Who said that NAF was defending scum? I certainly didn’t. You missed my point. I never said scum would defend scum. I said scum would defend town. It’s a common scum tactic to get said townie to think subconsciously, “oh, X is defending me…he must be a friend.”
–FCOD
That is true for Night One.
After the first night we need to be concerned about overlap that night and from previous night investigations. If the probablity of overlap was only 1/28 each night I wouldn’t have bothered. But as each day passes, the chance of overlaps will increase.
What are these benefits you keep speaking of? The only one I see is that by dividing it up into 2 groups there will never be a duplication investigation. Is that it? Are there any other benefits? If that is it then what is gained is very limited and duplication is unlikely regardless. The Oracle has 29 other people to choose from., the Apprentice 28. I will let some of you who enjoy Math to work it out. I believe the odds will be against this happening.
Therefore the benefits are slim. The risk is an easier to find Oracle. On the scales of worthwhileness, this plan is not.
What is that Cow up to now? Oh wait, I agree with the Cow on this one. I don’t think there was the implication that NAF was scum defending scum. He could be scum defending a known town to make himself look good.
The missing logic is fluiddruid’s
What would be your threshold then? 1/13? 1/20?
If the necessity should arise by then (that is: both players are still alive and well and have not outed themselves), the discussion should held then.
Of course, if they have a comprehensive list of living players and their investigation results at such a time (4, 5 Days?), they should out themselves and publish the investigation and that would render the scenario moot, anyhow.
Well, yes.
Okay. Maybe, I’ve gotten a bit carried away. I still think the risks are small (if not non-existant). But happily, I understand the counterview now, so I can sleep and stuff.
Well, there is another potential benefit – it makes it easier for the town to sort the real breadcrumbs from the white noise if either the Apprentice or the Oracle is killed, assuming we know which half of the possible suspects the dead player was investigating. I don’t think this outweighs the drawbacks we’ve already discussed, though.
The probabilities go up, not just because there are fewer people, but because they can overlap from previous night investigations. In other words the Apprentice’s Night 3 investigation can overlap with the Oracle’s Night One investigation and vice versa. I admit that the numbers may not be as large as I had imagined, but they are not totally insignificant. I’d do the math, but factoring in the day and night kills makes the whole thing rather daunting.
Fair enough, I didn’t think it through enough to understand you meant it that way. So I remove my FOS.
Nonetheless, in my experience, defending another player is not a scum tell. It’s natural to want to defend someone if you feel that they are being criticized unfairly. Yes, it can be abused, but, frankly, if I were scum and I were NAF, I wouldn’t be wanting to create associations so early; the less information to give, the better, from a scum perspective at this point.
The best (or, perhaps more accurately, easiest) way for scum to succeed in the early game is to simply stay off the radar altogether. Make weak or no assertions, vote little, suspect little, post innocuously and avoid suspicion. MIII showed the value in letting townies go about their business in the early game. If I would have changed one thing about that game it would have been to draw back more and let the town go about its dirty business. The odds are frankly on their side (i.e. nonscum being dunked rather than scum) so early and why give people a case to build on?
**Kyrie Eleison ** was the first to respond to the Sub PM and he will be taking Clockwork Jackal’s spot. I will be posting an updated player list shortly.
What role does the Avatar believe he is playing?
The Avatar believes he is a regular Cultist. Similarly, the Psychopath believes he is a regular Non-Believer.
Is the Apprentice told whether the results of his investigation are correct?
No, he will get a response functionally equivalent to “PlayerX is playing the role of RoleX.” If the Oracle is alive, he will only be able to determine his accuracy through mathematical formulae (which I’d love to provide, but I’ll let you all figure it out). Because an incorrect reading is a random sample of all living players, it’s still possible that he could get a correct reading (if he happens to hit the same person or someone with the same role) and it’s also possible he could get an obviously incorrect reading (if he gets his own role, or another role he knows that player can’t be).
OTOH, if/when the Oracle dies, if he gets an incorrect reading, he will know, because the response will come back functionally equivalent to “You were unable to determine the role of PlayerX”.
1 ArizonaTeach
2 USCDiver
3 Idle Thoughts
4 Zuma
5 Hockey Monkey
6 storyteller0910
7 NAF1138
8 sachertorte
9 SnakesCatLady
10 Malacandra
11 Mtgman
12 Kyrie Eleison (repl. Clckwork Jackal)
13 Hal Briston
14 Pleonast
15 DiggitCamara
16 Fretful Porpentine
17 Captain Carrot
18 Pasta
19 FlyingCowOfDoom
20 Scuba_Ben
21 Queuing
22 Zeriel
23 MonkeyMensch
24 ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies
25 Autolycus
26 HazelNutCoffee
27 MHaye
28 fluiddruid
29 MadTheSwine
30 Captain Klutz
:smack:
(I’m very fond of the headbanging smiley, but that’ll do.)
I’m going to put it down to five hours sleep followed by a hard slog home on public transport.
Right now it’s time to try reading the thread from where I left off last night, which is aroundabout post 350. Who knows? I might pick something up. With the help of the coffee.
This is one of my pet subjects, so I’d like to respond (anything to get off the subject of the Apprentice. Yeesh. I’d FoS the whole lot of you, but disagreeing with me on strategy doesn’t equal scum tell, something I will struggle to remember as the game goes on but am trying to keep firmly in mind for the moment).
There is no best way for scum to succeed, or rather, no best one way. Pick any given pattern of behavior, and chances are at least some scum will act that way, and some will not. Early in M4, Gadarene and NAF were filling page after page with posts, Autolycus was as silent as he’s been in this thread so far, and tirial was relatively quiet and inoffensive as you suggest. If the scum are all acting in the same way, as your last paragraph suggests, then they are handing us the keys to the kingdom if we catch even one of them.
That said, a word on the “defending other players = scum tell” meme, which is valuable as a caution if nothing else. I’ll disagree with your contention that creating associations is something the scum don’t want at this stage; creating associations is a huge advantage in the mid- to end-game, and creating associations early is the only way to create them at all. If you’re scum, and someone decides on Day 1 that you are trustworthy, you are golden.
What’s the best way to make townies think you’re trustworthy? Why, exploit their own fears of being suspected / lynched. Tell someone you think they’re town and they will - not entirely consciously - put a little green check mark next to your name in their ledger.
Here’s the thing: defending another player against spurious reasoning is not inherently scummy; it’s playing the game properly. I don’t have a problem with NAF’s rejection of my logic against MadtheSwine because NAF disagreed with my arguments; it was the gratuitous “I’m not getting a scummy vibe” that raised my eyebrow. At this stage of the game, we have no reason to trust anyone.
Remember: scum know who is town and who is not. If Player X seems to be very fervently sure that a particular player is town, and that player IS town, we will often tend to mentally clear Player X. “If he were scum,” we think, “why would he defend a townie like that?” But the answer is, because he knew he’d be proven right, and earn trust. Remember: in order to win, all the scum have to do is not all die. Just one, just one of them has to live. It is much more important for any given scum to lay the groundwork for future trust then to waste goodwill lynching a townie.
So in a situation like that, we should be looking very closely at why Player X defended the townie - what were his reasons? Saying that you think someone is town without any good reason should be no less suspicious than saying you think someone is scum without any good reason.
[/off soapbox]
While I think the oracle/apprentice division is a bad idea, I couldn’t resist running a quick Monte Carlo simulation of the problem. Hopefully this will put the discussion to rest.
Assuming:
The expected number of investigatory collisions, accounting for past investigations, is:
After Night 1: 0.03
After Night 2: 0.14
After Night 3: 0.33
After Night 4: 0.60
Alternately, the probability that no collisions have occured is:
After Night 1: 0.97
After Night 2: 0.86
After Night 3: 0.70
After Night 4: 0.50
After four nights, there’s still a 50-50 chance that a collision hasn’t even occured. Presumably we are ready to move on.
Also, I share the sentiment that fine-tuned math analysis (while fun) isn’t even in the the same league as thinking about how a person might play his/her role when it comes to weeding out the scum. To all the newbie townies: I encourage you to spend a few moments role playing. Pretend you’re scum. No, really believe it. Pick a random list of 6 players or so as your scummates. I’ll wait until you’re really convinced your scum… Okay. Have any scum been accused in the thread so far? Respond to it (offline, of course) as you naturally would. Would you do anything about it at all? Would you sit back? What might you post otherwise?
Rather than trying to turn noise into scumtells, try to figure out what straightforward scum would do, and look for that. (In the one game of Mafia I modded (elsewhere), this was the biggest fault of the town. Several (certainly not all) scum were playing super straightforwardly but the town saw all this noise and ripped itself to shreds.)
Of course, we’re still certain to dunk our share of townies. But, that’s the game…
Also, this shouldn’t be read an contradictory to storyteller0910’s post above. There will be hard-to-find scum, so certainly be on your toes! But there will presumably be a couple of fish (to use poker terminology) at the table, too. I’m happy to get them first. The sharks will show themselves in due time.
I’m quite the fan of people talking. I even do it myself - sometimes when I’d be better keeping my mouth shut. Talk away.
The only thing I object to is the practice of saying " I vote player name to get him to do something." Whether that something be to talk, or to make a roleclaim, don’t vote me just to make me do it. If you’re going to put me forward for full-immersion baptism in Nairu’s holy water, give some reasons and I’ll try and answer them one way or another. Say something controversial or challenging and I’ll reply. maybe I’ll try and refute the statement, maybe I’ll ask questions.
I simply won’t respond to any form of pressure vote. Not in this game nor any other. I’m not stopping you from making pressure votes, or responding to them if you wish. I will not do so, is all.
It’s a nice surprise to come on and not find five or six new pages, but only two. Wheew.
CJ, I hope everything is all right with everyone.
And speaking of CJ:
Well, I didn’t vote for CJ, now did I? However I did say, earlier, in this post:
Now I’ve hosted this game a bunch of times and it’s been my experience that scum like to throw in subtle comments like this to make it appear that the person in question really doesn’t know jack squat. They tend to do it more than others. At least that has been my observations. So to me, that’s a good reason to put a little ping on my meter about someone.
And about all this Apprentice stuff, man…
This has been a huge thing so far…and mostly just with you. You seemed obsesseed with the role almost or at least learning all about it. I dunno, but I seemed to understand most of it just from the read up. Why the huge interest? Seems to me you’ve already garnered a lot of suspicion and even votes because of it…come on now. I can understand over analyzing. I do it myself. But even I’m starting to get fairly suspicious of you and FCOD a bit. I don’t know what to think about it.
Yeah, it makes sense now. :smack:
Ohhh, I must have misread you then. I thought your suspicions of me were based on finding CJ scummy.
As for “defending” MtS, I don’t know or see that I really did anything of the sort. I DID say that “at least he has a reason that works for him” in an earlier post and also that I saw the same things he did, but it’s all in the eye of the reader if that’d be considered defending someone.
Welcome, Kyrie, to the game.
See I think this is where you misinterpreted my earlier post. There IS a risk. If the Apprentice is NOT in the group that the Oracle is investigating, he has a 0% percent chance of improving his accuracy. The fact that the Apprentice CAN improve is an important nuance to his role. Even though the chance of that happening are 50%, I think that is too big of a risk to lose what could end up being two Oracles (if the Apprentice reaches 80% prior to the Oracle’s death).
Hello, all. I’m just checking in at the moment – I see I’ve got quite a bit of reading I should do before I post anything substantial.