Has there ever been a game on Straight Dope that there was no lynch on Day 1, or is it standard practice to always go for lynch?
Is it also standard practice to have a “highest number of votes gets lynched” or is there ever “majority rules” where, if there are 12 players, for example, 7 votes for 1 person are needed for a lynch.
Those are the types of mafia games I’m familiar with, so that’s why I ask.
A few thoughts:
I would like to point out that this plan has one huge point in its favor toDay that it won’t in the future; unless they want to risk some sort of coded communication, the Wolves can’t decide among themselves who will pull the last minute vote switch. there is a good chance that either nobody will switch, and the alpha wolf will die, or multiple wolves will blow their covers. So I think the argument for doing this toDay is much stronger than the argument for continuing it throughout the game.
After thinking about it, I am less convinced that the scum counterstrategy septimus outlined would work. For one thing, it assumes that none of the scum have any real life obligations that would prevent them from being online at the very end of the Day.
HOWEVER, I am thinking that there must be some effective scum counterstrategy that nobody has yet admitted to having figured out. My assumption is that if **storyteller[/B really thought we had found a fatal flaw in his ruleset, he would have changed the rules in order to allow us to have a fun game. I would like to ask our vets for feedback on whether this sounds reasonable. And thinking that there is such a strategy, and putting the burden on the scum to figure it out, makes this plan feel more like “real Mafia” and less like exploiting the letter of the rules in violation of the spirit of the game.
I don’t know if there has ever not been a lynch, probably not intentionally by town, a no lynch is terribly bad for town as we don’t get information.
There have been multiple lynch mechanisms, I think there have been thresholds, first pass the post, hammer ( after X votes a short countdown starts) Borda counts ( we tried it in a terminator themed game) and all sorts.
Probably, but it’s super rare.
Yes, most votes dies. However, we have had “hammer” rules where if a certain threshold is meet, the person dies. Also, voting to extend Day or Night(or shorten them) is usually done by a threshold vote.
Numbers added to above quote by me.
Interesting.
Thanks Mahaloth.
Okay, I barely skimmed the responses above, but something is not right. I only have a few minutes to post because the boss doesn’t quite get it when I explain about wolves overrunning the town…
I was driving to work today after agreeing to this plan and voting for myself. It all seemed like a good idea days ago. I thought I found a loophole that could guarantee us winning, so I posted it. Thing is, I didn’t consider how players would feel about such a thing, including those who were town but looking for a regular game. I plead newbie ignorance on that.
I also didn’t really think the cats would herd. But I did think the wolves would squirm.
But it turned out OK, as most people seemed to like the idea and I think a few wolves made mistakes. The few who objected based on the spirit of the game would be enough to keep the game from really going this way, stnd we could go back to playing msfia with a few extra clues.
Then this morning I find the proposal in its most extreme form returning. I voted for it by voting for myself. But now I think it may divide us not based on town/ wolves. But instead we split based on proposal/not proposal. And I think that benefits wolves.
I also believe that enough infighting will keep the game from reaching the point of massive town self vote.
Sure we will know the wolf is among several non-voting players if the multi-tie went through, but we will certainly sacrafice a mason the first night and force the First Mason to expose himself. We will also sow bad feelings among townspeople who need to work together. We also fall behind two townspeople going into day 2.
So I think we should quash the plan now as what is best for town. If my reasoning is faulty, please explain.
The fatal flaw is probably going to be getting everyone to go along with it. Are we going to lynch everyone or anyone who doesn’t self-vote? I doubt it. Will it work if only half of us self-vote?
If the First Mason exposes himself before the vote, can’t the doc protect him? Or am I missing something?
Unvote Prof. Pepperwinkle
The Doc doesn’t work during Daytime
So, he’d have to protect him at Night. As long as he knows who to target, where is the problem?
Those are the risks I see, at least.
All right, that makes sense. Thank you for the information.
What percent are we at? Can we get a vote count?
I’ll join for the sake of making it work, if we can get even close to 100%.
unvote jesexton
vote Mahaloth
If seventeen players agree, we still have two players who do not. Their votes break the ties! So is there really any danger for the Alpha wolf in the version we are currently proposing? No.
In fact the two players who do not vote for themselves would have to not vote at all for this to work. The Alpha wolf is only really in danger if EVERYONE agrees to this plan.
Would these two or more players be wolf? Maybe. But all it takes is one town person who does not think this is a good idea and we learn nothing while exposing our masons. If my thinking is off, tell me.
Work out the end game scenarios for yourselves. If someone can tell me a realistic wolf killing method and enough folks get behind it for it to work, I may revote myself, but right now something is not right. Same goes for a realistic method that assures all townspeople vote our way.
**Well, this is not going as anticipated.
I am still personally disinclined to change the ruleset. However, the level of - uh - anger and frustration I’m seeing among players, including among many I have played with in the past, is making me feel like my personal opinions will need to be overridden for the good of the game.
Thus I will change the tiebreaker rule to something less complicated. I will, however, give anyone who so desires exactly 12 hours to protest the change via private message to me.
Sorry, guys. **
OK, given that even Biotop is abandoning the plan, it looks like it’s not going to happen. Therefore,
Unvote Chronos
Vote TexCat
Resuming my previous vote.
On another note, game balance: Septimus has already analyzed the game in terms of JSexton points, but I have a perhaps better way of measuring: Some time ago, I wrote a program that finds probabilities of winning using a Monte Carlo method. It simulates thousands of games for a given setup, and counts how many of them Town wins. I don’t have very many roles implemented yet, but this is a simple enough setup that I’ve got most of them. And of course the program must make some simplifying assumptions about player behavior, but I think it’s still approximately valid so long as Scum and Town are equally skilled.
With that said, with a game with 19 total players, of which one is a doctor, one is a detective, three are confirmables, and five are wolves, Town has about a 64% chance of victory. Note that I have not yet implemented the role of Godfather in this simulation, so Town’s chances are probably actually worse than this. How much worse? I’m not certain, but having a Godfather can’t be any worse than not having a detective at all, and in the equivalent case but without the Detective, Town has about a 33% chance of victory. So our chances are somewhere in between those two numbers, probably a bit on the higher end (since a Godfather doesn’t completely negate a Detective).
I can share the source code if anyone wants, but be warned that it’s messy: The primary input method is editing the source code and re-compiling (hey, I’m a physicist, not a professional programmer).
OK, that post took a while to compose. I guess we’re definitely abandoning the plan, then.
Oh, and my Monte Carlo simulations assumed that tiebreakers were completely random.
Good to see the tie breaking rule change. But what DOES NOT change is the responses we have all posted on this topic. This little exercise over the past few days will come in handy now and later in the game when we try to find wolves. I believe these responses ARE fair game.
Dude, what the hell did I sign up for. I just wanted to play mafia. I’m glad I’m not the only one turnedoff by all these plans and hypothetical scenarios.
OK so, Unvote Dante G