By dividing up the investigations we are basically telling the scum who the Oracle will be investigating. Not necessarily when this investigation when this investigation will happen, but that it will happen. So the scum now know who the Oracle will be investigating. The scum also know who are scum. This gives the scum 2 pieces of information with which to find the oracle; who the scum are and who the oracle will be investigating. If the oracle then finds a scum, from the predetermined list, and begins to breadcrumb their finding the scum will know what to look for. Someone who is scum from the list the oracle will be investigating all of a sudden being mentioned as scum, or FOS’d or whatever. Any person who does this will instantly be suspected of being the Oracle. The scum will then kill that person. This will sooner rather then later mean the death of the oracle.
Discussing what the Oracle should do can potentially get the Oracle killed simply because the Oracle’s actions could become predictable. It gives scum another clue as to what to look for when trying to identify the Oracle. Maybe discussing Oracle strategy might be more helpful later on in the game; at this point it doesn’t seem like it’s going to do much good.
How would this be helpful? Someone gets killed by the Avatar’s death regardless. The only way this could even possibly do any good was if we knew who has what power role and make sure those roles do not vote for the person getting drowned. And we don’t want our power roles have to role-claim any earlier than they have to.
Imagine that we choose the drowner, and that person happens to be a power-role. They either have to keep their mouth shut and pray that the one being drowned is not the Avatar, or role-claim and blow their cover, not to mention earn suspicion that they are simply a cultist trying to save their own neck.
I don’t think we can really develop a working strategy for dealing with the Avatar as of yet. We just better hope we get lucky and the Oracle/Apprentice finds the Avatar and is in a position to somehow let the Crusader know who it is.
As for reading a defense of someone else as a scum tell, I agree that it really depends on the manner of defense. It’s possible to defend an argument without defending the person. As I’ve already stated, I wasn’t sold on NAF or Idle Thought’s defense of MtS, which is why I am suspicious of both. NAF may be right - MtS’s mistake may be an honest one. Then why did he keep the vote? That’s what I’m asking MtS to explain.
Thank you for taking the time to educate me.
I’m pretty sure I designed the system so that scum don’t know which set the Oracle was investigating until they know who the Oracle is, by which point the whole deal is moot. (In case you missed it, I amended my idea to obfuscate which set the Oracle investigates. The Oracle investigates the set to which he does not belong, and the Apprentice investigates the other set) How is this scenario different from regular investigations? Without dividing up into investigation sets, scum still know who is scum and who isn’t, won’t breadcrumbs have the same effect either way? How does investigating from a set of 15 all that different from investigating from a set of 30? Am I asking too many questions?
I’m so sorry for being so obtuse.
I would really like to drop this topic as it is of no help at this point in the game; not to mention that the Oracle and the Apprentice are free to do as they please, at any rate. But IMO, any kind of pattern makes the Oracle and the Apprentice easier to trace through breadcrumbs, particularly as the game progresses. Not to mention the fact that if one is discovered, it immediately narrows the short-list in finding the other. We don’t want to make the cultists’ task any easier.
I was typing out a long “thinking out loud” post trying to follow the list-splitting logic without incurring risk, and I just can’t. I keep coming back to the fact that the Apprentice knows his/her own identity, and the identity of the Oracle, but has no way of sharing that information in anyway without risking exposure of him/herself to scum.
I suppose the one conclusion that I have come to is somewhat of a hair-splitting one. It isn’t the Oracle that we risk exposing by trying to do this, but the Apprentice.
Oh, and the whole Avatar idea was not suggested to be seriously implemented. My problem is the process is complex for little (possibly no) gain. The reasoning behind the idea was to take the randomness out of the Avatar’s death-kill. Essentially the idea was to turn the death caused by the Avatar dunk into a second lynching. My feeling is that a directed kill is better than a random kill.
I’m not actually advocating we do this. I was just responding to Pleonast’s query as to whether I’m capable of analyzing scum-role to the same extent as pro-town roles.
People seem to be hung up on the idea that we might lose another townie or power-role by doing a directed kill. Well, we face that risk everyday. Presumably the person we choose to do the dunking is rather high on the dunk list anyway, so what’s the big deal?
Again, all moot points, but I thought the idea was rather clever. Use the rules to your favor is my motto today.
The main difference, as I see it, is that it still narrows down the options of whom the Oracle will be investigating. To the scum that set of 30 is only a set of 23-24 (or whatever). They will know if more of their people fall in one set then the other. Again this narrows done said set further. If it is decided that the Oracle only investigates 1-15 and say 4 of the 7 (or whatever the number happens to be) then to the scum that looks like a set of 11. Now from that set of 11 one person appears to be breadcrumbing, to be FOS scum, to never go after a town person. Well that person looks like an oracle to scum, and Bam dead person. Maybe dead oracle.
Now with 30 people to draw from the set goes up to 23. It doubles the number of people who are possible Oracle’s to the scum. This is important.
One thing you have to remember the Oracle must breadcrumb to be effective. The scum know exactly who is scum. Therefore what looks like innocent FOSing, or whatever, to the believer will look much more suspicious to scum. Admittedly this is a problem that exists regardless of division of labour, however I want the problem to be as big as possible for the cult. Dividing up the labour, to avoid the chance of our investigative staff doing double work, also divides up the problem the scum face.
It’s not working within the rules. Holding a vote to decide who does the dunking is actually implementing another rule - the only way it would work without additional rules is if the person did it voluntarily. What if the person refused to be the dunker?
No point in discussing strategy we can’t use.
All this thinking is making me hungry. wanders off in search of food
As long as the town is careful, safe discussion can occur, imho.
By (carefully) discussing hypotheticals, we may actually prevent the investigators from making mistakes. Further, the more townies who do not actually hold investigative roles who participate in the conversation will muddy the waters and make it more difficult for the scum to key in on the actual investigators during said careful and hypothetical conversation.
I do not disagree that the investigators should keep what they intend to do close to the vest. But I disagree that discussion is equivalent to painting targets on their backs. It doesn’t have to be that way if we’re all careful, especially the investigators themselves.
Apologies again. While I understand your frustration at my hounding at this point which doesn’t help the game, I want to *learn *something here. Or maybe even teach something.
Quite frankly, we could have had this discussion before roles even went out. Everything is general and doesn’t rely on any particular role assignment, nor does it reveal any.
The Apprentice doesn’t have to reveal anything to anyone. He already knows who the Oracle is. The Oracle already knows who the Oracle is. They use this common knowledge to organize. Organizational tactics are good. Armys coordinate because it is good. The apprentice and oracle can coordinate without revealing anything to scum. The Oracle, knowing who the Oracle is, chooses the set not containing the Oracle. The Apprentice, also knowing who the Oracle is, chooses the set that does contain the Oracle.
Please tell me how this reveals the Oracle’s identity to scum.
The problem with your system is that as soon as the Oracle discovers a nonbeliever and starts dropping hints, the cult might pick up on it and know which group he is investigating. They therefore know what group he is in - the other one.
They’ve just narrowed the field of search for one of their major targets by 50% - more if there are a large number of Cultists in the same group. The Cult already have an advantage in information. Your idea gives them more information.
I’m against any form of steering any of the town power roles. it gives the Cult a chance to meddle in the choice directly. Also, how can you enforce it? The Town has no executive oversight of what the player puts in the PM to the GO.
I’m now seriously wondering about Sachertorte. It would be worse if he hadn’t said 9when floating the idea) that the players were free to ignore his idea.
This may be a dumb question, but how can the Oracle and the Apprentice coordinate if the Oracle doesn’t know who the Apprentice is? (I may have read the rules wrong; this game has a lot more roles and rules and win conditions than I have played before.)
Yes! This helps immensely!
I made an original proposition yesterday afternoon that contains the flaw that you have (thankfully) pointed out to me clearly.
This morning I amended the idea with a twist where we as a town don’t arbitrarily assign the Oracle to 1-15, but use the common knowledge of the Apprentice and Oracle to coordinate secretly. I think this helps the problem you point out. I have a glimmer of an idea that the division may still provide the possiblity of isolating behaviors to help scum, but they would have to be much more complex and sophisticated than the case where we assigned the sets openly.
I still think the **benefits **of coordination outweigh the risks, but at least now I understand the counter-point-of-view.
The Oracle doesn’t know who the Apprentice is, and the scheme doesn’t require it. Both the Oracle and the Apprentice know who the ORACLE is. That’s all that is needed for coordination. They coordinate based on the Oracle’s position in the player queue. This is information that *both *have and need not communicate.
It would constrain the Oracle’s investigations. (S)he has certain interactions, ideas, etc. which would possibly leave him/her with a completely different investigation angle.
The breadcrumbs that (s)he leaves would, probably, make it easier to detect him/her. For instance:
a.)(s)he says so-and-so is suspicious
b.)so-and-so happens to be in subset I
c.)so-and-so happens to be scum (scum WILL know that)
If someone “happens” to point a finger a two scum from subset I, it would be a pointer for scum that that person is the Oracle
And it doesn’t actually help town. The odds of both of them investigating the same player are one in 28. And since the Apprentice knows who the Oracle is, the odds are even lower (the Apprentice probably wouldn’t investigate someone with whom the Oracle had high interaction).
In other words:
Power Roles will probably figure out how to use their powers without your input
Talking about power roles helps scum far more than it helps town (involuntary slips, etc.)
If I’m understanding sachertorte’s posts correctly, the idea is that they both know who the Oracle is, and therefore one of them can choose to investigate the group the Oracle is in, and the other one can investigate the group where he isn’t.
Upon reflection, I’m inclined to agree that the disadvantages to sachertorte’s plan outweigh the advantages, but I don’t see the harm in discussing ideas like that and turning them over – the Oracle and Apprentice, after all, are perfectly free to ignore the discussions.
Well, um. If the Oracle starts dropping hints and the cult picks up on it, don’t you think it would be easier to find the Oracle by looking at the person who dropped the breadcrumb?
This again makes sense on the surface but only occurs if scum is completely artless. Of course the most likely reason to know another role is to be scum/scum, more so at the beginning of the day, at most on Day One.
No scum - certainly not one as experienced as NAF - would willingly associate themselves with another scum based on such a frivilous risk with little possibility to gain.
IMHO “defending” others is not a scum tell at all. I never defended scum as scum, I only ever defended townies (and did little defending at all, frankly). Scum know that creating associations is essentially how they are caught.
Hypothetically, let’s say that the 11th player on Blaster’s player list is the Oracle. (In actuallity, 11 was my number for high school sports queue that damn cheer in my head)
Both the Oracle and the Apprentice know that the hypothetical player 11 is the Oracle, and can therefor split the list such that the Oracle investigates the half of the list that he/she is not on (players 16-30) while the Apprentice investigates the half that the Oracle is on (players 1-15).
And you can all disregard my post 445 . Due to a lack of braincells, I was adding the unnecessary complication that it was a bad thing if the Apprentice was on the same half of the list as the Oracle. :smack:
