Mafia: The Mob is Recruiting [Game Finished]

I don’t think that saying “if I were scum, this is how I think I would play” is necessarily a bad thing, but I can understand reservations about it. Remember, I play on the assumption that the scum are as smart or smarter than me, so making any sort of statement about how scum should play is likely not giving them information. In the off case that it IS a new stategy, they’re then faced with a WIFOM situation of using the superior strategy, knowing we’re aware of it, versus using an alternate. IOW, while it intuitively seems to be helping the scum, I just cannot logically justify that it is. But, fair enough, I’m happy to bug you about it again later.

To retouch on the point from above, and reiterate one of my primary points in the game, sharing information is generally to the town’s advantage because we have a disadvantage in information, so anything will help UNLESS it happens to be information the scum don’t have like the identity of a power role. Now, there may be other exceptions, but I really think that unless one can come up with a good reason not to share the information, chances are it’s to our advantage that you do. Hence, why I asked what you perceived the advantage of withholding such a list may be. And if, perchance, you said you couldn’t reveal why until such a time, I could live with that, but I’d expect it to either be patently obvious, or come with such an explanation upon it’s revelation.

But that’s the point, I DID examine his motivations. I found his voting without providing reasoning to be more consistent with a motivation to without information and/or provide wiggle room later rather than a motivation of simply agreeing that that candidate was the most scummy. Upon further discussion with him, he clarified that point, as well as explained his reasoning. And while I did find his reasoning flawed, the motivation behind the reasoning appeared to be pro-town, so I felt comfortable enough unvoting him and investigating another person.

Funny, you seem to be behaving this way, except with the targets reversed. I provided my reasoning for why I felt CapnPitt’s motivation was likely pro-town, you and I discussed this directly yesterday. But here, my attitude did not change, I found what appeared to be anti-town motivation. Instead of attacking my reasoning behind that motivation, through ad hominem attacks at me with smudges and such.

So I have to ask you, prior to my discussion with hotflungwok, did you really think I was off my rocker? Do you not find unreasoned votes suspicious, particularly two Days in a row? Even if you don’t, can you not at least see how someone else might find that suspicious? How about the talk of the Vigilante. Attacking me personally, making vague statements about my attitude, my level-headedness, so on are baseless smudges. If you disagree with me, back it up, attack my reasoning.

All I’m seeing here are false generalizations about my behavior or my reasoning. I can only imagine a couple reasons why these generalizations aren’t backed up. One option is that you’re incorrect, which is entirely possible, but surely upon looking back you’d realize that; this has not occurred. Another is that you just haven’t gotten around to it yet, this is possible, but seems somewhat inconsistent with your previous play, but also means you would eventually do so. A third option is that you’re deliberately making false generalizations such that providing specific cites, would either requite a lack on context, or provide contradictory examples. Thus, barring a support for these generalizations, I just cannot see compelling motivation behind any of those options, except for the third.

They seemed less smudgy and more directly suspicious of them than what you did to me. In inclined to believe those were legit, and you were since recruited, but I cannot back that up with anything other than intuition at this time. So fair enough, I’m willing to give you the benefit of that point for now.

Another smudge, which is interesting in it’s timing during my discussion with him. Would you think the scum would recruit him after leading a bandwagon against Capn? IME, the town tends to be somewhat critical of leading bandwagons, of which NAF was quick to shake off this Morning with the surprise that it built so quickly. You also say “those guys” whom else are you suggesting the investigators check out?

Ok. That makes more sense. I was kinda stuck on you as scum, so it self reinforced. At the time, I thought you were playing sloppy - behind by one in the vote, and trying to get advice out before dying, which didn’t make much sense to me, as you weren’t going to be lynched. But I see what you’re saying - we don’t want lurkers cause they hurt us.

Unvote: Pleonast

WARNING: This is going to be long because I am trying to be as complete in my response as possible. I expect BlaM to read it, but if you aren’t BlaM do try and read the whole thing. Thanks.

I know you don’t think that giving the scum tips (I am calling it giving the scum tips as a short hand, I understand that the concept we are discussing is more complicated than that) is necessarily a bad idea, but if those tips are something that I don’t think will actually give the town helpfull information why risk it. So I am not going to just spout out information like that without giving it some thought first.

That being said, I will be more than happy to share said list of people I am watching to see if they get recruited, I just want to wait till it is closer to the end of the Day. I don’t see any benefit to having this back and forth between you and myself continuing if no one else is going to get involved.

I just feel like this is a little bit of a black and white attitude. I am more of a shades of grey guy.

I realized in my last post to you that you are right, you did examine the motivations…I just think you are looking at them the wrong way. You are looking at how will this help the town, not how will this help the scum. Or maybe you think you are looking at both, I can’t really be sure…but I don’t see any benefit to the scum in hotflungwok’s actions. I did see benefit to the scum in Capn’s actions. This answers your next point too I think, so I will leave it in, but not repeat myself.

Actually, I will add one thing. You are grossely exagerating what I said. It wasn’t an ad hominim attack, it wasn’t even an attack. It was a gentle nudge. If you are going to assume that the scum are as smart as you, and if you think I am playing as scum today, give me the credit that I wouldn’t make such a clumsy attack. Again, what’s the motivation?

I think I have addressed this, but let me know if you are still unclear, I will be happy to briefly go over it again.

Where are these false generalizations? Point them out and I will make them less general.

This paragraph baffles me, it’s like we are having two totally different conversations. You are acting as though I am attacking you repeatedly. I made one intentionally inflamatory remark to see how you reacted, because I found your reasoning to be flawed and possibly suspect. Everything I have said after that has been an explination of my thought process. Am I really being that unclear? If I am, again, you are going to have to bring up more specific examples so I can address them more specifically.

Well like I said, I was a bit blunt with them. Look over all my posts from Day 2 and you will see that this is a strategy I have been working with through the whole game up until this point. Read my posts about what happened Night 1 which were all an attempt to get a scum player to make comments on the Night action. You aren’t special BlaM, you are just the first person to notice.

Now, if I may…unless some other people want to join in on this, I think this back and forth between us is a distraction to the town at best. I am happy to answer specific points that you want to bring up, I won’t tell you to not talk about me if you really feel you want to, but I don’t see how the two of us dominating the conversation for the rest of the Day helps the town. That’s not a smudge, because I don’t think you were recruited yet, that’s just a reminder not to get all tunnel visioned on me.

We need everyone to talk a lot, so that when/if they get recuited we will know the difference, and right now I think the two of us are drowing out the rest of the conversation.

Other veterans. Other leaders. It’s becoming clear that some people are more influential than others, and while they may be innocent now, they may not be later.

Total posts made to the game thread:

Blaster Master 51
NAF1138 45
Menocchio 40
Santo Rugger 40
bufftabby 39
Hawkeyeop 39
HazelNutCoffee 37
**Pleonast ** 34
Darth Sensitive 29
Freudian Slit 29
hotflungwok 27
chrisk 26
Koldanar 25
**Diomedes ** 24
sinjin 23
**Hockey Monkey ** 23
OneCentStamp 22
Hal Briston 21
Millit the Frail 21
MHaye 13
dotchan 9
**Drain Bead ** 4 (subbed in toDay)

Bolded players have posted toDay, non bolded players have yet to post.
No conclusions, just information. And please, if I missed seeing you post toDay, let me know.

I would like to say…neither BlaM or myself posted Day 1, neither of us can really post durring the weekends or evenings…admittadly we are doing a bit of overposting at the moment, but it is kind of shocking that we are the post count leaders. Those people at the bottome of the list, we REALLY need you to post more. Dot, MHaye we especially need the two of you to post more.

We don’t need fluff, but we do need you to get more from you.

NAF, just so you know (you probably do) but making lists like that was something I did when I was scum to try to look like “helpful townie” without posting anything of actual substance.

My post

Whatever NAF’s reason for posting, it is helpful to the Town.

Note to all: next week I’ll be on travel. I think I’ll have internet access, but I’m likely to have limited time.

So ignore the list, I am trying to draw attention to the fact that people aren’t posting nearly enough. Strip out the pregame and Night posts and there are several people who have posted to the game less than 15 times in 3 Days. That really just isn’t good enough if the town is going to win this thing.

(sorry for missing your post Dot, fluid could you bold her name in my previous post or is it enough that we are talking about it? But it doesn’t change the fact that you REALLY need to post a whole heck of a lot more.)

I apologize to my fellow Towners if my posting has been sporadic. Mostly, I’m just a little intimidated (more so yesterday than today) and trying to figure out how this really works. It hasn’t helped that a lot of the other players here are obviously familiar with each other, referencing play habits from previous games and “classic scum tells.”

I’m reading closely, and I’m trying to figure out who’s acting suspicious. If I can manage not to get lynched or disappeared in the process, better yet.

Friendly warning, OneCentStamp, you can’t edit posts. It’s a big no-no, and can get you mod killed.

Just a few concerns and thoughts at the moment, no real accusations : I was thinking, would it be possible that behind all the math Blaster could be hiding scum intentions? It doesn’t seem likely, regarding the rest of his (her?) behavior, just a small thought.

Menocchio, I need to back and review my FOS on.

I’m still hoping to see changes in behavior today for someone. With 1-2 recruits, it’s a good bet someone will die tonight, yes?

:eek: Thanks. FTR, the substance of my edit was changing managed to manage.

That would likely depend on the vig. Recruiting is much better for the scum numbers than killing, so I expect them to keep recruiting until they have a very good reason not to.

I’m still modding the off-board game, and I see no point in posting for the sake of posting, especially these first few Days when there’s so many people. I’ll pretty much just post to FoS, vote, or discuss game theory where applicable.

:dubious: I am following that game and have a fair amount of experiance modding…is there really that much to do?

And while posting for the sake of posting might be a bad thing in other games, it is the only way we can survive in this one. You must have SOME thoughts on what is going on, post them. I am not saying post fluff that is not game related, but post something about what is being talked about toDay.

What do you think about role claims for power roles in future Days? Should some roles mass claim at a certain point? How long should a power role wait to claim? Do you think I am acting scummy like BlaM says? What about BlaM or hotflungwok? (I know you said something about hfw earlier, but things have changed since then) What do you think of Pleo’s role claim? I mean come on, there is a lot that could be discusssed!

I have a few thoughts on role claims. Tell me if I’m crazy.

I’m not sure when one would be optimum. I don’t know how well this plan works.

But I’m wondering how good of an idea it is for the masons and priests to claim together, with the masons claiming as priests too. That keeps numbers of both obfuscated and builds a core of protowniness. Priests can’t be recruited, and masons only have a small chance. So that would take them off the possible recruit list.

I think. I know that scum could sneak in there, so maybe it’s a foolish idea. I’m just throwing the thought I had during class out there.

I like to post a lot, and I like to use a lot of math and such, simply because it’s how I think. I’ve grown a bit more wary of my use of math after it got me in a lot of trouble in a previous game (was it the Firefly one?); trust me, I’d use a LOT more if I didn’t think it would be enormously distracting. I like to provide as much of my reasoning process as possible because I think transparency is important to keeping my motivations clear.

That said, I can appreciate that some math and lengthy posts can look like I’m inflating my posts without actually containing any real substance. But if you really feel my math could have nefarious intentions, please bring it up so I can address it.

For instance, I suppose discussing recruitment failure could be seen that way, but again, this is posted with my specifically stated motivation about maximizing information, and specifically, I could have posted that information on the scum board over night instead, were I scum and inclined to keep that information out of the hands of town.

Basically, I think mathematical posts are generally null tells, simply because it’s extremely difficult to differentiate motivation when looking pure at something that is coldly logical. That is, motivations generally won’t effect the outcome of the math, and even errors could just as easily be legitimate for even a scummy player as they could be nefariously intended.

IOW, I’d tend tend to say that those sorts of posts should neither be held in favor nor against the poster. I’d say the same for anyone posting vote count updates, or post count updates, summaries, or any other similar sorts of posts.

Mason claiming is something very difficult to theorize on, because inevitably they have more information about themselves than we do. They have their own sense of how much suspicion they’re under and how much they theink their brethren are under. Similarly, they can do a better job of guessing how likely they are to be Night killed than we can. So, judging how and when they should claim is generally not very useful, just because there’s so many possibilities.

That said, you plan sounds good on the top level, but you point out the fatal flaw, a scum can easily claim Priest, and then you’d have a group of guaranteed townies (the Priests), most likely townies (the Masons), and scum… IOW, the grouping really doesn’t do anything to distinguish them from the rest of the group of guaranteed townies (Doctor), most likely townies (vanilla, Bishop, etc.), and scum. Refering back to my information theory post, if we’re going to seperate people into groups, we need to make sure that the group has a different probability of containing certain roles than the rest, or it won’t gain us any useful information. Even worse, by doing this, we really don’t gain information on the scum, but the scum DO gain information on the town (they’d know where all the no-recruitables are, at least in a much higher concentration).

Ultimately, this would net us little information, while potentially providing a lot of useful information to the scum.

Would it be worth it to have masons just claim as masons though? They are not that likely to be purposely recruited given the fail rate and scum can’t hide in their ranks. Anything that can easily be recruited or can’t be confirmed is risky to claim, but I don’t see masons as falling into either category. At the very least, it would narrow down our search for the godfather.