I’m using random.org to throw out my FOS at Kyrie Eleison.
And I even have an upstanding, Christian cite to rationalize my decision:
Following me in the dark eh? FOS!!!
So the consensus is that voting “no one” on the first day is a bad idea. But should we be posting votes yet, or just shoot the breeze for a while first? I guess shooting the breeze won’t give any information unless someone accidentally posts something like “I’m in the mafia”. So random voting might be good.
FOS! 
I agree, we need votes and FOSes to put pressure on people. Random chit-chat just adds noise and makes the thread harder to review.
Vote ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies for using random.org for an FOS but not a vote. A random FOS seems even more pointless than a random vote.
Bushmills and coffee.
And proof positive that I’m not scum. Eye-talians don’t drink irish whiskey. 
Contradict yourself much?
A vote speeds the day, is fodder for a bandwagon, requires color-coding (hey…I’m lazy), and requires a formal post to “undo” (with more color-coding).
A random FOS on the first day provides all of the desired consequences (ice-breaking, conversation-inspiring) with less of the undesireable ones (chance of innocent neck-stretching).
I agree with this. Too much voting too fast can have BAD results (look at game 2’s first day), but the FOS will do about the same as a vote for now. We can start voting once some real conversations happen, but nothing has really been said yet.
I’m going to have to vote Lemur866 for several reasons.
First off, the earlier mentioned post about making up a hit list.
Second, the Lemur is described as a nocturnal species and the Mafia is active at night. Add to that the tail is way to similar to prison striped to be a coincidense.
Well, a revenge vote would have me voting for Blaster Master because he voted for me, but I don’t have any evidence yet that he is a townie or that he is Mafia. I will, however, be keeping a close eye on him.
I guess I’ll just keep sippin’ the Bailey’s and reading along to see what comes up…
No, I don’t think I do. Where do you think I did?
I think voting is harder for someone to just ignore than an FOS, and tends to bring out over-defensiveness a lot better. It’s also easier to review voting records later in the game.
I voted for you for a silly reason, yes, but it got you to respond, and at least it was a reason. It’s better to pick a small reason to vote or FOS someone this early in the game rather than to doing so purely randomly. At least give them something to defend against.
I’ve been randomly FOSed? Lord, have mercy, and share them damn cookies.
I buy NAF’s explanation, even if I don’t agree with his reasoning for being suspicious of Diggit. Unvote NAF1138.
I hesitated to bring this up earlier, because I’m not sure calling attention to it does the town any good, but we have our first roleclaim on the table, and it seems to be passing undiscussed:
It seems to me that there are three possibilities:
[ul]
[li]Hal Briston is a simple townie, and has just made it a little easier for the mob to identifiy pro-town power roles[/li][li]Hal Briston is pro-town, but not a simple townie, in which case his lying may make things difficult for the town later[/li][li]Hal Briston is scum, and is hoping both to deflect suspicion, and to encourage townies to follow his lead and claim roles.[/li][/ul]
None of these possibilities seem to have a pro-town outcome. FOS Hal Briston.
Okay, this may get me killed off early by the Mafia or may even put the FOS on me by the citizens, but I’m going to say what I said a bit early on in here. Mainly that this is my first time playing this game as a participant, however I have hosted this game many, many times. It’s interesting insight getting to see what both sides do when you know who is who and from a neutral POV.
Getting that bit of info out of the way and reading over the posts of the players so far, I already have suspicions (which I’ll name) and people who I trust (which I won’t, just in case I’m wrong and not wanting them to think they have someone they can mislead).
So to start out, I’m very suspicious of anyone who said “let’s not vote”. This game, if the citizens have any chance at all, MUST rely on trying to get a mafia member each day. The first day sucks, yeah, because it’s so random. But what good would not voting do? The citizens actually use past voting and such to determine who is who and letting a day go by wasted, as it would seem, would be kinda foolish. It would still make day two just as random if nobody voted.
It also is a pretty good tactic to use (“let’s not vote so we won’t accidently kill off one of our own”) if one is scum. A line that one would try as to throw others off.
So fluiddruid, Millit the Frail and Lemur866 are all coming up on my radar with minor warning signs to start off.
I’m going to hold off a vote for now though.
Here is my thought (comming from the perspective of someone who is currently watching both sides of a very very complicated game).
Not voting or voting no kill, is bad. It gets us nowhere and wastes our chance to get an advantage over the mob.
Totally random voting is bad too though, because it will just muddy up the waters later. I am watching the results of this type of thoughless random action right now in the other game. When you vote you have to be able to back it up with something, because you WILL get called on it eventually. And I think that saying, “well it was just a wild guess” isn’t a great defense.
That being said, I know that at the end of the day most of the votes will be sorta random guesses. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hold off voting for just a bit if we don’t have something to go on.
Random voting gets us nowhere too.
Contradict was perhaps the wrong word, but…
You say “we need votes and FOS’s”, but then vote me because you don’t like my method.
Fair enough, but you’re probably not going to encourage anyone who might be hesitant to throw something out there…
I’m highly suspicious of fluiddruid right now for being the third person to vote for NAF1138 in post #199. But, then Idle Thoughts misrepresents fluiddruid’s position on voting, by lumping fluiddruid, Millit the Frail and Lemur866 all together as advocates of not voting, which isn’t what fluiddruid had been suggesting here at all.
I’m not ready to cast a vote yet, but I’m quite curious.
Come on, people. Random.org? That’s like saying “Hey, I don’t want to be responsible for my vote!” What are you trying to do, leave no trail? The only reason anyone doesn’t want to leave a trail (even if it’s a crappy trail) is that they’re Mafia. A townie has nothing to hide.
Anyway, I’m definitely cool with lynching someone today. Things are getting interesting. All I said was that I spent the night mulling over the possibility of lynching no one. It went from a good idea to a bad one pretty easily. It’s no way to get a read on anyone.
To back up my words, I’m going to FOS CometotheDarkSidewehaveCookies and Blaster Master.
Since I just FOS’ed you (Grrrr…you all are making me verb-ize nouns!) for the same reason, I just want to explain: Own it! Own up to your vote, if you’ve got nothing to be afraid of. If you die, then at least we can see who you did or didn’t think was suspicious at any given time. It could come in really handy if you’re a Mason or the Detective.
Well, yeah, you’re right, but she does mention it (that she was thinking about that, and thus putting the idea out there she had considered that), so it just strikes me as odd a bit.
I disagree. From my perspective, the only way we started getting information was when votes started piling up and people felt threatened of being lynched. Thus, I think the best approach is to pile up a few votes, get people to sweat, and see if they slip.
How exactly is it “not leaving a trail”? Will my vote magically disappear when the day ends? I can either pick someone out of my head (which would be decidely non-random), or I can make a truly random vote. Either way, my vote accomplished its task when SnakesCatLady responded with an FOS on me, which may or may not be helpful later. When I see a target who seems more likely scum than random, I’ll change my vote.
Basically, voting needs to happen to get information, but exactly how are we going to avoid random votes especially on the first day. The only votes that are likely not to be pretty much random are mafia and mason votes, which will garner us more information in the future. So you either vote randomly, which looks suspicious, or you jump on a wagon, which looks suspicious, or you don’t vote, which looks suspicious. The only non-suspicious thing to do now is to lurk, which will look suspicious later
And it seems to me that I’ve got to give the other threads a more thorough read-through.
I figured that coming right out as a townie would be the de facto standard – after all, isn’t everyone at least trying to give off a “townie vibe”? Well, maybe not. You raise some good points there. While I don’t agree that a player saying they’re a townie can only hurt the town, nor do I think doing so will make things more difficult later, I do see how this follows a logic path that I had overlooked earlier on.
Time to do a little more research.
See and I think all that will do is get some role claims comming in before they should. Don’t you think the town might be doing better in the other game if you hadn’t been forced to claim so early, or if all the masons weren’t forced to claim so early.
Forcing early role claims isn’t necessarily a good thing, especially if it is because of random voting.
I have some people pinging me right now, but so far nothing strong enough to get me to vote, so I won’t vote now. I will talk to those people as they start to post more however, and see what they have to say.
We have time, we should use it.