I also find both votes of Mahaloth to be somewhat unsatisfactory and might vote him except for one fact: I’ve played with him before, and often find his votes unsatisfactory even when he’s town! :dubious: (Sorry, Mahaloth, if you’d rather I remain silent than defend you in this way. )
Many of these early votes are against odd votes that scum would probably not do. But many acknowledge that their votes are weak. I’m happy with my vote on Precambrianmollusc who seems to exaggerate his case slightly.
Another reason, I think, is that mods want a few message board threads to contain a complete record of the game play for later perusal. (Unfortunately, the games are so long and confusing I’ve never been able to peruse any entire past game.)
But anyway, aren’t you guilty of what you argue against, special ed ? Or are you nominating Friday to Lynch for having the most insipid lyrics ever?
I was mostly just thinking out loud, which is something I’ve not normally done in this game, which usually leads to people accusing me of being too quiet. it’s worth noting that he left out the first word few words of my original statement where I mention that I’m almost of that thinking - I’m not entirely convinced, but it seems a plausible possibility. one of the difficulties I have with this game is making clear cases against people for lynching on my own (I tend to do a lot of reading/lurking and then pick the vote with the best arguments in my opinion); I’ve always been town and trying to make a case of my own always almost seems dishonest early on because I’m really grasping at straws. it occurs to me that making a case on day one as scum would be much easier because I’d be a bad guy and my job would be to dishonest.
that said, at least a half dozen of you have expressed displeasure (in various forms) with my abstain vote that I noticed, possibly more; I can certainly see the side that not voting, even if it’s an obviously baseless vote, is anti-town to some degree and it would seem that attempting to persuade me to vote in this particular situation would not be something scum would go out of their way to do, so you all get bonus townie points in my book (I’m not actually keeping a spreadsheet, although I did consider it).
I will make a point of finding a vote to replace my current abstain; I guess if all else fails I can fall back on OMGUSing Mahaloth or one of MG’s other suggestions.
someone did mention that I did not offer an excuse for my lack of activity leading up to my first post. it’s not an excuse, necessarily, but I don’t get a lot of time for stuff like this these days. I’m a work at home, stay at home dad with a 5 month old, which keeps me very busy most of the day; in the evenings my wife is home, but it’s also the busy season for her online business, so I’ve pretty much got my hands full all day. I am able to read the thread a few times during the day while I’m feeding the kid, but not post anything of substance as I’d be typing with one or less hands - and I assure you I am reading, though (I’d be happy to post a simple “reading” post every time if that’s of any value?) my goal is to make at least one coherent post per (d)ay, usually about this time of the morning or possibly just before bed each night.
Get vote(s) in on every Day. It’s pro-Town to do so. On Day One, it’s hard, but worth it anyway.
Of course, it attracts votes. Getting myself “out there” and on paper, so to speak, attracts votes…since I become one easy to vote for. I mean, Mentalguy voted for me based on feelings more than anything, and my vote is considered weak to people? Then he tells people to make at least a policy vote?
So once again I have no idea who to vote for on Day1, but I do know a few things:
Town can discuss things at Night
Scum can discuss things during the Day
We may or may not have a Vig
That isn’t really very helpful but it’s a start, for me anyway.
I don’t care for random votes
I don’t care for voting to abstain from voting
Inner is always on my radar but he seems to play the same way whether he is Town or Scum, he usually posts about game mechanics, which is very helpful but also quite neutral.
6.** Ed ** still frightens the life out of me and I cringe when he writes “bah” about my posts
I still want to place OMGUS votes but I am trying hard not to
I liked** Ed**'s countdown clock but that got me into trouble before when I discussed it.
I suppose I haven’t helped anyone much but it has helped me a little.
It’s true. I randomly decided to vote for SilverJan and it earned me two votes myself whose justifications were pretty much OMGUS. I guess that this is the way it works, though, just to get some votes going and then scrutinize closely if there are people that are all too eager to jump on a bandwagon. But it’s a risky business.
I know, I suck at participating on Day One. Yesterday I had like 5 meetings though so hopefully today I have a bit more time on my hands.
Despite being an OMGUS vote, I’m going to place this anyway.
vote wevets
I didn’t like this vote at a gut level. It strikes me as intentionally vague and quick. Svejk mentioned five lurkers – but wevets opted to, without comment, vote for one of them that already had some random votes. Why? If you’re just placing a lurker vote then it makes sense to have some criteria to choose between them; because you’re not saying, wevets, I’m assuming this is why. If you’re making a vote off a list of five, and you choose one in this manner, it looks suspicious to me. I especially dislike a lurker vote coming from someone who has posted so carefully and so little.
As a general rule, I dislike unspoken reasons or short votes, even on Day One, because it leaves too much wiggle-room to reinvent the reasons later on. Explain your actions as you do them (as much as possible with due considerations to power roles). If it’s a random choice, say so, but expect criticism if that random choice happens to make someone a vote leader. (I get that I don’t have many votes, but on Day One, someone moving someone into the 2-3 vote range is often enough to make for a lazy lynch as people start choosing between multi-vote candidates as the deadline nears.)
Day One always works like this but it’s necessary to go through the unpleasant business just to have something to start with. After all, if you thumb-twiddle for all of Day One, then Day Two is basically Day One all over again. As a -town strategy, too, pushing for riskier play doesn’t allow scum players to hang back. I’ve definitely been in a few games that went awry just because Town played too nice – they never pushed, and so the scum team just basically had to sit back and wait, never sticking their neck out. It’s a hard balance for me to strike since I tend to like to bite down and stubbornly stick to an argument or a suspicion, but in past games I’ve tried to be a pot-stirrer that’s willing to move positions as evidence allows. (Causing a couple of lynches for being a flip-flopper; ah well.)
Townies shouldn’t risk their lives needlessly, but the town advantage is numbers; some of our number (hopefully vanilla) must necessarily die for information. Sucks, and I never like to go down without a fight, but it’s necessary to prod and attract votes. Really, attracting bad votes, even if you die, is probably a net benefit to town especially so early in the game. They tend to bite back on their casters.
Well, actually the list was alphabetical and I chose the first name on it. Two reasons if you want to be pedantic about it. Just no good reasons.
I guess I didn’t elaborate enough on “there’s not much to go on until Friday” it seems to me that unless you’re really good at picking up on some sort of subtle typed clue, there’s not going to be any good information to go on the first day. Perhaps I just don’t get it, but the basis for first day votes seems flimsy and I can’t fault anyone for choosing at random or with a system that doesn’t have any reasonable expectation of discriminating between town and scum. I’m guessing from the reaction to fubbleskag’s abstain vote it’s considered bad form not to lynch someone on the first day, although from a role-playing perspective that would make sense… the town gets all crazy about lynching people only after a murder has been committed in the night. But perhaps that would give an advantage to the scum?
In any case, it’s only Wednesday and the deadline is Friday. Plenty of time for people to switch their votes, myself included.
Being snide doesn’t help me understand you better, nor help Town’s chances. May I ask why you’ve chosen to turn the discussion in that direction?
I specifically said that you didn’t elaborate enough on why you a) picked me off the list and b) why you happened to pick someone who already had a random vote. You have now claimed you picked the first person alphabetically. Fine. But my whole point was that vote rationales need to be explained first not when questioned later as it simply gives too much room for scum otherwise. If you pick one out of five names and don’t say why, I am going to wonder why you chose to do that. You made a choice to single out a person; you made a choice not to explain it. It’s then up to the rest of us to interpret that action. It tends not to lend itself to a positive interpretation (particularly if a part of a pattern), and that’s why I’m point it out now. For all I know, you’re Town. I think you’re a good suspect based on this exchange but I can’t discount it. In which case, I ask that you play pro-Town and explain your actions when you do them – just as I ask of everyone, to avoid wiggly revisionist history.
Lastly, there’s always information to establish a vote by the end of the first Day. It’s not easy to pick it out and we’re often wrong but it’s the basis of how Town does determine such information in the long haul. Hand-waving that you don’t need to explain your Day One vote is destructive to that end.
As I already said just a few posts up, if we allow random votes on Day One with no explanation then it buys us nothing. A Townie gets killed and we’re back at Square One with nothing to go on. Ultimately there is information to be gathered on Day One – scum knows they’re scum, and town knows they’re town, and scum players know who’s town. While difficult, there’s always the possibility of determining who is who on Day One – or at least substantially laying the groundwork to do so – but only if the game is actually played.
The same goes for me. Not sure what you mean to say here. I can’t predict what you’re going to do, only look at what you’ve done and what you’ve said. If you have more to share, then share it; being cryptic doesn’t help.
It occurs to me after re-reading our exchange that what I interpreted as sarcastic questioning may not have been. If that’s the case, I apologize in advance. It just came off that way to me.
Yeah, I don’t think it was sarcastic, I didn’t get that reading at all (and I’m usually hypersensitive to that sort of thing). So I was kinda surprised by your calling it snide. But that’s the peril of the written word–it’s so easy to take things in different ways than originally intended.
Yeah, I think this is a lot of the problem with talking on D1. It usually ends up as lynching the loud.
I always end up hugely overthinking everything I say (and that’s not just D1, it’s the whole game). Like, in different games, I’ve gotten heat for voting too early, for voting too late, for “indecisive” language, for everything really. I suppose the thing to do is just not take any of it too seriously and talk away anyway (it’s only a game right:) ) But damned if it’s not hard to get defensive and aggrieved when someone is calling you scummy when you’re town.
It’s a lot easier a day or two in, where you at least begin to find people actually scummy or not. D1 I never really have a suspect, so I end up doing a crappy vote and rightfully getting called for it.
I didn’t mean for it to be snide, and I must confess to total phrasing failure. I should have realized smilies do not really convey intent or tone. My apologies, I’m not really sure what constitutes good reasoning for a vote, but your post has me thinking about it so far, which is good.
Let’s take a look at votes that have been placed so far:
Svejk voted for Silver Jan, allegedly randomly
precambrianmollusc voted for Svejk for voting for Silver Jan
Mahaloth voted for Svejk for voting allegedly randomly
Astral Rejection voted for precambrianmollusc for voting for Svejk
choie voted for fluiddruid allegedly randomly and b/c of modness
septimus voted for precambrianmollusc for getting in a “little jab”
wevets voted for fluiddruid for some crappy reason, allegedly alphabetical order, as if he knew the alphabet!
fubbleskag voted for no one, on the basis that no good choice could be made.
Mahaloth changed his vote to fubbleskag for abstaining.
Mental Guy voted for Mahaloth for a feeling that Mahaloth seemed to be searching for a safe vote.
fluiddruid voted for wevets for voting for him.
Honestly, #1-7 do not appeal to me (and that even includes my own vote.) #8 does not seem to be an acceptable option, and #9 seems counterproductive against what might be a very newbie thing, while #11 doesn’t appeal to me both on a personal or a reasoning basis. #10 isn’t what I would call strong reasoning, and even the post with that vote doesn’t use language suggesting any sort of conviction.
However, I think with the recent posts from fluiddruid it does seem less like that’s a vote to eliminate lurkage.
Unvote fluiddruid
Looking back on the list, I’m going to switch my vote to precambrianmollusc which is a real shame b/c I really like that username, but the first vote for someone for voting for someone seems like a starting a negative cycle that might tear the town apart (although I’m not sure anything could prevent the town’s suspicion tearing it apart.)
Well it was really just a vote to kick things off , and as Svejk suggested we got going with the false/uninformed accusations I figured, well why not Svjek,
Although based on the third vote rule I think I will change my vote to you !
vote Wevets
I initially wanted PreCambrianSabretoothedMollusc, but it didnt fit
)
