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

[special_ed]

@choie

Not at that point, no. I admit that his personal circumstances might’ve made it impossible for him to know if he’d have been able to be around later in the Day. But speaking strictly for myself, I’d’ve have waited until as late as possible, like, 8 hours pre-Dusk, and spent the rest of the time doing my damndest to make a case for my own survival. I don’t think septimus was making a very good case for himself prior to his claim, which is why things got to the point where he felt he had no choice. But again, in fairness, as he says himself, he’s not confident in his abilities to woo people over with words, so I guess that’s why he needed to claim earlier. (That and his schedule.)

Certainly if your back’s against the wall, and you’re a power role that’s useful to Town and you know you can still do more good things for Town, then it’s your responsibility to claim. That’s how I’ll play it myself, should such an honorable role be bestowed upon me. (Mind you, I think fubbleskag’s claim timing was way worse than septimus– during the Night when we were in no way close to a vote, for heaven’s sake! – but we have less to lose if he bites it.)

It’s quite likely that I’m wrong about strategy; I’ve spent a lot of time looking up games and role responsibilities and so on, not just here but on various wikis (epicmafia, mafiascum, etc.), and that’s where I’ve developed my feelings about waiting until the absolute last reasonable moment before claiming Doc. But these are all theories and objective discussions; it’s probably quite different when you’re in-game standing on a pyre a la Joan of Arc and you feel the flames licking at your flesh.

That’s the wrong approach.

You cannot gaurantee that the people who voted you will be around to unvote you.
You cannot gaurantee that you’ll be able to build a consensus around another player.
Too often I’ve seen a voting frenzy looking for another lynch candidate, often someone who isn’t around and cannot claim or defend themselves.

It’s a very wrong approach.

[special_ed]

@choie

Oh man, I’m wishing I were scum, because their jobs are pretty easy right now. Why would the scum team be frustrated? They don’t have to eliminate the doctor; he’s already neutralized his power himself, and basically turned himself into an unkillable vanilla. And so what if there’s one person who’s unkillable? Unless I’m mistaken, scum don’t need to kill all of us, right? They can take their leisurely time and cap everyone but the doctor, or at least a majority, until we have no chance of winning. And the doc’s not gonna do anything to stop 'em, because he’s now understandably worried about his life. (Especially since we seem to have a serial killer as well!)

Scum gloating? Or maybe a depressed Serial Killer? I’m not getting that frustrated Townie vibe off of you. You have a couple of strong items on your agenda. So your initial statement seems out of place.

At any point, he can protect someone else.

And the Scum risk him changing his mind and protecting someone else.

But, the real question is, why would he protect someone he isn’t sure is

[quote=“choie, post:1040, topic:603526”]

And don’t kid a kidder, bub. What you were doing was non-accusatory accusing. You were doubting the existence of a doctor; there is no significant difference between saying “I doubt there’s a doctor” and my saying “I doubt septimus is a doctor because we have no proof that there is a doctor, mainly because as far as we can tell, no one’s ever so much as picked up a tongue depressor in this game.” And your saying that he’s making some weak-ass choices is exactly what I’m doing too. So nice attempt to distance yourself from my POV, but like it or not, your POV has suddenly changed, probably because you want to hang with the cool kids after school rather than with the one idjit who dares to suggest exactly the same thing you were suggesting but apparently too cautious or scummy to state flatly.
[/quote\

No, what I was doing was keeping all possibilities on the table. A wise move, in my mind. I’m not going to blindly trust him. I’m not going to blindly accuse him. There are points that indicate he might e honest, but we need to remember, that there are points that indicate he might not be honest.

And, if you read those first 2 post I link to, you’ll see they really are discussions about the game state. Discussions about how it is possible that we have 2 protective roles, and if so, that really points towards a serial killer. But how it’s also possible that we don’t.

When I called his scum hunting weak, I wasn’t trying to fabricate a case against him for claiming or self-protecting. Things he did in what I consider a proper fashion.

I was criticizing his decision to sit back and let everyone else play. Read that third post you gave a link on. My criticism is very different from yours, and really has nothing to do with his alignment

This is all gonna be amusing toward the EOD, that’s for sure. :D[/quote]

[Svejk_1]

@choie

Not at that point, no. I admit that his personal circumstances might’ve made it impossible for him to know if he’d have been able to be around later in the Day. But speaking strictly for myself, I’d’ve have waited until as late as possible, like, 8 hours pre-Dusk, and spent the rest of the time doing my damndest to make a case for my own survival.

Just to chime in with others that have already said this: this seems to me to be a terrible strategy. For the record, I don’t really think you’re scummy for advocating it, so I’m not looking to pile on you along with those that have voted for you or might be plannign to do so, Given that the majority of the players is in North America, 8 hrs before dusk is between 1AM and 4AM, so most of the people in the game would spend the majority of the time between your hypothetical claim and EOD sleeping. I agree that it would have been better if Septimus had not found himself as lynch leader to begin with, and had not gathered four votes against himself, but given that this *was *the situation he was in, and assuming that he is not lying, I can find no fault with his decision to claim when he did.

[choie]

Svejk, you make a fair point. I’m in a weird position here because to me, 1 - 4AM is pretty much like everyone else’s 6PM - 10PM (I’m a freelancer so I tend to work odd hours) so it was a bit myopic of me to assume everyone else would’ve been around. And as I said, I don’t have first-hand experience at making claims to spare myself, which means I guess I’d like to think I’d be all Giles Corey but I’d end up being… um, Elia Kazan, to use a particularly odd analogy.

Hmm, y’know, I had the same issue with Inner Stickler’s doctor back in De’endee. Maybe I just don’t trust doctors.

[fluiddruid]

Hi guys, just a personal update. Mostly my lack of consistent involvement in this game has been due to a lot of holiday busy-ness, work, plus feeling under the weather for the last month or so. I finally broke down and went to the doctor and he thinks I have walking pneumonia. Not a big deal but the meds (or general lack of sleep) put me out for much of yesterday. I’m feeling a bit better and am back at the office today, so I should be able to catch up on the last few days shortly.

I will be away from home Friday through Sunday but I should be able to check in (albeit long, detailed posts are probably out since I’ll be posting via iPad). Sunday I almost certainly not be online at all due to family commitments on the holiday, though.

[choie]

@fluiddruid

Hi guys, just a personal update. Mostly my lack of consistent involvement in this game has been due to a lot of holiday busy-ness, work, plus feeling under the weather for the last month or so. I finally broke down and went to the doctor and he thinks I have walking pneumonia. Not a big deal but the meds (or general lack of sleep) put me out for much of yesterday. I’m feeling a bit better and am back at the office today, so I should be able to catch up on the last few days shortly.

I will be away from home Friday through Sunday but I should be able to check in (albeit long, detailed posts are probably out since I’ll be posting via iPad). Sunday I almost certainly not be online at all due to family commitments on the holiday, though.

Holy crap, take care of yourself, fluiddruid! Pneumonia of any kind’s not to be played around with. Are you sure it was a good iidea to go into work today? Hopefully you won’t tire yourself too much. (Or infect anyone, for that matter!) Anyway feel better.

[Mahaloth]

Guys, I’m having major issues being able to load the Straight Dope at work. It is not a blocked site and it isn’t filtered out in anyway, but it stopped loading last Friday. I post from work sometimes and I can’t figure it out.

Firefox, IE, and Chrome all just say “Waiting for reply” when trying to load the SDMB and eventually it times out. I brought my laptop in from home. It can access…everything at work, even Facebook(which is blocked).

Same error.

Anyone know why the SDMB would suddenly cause an error like this? It’s affecting my game-time. Again, it really is not filtered out by my work and even my laptop gets the error when I use it at work(and am not even on the network).

[Hirka_T_Bawa]

OOG: Another long day yesterday at work, still trying to catch up from the breakin… Damn crooks, making my life hard! I ended up no getting out till 10pm (the pharmacy closed at 8pm), came home, and fell asleep. Slept all day.

I’ll make a more productive review tonight, just skimmed the thread to see what has happened since I was last on, and wanted to get some thoughts in.

@Svejk_1

At this stage in the game, when there’s at least three and possibly four scum out there, how can you have only 2 people that you suspect, and how come you only suspect them a little bit? I have to question your motivation for posting something that essentially says you think almost everyone is town when that clearly cannot be true.

Oh, I know someone on my list that I’m not currently suspecticting is anti-town, but I wanted to put my thoughts out there while I was thinking. Now, anything could change as the days go on, but that list is my current starting point. I also still need to review Silver Jan which I hope to do tonight.

@Svejk_1

Now that **septimus **has replied, will you change your vote? Hirka, if you read this, what about you - **septimus **is back and has responded, are you going to keep your vote in place?

No, I’m not. I’m glad to finally get a response out of septimus, and someone else has at least claimed having a different role PM subject… And I can see if Trepa was going to change someone’s, it would be the doc, possibly to get exactly this type of response.

Unvote septimus

[MentalGuy]

@Silver_Jan

First of all, I think most of** Hirka**’s analysis comes from meta gaming which is difficult not to do but I don’t think too much emphasis should be placed on that. I don’t understand why he thinks everyone that voted for gnarly is Town, surely scum would be looking for some Town cred there?

Nothing that** Fubbles** has done so far has changed my gut feeling about him. Claiming an odd (even though real) role in the middle of the night was a bit funny. I am starting to think he did that so that he would have an excuse to be alive in the morning. Scum doesn’t usually NK their own.

Choie often puts herself down but I find her to be rather strong and opinionated (it’s not a slur on your RL peson, just your game styles so don’t take offense :)), she does have strong way about her and that’s a good thing but… she herself has even given reasons why she should be considered scummy. This could be WIFOM on her part. “Look, here are the reasons I should be considered scum but now that I have said them, I cannot possibly be scum” just paraphrasing here.
My list of suspects at the moment are:

1. Fubbles
2. Choie
3. Hirka

Vote Fubbleskag

I reviewed Silver Jan’s post throughout the game. I did not really find anything to offset the feeling I get reading this one. Did she really believe that Fubbles would need an excuse for being alive this Morning? After he has constantly brought negative attention on himself by voting “abstain”, revoting a just claimed doc, and voting himself, she thought scum would be thinking “wow, this guy is too dangerous, we better get rid of him”?

And while her reason for suspecting Hirka may have some validity, it seems very weak, and she does not even consider Hirka’s role in getting charlie lynched.
It seems to me that she is just manufacturing reasons for voting and being suspicious. While I didn’t see anything this blatant in her earlier posts, I also did not see anything particularly exonerating.

I also review fluiddruid and Scathach. I am getting a Town lean on fluiddruid, but have gone back to suspecting Scathach. I was giving Scathach a bit of Town cred for voting charlie. While she made a legitimate case on him, it would be a fairly easy case for a scum to make against another and also one that she might not expect other players to really think worth a vote. I did the review last night and I don’t remember which posts got me back to being suspicious of her, but if I decide I need to vote her I will make a more involved case.

For now, I am going to

Vote Silver Jan

[Trepa_Mayfield]

Vote Count:
choie (2): Mahaloth, Septimus
septimus (1): fluiddruid
Silver Jan (1): Mental Guy
Scathach (1): choie
Special Ed (1): Scathach
fubbleskag (1): Silver Jan

[choie]

Sorry, this thought just came to me.

Trepa, since Sunday is Christmas, will Night be lengthened/shortened to accommodate all those strange folks who’d rather celebrate the birth of their Lord than play a game involving vigilantes, serial killers, and the Mafia?

[Svejk_1]

@Trepa_Mayfield

Vote Count:
choie (2): Mahaloth, Septimus
septimus (1): fluiddruid
Silver Jan (1): Mental Guy
Scathach (1): choie
Special Ed (1): Scathach
fubbleskag (1): Silver Jan

Trepa, this misses my vote for fubbleskag. Also, on the issue of the holidays, given the choice I’d vote for an extended night as it would accomodate travel plans that I have.

Also, is it just me or is D4 slow going? I guess you can really tell when prolific players get killed, and the more sparse posters stay behind.

[choie]

@Svejk_1

Also, is it just me or is D4 slow going? I guess you can really tell when prolific players get killed, and the more sparse posters stay behind.

Hey, I did all I could to keep things lively.

[Svejk_1]

Vote count
Septimus (1) - [del]Hirka (968-1048)[/del], FluidDruid (970)
Fubbleskag (2) - Švejk (994), Silver Jan (1006)
Choie (1) - Mahaloth (997)
Special Ed (1) - Scathach (1007)
Scathach (1) - Choie (1027)
Silver Jan (1) - Mental Guy (1049)

Not voting: PCM, Special Ed, Hirka, Fubbleskag, Septimus,

[choie]

Svejk, you’re missing septimus’s vote on me in #1010.

[Trepa_Mayfield]

Vote Count:
choie (2): Mahaloth, Septimus
fubbleskag (2): Silver Jan, Svejk
septimus (1): fluiddruid
Silver Jan (1): Mental Guy
Scathach (1): choie
Special Ed (1): Scathach

@Svejk_1

Trepa, this misses my vote for fubbleskag.

Sorry about that–I knew I missed somebody’s vote, but then I couldn’t find it because it was on the previous page.

@choie

Sorry, this thought just came to me.

Trepa, since Sunday is Christmas, will Night be lengthened/shortened to accommodate all those strange folks who’d rather celebrate the birth of their Lord than play a game involving vigilantes, serial killers, and the Mafia?

@Svejk_1

Also, on the issue of the holidays, given the choice I’d vote for an extended night as it would accomodate travel plans that I have.

I can extend the night by a couple days, I guess. I’m a bit worried, though, that if I let it go too long, more people will wander away. Yeah, two extra night days seem like a decent compromise.

So Night 4 would end on Tuesday, the 27th. Does that work for everyone?

[Svejk_1]

I’m sorry, missed that, I was just looking at that myself. Clearly, I should stop junior modding and go to bed. As soon as I finish my drink, that is.

There, I fixed it, I think this should be correct:

Vote count
Fubbleskag (2) - Švejk (994), Silver Jan (1006)
Choie (2) - Mahaloth (997), Septimus (1010)
Septimus (1) - [del]Hirka (968-1048)[/del], FluidDruid (970)
Special Ed (1) - Scathach (1007)
Scathach (1) - Choie (1027)
Silver Jan (1) - Mental Guy (1049)

Not voting: PCM, Special Ed, Hirka, Fubbleskag,

[Hirka_T_Bawa]

Ok, I finally had a chance to review Silver Jan. I read through all 44 posts she has… And honestly, I’m really starting to think she is scum She posted a bunch of fluff, or responses to questions, yet I never actually saw her doing any actual scum hunting. She has never posted questions about anyone, and I never saw anything about her that actually stuck out… Honestly, when I opened all 44 posts in tabs, I was closing all of them thinking “this doesn’t say anything”… Well… when I was going through all the tabs saying that, that started to get suspicious. It looks like she is flying WAY under the radar. She has made almost double the posts I have (though, I was away the first day), yet, IMHO, she hasn’t made nearly as many posts about the actual game state… Looks to me like she is trying to keep her post count up, while ignoring what is actually going on.

Here is the posts I saw that made me hit the multi quote message button…

@Silver_Jan

Ok then, please rephrase those TWO sentences for me without using the word suspicious??? I was trying to get my point across and be very clear at the same time!

]Vote fisha

It’s partly an OMGUS and partly because I think fisha’s vote for me is a very opportunistic vote, especially as the original vote for me was apparently a random one.

Wow, I used vote 3 times in ONE sentence, I must be scum!!! I will calm down now.

Voting for someone, saying she “must be scum”, and saying it is an OMGUS vote. Sound like she is trying to excuse her actions, and make it sound reasonable. Looks like she is trying to place a vote that won’t be questioned.

@Silver_Jan

As I was reading I was thinking that** Fubbleskag** really pinged me, that revote on Septimus after he had claimed was just weird. Mental Guy made an even better case against Fubbles in post 776 than I could have. The other thing that I find a bit odd is that he answers a lot of questions with smilies, what’s up with that? Then his very first vote to abstain. Altogether it mounts up and I think it makes him look very scummy.

Vote Fubbleskag

Here is another vote that she placed that made me think it was a safe vote, one that wouldn’t be questioned in the grand scheme of things. Also, this is the closest I’ve seen her make in her 44 votes to an actual case against someone.

@Silver_Jan

@** Hirka**, why should I vote for people that I don’t find particularly scummy?** Svejk is coming across as Town to me and Mahaloth I have no idea about. I am sorry if my voting for Fubbles** still causes a tie but he hasn’t done or said anything to make me think that he is Town. Like Special Ed has said, vote for the person you think is the scummiest out of all the other players.

I agree, you shouldn’t vote for someone you don’t find scummy, and honestly, if you voted for Svejk he probably would have been lynched, because I wouldn’t have changed my vote, and Gnarlycharlie would still be alive today. But, at the time, there was a definite tie.. is keeping the tie pro town or anti town? Specially when we already had a tie on day one. But either way, you never actually made a case against Fubbles, you just agreed with another case, voted him on his revote of septimus, and his amount of “Smiles” in his posts…

Keeping your vote on someone isn’t scummy per se, but not looking at the other cases in the event of a tie is not a townie move, IMHO. I posted a whole list of reasons why you should break the tie, and vote for my candidate. If you didn’t agree, I would think you would have listed a bunch of reasons why I should vote for yours instead.

In conclusion, I don’t see anything in Silver Jan’s 44 posts so far that makes me think she is town at all, most of her posts have been fluff, or responding to other posts. She hasn’t done any scum hunting herself, hasn’t suggest who might be scum or not, and just seems to be going with the flow. To me, this suggests that she might be scum that is trying to stay off the radar.

Vote Silver Jan

[Hirka_T_Bawa]

@Trepa_Mayfield

So Night 4 would end on Tuesday, the 27th. Does that work for everyone?

I’m working this Friday, Saturday, off Sunday (Christmas), and then the Monday after… So… Yea, this will mostly work for me… However, If we extend the night, how about extending the day so it isn’t lopsided? Even though I’m working both Friday and Saturday, I’m sure I’ll have more time to check the thread before EOD saturday then I will Friday. So, how about EOD being Saturday morning and EON being Tuesday morning?

Does this work for anyone else? Does this work for you Trepa?

[Svejk_1]

   | chi | sjn | fsk | fsk | sed | fld | sed | htb | fld 
   | [809](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14570910&postcount=809) | [818](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14571486&postcount=818) | [834](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14571794&postcount=834) | [847](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14571894&postcount=847) | [857](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14572374&postcount=857) | [860](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14572393&postcount=860) | [862](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14572415&postcount=862) | [869](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14572454&postcount=869) | [872](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14572515&postcount=872)
--------------------------------------------------------
mah|  3  |  3  |  3  |  3  |  3  |  3  |  3  |  3  |  3  |
švk|  3  |  3  |  3  |  3  |  2  |  3  |  3  |  2  |  1  |
gnc|  2  |  2  |  2  |  2  |  2  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  |
sed|  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |
fsk|  1  |  2  |  3  |  2  |  2  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |
htb|  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |
chi|  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  1  |
TOT| 12  | 13  | 13  | 13  | 12  | 12  | 13  |  13 | 13  |

Here is an overview of the votes that led to Gnarly being killed yesterday. It’s quite neat looking but it is not clear to me that it supplies a whole lot of clear pointers as to where scum might have jumped on the Gnarly wagon for town cred. Maybe more discerning folk can identify some patterns.

Things start happening from post #860, 37 minutes before EoD. Two votes against Gnarly are already in place (**Scathach **and Guiri) **Fluid **has just voted for me (860), and now **Ed **votes for **Gnarly **(862, 35 minutes to go) creating a three-way tie. Hirka comes along, says he won’t have ties, unvotes me and votes for Gnarly (869). This is the penultimate column; this happens with 29 minutes to go. Gnarly is now in the lead with 4 votes, over 2 for me and 3 for Mahaloth.

At this stage, Ed posts twice in rapid succession trying to substantiate his vote for Gnarly. He wonders if Hirka (who just unvoted me) can convince him to re-vote me (Hirka, in post #875, says it would take him longer than 20 minutes to compose a case and that he is fine with Gnarly being lynched anyway), and lists a number of posts in which Guiri made a case against Gnarly. With 18 minutes to go, FluidDruid adds her vote to the votes for Gnarly, sealing the deal. Her vote is redundant, as Gnarly was already in the lead, so perhaps this is were scum tried to pile on a bandwagon given that it was a done deal? Still, FluidDruid’s post include a reasonable justification for voting for Gnarly.

Gnarlycharlie is pronounced dead at 12:08 PM EST.