I’ve said this before, in a past life, but it’s worth repeating here:
Vote for the person you think is most likely to be scum.
Don’t vote on a bandwagon because it’s a bandwagon. Don’t avoid a bandwagon because it’s a bandwagon. Don’t decline to vote unless you have a damn good reason. Don’t vote for any meta-game reason.
If you are town, and if you want to be as helpful as possible, with a very few exceptions vote for the person you think is most likely to be scum.
I agree, but if that’s all someone is posting – it’s bad. For example, HazelNutCoffee has fluff posts **and **discussion posts. I’m fine with that. As far as I recall, **SnakesCatLady **made one post this gameday, that says nothing. That looks suspicous to me. Sorry for killing SnakesCatLady’s ‘fun.’ Maybe a nice swim will refresh her.
For those of you just joining us, it’s not really 8 pages. The first four are pre-game chatter, it’s *only *4.
And… I have to violate my promise not to discuss the Oracle and Apprentice separation strategy; honestly, I think I’ll explode otherwise. One of the flaws **storyteller **pointed out is that the town doesn’t know my alignment, so I could be manipulating how the Oracle investigates to scum’s advantage. Also, letting scum know which subset the Oracle is investigating gives them undue information. The problem is, how do we coordinate the Oracle and the Apprentice without telling scum the plan. Well, there is one bit of information that only the Oracle and Apprentice both have that can be used to coordinate without tipping anything off to the scum. Both Oracle and Apprentice know the identity of the Oracle.
Proposed:
Divide the set of players into two disjoint subsets: players 1-15 and players 16-30.
The Oracle will investigate the set of players to which the Oracle does **not **belong.
The Apprentice will investigate the set of players to which the Oracle does belong.
Voila!
This method achieves seperation without tipping off information to the scum. The only flaw I see now is that information will be revealed when the Oracle is killed or outed. Anyway, blah blah blah. Oracle and Apprentice, choose to follow or ignore on your own.
Actual game content stuff:
I’m quite curious about the MadTheSwine - ClockworkJackal discussion. In CJ’s early post the phrase
struck me as odd, but I dismissed it because in watching other games statments like this were flashing at me and I was wrong nearly all the time.
Having played as the Doctor in M4, I can tell you that there are other reasons for protecting another player (although certainly not on the first Night). For example, if one of the pro-town power roles is outed it may be wise for the Priest to protect that person. Of course, the Cultists might anticipate this and kill the Priest instead, so it can be difficult to decide. The Priest knows that the Cultists know, so he can clearly not protect himself. But the Priest knows that the Cultists know that the Priest knows, so he can clearly not protect the other player! IT HAS WORKED! YOU’VE GIVEN EVERYTHING AWAY! I KNOW WHO YOU’RE GOING TO KILL!!
Sorry, flashbacks…
In general, I believe that it’s scummy to defend another player on the first day. Only the scum have information about roles, and it’s a known scum strategy to warm up to a townie by defending him/her. There’s not really any good reason for a townie to defend someone else this early in the game. NAF, J’accuse!
Vote NAF1138
–FCOD
I urge the investigators not to follow this plan. What if the Apprentice is not in the Oracle’s set? He’ll never learn. What if the scum aren’t evenly distributed among the two sets? It might make it harder for the Oracle to find one. No offense to sachertorte, but it’s just a bad idea. The investigators should investigate whomever the hell they feel like. I think the best plan would be that the Oracle and Apprentice investigate players from whom they get a strong scum or a strong town vibe. I think redundant readings are a non-issue. At this point the Apprentice isn’t that useful anyway.
–FCOD
Only one TINY caveat: what if they’re both masons (monks)?
Granted, I’d expect that a monk wouldn’t take that risk of outing himself and a buddy unless there was imminent danger of an actual lynching of a monk. Therefore, it might be scummy unless it’s later in the day and the someone getting defended has a decent plurarity. Even then, tread with caution.
In other news, you make some great points on the Oracle/Apprentice thing and now I’m not sure what to think–but I’m leaning towards the default of “Power Roles shouldn’t be controlled by the majority in open discussion” just due to the point someone else made–that lets scum have a chance to influence them.
At this point, I’m only getting a few low-level scum vibes, but at least I’ve got a set of about five players I can suspect with varying degress–namely, Clockwork Jackal('s replacement), MadtheSwine, NAF1138, Pleonast, and DiggitCamera–Jackal for nitpickiness in pronouns to try to hang one on ME, Mad and NAF for the reasons FlyingCowofDoom stated, and Pleo and Diggit for random voting because honestly, I do think it hurts town when you do stuff without thinking about it.
That’s roughly in the order I’d choose to vote on them right now, if I thought I had enough information to vote. I don’t.
Oooh, SCL, you gonna sit back and take that?
Well, **CJ ** is going to be subbed out, so again, I will withold judgement for a while longer. I am still waiting for an explanation from MadTheSwine, so while I’m at it:
FOS MadTheSwine.
I am tempted to point one at NAF and Idle Thoughts as well, for the same reasons FCOD listed above. MtS’s reasons for voting for** CJ** are rather shaky, IMO, and neither NAF nor Idle Thoughts has made any convincing arguments that support them.
I mistook Scuba_Ben for USCDiver and retracted my vote because of that. I don’t feel strongly enough about a random vote to reinstate it. I haven’t made another random vote because it feels like this thread has enough discussions going. Seems consistent to me.
Also, bootstrapping discussion is different than poking someone with a vote (i.e., voting for someone to get a response from them). A poke-vote is not random, anyway.
USCDiver: springboard–Thanks! I’ll keep that mental picture.
Ah, I was visualizing you soldering little weights onto a fifty-cent piece.
sachertorte: clever plan! But I think it’s best our power roles do not follow any predictable plan.
I feel like I should vote for someone. Hmm…
Vote MadTheSwine
For shaky reasoning. I’m not gung-ho about dunking Mad, but he’s highest on my likely scum list.
Mathematically, this is a wash.
No seperation yields a 1 in 29 chance of the Oracle targetting the Apprentice.
Seperation yields 50% * 1 in 15 chance of the Oracle targetting the Apprentice.
They are roughly equal.
You are welcome to your opinion. Like I said beofre, I state the policy for the investigators to choose whether to follow it or not. I don’t think we should direct them to follow it, and I don’t think we should direct them *not *to follow it either. Let them choose.
I think overlap is a very bad thing, and I’m suspiscous of your casual outlook the the efficacy of the Apprentice and the deteriment of overlapping investigations. You even go so far as to direct both Oracle and Apprentice to target strong-town and strong-scum vibe people. In following this, they are even *more *likely to overlap. Furthermore, I would argue that the Oracle and Apprentice should do the oppose what you sugget and specifically target people who are, at the moment, *unlikely *to get dunked (i.e., not strong-scum) and unlikely to get night killed (not strong-town). If they investigate strong-scum strong-town, then there is a higher change that the investigation goes to waste if that person gets dunked/nightkilled.
The course of action proposed by FlyingCowOfDoom strikes me as very anti-town.
Vote FlyingCowOfDoom
I vote for FlyingCowOfDoom **not **becuase of disagreement over the seperation theory, but for the contradictory suggestions that investigators do their own thing **and then ** encouraging them to target strong-scum and strong-town, which I feel hurts the town.
A mason that is that foolish will be picked off quickly anyway. This early in the game, it’s just scummy.
A fact about this game is that the town has NO information to work with on the first day. The only thing we have to go on is hunches, barring a major slipup by a scum. You will probably not get “enough information to vote” before the end of the day. You should vote for the person you think is the most scummy. Voting tends to make people nervous and more likely to make a mistake, so IMO it’s good to vote early on for someone.
Don’t forget that you can always unvote should you change your mind.
–FCOD
(bolding added)
Yes, depending on how players are distributed in the two sets then it may make some things harder. However, it is just as likely that they are distributed in a way that makes things easier.
Having said that, I agree that the Oracle and the Apprentice need to make their own decisions as to who to investigate. Sachertorte, it’s a clever idea but we don’t want the scum to be given any clues as to who has been investigated.
I’ll also add that the real benefit of the investigations is to confirm players as town, especially in this game where they cannot distinguish between scum and non believers.
Thanks. I was all warm and fuzzy last night when I realized that there was a way to coordinate without tipping off scum or relying on a not-yet-trusted player’s direction. I can’t believe I didn’t think of using the fact that the Apprentice knows who the Oracle is before.
It seems like there’s quite a bit of resistance to coordinating the two investigators. Personally, I don’t view the plan as predictable, but they can judge it for themselves. From scum point of view each player has the same chance of being investigated whether coordinated or not. Oh well, it probably doesn’t really matter all that much. But I had fun discussing it!
Ok, have we (meaning all of us) gotten the Oracle/Apprentice tactics discussion out of our system now?
I’m going to vote for the next person who discusses in any way any of the non-scum power roles. It just does not help the Town to talk about these things.
Quick question:
Why are we focusing so much on the apprentice/oracle? What purpose does this serve this early in the game? Bad idea or good idea, it matters not. It is out there, the 2 roles know about. The 2 roles can now choose whether or not follow it by themselves. All this discussion about helpful town power roles can do nothing but help the scum.
Pleonast, in the post were you voted for USC Diver here is your quote:
Then you said this:
So you randomly chose the wrong person? huh?
I may be a little slow, but I don’t see the difference, nor do I understand this statement. Particularly since you did random vote for someone (by your own admission) to generate discussion.
As well what is the difference between a poke-vote and a random vote within the first 12 hours or so of the game?
Clockwork, I am so sorry. I am sure that all our thoughts are with you. Don’t worry about having to sub out sometimes life happens.
Take care.
since she isn’t playing anymore I guess I should unvote Clockwork Jackel.
Who took over for her?
Sorry Pleonast, but I composed this before you posted. 
I’m not good at math, but that doesn’t sound right to me. It’s only 1 in 29 the first Night. After that, the pool of unconfirmed players keeps getting smaller, so the second Night it would be a 1 in 26 chance (if the Crusader succeeds), then possibly 1 in 23, and so on. If the Apprentice is in the wrong set, there’s no chance of ever finding him.
The Apprentice’s investigations are not reliable. No matter whom he investigates, there is a 50% chance it will be wrong. If it’s wrong, the chances are he will get back a pro-town role. This makes it extremely dangerous to rely on the investigation. That’s why I don’t care about overlap.
Here’s what I said:
Here’s what you said:
We’re basically saying the same thing here. We both suggested an investigative strategy and we both said the investigators should do what they want. Why is it scummy for me but not for you?
–FCOD
Ugh, I’m so tired of this discussion, but it’s what we’re talking about at the moment and I’d like to contribute some.
While statistically it is a wash, the downside of the Apprentice having 0% chance of being investigated (by being in the wrong group) outweighs the benefit of not having overlapping investigations. In other words, there is a palpable benefit to ensuring that the Apprentice has a chance of being investigated as this increases his accuracy.
Some of us are talking about other things. You could have contributed that way 
Ack, a posting flurry while I was composing. I’ll learn to preview before posting from now on. At least I wasn’t the ‘next person’ so we won’t be back to where we started all of this mess!
snipped/color removed
I expected this. I know that it is considered scummy to defend other players, but honestly I don’t get it. For the record, I defended Mad against storyteller’s argument, not against all accusations of scummitude.
I know I know, “Mad could be scum and only scum would know if he is scum”. Maybe he is scum, but that doesn’t make storytellers argument any more convincing. I see it as the job of every player in the game to talk about other peoples arguments, otherwise we end up running in circles. If we just let any old accusation hang out there we don’t end up talking about anything real.
This acutally answers Pleonasts question about, if we don’t random vote what do we do this early in the game? We make arguments against other players, and we examine and anylize others arguments about other players. That is what this game is about.
A poke-vote is not random by definition–choosing to vote for someone in particular in order to get a response from them.
A random vote means choosing a player at random and voting for them. I use random votes at the start of the first Day to jumpstart discussion. Discussion in general, not necessarily from the person voted for.