Mafia The Game III: Kinder and Gentler

The Game Room
1621

[QUOTE=Blaster Master]
No, its not. However, IIRC, I didn’t see much input from you at all about the top three candidates yesterday. Don’t forget that part of the evidence against **SCL ** is her “safe” vote for fluiddruid on day two, even though fluiddruid ended up being scum. It may be flawed logic, or she may have been scum taking it as an opportunity to not participate in a townie lynch AND seperate herself from who she felt looked scummy.

>snip<

[/QUOTE]

I still do not understand this reasoning. I voted for scum, because I thought she was scum. I did not dance around and vote for this person Day 2, that person Day 3, and another person Day 4 - I voted for the person I thought was scum until she was lynched and I was free to put my vote elsewhere. I was RIGHT, damnit, and now there are people who want to lynch me for it. I just cannot believe I am being considered suspicious for consistently voting for the only scum we have been successful in catching!

1622

[QUOTE=SnakesCatLady]
I still do not understand this reasoning. I voted for scum, because I thought she was scum. I did not dance around and vote for this person Day 2, that person Day 3, and another person Day 4 - I voted for the person I thought was scum until she was lynched and I was free to put my vote elsewhere. I was RIGHT, damnit, and now there are people who want to lynch me for it. I just cannot believe I am being considered suspicious for consistently voting for the only scum we have been successful in catching!
[/QUOTE]

If you haven’t looked at the results from M2, and Storyteller’s strategy there, please do. He was riding the case of some of the mafia from very near the beginning of the game and when they finally came up scum, it was made him look rather clean, if it had been the other way around, it would have looked like he was pursuing them because they weren’t scum. That is, pursuing scum from the get go, especially considering that the first vote was cast well after the bandwagons were established for a fellow scum could be an attempt to hide and, when one of you does show up scum, the other can say "look I voted for/was voted against by known scum, I must be townie.

Am I saying that is necessarily the case here… no, but the possibility that it was cannot be ignored. Combine that with fluiddruid’s obvious attempt to distance herself from you, and that adds lots of suspicion. However, it’s also likely that you just had a good read on her, and she was afraid of you and trying to get your lynch to follow hers. Like I’d said, I’m suspicious, but I’m not prepared to lynch you without stronger evidence.

Beside all that, my main point of mentioning you with regard to **Hal Briston ** was as a comparison that a “safe” vote, while not enough evidence in and of itself, is still enough to get a good amount of suspicion on someone; it was not an explicit condonation of the logic that got you close to lynching. Regardless of where your final vote lies, “safe” or not, it’s still helpful to the town to know where you stand on the top vote getters.

1623

Three nights in a row, hmm. I had something to say that I didn’t get in before the end of the last day, and now that another night has gone by without a kill, it’s even more interesting.

There seemed to be a general buzz at the close of the day about the “Mafia recruiting the Doctor” scenario. As in, the Mafia tried to kill someone, ran up against a wall, and then recruited him the next night, assuming he/she had been self-protecting. But why would we assume that the Doctor has stopped self-protecting on the second night? Maybe that recruit was still blocked on the second night. Do you think the Mafia would risk that?

Only one person, someone I’ve never been suspicious of, has been trying to draw the Doc’s protection off the Doc him/hesrself during the days: tirial. Is there a chance that the Mafia has gone for the self-protecting Doc more than once, hoping that he/she stops self protecting, knowing that taking out the Doc is a powerful move?

1624

[QUOTE=Blaster Master]
If you haven’t looked at the results from M2, and Storyteller’s strategy there, please do. He was riding the case of some of the mafia from very near the beginning of the game and when they finally came up scum, it was made him look rather clean, if it had been the other way around, it would have looked like he was pursuing them because they weren’t scum. That is, pursuing scum from the get go, especially considering that the first vote was cast well after the bandwagons were established for a fellow scum could be an attempt to hide and, when one of you does show up scum, the other can say "look I voted for/was voted against by known scum, I must be townie.
[/QUOTE]

This is absolutely important. The scum really need at least one of their own left, in the endgame, who has been diligently voting for other scum in the beginning. I feel very strongly that SCL may have been set up as this game’s Storyteller. The votes for and from fluiddruid are pretty suspicious. The Mafia is SMART, guys. It’s STUPID for them all to act like a team.

Oh, and I’m up to date with the votes, including our one early bird vote from Hal this morning.

1625

I guess I would have been better off helping to lynch other townies, rather than trying to root out scum.

1626

[QUOTE=Millit the Frail]
(snip)

There seemed to be a general buzz at the close of the day about the “Mafia recruiting the Doctor” scenario. As in, the Mafia tried to kill someone, ran up against a wall, and then recruited him the next night, assuming he/she had been self-protecting. But why would we assume that the Doctor has stopped self-protecting on the second night? Maybe that recruit was still blocked on the second night. Do you think the Mafia would risk that?
(snip)

[/QUOTE]

… not exactly.

The Doctor can protect anyone (including him/herself) from harm. The way I read it, the Doctor cannot protect anyone from being recruited (that privilege was restricted to our now extinct Dogooders.

Thus IdleThought’s (and my idea) that we had a block on one day, and a recruitment attempt on the second.

However, this is not certain. There might have been extremely good luck on the Doctor’s part and/or the NightWatchMan’s, foolish stubbornness on part of the Mafia (trying to kill the Doctor again… and again… and again…) or many, many other scenarios.

1627

[QUOTE=DiggitCamara]
… not exactly.

The Doctor can protect anyone (including him/herself) from harm. The way I read it, the Doctor cannot protect anyone from being recruited (that privilege was restricted to our now extinct Dogooders.

Thus IdleThought’s (and my idea) that we had a block on one day, and a recruitment attempt on the second.

However, this is not certain. There might have been extremely good luck on the Doctor’s part and/or the NightWatchMan’s, foolish stubbornness on part of the Mafia (trying to kill the Doctor again… and again… and again…) or many, many other scenarios.
[/QUOTE]

Which is why I again advocate that trying to hash out those possibilities is not going to get us anywhere. Is it not simpler to assume that a) someone has been recruited and b) it could have been anyone?

1628

[QUOTE=CaerieD]

Right now, I’m most suspicious of Hal Briston, Omni no Kami, tirial and Rachm Qoch for giving the throwaway votes. Especially tirial–she’s been hounding me for days and suddenly changes her tune when she has the chance to lynch me? I hadn’t noticed any drastic change in her opinion until it came time to vote.
[/QUOTE]

I agree with this. We need to take a good look at the people who made “throwaway” votes…AND they people they voted for. It wouldn’t surpise me a bit if there isn’t a mafia vs mafia vote there, from someone looking to establish a clean record. Or provide an alibi for their scum buddy, if they turn up dead the living scum can say, “See, that scum was targeting me from the beginning! That proves I’m town!”

Next item. Three days without a night kill? I have to believe this means we’ve had a recruitment, the odds of the doctor and watchman protecting perfectly three times in a row are damn slim. The only thing holding the mafia back from recruiting was the existance of that second Do-Gooder, which you all conveniently lynched yesterday. Lightning turning up Do-Gooder after two days of no-kills, and the scum figure they might as well recruit. Unless the recruitment was done earlier. The only problem with this argument is that it still seems a bit too early to recruit, they’ve only lost one mafiosi yet. Unless they figure they’ve bracketed the doctor. That scenario would be that they targeted some player at random three nights ago, and found him blocked. They try the same player again, and are again blocked. They figure it has to be the doctor self-protecting, and recruit, knowing that there’s no chance of a blocked recruitment now that both Do-Gooders are exposed. So they recruit, and hope they reel in the doc.

Or they’ve recruited some other player, who’s either flown under the radar, or established themselves as trustworthy.

The only other explanation is three consecutive Doc/Watch blocks, and that stretches credulity. We can’t rule out three consecutive blocks, but it’s so unlikely that I have to believe the recruitment scenario.

1629

[QUOTE=ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies]
Which is why I again advocate that trying to hash out those possibilities is not going to get us anywhere. Is it not simpler to assume that a) someone has been recruited and b) it could have been anyone?
[/QUOTE]
Simpler, and (to my mind) less time-wasting as well.

For all we know, the Night Watchman is the luckiest mofo in the world (hell, any old-school D&D player knows you can occasionaly hit a natural 18 off of 3d6, and that would be the same thing).

However, I’m going to work under the same assumption as you are – the recruitment has been made. Other than that, all I know is we got a free pass the other two nights, woohoo for that. If, by chance, the recruitment hasn’t been made yet, then we hit the luck-out trifecta…double-woohoo.

1630

Okay, let’s look at some numbers. The chance of the NWM blocking is 1/6 (~16.67%); the chance of the DOC blocking is 1/n (~6.67%, 7.14%, 7.69% for each of the last three nights successively). The combined probability is the union of the probabilities, or (n+5)/(6n) (~22.22%, 22.62%, 23.08%). Thus, the probability of all three nights being blocks is the intersection of these three probabilities which is ~1.16%. The probability for getting blocked twice and recruiting last night is ~5.03%. If they recruited vanilla or mason on the second night, that is ~5.13%. If they recruited doctor the second night, its 3.70%, and if they recruited the NWM the second night its 1.71%.

What does all this mean? Basically, there’s almost 99% chance that the recruitment has occurred. If we assume the recruitment did happen in the last two nights (as I really think it wouldn’t make sense to recruit on the first no-kill night, and it overly complicates the numbers), then we can normalize around the other four probabilities such that there’s about a 1/3 chance the recruitment happened last night (~32.31%), versus a 2/3 chance it happened the second night. If it happened last night, there’s no way to know who was recruited, so its a 1/13 chance it was either the NWM, 1/13 it was the doc, and either 6/13 or 7/13 (depending on whether there’s 4 or 5 mafia) chance it was either a vanilla or mason.

What does this all THAT mean? Well, if we go with the 99% chance that the recruitment happened, and that it didn’t happen on the first night, that means there’s a 27.80% chance the Doctor was recruited, a 15.02% chance that the NWM was recruited, and a 57.18% chance that either a vanilla or mason was recruited (or 9.53% that a given person at random who isn’t the DOC or NWM was recruited). IOW, to put them in simplery numbers, the DOC is 3x more likely to have been recruited than anyone else except the NWM, he’s 2x more likely to have been recruited than the NWM, and the NWM is 1.5x more likely to have been recruited than anyone other than the DOC.

Of course, that’s all assuming that everyone is shooting blindly, which the NWM essentially is, but the DOC isn’t, but I expect when adjusted the DOC’s reads on a good target, and the mafia’s reads on who may be the DOC or his likely protect, the numbers probably come out about the same.

1631

If we take a good look at the preceding days, we have:

Day 1: Hard competition to lynch a citizen (Lightnin’ versus percypercy versus Projammer)
Day 2: Tie between two citizens (dnooman versus Projammer)
Day 3: Hard competition to lynch a citizen over scum (Projammer finally won against fluiddruid)
Day 4: Runaway train against scum (fluiddruid)
Day 5: Relatively easy lynch of citizen versus unknown (Lightnin’ versus SnakesCatLady)

For my part, at least, I’ll take a long hard look at the data the 3rd day yields. Mainly since it’s the only day were scum had a vested interest in derailing a vote (unless, of course, SnakesCatLady is scum). On Day 4 it’s pretty obvious the scum had fluiddruid as a sacrificial lamb and at least one of them voted for her.

1632

[QUOTE=DiggitCamara]
… not exactly.

The Doctor can protect anyone (including him/herself) from harm. The way I read it, the Doctor cannot protect anyone from being recruited (that privilege was restricted to our now extinct Dogooders.

Thus IdleThought’s (and my idea) that we had a block on one day, and a recruitment attempt on the second.

However, this is not certain. There might have been extremely good luck on the Doctor’s part and/or the NightWatchMan’s, foolish stubbornness on part of the Mafia (trying to kill the Doctor again… and again… and again…) or many, many other scenarios.
[/QUOTE]

Ah. OK. Between this and thinking there was a Godfather, any chance that I might be seen as “too stupid to be Mafia?”

…didn’t think so.

Anyway, I like your recent idea, about looking over Day 3 very carefully. I’ll have some time tomorrow to do some reading (can’t get in-depth at work) and maybe something will stand out. I’m celebrating a graduation tonight, so I’ll see you all in the morning.

1633

[QUOTE=ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies]
I would be hollering “Praise Jesus” if it weren’t for the sinking feeling in my stomach that this 3rd peaceful night brings closer the possibility that one of our own is now a traitorous scum.

I’m going to have to come out swinging today. Even though fluiddruid scummily (sp?) used a similar approach, I’m hereby asserting that I am pro-town, but I am not divulging the flavor of my creamy center.

My fellow townsfolk need to look long and hard at the three other individuals with Lightnin’s Do-gooder blood on their hands besides me: Diggit, Millit, and nesta. By doing so, you would at least come extremely close to a 1 in 3 chance of targeting a scum to lynch, if not better.

Conversely, I also caution my fellow townsfolk to consider the 4 individuals who voted alone at the close of yesterday: Hal Briston, Omi No Kami, tirial, and Rachm Qoch. These (imho) odd votes may indicate the scum sitting back on their heels while the town split their votes on yet more town-on-town violence.

I like the 1 in 3 odds better, personally, but ymmv.
[/QUOTE]

I think odds are good that both scenarios are not only correct, but connected.

As the day was drawing to a close, the one thing that was clear was that we had the closest thing to a coin toss since Projammer/dnooman. That coin toss would have happened if either one of the following had occurred: 1) someone had put a 4th vote on either SNL or CaerieD, tying him with Lightnin; or 2) someone had unvoted Lightnin, tying him with both SNL and CaerieD at 3 votes apiece.

Notice that the only unvote the whole day was tirial’s. This is the lowest of the game, so far. Knowing that he’s innocent, mafia would be loath to put the decisive vote on Lightnin, but could still ensure his lynching by quietly keeping a vote for him.

This ties into the 4 single votes (one of which I realize is myself) that you bring up – any one of the single votes could have reasonably gone to SNL or CaerieD. For some reason it looks like there was an effort made to ensure that neither of them swung. Why was that? If they’re both town, mafia wouldn’t care if it went to a coin toss since a townie would be sure to hang either way. So why were there four safe single votes at the end? Are the three other single votes a case of jitters about accidentally lynching another townie, or something else?

1634

[QUOTE=Rachm Qoch]
…either SNL or…

…both SNL and…

…to SNL or…
[/QUOTE]
Big Lorne Michaels fan, are you? :slight_smile:

1635

[QUOTE=Rachm Qoch]
This ties into the 4 single votes (one of which I realize is myself) that you bring up – any one of the single votes could have reasonably gone to SNL or CaerieD. For some reason it looks like there was an effort made to ensure that neither of them swung. Why was that? If they’re both town, mafia wouldn’t care if it went to a coin toss since a townie would be sure to hang either way.
[/QUOTE]

Hmm. I know that no one likes to admit to “trusting” certain players, but his analysis makes me trust CaerieD and SNL a bit more. The scum knew Lightning was town, but he had only one extra vote. Therefore, a last minute change of only one townie vote could result in either CaerieD or SNL getting lynched. The fact that no one seemed to feel the need to pile on an extra vote on Lightning tends to indicate that the scum didn’t particularly care if CaerieD or SNL died instead.

I’ve been pretty suspicious of both of them for quite some time, but this is evidence that I might have been wrong.

Of course, it could have just been a ballsy move on the mafia’s part to leave another mafiosi with their ass hanging in the breeze, but piling an extra vote onto Lighting would probably have gone un-noticed.

So…unFOS CaerieD and unFOS SnakesCatLady.

1636

[QUOTE=Rachm Qoch]
I think odds are good that both scenarios are not only correct, but connected.
[/QUOTE]

Good points, can you explain your single vote? Did you think all three were townies? Did you think one or more of them was scum, but thought that Lemur was scummier?

1637

[QUOTE=SnakesCatLady]
Interesting bit of voteplay late in the game yesterday. With the votes running pretty closely
between the late lamented Lightnin’ and myself. Omi no Kami voted for Rache Qoch and Rache Qoch voted for Omi no Kami. Very safe votes, those…

I am not as suspicious of CaerieD as I once was, even though she tried to get my lynched yesterday.
[/QUOTE]

FTR I voted for Lemur. I’m trying not to be too reactionary with my votes. After everything that happened over the first couple of days I’ve come to realize that not every single vote for myself is necessarily scum trying to stir shit up.

1638

[QUOTE=Rachm Qoch]
This ties into the 4 single votes (one of which I realize is myself) that you bring up – any one of the single votes could have reasonably gone to SNL or CaerieD. For some reason it looks like there was an effort made to ensure that neither of them swung. Why was that? If they’re both town, mafia wouldn’t care if it went to a coin toss since a townie would be sure to hang either way. So why were there four safe single votes at the end? Are the three other single votes a case of jitters about accidentally lynching another townie, or something else?
[/QUOTE]
Are you certain you should be pursuing this line of questioning? It seems to me that this looks worse for you than anyone else.

Let’s look at how things stood when each of the single votes came in:

Lightnin’ - 2, SCL - 2, CaerieD - 2
I put in my vote for nesta

Lightnin’ - 4, SCL - 3, CaerieD - 2
Omi puts in a vote for Rachm

Lightnin’ - 4, SCL - 3, CaerieD - 2
tirial votes and then unvotes Blaster, puts in a vote for Idle Thoughts

Lightnin’ - 4, SCL - 3, CaerieD - 3
Rachm puts in a vote for Lemur

Seeing as yours was the final vote of the day, is there a reason (outside of heavy suspicion of Lemur, of course) that you didn’t push SCL or CaerieD into a tie?

1639

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
So…unFOS CaerieD and unFOS SnakesCatLady.
[/QUOTE]

I’m not exactly questioning your unFOS, because I’m also a lot less suspicious of them, but for different reasons. Is it not possible that one of them is scum, and either the other scum thought it was too risky to put another vote out on Lightnin’ and expose both of them, or that perhaps one or more of the votes on **Lightnin’ ** already were scum and there wasn’t anything more they could have done to make it a safer for the other scum? IOW, I think because of the single votes, it’s hard to say if the scum were scared and threw a few votes on Lightnin’ to protect either SCL or CaerieD, or they were scared, and stayed the heck out of the way?

OTOH, Lightnin’ had been riding near the top of suspicion lists for several days. So the sake of argument, let’s assume SCL and CaerieD are both town, wouldn’t it have looked MORE suspicious had either of them gotten lynched and showed up town. Obviously, the scum would have known, and not cared which one got lynched, but at the same time, where would they have safely thrown their votes? If they’d piled on whichever of them got lynched, they would have drawn a boatload of suspicion for being involved in yet another vote swing away from Lightnin’. IOW, I think a lynch vote for Lightnin’, even if both of the other two are town, is still safer because he was a likely lynchee going into the day.

But even that bothers me, because that logic would imply we’d have a reasonable number of the town along with one or two mafia on Lightnin’, and that logic would have us say that only two or three of the votes on him were townie… I think at least three of the votes on him were probably Townie. So where the heck did the scum vote? If all three were townies, with the votes so close, wouldn’t it make the most sense to leave the votes off of all of them?

Of course, that all relies on neither of them being scum. If one of them is, they still may have easily either done some single voting, or even fabricated one of the other two bandwagons to try to make sure there was enough competition to keep their compatriot safe.

1640

[QUOTE=Blaster Master]
Good points, can you explain your single vote? Did you think all three were townies? Did you think one or more of them was scum, but thought that Lemur was scummier?
[/QUOTE]

I figured there was a good chance scum was in the mix – and I still do. Pinning him/her down is a lot tougher.

Since you’re good with numbers, I’ll explain it to you this way.

The top three. If I were to estimate that, within a group of three individuals, there was a 75% chance that at least one of them were scum, how likely is it that any particular individual is scum? Given the 75% estimate, the likelyhood of none of them being scum is (1-0.75) = 0.25, or 1 in 4. The likelyhood of a particular individual among the three of not being scum is (0.25)^3 = 0.63; i.e. the probability of any particular individual being scum is (1-0.63)=0.27.

So even if I’m 75% sure that one of the top three is scum, I’ve only got a 27% chance of lucking out and picking the correct one. These are bad odds.

What that tells me is that I can’t count on getting lucky if I suspect that there’s scum somewhere in a pack of individuals. I need something concrete to pin my hat on, like I had with fluiddruid and have more and more with Lemur.

Given a high degree of uncertainty, it’s prudent not to rush a vote against someone who’s true status is likely to become clearer as things shake out.