I’ll answer this specifically, since it was a question directed to me. With a purely random vote with no opportunity to role-claim, there is a chance a power role will die. With a “normal” vote, that chance is greatly reduced, both because of role-claims and because some power roles know each others’ identity and would not vote for that person (most likely). And you are absolutely wrong about the second part of what you said. Ask anyone who played in M4 - a Day Two role claim actually PROTECTED the claimers. I AM NOT ADVOCATING MAKING ROLE-CLAIMS. In M4 it was relatively forced. I’m just saying that they can be valuable, valuable tools and a random forced vote might take one of them out. And if I’m understanding some other stuff being said here, people are suggesting casual role-claims be done on Day Two? What the heck is THAT about?
As for the rest of your post, yes, sure, publically using a randomizer to cast votes would eliminate the possibility of a scum fix. Conceded. Point Two we still disagree on, but fine, and point three, I think we’re right in the middle on. But if you’re not going to push for random votes, I’m not gonna force the issue at all. I still think it’s a hideous idea that hurts the town, but if you’re not gonna die on this hill, I don’t wanna either, and I’m about as sick as discussing random votes as others are about Oracle/Apprentice.
But I will say “it’s what they do on mafia.net” has never been real popular and messing with peoples’ heads…totally NOT cool.
I just don’t understand how a random vote can be guaranteed. The way I see it, a random vote can only work if it’s actually, truly random by everyone. I don’t see why a cultist would go along with this. It would make sense for a cultist to claim to random vote and then acutally place a calculated vote to screw everything up.
Not particularly. Just at the idea of random voting in general. It doesn’t seem like the idea is being particularly advocated by anyone at this point, so I’m willing to let it drop.
I re-read my post, and while I’m certainly guilty of rambling and being unclear at times, I’m not sure where you’re getting the impression that I think the power roles should roleclaim on day 2. Could you quote that bit for me and I’ll try to re-phrase it somehow? The only case I can see for why a town power role should claim is if the process to select players, which is mathematical and unbiased by scum with hidden agendas, starts a countdown to the dunking of said power role.
I think I’m going to start a seperate thread, probably in GQ, about this. The random, but verifiable, strategy may be a breaking strategy for the town. I’m going to need some other game theorists to help determine if it is or not. I’m still not advocating it here, because it’s completely unfun, but mathematically it’s interesting.
Bolding mine. It appears that you are advocating a random vote toDay and role claiming afterward.
I’m not a math wiz, or a computer wiz, or a wiz at all. I make beads and love cats. So I don’t understand how you can get everyone to vote a random vote. Everyone could say they voted randomly but how could you make sure of it? Scum by definition are not honest.
There may be something to this. We don’t need to use official votes: just a special declaration like: “The oracle is X” where X is chosen randomly by all players except the apprentice. Howver, the only way this works (as you say) is if we can get a large number of players to commit to doing it. Further than that, though, we’d need a large number of players to commit to committing to doing it. Basically, anything that splits the field into “likely apprentice/oracle” and “not likely apprentice/oracle” is a bad idea since it narrows the target list for the scum. When we ask for a show of hands in favor of the idea, would the apprentice/oracle be likely to say “yea” or “nay” or nothing at all? Would the apprentice/oracle vote early or late in the voting sequence? While I agree the answers to these are as hard for the scum as they are for us, breaking the (30-N[sub]scum[/sub])-fold symmetry that we (the town) currently have in our favor is something I’d save until the benefits are clear. (I know you’re just presenting the idea to the group, not advocating it, in case my tone sounds accusatory or whatnot.)
Oh wait: The other huge problem is that the death of the apprentice means instant identification of the oracle. Maybe not so bad, but it’s certainly an all-our-eggs-in-one-basket approach that would make me a little nervous. Hmmm… maybe there’s another way…
My fellow brothers and sisters in Nairu. While it WOULD be wonderful if the Oracle was able to identify the Apprentice early on in the game, I really don’t think that’s what our top priority should be at this point. Anything we do to assist such an identification inevitably makes it easier for any and all to find the Oracle and/or the Apprentice. Not to mention that these plans seem contingent on mass cooperation. The presence of cultists screws everything up anyway because it is highly likely they will pretend to go along with the plan while doing something to mess with the results. There is nothing we can do to guard against this.
I’m inclined to agree with storyteller and Pleonast in FOS’ing everyone who keeps discussing these strategies. Either that or pour hot coffee on your heads.
So how about I re-phrase the bolded part as such. “A honest townie who is strapped into the dunking chair on a particular day can take advantage of the 12-hour countdown window to roleclaim, if they feel it will save them(i.e. they’re a power role or a Monk). An innocent vanilla townie should just take one for the team and consider it an unlucky break.”
Hmmm, I’ll get the ball rolling on this, albeit off the top of my head with little in-depth analysis.
At the beginning of the Game (Night 1), there are 2 possible kills. The Cultists and the Crusader. Now the Crusader is only 50% accurate. So if there is one kill on Night One it could mean two things. 1)Cultists made a kill and Crusader was unsuccessful(or chose not to kill). 2)The Crusader was successful and the Cultists failed to kill. This second scenario is most compelling. For the Cultists to have a no-kill they either chose not to kill, recruited, were blocked or activated the psychopath.
More data (from subsequent nights) would be necessary, but this just ends up complicating things enormously. If the psychopath was activated, it ups the possible kills to 3 on each night. But anything less than 3 leads to so many different possible conclusions that analysis beforehand is moot.
Someone with more mathematical sense or patience may come along and expound some.
Ok, so I have been more or less following along all day, and I have a few minutes of free time to jot out a couple of quick ideas before I leave. I don’t really have anything to add to the current discussions, but we have been talking a lot and that is nothing but good.
The game started on page 4 and we are now on page 11, so that is a solid 7 pages of material being generated in the first 24 hours of play. I say, good for us. So I took some time to just skim back through the day so far. (Something I like to do when it looks like conversation is leading us away from our scum hunt)
You know what I noticed…in the 7 pages of game posts, there are a lot of players I am not noticing. Let me just list off some names and y’all can tell me if you think they have been making their presence known. Some of them have posted a bit, I’m sure, but like Fluid said, those are the people to be extra wary of, the people who can’t be called out as lurkers.
Zuma
Malacandra
Fretful Propentine
Captain Carrot
Zeriel
MonkeyMench
Autolycus
Captain Klutz
I know NOTHING about any of you. (in this game) The fact that some of you are veterans and yet have failed to make any real impression on me is even more surprising.
I know a couple of you are posting, (zuma and Malacandra are the only ones I remember off the top of my head that have posts) but you are like freakin’ blank pages.
I’m too busy to stick around here all day having back and forth type conversation posts. I can do what I did last night and jump on around 12-3 a.m. pacific and address several topics. This won’t change for the next few days.
I have next week off (which is why I have zero free through friday) and after that hopefully won’t be as busy. Until then my middle of the night posts are all I can promise.
I’ve posted – several times, in fact – but at the moment I haven’t got anything terribly useful to contribute, and I feel like a lot of the mistakes we made in M2 came from people posting way the hell too much when they had nothing to say.
For what it’s worth, if previous experience is anything to go by, I suspect the people who are talking a lot and proposing strategies are mostly vanilla townies. (I definitely think sachertorte is a townie, because I’m having a hard time seeing a Cultist draw attention to himself by pushing an unpopular strategy that hard.) Right now I’m most suspicious of Autolycus, because his silence this time around seems really uncharacteristic compared to what we saw in M2, and he definitely has been online today since he posted in another thread. Not ready to cast a vote yet, though.
I’m inclined to agree with Fretful Porpentine - the intensity that sachertorte has displayed makes me wary about em, yet I’m all too well aware that that wariness could very well be reality backfiring. Hopefully I’ll have a better feel on em by this time tomorrow.
But what people are reporting about Autolycus in previous games does worry me. I’m wondering if it would be a useful strategy to eliminate, or at least apply pressure to, the worst lurkers. (We did discuss in the forbidden thread for M3 techniques to discourage lurking; none of them seem to have made it into M5.)
It is made worse than just his behavior in M2. In the pirates game, where I was his scum mate, I activly encouraged him to lurk and post weird disconected thoughts as a useful scum tactic. It worked too. I sort of feel responsible for creating this moster. (or at least growing it.)
I hate to say we should force everyone to post, but lurking can be bad. Everyone needs not only to post but to post theories and analysis of some sort, that way when they die we can follow their trail. Especially useful if they are scum, but surprisingly useful if they are not.
Fretful, you are right you have posted. I was calling out people who seem to be below the radar, not just people who haven’t posted. I had forgotten you were in the game when I looked at the player list. Same with Mal and zuma. I knew you guys were posting, but I couldn’t remember a single thing you had said.
The first half of that post isn’t really all that cohearant. What I am saying is that we need to stamp out lurking as a scum strategy, if you have ideas I am open to them. Because it can be a scum strategy, and a very good one. Auto only got night killed because he annoyed one of the night killers. Otherwise I think he would have lasted several more days.
I will be thinking about how to deter lurking - I can string beads and think at the same time once I have the pattern in place. At this point in the game it is difficult to tell who is lurking as a strategy and who just doesn’t have anything to contribute. Everyone needs to try to contribute any ideas they have. Those of you who are more experienced and knowledgeable about the game (or think you are ) try not to be too cruel to people who are advancing ideas. It is discouraging to post something and have a bunch of snarky comebacks or put downs, and that doesn’t encourage new players to contribute. I’m not saying not to disagree with ideas, just try not to be hateful about it.
One idea I have for discouraging lurkers can only reasonably be put into play after a couple of game “Days”. Once there is actually something to look at and talk about, players who aren’t contributing to the discussion need to be called out. If they persist in not participating, give 'em a bath. The nature of this game is that we have to lose players and if I am not sure of my suspicions I would rather vote for someone who isn’t participating than someone who is.
Isn’t the way to discourage scum lurking simply to kill lurkers? Or at least highly consider it? I’ve got eight FsOS pointed at that list of yours, until they convince me otherwise. If I’ve got nothing solid to go on late in the Day, the “soft” posters are likely to get my vote. (Although I’ve got a few things to go on at present… I think.)
I worry some about pro-town power roles lurking, though. Don’t stand out by being quiet, guys! Mix it up with the rest of the crowd. (Of course, now that I’ve said that, if you are lurking you’ll need to ramp it up slowly…)
) try not to be too cruel to people who are advancing ideas. It is discouraging to post something and have a bunch of snarky comebacks or put downs, and that doesn’t encourage new players to contribute. I’m not saying not to disagree with ideas, just try not to be hateful about it.