting at least onc
Ok, the virus-laden computer upstairs is no better, so it is back to the phone.
I first want to cheer Jimmy Chitwood, whose post mirrored a lot of what I was thinking. The folks he mentioned above are on my radar and my instinct says Jimmy Chitwood is town.
Indeed I am trying to figure out how a wolf would think in this game. That’s why I can’t right now buy into theories that Chronos is wolf. I purposely avoided putting out any “blunt instrument” use of the tie rule, and encouraged others the same way during night zero. I wanted wolf response without a coordinated plan on their part. If Chronos was wolf, the elaborate strategy he would have to be using would not make much sense in a Newbie game. How would he know how his other wolves would respond to his improving my proposal? No, I feel pretty good about Chronos.
What I do wonder about is why we are hearing so little from several players. The minimum research I did before this game started indicated that lurkers are often wolves. Come on, fellow honest townspeople, let us hear from all of you!
Actually, Biotop, I’m glad to see the rules posted again, even though I’ve read them several times. Particularly the participation part.
I tend not to post much until I have something of value to add, and so far much of the conversation has revolved around the potential tie-vote subject. I don’t have a lot to say about that at this point in time.
Still not quite ready to call out anyone as Scum, but parts of the conversation sure sound like a wolf-fight to me…
As a new player, I’m not talking a lot because I don’t have a lot to contribute. I’m figuring out the guy by reading along. I still don’t see what’s wrong with Biotop’s plan, but I’m a fan of Game Theory.
I’m not sure lurkers are often wolves. I mean, they had an equal chanceto get a wolf role as anyone.
I did try lurking as a scum strategy along time ago on another board(idlemafia if you care). It worked and my scum team won the game. It was a very unpopular move, though. It was kind of poor form, I believe many thought.
Most scum just try to play as if they are town, I think.
Many still want to adopt a version of Biotop’s plan. I’m willing to go along. I think we should focus on Biotop’s plan as amended by Thing Fish. In this plan, everyone votes for themselves, like this:
Unvote Chronos
Vote septimus
In my earlier post I pointed out that Scum can use last-minute vote shenanigans to get misLynches on Days 1, 3, 5, 7. In the late game, if half our Lynches are misLynches we’re likely to lose, but Wolf are harder to find early in the game so I think a guaranteed Wolf kill on Day 2 is good enough to adopt the Plan toDay.
And if we’re going to do this, we should do it NOW, before Wolves have a Night to discuss it.
Here’s how I see the Day unfolding if we decide to go ahead with this Plan. First, a very large majority would have to go along, voting themselves as I have just done, or at least indicating a willingness to do so. The First Mason must NOT reveal himself early, just vote himself if he wants to pursue the Plan. (Wolves may try to hide by voting themselves also.)
Only when a huge majority has gone along – say, at least 17 of the 19 players – should the First Mason claim, and unvote himself. The Alpha Wolf will be stuck; we’ll assume that anyone still refusing to vote for him- or herself is a Wolf. The Wolves will have to flinch: one may make a false counterclaim of First Mason and get Lynched Day 1 or Day 2. Or some of the Wolves may drag their feet, pretending they’re Townies who don’t like the plan. Or a Wolf may sacrifice himself with a last-minute save; in that case we get a guaranteed Day 2 Wolf Lynch, and, if Wolves mistime their last-minute ploy, we’ll get a Day 1 Lynch or catch two Wolves.
But I don’t think we’ll get 17 players to vote themselves. I think the plan will fall through and we’ll get information from who was eager to cooperate and who wasn’t.
@ JSexton and others who’ve objected to the Plan: If a large majority of players agree to the Plan just for Day 1, will you cooperate? At a minimum, if we get 17 players cooperating and First Mason declares himself, will you cooperate so First Mason’s sacrifice will not be in vain? We will still be playing Psychology Mafia, since Wolves will have to flinch, make false claim, or desperate last-minute vote as it plays out. I think it’s much more likely we learn a lot from such reluctance without ever getting to the 17-player threshold that would lead First Mason to claim toDay.
I do understand the objection. Adopting this plan is like “gaming the system” rather than playing Mafia. But players are justified in thinking it Scummy to refuse a plan “guaranteed” to catch Scum. Let’s at least “go on record.”
We’ve got plenty of time left in the Day. If the Plan gets little support, we’ll unvote ourselves and nothing’s lost. But if we get, say, 12 or more votes, I think it will be right to look with suspicion on those still not cooperating. If we get, say, 16 or 17 votes and First Mason then announces his identity, remaining Townies must go along or First Mason’s sacrifice will be in vain. We’ll then be guaranteed to Lynch a Wolf Day 1 or Day 2, and may be able to snare another Wolf based on observing who was reluctant or flinching.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I’m still suspicious of Chronos; he’d describe pro-Town plans even if Scum. And Biotops’ plan was NOT Chonos’; Chronos merely proposed an obvious extension before any one else did. Chronos’ original “plan” was ill-formed and might have confused Masons; a real Townie might have thought more carefully before posting.
But I’ll also want to look for Wolves hiding among low-participation players.
sangfroid, can you be more specific about the possible “wolf-fight”? Will you vote yourself now, as a show of solidarity with the Biotop-Thing Fish guaranteed Wolf Lynch plan?
Man, I hate unwritten rules. Story has made clear that there will not be a written rule against the Biotop-Thing Fish plan, but many posters have made it clear that they think it’d make the game un-fun (and I can’t exactly blame them for that), so there seems to be an unwritten rule against it. But where are the boundaries? Is it OK to use the plan just once, and then switch to more conventional play? Is it OK to use a weaker version of the plan, and if so, how much weaker? I mean, suppose that we never got on this topic at all, but in the early game, we just happened to have a tie anyway, and it later got to the point where we were hunting the Alpha. I don’t think it’d be out of line at that point to use the information we had… but there’s no qualitative difference between that and the full-on plan (though a heck of a lot of quantitative difference).
Ah, well, I’ll give it a shot, and I guess we’ll just stop when we go too far, whenever that is. Unvote TexCat
Vote Chronos
Please note that I’m still extremely suspicious of TexCat, and will go back to voting her if this plan doesn’t go through.
It’s clever as hell. Kudos to everyone who worked on coming up with it.
I don’t know if it turns this game into “not Mafia” but it certainly steers it away from the fun category for me.
It requires a certain amount of cat herding that is, in any Mafia game… let’s say optimistic at best?
At the moment, I’m suspicious of Septimus for admitting that the plan is more like “gaming the system,” admitting that it probably won’t work, and then pushing hard for it anyway. Preemptively declaring that anyone reluctant to follow the plan is scummy creates a nice convenient pool of players to point fingers at, even when he has to know that at least a portion of the reluctance is out of a sense of wanting a good game rather than being scum.
I gotta say something here doesn’t feel right…but I am prepared to follow along. If this is a trick to get those of us who were naming names before to look elsewhere, we can all go back and vote for for those we were suspicious of earlier. I certainly will not forget those names. Conversely, if we find Septimus is honest we can get a read on the others perhaps.
I apologize for not being very attentive yesterday. I’m a bit lost on the finer points of the plan. There also seems to have been some late tweaks that I’m not sure I quite followed. Would someone be kind enough to summarize the plan in a single, concise post so we (I) are all clear on our role? Sorry, it’s my inner project manager crying to be heard.
Assuming I understand it, I’m willing to give it a shot. Like septimus, I think there’s a good chance we won’t get enough participation, but if the plan falls apart, meh, we go back to voting however we want before the end of the Day. So, putting my marker down, at least until I can be clear on the plan:
No, I didn’t misread, but I read way to much into what you wrote… I read scummy intentions into your suggestions after reading your last post before this. Which I still think smells bad. I take back my comments about random voting.
I’m new at this iteration of the game, and I asked a general question earlier asking wether it is more likely for a claimed mason to be NK’ed than any other unclaimed power role. I also reffered to that post. My thinking was, there is reason to believe a claimed first mason may be protected. Would the wolves take a chance on that, or try to NK another target and atleast get a kill, potentially another power-role. I don’t know and I didn’t presume. Even when rightfully accusing me of misreading your post, atleast do me the courtesy of reading mine.
Okay, this is very interesting. I have to say the game so far, even with a potentially, as some other posters put it “gamey”, future, it has been so consistenly so far.