Mafia: The Thrill of the Chase [Newbie Friendly!]

The Game Room
181

If I understand it correctly, a vig is a townie who, during the night, may send a player’s name to the moderator. That player will then be killed. I have a couple of questions about that.

Do we find out if a kill was a vigilante kill or a scum kill? Am I correct in understanding that the main way (other than the vig identifying him or herself) in which we as townies would find out that there was a vig among us, would be if two people got killed during one night? Or would that just lead to the conclusion that there is either a vig, or a serial killer? I guess in this case it would boil down to making sense of who got killed, and see whether the motives for these kills would vig motives, scum motives, or sk motives.

182

Yes

183

Not explicitly usually. Often, when a vig outs themself, they’ll claim their kills. If two people get killed in the same night judgement is usually reserved as to who killed whom. (More than one scum has been caught because they automatically assigned SK or Vig kill status to the kill they knew was not scum’s.) In games where color can be important, often the kills of one person will share similarities that match the killer. For example, in the game I mentioned earlier where I was a vig, I was Shere Khan from the Jungle Book and my targets were all described as being mauled as if by claws. When I claimed my character, everyone immediately knew who I had targeted because who else but a tiger would rip his victims to shreds? However, we’ve been told in this game we can safely ignore color.

184

A) Rarely, not in my experience. But I haven’t played enough to say always.

B) If it is a psychological condition, add it to the list. Also, I find it interesting that you only mention the value of info derived from lynched townies-there is info that can be gleaned from lynched scum, and we’ve taken one out, besides.

C)** peeker **cracks my shit up. When I played with him a couple of years back, he was pretty talented, amidst all his incoherent blatherings. In my mind, he’s Dennis Hopper. I have yet to have him deny it.

D) Why lynch a contributor? Although I will say that a lot of times scum will try to get town to lynch a strong player, and take out strong players at night, too. Makes it easier for them to win. (aside-I’ve always thought it would suck to be really good at this, because you’d be the first to go, all the time. If I was scum I would kill the best, first.)

E) I’ve seen it. It’s stupid.

185

I guess another variable that would affect the number of kills is whether a Doctor managed to protect one of the victims (or him/herself) that scum/sk/vig are targeting. I assume we also do not know when a doctor successfully protects someone? So essentially, given these parameters, the number of kills during a single night could range from 0 to 3. That oughta make for a lot of speculation come Tomorrow!

186

definitely not a noob. :smiley:

bad boy, Inner. :wink:

in a group this large, a vig wouldn’t be unusual. it’s a fairly standard role so it can’t be excluded based on the mod’s setup.

some players prefer that vigs take out lurkers rather than lynch them because with lynching you can’t analyze the reasons. everyone just says lynch X for lurking.

187

II) You’re mistaken if you think Ed purposefully campaigns to lynch townies. (Unless he’s scum.) The fact of the matter is that some townies are going to be lynched. The sooner we can put away the hair shirts and accept it philosophically, the better off we’ll be. Make lemonade from your townies and look for the scum who pushed their lynch. (Arguably harder with a lynched scum because scum and townies have equally valid reasons for supporting their lynch. Townies, because they want scum dead and scum because then they get townie cred.)

IV)Talk to Storyteller, guiri, or BillMC about this. Several players suffer from the curse of the Night 1 NK. It can almost be worse if you survive for a few days because all of a sudden everyone’s making eyes at you. “Why aren’t you dead yet? If I were scum, I’da killed you Night 1. YOU MUST BE SCUM DIE DIE DIE”

188

A) Poor Scum might do it. But we’ll catch the poor Scum anyway. Good Scum play well.

B) Yes, of course, all lynches give us information. With the exception of policy lynches which Scum and town can get behind equally. And which yield us little to no information.

C) I’ve met peeker. He is kinda like Dennis Hopper. If Dennis Hopper were an accountant.

D) Because we are trying to lynch Scum. And, unless we are convinced that the Scum are going to be our non-contributors, we need to lynch contributors. (And wouldn’t the game be easy if the Scum always didn’t participate!)

E) OK, sure. But I think we have enough good players here that we won’t do something stupid. OK, we will, I guess, but not if we are aware of it. And isn’t being aware the best defense against being stupid?

189

I thought being smart was.

On the other hand forewarned is forearmed. (And four-armed is twenty-fingered. Wouldn’t that make accountancy interesting.)

190

I suspect we have 5 scum and no vig. Here’s the math of the four most likely scenarios. All assume the worst possible outcome for town.

4 scum, no vig:

4 scum, no vig
D1 16 town, 4 scum
N1 15 town, 4 scum
D2 14 town, 4 scum
N2 13 town, 4 scum
D3 12 town, 4 scum
N3 11 town, 4 scum
D4 10 town, 4 scum
N4 9 town, 4 scum
D5 8 town, 4 scum
N5 7 town, 4 scum
D6 6 town, 4 scum
N6 5 town, 4 scum
D7 4 town, 4 scum - Day 7’s lynch wins for scum

4 scum, 1 vig:

4 scum, 1 vig
D1 16 town, 4 scum
N1 15 town, 4 scum
D2 13 town, 4 scum
N2 12 town, 4 scum
D3 10 town, 4 scum
N3 9 town, 4 scum
D4 7 town, 4 scum
N4 6 town, 4 scum - if the vig hits town tonight, scum win.

5 scum, no vig:

5 scum, no vig
D1 15 town, 5 scum
N1 14 town, 5 scum
D2 13 town, 5 scum
N2 12 town, 5 scum
D3 11 town, 5 scum
N3 10 town, 5 scum
D4 9 town, 5 scum
N4 8 town, 5 scum
D5 7 town, 5 scum
N5 6 town, 5 scum
D6 5 town, 5 scum - Day 6’s lynch wins for scum

5 scum, 1 vig:

5 scum, 1 vig
D1 15 town, 5 scum
N1 14 town, 5 scum
D2 12 town, 5 scum
N2 11 town, 5 scum
D3 9 town, 5 scum
N3 8 town, 5 scum
D4 6 town, 5 scum - Day 4’s mislynch wins for scum

With 4 scum, town needs 4 successful lynches, yet scum needs to force 7 mislynches. That’s a serious uphill battle.

4 scum and a vig is more likely than 4 scum and no vig. Scum wins if Day 4 results in a mislynch and the vig hits town again that night. This might seem unbalanced - town needs 4 successful lynches, while scum only needs to force 4 mislynches - but this assumes that the vig misses every single night. There’s no guaranteeing it will. If their kill isn’t forced (that is, they don’t need to perform a kill each night), the odds could go even better for town. By not killing unless they’re fairly certain they’ll hit scum, town “earns” extra mislynches.

5 scum and no vig: town needs 5 correct lynches, scum needs to force 6 mislynches. Not terrible odds, given that scum can coordinate. I feel this is most likely, especially given that we’re in a newbie friendly game.

5 scum and 1 vig: the game could be over as early as D4, assuming the vig always hits town. Again, not killing can potentially be more beneficial. This scenario actually seems tilted in scum’s direction. 5 correct lynches are needed to win the game, yet scum can win with only 4 mislynches.
Overall: I find the middle two options most likely, with “no vig” edging out “1 vig” in my opinion. Incidentally, I think I made a mistake in my math, since I seem to remember ties are decided at random, meaning scum wouldn’t necessarily win on night 4 in my second example. Oh well.

Now to go address some posts!

191

If nobody’s dead tomorrow, a doctor’s successful protection is a solid guess.

I get that way with Normal Phase. When she’s still alive, I get all suspicious. It’s a bad habit I need to cure.

192

Haha,** peeker** is an accountant, I forgot. Which always made his ramblings even more hilarious to me. I mean, can you imagine** peeker**being your accountant? Being ushered into a lush, quiet, high appointed office ( Or a teepee in a landfill…)

“Well, I really think you should change your LLC to an S-corp for saving money on self employment taxes. BLUE TURKEY BALLS DELI ROLLERSKATES! AMISH INFIDELS BREAKDANCING! You might want to look at your gross margin ratio. WHERE"S MY BEES, DAMNIT, WHAT DID YOU SMELL WITH MY BEES?!”

And just because YOU say he’s not Dennis Hopper, doesn’t make it so. Until I see the both of them at the same time, same place, it’s not conclusively proven.

Off to bed, but thanks for reminding me of that wicked smart bastard. I laughed.

193

I’m gonna toss out an early vote for Precambrian.

Vote Precambrianmollusc.

The “so he claims” doesn’t sit right with me. Švejk is a new player, and that early vote doesn’t strike me as disingenuous in any way. Precambrian seems to be tossing in an extra tiny little jab that isn’t truly warranted.

194

Also, he is the only poster who does not capitalize that I do not think negatively of.

195

Well, with Dennis Hopper being dead and all, it’ll be a while before you do see them in the same place at the same time…

196

I see your point…sort of. I am voting against you for your random vote, but I don’t think it happens all that often…therefore, we don’t lose a lot of noobs to it. Do we?

Just never get in a plane with him.

197

I hope you’re right; If I die, I’ll haunt the fuck out of you! :cool:

198

Criminies, it’s the first day of the first Day and I’m already feeling blearily lost.

Wait… what’s the difference between a doctor and a roleblocker? Is the difference that a doctor protects a specific person (presumably not knowing if they’re scum or town), and a roleblocker blocks a specific person (ditto)? Or does a roleblocker block a specific target from being killed?

Oh man, I was sooooo hoping that Normal Phase would be playing in this game just so I could be all up in that wench’s grill. Ditto Stanislaus, the dirty rat.

Does anyone else find it hard not to bring in irrelevant issues from past Mafia games into their current game? Because there’s part of me that’s tempted to vote for Silver Jan just 'cause I know she was innocent in De’endee (and alas, I voted for her then) but she was scum (I think?) in the Mystery game. So I’ve been trying to think, “okay, what are the odds that someone woudl go from innocent to scum and back to innocent again?”

But that doesn’t really work, obviously, because for one reason, the game moderator* would have to be aware of each person’s status in past games, and I highly doubt they’d go to that trouble. Also it’s just dumb. I might just as well vote for special ed because in the last game he went “bah” at me every five minutes.

So I guess what I’m saying is I haven’t a freakin’ clue whom to vote for during the first round.

  • What are the organizers called in a Mafia game? Mods? Admins? Sysops? Dungeon-masters?
199

Mods. With the exception of Pleo’s Conspiracy games, I can’t think of any games in our part of the mafia world where the mod used some method other than a randomizer to assign roles. My best guess for odds would be (number of innocent/number of players in Deendee)(number of scum/number of players in Mystery)(best guess as to innocent/20)

Like I said, we don’t need to talk about why Grudges are Bad, but they are. So don’t have them.

200

quick question: I read somewhere about JSexton’s rule that supposedly helps balance a game by assigning points to different roles and than balancing town v scum. What are those points? I guess it’s likely that the mod in this game would have sought to balance the two camps; would he have used this rule?