I would imagine potentially risking public knowlegde of their own roles would be much more damaging for scum than a mason being exposed for us. Masons will have to expose themselves, scum rely on not exposing themselves. We thrive on sharing and interpreting information, they thrive on misdirection and on minimizing what is shared about them. So I still don’t see how forcing a tie would benefit scum, although I’m sure there will be opportunities on both side to benefit from this mechanic.
I do agree though, that posting is good. I’m hoping to be able to post as much as possible, camping trips and fishing aside.
And the value of confirmed Town in the endgame is precisely why I’d really like to get some information about who the Alpha Wolf is. Masons are good, of course, but we only have three of them. The Seer can produce many more confirmed Town, but as long as the Alpha is still unaccounted-for, every last one of those confirmations is suspect.
Plus, while confirmed Town are good, confirmed Scum are even better. A trade of a Mason for a Wolf is a good trade, and even better if the Wolf we can nab that way is the Alpha.
I have never played the game before, so I don’t really know what I am talking about. That said, if we have a good reason to suspect someone of wolfism then who cares about ties. LYNCH THE SCUM!! And those who were not in favor got some serious explaining to do.
But if we are accusing based on less than reasonable methods (example: Prof. Pepperwinkle is the only player whose name contains all the letters of “W-O-L-F,” then perhaps engineering a tie could tell us more than randomly lynching someone to see what happens.
The problem here is that , unless we have a flat out confession from said wolf or an investigation from someone we can reasonably believe is the seer, or flat out perfect information goof , we are unlikely to ever be lynching based on good reason.
Anyway I have finished day 3 of a cross country drive , eaten a big chunk of cow and had some decent vino so will bid you all good night . Til tomorrow
pcm
Going in as a noob I didn’t know/think there was any kind of “moneyball” approach to playing Mafia; I figure we do our best with very scanty info, crack a few jokes, and probably cut down a few innocents on the way to making a nice stack of wolf pelts. I’m sure what Chronos is offering will make a lot of sense once we’re actually there, but in the abstract it sorta turns my head around.
I agree with JSexton’s post above, re: let’s play the game and not worry so much about exploiting what may or may not be a weak spot in the rules. Besides, I like that he used the word “faffing.”
Lastly, anagrams of my username include nun cosh; con huns; Ochs nun; and shun NCO. Make of them what you will. I kind of like “nun cosh.”
Googling around you can find a point-based system for balancing Mafia games. Since this one is very traditional, the point system should work pretty well. Those points work out to
With those numbers, we’re slightly (+1.5 points) unbalanced in favor of Wolves. Change a Wolf to a Vanilla Town, and we’d be much more unbalanced (+4 points) in favor of Town.
BTW, these are called JSexton points, whoever he is.
The points show that our finding Alpha Wolf (or avoiding him in Seer probes) is much more important than their finding First Mason. I think we should concentrate on voting probable Scum, but with a lean toward encouraging ties. At least the possibility of ties should give useful discussion.
That gets back to what I was saying about legitimate differences of opinion: I, personally, am a very “moneyball” style of player. Others play more from their gut impressions. Personally, I don’t trust my gut any farther than I can throw it.
I agree that if there’s a single very strong Scum candidate, we should just lynch that person and be done with it, but that doesn’t come up very often, especially not on early Days.
And if this game had a more conventional tiebreaking mechanism, I would still have tried to find something else to talk about, since getting the conversation started is essential no matter how you play the game. It’s convenient that there was something more substantive to talk about, though, and also that it was a pro-Town mechanic.
Just want to chime in to say that all the theorycrafting over ties is interesting, but a bit too complex for a Mafia beginner like myself. I’ll let the veterans wrangle over the implications of all that.
I’ve followed along on a few other Mafia games on this board…hopefully I’ve picked something up along the way in terms of scum-hunting.
I’ve never played mafia before, and I’ve never played any mafia-game on a message board before. I would imagine town has even less information from start in a pbp game, than face to face, since you can’t rely as much on tells and obvious slips. IMO any information that can be gained should be considered valuable and viable tactic, when it comes up. Discussing it beforehand and being aware of a tactic like this could prove valuable once we are at that point. And that is, IMO, playing the game.
All of this make my head spin too, but I think that’s part of the game. We need to try to sift information out of the confusion however we can, and keep our eyes and ears open for an eventual scum slip-up. In my experience the confusion stays more or less till the end anyway. I’m feeling a bit out of my depth with this too, but no worries, I think we all do, even the veterans among us.
I’m happy a lot of us are newbie’s, since I imagine knowledge of previous play will become less of a talking point. I prefer talking actual tactics and analysis of what players are doing right here and now, what they say and how they vote, than whatever they have done in a different role previously.
Oh, and btw, english is my second language, so if any of you find my writing confusing, please tell me and I’ll try harder to make myself clear.
Tough crowd! It was just my attempt at self deprecating humor as a guy who doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. I’ll be more on point from here on out.
I’ll share as much as I can. I’m not sure how much data I’ll be able to gather, just depending on how much time I have around work. But I honestly do like spreadsheets and playing with data, so I’ll do what I can.
When I get something together, I’ll probably paste it as comma- or tab-delimited text between code tags. Then folks can copy it off and import it into their own spreadsheets if they want to.
Anyway, I did stats of participation as of post 157(this one). It doesn’t say much at the moment, but I figure it’s nice to get it going. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Bayard IIIII I (6)
Biotop IIIII II (7)
Chronos IIIII IIIII (10)
Cygnus42 II (2)
Dante G (0)
DiggitCamara II (2)
Jimmy Chitwood I (1)
Johnny Bravo I (1)
Jsexton IIIII I (6)
Mahaloth IIIII II (7)
Nonsuch IIII (4)
Plumpudding IIIII IIIII (10)
Precambrianmollusc IIIII IIIII I (11)
Prof. Pepperwinkle III (3)
sangfroid II (2)
Sario I (1)
septimus II (2)
Texcat IIII (4)
Thing Fish I (1)
About editing, I have edited a few post together with a few others. I know it’s frowned upon, and I understand why. I’m sorry for that, however, do you guys feel it is important at this stage? If you feel I should stop, no matter how itchy my fingers get I’ll stop. Hopefully I won’t feel like needing it moving forward with the game.
A possibly better way might be to quote the post you want to edit, and make your changes in the quote, that way the original is preserved and you still can make your changes.
Plumpudding, There is an easy way to get the participation numbers. In the Thread Games forum, click on the number under the Replies column. It should bring up another window with who has replied and how many times.
