MAFIA: The Game - Ideal for Beginners [Game in Progress]

Thing Fish, thanks for this post. I’m going to go back and check your work when I can, but this generally squares with my recollection. I snipped your post to highlight the parts that I especially agree with and/or found persuasive.

I continue to think TexCat is town. If I were a wolf, and I saw the town barreling toward lynching one of two townies, I sure wouldn’t get in the way. I’d probably keep my head down and watch the fun. It looks like Sario, after his vote of septimus, pretty much stayed on the sidelines. To be fair, I did not contribute much either, but I did maintain throughout that I thought septimus was town, and I never got on the TexCat bandwagon. Sario did put a vote down on septimus, for not the most persuasive reasons, then sat back and watched us turn on each other. I still haven’t started to lean heavily one way or the other on Dante G or Diggit Camera, but I am becoming suspicious of Sario.

My bold.

Yes. I agree 100% that Plumpudding’s attacks on TexCat were mostly scattershot personal attacks with a hefty dose of sexist language. I don’t know if he’s a wolf, but I am tempted to vote him for being a jerk.

I still have suspicions of JSexton. Not sure about Pepperwinkle yet. I’d like to hear your thoughts on him.

I’ll hold off on voting for now. But I would like to hear Sario explain his vote a little better and let us know what he was up to last Night.

My only excuse for confusing the 2 players is the fact that I was reading the thread, while at work and was distracted with phone calls coming into my headset. I replied to posts while distracted, hence then confusion.

Avenge me, Town! Meanwhile I’m off to read some forbidden commentary.

So, don’t get me wrong - I switched votes late in the Day and our doc got killed. I welcome and deserve suspicion.

If you’re curious about my internal narrative, it’s a lot simpler than that. I didn’t think the case against TexCat was very strong, but I did not understand what the case against septimus even was. I voted TexCat on what was, I think now, a premature resignation to the fact that the only way I could help avoid a mislynch was to vote for the person between the two who seemed less Townish. In retrospect there was time to at least try to stick to my guns, as I was basically sitting in front of my computer in my office the whole end of Day.

“Suddenly decided they looked equally townish” is, I think, a pretty dramatic way of looking at what I did. I wished I had never switched my vote, is the truth of what happened. I wished I had stuck with my initial #1 choice and not contributed to the either/or dynamic between TexCat and septimus, and realized it actually wasn’t too late to avoid throwing good money after bad.

Dude. Really? Read what I posted, already. septimus’ first two votes came in posts 460 and 461. In post 464, which I already quoted in my long post above, I said:

(post snipped for the benefit of those with short attention spans)

OK, so I was wrong about Chronos.

And by pretty simple logic, since I was almost sure that septimus was town, that meant that I thought TexCat was the scummiest of the two, which is exactly why I voted for her, which is exactly what I said at the time I voted. Sheesh.

If plum was scum and texcat town , it is odd that a scum plum would be all over her so much given it it would be a town mis lynch either way. I think plum is more likely an active, but muddled town. If texcat was scum then the pull away from j sexton could be an attempt to get septimus dead, that would assume that a few wolves were voting for j sexton and so they didn’t have enough spare votes to pile further into sexton. It is dangerous for wolves to intervene and they must know that kind of thing would pull some heat. If texcat were on the cusp of being lynched and if she is a wolf , why no false claim? A wolf about to be lynched has nothing to loose so if texcat were a wolf , she must have been pretty certain her fellow wolves would be able to pull the heat off of her .
Sorry for lack of formatting , on tapatalk on a opine and can only see two short lines of text .

What I am confused by is in what exact way you were wrong.

Who did you think was the wolfiest person an hour before the lynch? Who did you think was the wolfiest at end of Day? If they’re different, what caused it?

But here you said you voted to protect septimus , not that texcat was more scum like, it’s the post event revision of the reason that is pinging me .

That was responding to thingfish

It’s Jsexton for me, or Prof. Pepperwinkle.

I’d say let’s lynch jsexton.

Vote Jsexton

I had no idea. I was following the mob.
At the end of Day the most suspicious person was Cygnus42, 'cause he kept switching his vote. That’s not enough for me to switch my vote, though.

Wow…lots to cover here toDay.
One of my reasons for voting TexCat in the last round was due to Chronos’ thought processes in conjunction with my own suspicions. Those suspicions are even higher now.

I’m also looking very closely at those who have cavalierly tossed my name out there for essentially no reason at all. Doesn’t get much scummier to me.

More to read; more to post.
I do know this: the wolves may be relishing in their victory, but Town can bounce back with an efficient hunt today.

Clearly, some very crafty adversaries are conspiring against us.

Just who do you believe might have the expertise, and particularly the expertise here in this place, to have sussed out not one but two of our key players right off the bat?

Oh wow. I’m not gonna be sorry for attacking our one “hysterical” players for being “hysterical”, because she’s a woman. Please, it’s a game, if you want to accuse me of being a misygonist, do it somewhere else. Read her posts, and tell me if you don’t notice a different level of emotion than from a post of mine.

I did mention that, but I have no idea where you get “with pride” from. I didn’t trust Septimus. I felt he could have explained himself a lot better, like f.ex. why he distrusted Chronos, other than “because we’ve played together before”. I was also quite clear on TexCat being a much better Day One lynch.

I may be obnoxious, and you may vote whatever you want. I hope you don’t vote with me being obnoxious as a reason.

You feel I was party to that?

Ummm, we didn’t know if it was a tie or not? Atleast I didn’t know. We had no official count, and by mine they both had the same number of votes. Other than that, it was an exhilarating day! It wasn’t boring. Only very detrimental.

Just to attend to the last question: I think it was dumb luck. There were 5 out of 14 for the first instance, and 4 out of 13 for the second, giving a product of 10 out of 91, or about 11%. Not that uncommon.

Okay. What a horrible result. BUT, we’re not dead yet.

This is gonna be a long one, but please bear with me.

We have way too many players who post very little, and *when *they post, add little to the discussion. This is **NOT **good for town. Please join the discussion! If you don’t post, even if you *are *town, you’re only harming town by being one more undeciferable variable. Killing the loud for being **LOUD **is **NOT **a great strategy, as the loud make the game. Lynch players for *what *they say, or *why *they **MIGHT **say such a thing, not how they say it.

I feel I have to explain what I’ve been doing and thinking in greater detail. Some posters seem to be unsure about my intentions. Quite late in the day, I began ramping up on my attacks on **Septimus *and TexCat. I especially wanted to put heat on TexCat, who I felt was BY FAR acting the most scummy of all the suspects. I’m gonna go over her case again in a later post, as a lot have changed and some of my suspicions have been rendered ridiculous, but as a Day One lynch I felt she was a good bet. I noticed that she had a trend of defending herself emotionally, without backing her opinions with sound reasoning. I thought I’d made it quite clear why was I harping on her, and that people would begin noticing this trend too. She continued to defend herself, getting more and more “hysterical” and finally voted me in self-defense. That was a good thing, in my opinion, as that eliminated a vote on Septimus, making it more likely she herself would hang. I wrote post 590 and continued to answer her directly for that vote to stay. I knew of course that she would always have the possibility of voting ****Septimus ****again last minute, but there wasn’t a clear tie yet. If anyone would have followed her in her vote on me, as in Precambrianmollusc’s vote-after-deadline, that would have been good too.

Unfortunately, people began doubting their own cases(or they never had a case) against **TexCat **and began switching votes away from her. I tried to dial my tone down a bit and stop focussing directly at her, but it was probably too late. Maybe I appeared a bit over-confident; what I was confident about was **TexCat **being a good lynch, not her being scum(even though I directly stated she was several times, same with Septimus, though my read of him was more of a general suspicion). I have to say I was hoping for a little support, but oh well. **TexCat **changed her vote again and **Septimus **changed it back, creating a potential tie. I’m not sure if Cygnus42’s unvote was valid or not, so I don’t know if there actually was a tie, but I would ask people to seriously look into posters voting and switching last minute. In my opinion this does not bode well for TexCat’s defense, but I’ll get back to that.

This was also a long day with a lot of discussion in all directions, so I’m quite dissappointed more people didn’t show up in the last hour, partaking in what I would think is the most critical point of the discussion. I feel **Septimus **should have claimed earlier giving more people time to change their mind. Two minutes is way too short for anyone but the most attentative to change their opinion, and I think he should have realised too many players were absent for a large switch to occur that late. He should have have been able to live until next day by protecting himself, we could have analyzed potential counter-claims, and if no counter would have appeared it would have meant he was either what he claimed to be or a wolf, and it would have given him time to prepare his case and post his role PM. If he’d managed to convince people, we would have had a claimed town in the Day Two vote, even if he’d gotten NK’d Night Two. Maybe not the best case scenario for a Guardian, but a lot better than the mess we’re in now.

One good thing to come out of this whole situation, is that I’m fairly sure Cugnus42, a poster I didn’t really feel any way about, is IMO more than probable town. He unvoted on the minute, and I feel that shows he intended to see if someone would confirm, or to see how Septimus would choose to defend himself. One could see a wolf doing that, but only playing a very high game, unvoting, HOPING for a tie that would kill off ONE of them, then defending himself. Instead he could have kept his vote, claiming he was absent and then stay off the radar. I think that is very unlikely. So, to me, he looks more or less confirmed town.

Okay, **Chronos **was town. I was really hoping he wouldn’t get lynched. That gives some information. I’m gonna look back and see if I can get some information out of that.

A few others things to mention, Jsexton, didn’t vote.** Prof. Pepperwinkle** voted last minute on **Septimus **without stating a reason, and for the record, that has been his mo all along. His participation has been low, and mostly consisting of one liners. **Chronos **didn’t appear last hour, but I remember him saying that he would have difficulties with participating near end of days.

This is OOG and also directed at storyteller about participation: It would have been great with an official vote-count. We had been asking for several pages for that and the new tie-mechanism with no answer. I also asked in a pm about timezones, which I never got a reply about. That late in the day, I felt too little attention was being devoted by storyteller and some players, and things became messy and confusing when things could have been much clearer.

Another OOG thing I wanna say: I do not intend to personally attack anyone. If I call someone f.ex. Worthless, I mean worthless in game-context and player-input, not personally. I don’t know any of you, but i’ll wager all of you are great persons. If anyone feel I’ve been stepping over the bound of the game, I’ll apologize (on the condition that it actually IS a personal attack!). I am playing a game and that’s it. I get very involved, I’ve had great fun so far and I hope to have more. I want everyone to know that whatever happens, do not take it personally, as I don’t.

And again, switching and hopping on wagons last minute is not in towns favour, and so is voting for no reason. If we are gonna get through this, now that the game suddenly got a **LOT **harder, we will need to post substantially and share our thoughts, or we will loose.

  • She seems, to me, to have mainly agrued by appeal to emotion, by (fake?)outrage and by trying to tar other players, which isn’t very helpful in a game about sussing out motives, but I’ll get back to her case in another post. 372, 379, 380

583, 610

Want to clarify a bit on a couple points, starting here -
I don’t believe I broke the tie on septimus - the unofficial count above had it at 7-5 before my vote. Though, honestly, I didn’t know exactly were things stood on the count. When I attempted the un-vote of septimus, I knew I was short on time. So, I didn’t take the extra time to type out & format a vote for Tex (or more likely, Dante G). As it was, I was probably too late, but didn’t affect the outcome regardless.

I was concerned about the Day ending in a tie though - we don’t currently know the tiebreaker policy. I think I recall one game on this board that I followed along, where a tie at EOD was ‘no lynch’. I didn’t want to see that outcome, so I did try to avoid a tie.

My thought process was a lot like what Jimmy Chitwood said below, though with the opposite conclusion. I considered **Texcat **to be probably less scummy, so I tossed the vote on septimus.

Also, from Prof P:

It’s easy enough to look back and see I didn’t ‘keep switching my vote’. I voted once early on for JSexton, and switched to **septimus **at nearly the last minute - then unvoted the vote. Obviously, the vote for septimus was ill-advised, but you can’t say I kept switching my vote.

So retroactively covering your reasoning for a texcat vote by cosying up to an uninformed vote by a known town. “Look I voted for the same reason as a now known town so I must be ok.”. The only thing I assume Chronos knew about texcat was that she was not a mason ( unless there was some bizarre “I’ll vote for a fellow Mason to cover up things” weirdness)

Do you think scum Sussed out that septimus was a town role and engineered the lynch? All they could have known was septimus was town and we can either assume they engineered a lynch away from texcat or sexton , or rally didn’t care who got lynched. Your professed certainty that this happened seams deliberately designed to smudge experienced players, when as a town could you have no certainty of scum k owing who septimus and Chronos were.

Both sangfroid and thingfish are using info we have now to make their votes seam more town like.

Nonsense. No one sniffed out any power roles. How could they? There was nothing to indicate that septimus was the Guardian. If he* was* a target it could only have been to protect TexCat. Otherwise he was just a target of our collective blundering stupidity. In either case the wolves got lucky. I feel bad about Chronos, because we had already pretty much agreed he was town and he is obviously a smart and talented player. His player skills are a huge loss to us, I fear. Wolves are not going to kill anyone we are suspicious of without a very good reason, so a smart experienced low-suspicion target was their choice. And they got lucky again.

With respect, Biotop, I just do not believe in that much luck. Two key Townspeople in one cycle?
I agree that the wolves would likely have no real way to tag our Guardian, but something sure stinks here and it ain’t just the decomposing carcasses of our Guardian and Third Mason.

There was so much churn and misdirection this cycle about the tie vote potential, self-voting, and so on as well as the typical big heaping pile of last-minute shenanigans that I’m surprised anyone Town can even think straight at the moment. Excellent wolf strategy in my opinion.

We all know this is a game of information. And disinformation. And misdirection.

For myself, I am taking a very close look at those who put a whole lot of effort into adding to that big 'ol pile of churn (the recently dearly departed excepted, of course).

I was away from my computer all day Monday, and on my return, read what ensued in the last hours with a kind of sickened fascination. What a fucking own-goal this all was. And now with Chronos having been a Mason, we’re down two power roles and the thing has barely started. My first thought was that we’re completely hosed, but I’m rallying. Early days and all. So I’m trying to process all this and come out the other side with a position I can justify.

Firstly, I was not very convinced by the argument for septimus being scum (recall I had voted for DanteG earlier), although I didn’t really have much to counter with besides my own instinct. Had the vote proceeded more organically, it appears likely TexCat would have got the rope, which, assuming she were town, would be almost as big a mistake as lynching septimus. (More on that anon.) So the most generous interpretation would be that a (probable) townsperson was going to to get it either way, and the fact that septimus turned out to be the Guardian was simple bad luck. (And septimus’ refusal to claim until literally the last minute was, as he admits, a big mistake.)

However, there is a consistent theme that’s jumping out at me as I read today’s post-mortems. I am highlighting the passages that are relevant and eliminating some that aren’t, and am not trying to misrepresent anyone’s arguments.

Prof. Pepperwinkle then cuts to the chase:

I get that this is a game of strategies and counter-strategies, and that a lot of people here plainly understand these better than me. But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that had people simply voted for the player they themselves thought was scummiest, we probably wouldn’t have ended up lynching our own Guardian.

I do not understand the line of reasoning that concludes, “Unless I vote for one of the top candidates, my vote is meaningless.” I voted DanteG and in no way think my vote was wasted; he was the best candidate I could determine (at the time — again, more on that anon), and I wanted to make sure I was heard even if I was a sidelight to the “main” debate re: septimus and TexCat.

My thoughts too. The best thing I know how to do for our side is to weigh the evidence myself, make a conclusion and stand by it. I hope to keep doing that and I hope to be called out if I don’t.

OK, got that off my chest. What to do now?

I weigh three possibilities:

  1. The lynch was a concerted effort by scum to kill septimus
  2. The lynch was a concerted effort by scum to save TexCat
  3. The lynch was a result of guesswork and miscommunication and no strategy was behind it

Thing Fish makes a strong case for #1. The only problem I have with it is I don’t see why septimus should have been targeted in the first place, or indeed, how scum could have engineered such a sweeping, under-the-radar pile-on.
I agree with Biotop: I don’t think the other side had any inkling septimus was Guardian

“When”?

And finally:

Mea culpa. Having already voted for Dante G, I don’t think I could have directly swayed the vote against septimus; he wasn’t 100% town in my book, but the case against him certainly seemed light compared to some others.