Mafia V: The Cult of Sekham

The Game Room
561

[QUOTE=Fretful Porpentine]
I disagree – given that the Oracle knows who he or she is, nobody else knows who the Oracle is, and the Oracle can investigate people when the scum can’t, I can think of a few ways the Apprentice could make this work.
[/QUOTE]
Not correct – the Apprentice knows who the Oracle is. That was part of sachertorte’s point.

Similarly (and not yet discussed, IIRC) the Disciple knows the Priest, but not vice versa. There’s an advantage there, if we can figure out how to use it without tipping off the scum. Which, as noted, is something of the same problem with the Apprentice.

Added on preview: Something smells in Queuing’s analysis; e seems awfully weak on the dangers to the Apprentice. I’m hesitant to side with em at this point. (Maybe I should start my own list of wary, very wary, suspect, strongly suspect.)

562

** Hal Briston ** (2) - Kyrie Eleison, zuma
** NAF1138 ** (2) - FlyingCowOfDoom, Zeriel
** sachertorte ** (2) - SnakesCatLady, Pleonast
** Clockwork Jackal / Kyrie Eleison ** (1) - MadTheSwine
** MadTheSwine ** (1) - storyteller0910
** Zeriel ** (1) - ArizonaTeach
** Zuma ** (1) - Malacandra

[QUOTE=USCDiver]
[out of character]
Since I’ve already had my remediation earlier in the thread…
votes are in Blue
unvotes are in Red
FOS in DarkOrange

Also, isn’t there a way to get a post count in-thread by clicking some button on the blue tool bar at the top of the thread? I think it was mentioned in a previous Mafia Thread.
[/ooc]
[/QUOTE]

Good thing you pointed it out; I’d missed his vote. Didn’t help that it was at the bottom of the page either. :eek:

Also, I think the Vote history is going to get really long, so I’ll only post that for final vote counts or if otherwise requested.

563

[QUOTE=Fretful Porpentine]

I’m inclined to think that the Apprentice can almost certainly find a subtler way to identify himself or herself to the Oracle under the cover of normal game chatter, so I’m not totally on board with this plan – but will go along with it if there’s general agreement that this is what we should do.
[/QUOTE]

I would decline to participate in this plan, whether or not it is supported by
“consensus.” There are likely to be a number of scum among any such consensus, who would no doubt delight in our setting up a quick and easy way for them to identify our Oracle if they can identify our Apprentice (or vice versa). I am not interested in any plan where the outing of one power role immediately and automatically leads to the outing of another, particularly not this early in the game.

For the rest, I am incredibly frustrated with the way the town is approaching this game so far. Seriously, the math of night kills? Game is on, and the few people who are taking halting steps toward trying to actually identify scum are being drowned out by the people who appear to be, in essence, trying to identify the Apprentice. I can’t even follow the discussion.

I am becoming incresingly convinced that somewhere among the bloc of people who insist on pursuing this topic to our collective detriment there is at least one Cultist, absolutely delighted that we are moving toward a rushed, random, evidence-free lynch at the end of the Day. I don’t know who it is, but the townies who are letting this conversation absolutely dominate the Day might want to think about taking a step back and thinking about what has actually been accomplished so far.

564

[QUOTE=ArizonaTeach]
He did what in the who now?
I don’t see anything in his other posts, either. Ok.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Captain Klutz]
The minimum contribution we can expect from everyone is a vote together with justification
[/QUOTE]

Who benefits if we have people thinking it’s alright to post once per GameDay, with a vote and justification? That doesn’t give the townies much to go on, therefore it’s …essentially, not even worth an “official” FOS, just a mental note that it might be scummy.

565

[QUOTE=NAF1138]
Let me just list off some names and y’all can tell me if you think they have been making their presence known. …

[/QUOTE]

Of those people, actual post counts:
17 Zeriel
12 Zuma
10 Fretful Propentine
8 MonkeyMench
5 Malacandra
5 Captain Carrot
5 Autolycus
2 Captain Klutz

People with similarly low (<=10) post counts not mentioned:
ArizonaTeach
fluiddruid
Mhaye
Clockwork Jackal + Kyrie Eleison combined
Hockey Monkey

If NAF1138 is town, this list means nothing. If NAF1138 is scum, these folks are suspect.

566

[QUOTE=Queuing]
We all get your point sachertorte.
[/QUOTE]

I accept that you understand, but I don’t think you can say everyone does.

[QUOTE=HazelNutCoffee]
For the record, we understand your plan perfectly, as Queuing has already stated.
[/QUOTE]

Again, I’m sure many do. But when I see posts like this:

[QUOTE=USCDiver]
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).
[/QUOTE]

I see that there are people who don’t fully understand what I’m trying to say. So I go for a walk to come and see this:

[QUOTE=Malacandra]
I see what you’re saying, but I don’t think it matters. The Oracle will investigate a certain number* of randomly chosen people during the game. It doesn’t matter what criteria he uses to split the pool - either his investigations will include the Apprentice or they won’t. I’m assuming no evidence arises during the game to suggest a possible Apprentice to the Oracle; if it does, then he should follow his hunch, of course. But otherwise the only difference is that an external observer with full knowledge could see that the Oracle was predestined to fail. He could see that anyway, if the Oracle published the entire list of investigatees at the start of the game, whether the Oracle had split the player list in half by number or by any other means.
[/QUOTE]

Which makes me immensely happy. I like a little confirmation that I’m not crazy.
Basically, there are two types of risk people are trying to convince me of. Real risk, which I think is small but others think is too big, and imaginary risks which are the ones I’ve been trying to refute.
At this point I don’t even want coordination anymore. For me (out of game) the best thing would be for there to be no coordination so that I can take a look at the results after the game.

[QUOTE=Mtgman]
The anser to your second question, if I’m no longer advocating a random Day 1 vote for the town. Not because I’m convinced it’s a bad idea, or unimplementable, but because with so many people opposed to the idea I’m not interested in shoveling sand against the tide.
[/QUOTE]

I wish I had your sensibilities.
I, for one, applaud the novel thinking and approach to the game; however, if your theory is correct, I think it is a bit game breaking. If we rely on some sort of algorithm for running what is the essence of the game, it kind of defeats the purpose of playing. Even if it is mathematically better, it won’t be as entertaining.
(I see that you’ve already acknowledged this).

[QUOTE=DiggitCamara]
If everyone (and by everyone I mean at least 80% of the current player population) were to publish a “random vote” (with unvoting, of course), the Apprentice could hide his/her “random vote” among the noise.

With a truly random vote (by everyone else) you’d have votes flying every which way. However, the Apprentice with his/her “random” vote could actually purposefully be voting for the Oracle. The Oracle would only have to cast his/her real night-time investigation in the Apprentice’s direction…

Anyway, it’s just an idea.
[/QUOTE]

I think its already clear that I’m one to appreciate unconventional play and exploitation of the game rules.
The flaw I see with DiggitCamara’s proposal is that the process reduces the set of players from which the the scum are to find the Oracle (where have I hread that before? Echo? echo?). The voting scheme you propose will leave some players without votes, indicating to the scum that these players are not the Oracle. Furthermore there is no way to guarantee everyone gets one vote since someone voting before the Apprentice may randomly vote for the Oracle forcing the Apprentice to double up on the Oracle vote, which would be very bad and zoom in on the Oracle quite quickly.
Love the idea though.

[QUOTE=Mtgman]
Witness the crushing blow dealt by the Oracle in the original Werewolf game when the “wait a bit, then tell all, in a clear and unambiguous way” strategy was employed. I think, but I haven’t run the numbers, that if we have five Day/Night cycles worth of data from an Oracle, that would be enough to break the Cult’s back. It depends on how fast we lose Monks really.
[/QUOTE]

I like this line of thinking. At some point a direct roleclaim becomes more valueable than breadcrumbs; even more valuable than the prospect of more breadcrumbs. I leave it to the Oracle to judge when that time is.

[QUOTE=Pasta]
Isn’t the way to discourage scum lurking simply to kill lurkers?
[/QUOTE]

Someone else up thread addressed this (I think). Basically, if we have several lurkers, its too easy for scum to guide the town towards dunking a townie lurker instead of a scum lurker, and they get nice cover of ‘but he was lurking.’
Unless… we randomly…
Ow! that hurt.

[QUOTE=HazelNutCoffee]
An absolute maximum of four kills are possible (if somehow the Avatar is burned after the Psychopath is activated, and the Crusader makes a successful kill on the same night).
[/QUOTE]

I think we can safely remove the Avatar from the matrix of possiblities. An Avatar-based death will be posted by Blaster Master at the end of the day. It will be clear to us that it happened.

[QUOTE=Kyrie Eleison]
Second, there’s a fair chance that the Apprentice could be expected to object to any division that makes it unlikely that he’ll be investigated. As it happened, everyone pretty much objected, but had there been only a few objectors, they would have made a nice pool of candidates for Apprentice hunting. So I’m a little bit suspicious of sachertorte as a result.
[/QUOTE]

Thank you for your clear reasoning here. This is a flaw I hadn’t considered, and I feel bad that I didn’t notice it. I was too wrapped up in analyzing the game mechanics and not adequately considering how other players would react to my idea. What’s worse is it actually is a reason for not discussing the whole mess. Sorry. Suspicion noted; lesson learned.

[QUOTE=Queuing]
I don’t hate the idea of everyone picking a name and yelling it out, allowing the Oracle to find the apprentice. From a risk/reward perspective I see a much greater reward then the previous oracle/apprentice discussion.
[/QUOTE]

I completely disagree with this statement, but I’m glad you made it. Watching M3, I was completely baffled by DiggitCamara’s logic. His reasoning process was orthogonal to my own and it made me seriously think he was scum. Based on your view of coordination and having the apprentice announce who the Oracle is, even under cover from other townies, is in my opinion much **riskier **than coordination. The process would collapse the set of scum targets to find the Oracle. Very bad for town.
So how can you advocate something that isolates the possibly Oracle set yet be against something whose flaw is reducing the set from which breadcrumbs are correlated?
The good news is, now we know that the two of us just have completely different thinking processes. “Agree to disagree” and all that.
I won’t vote or FOS you for this, given that I understand that I had the same kind of reaction to DiggitCamara (and I wasn’t even playing that game), but I really would like other players to look at my point of view on the Apprentice covered-reveal idea. If the rest of the town thinks it’s sound logic, I… just don’t know what I’ll do with myself.

567

[QUOTE=Scuba_Ben]
Not correct – the Apprentice knows who the Oracle is. That was part of sachertorte’s point.
[/quote]

No, I realize that. What I was trying to say is that since the Oracle knows his or her own identity, and nobody other than the Oracle and the Apprentice knows this information, it is possible for the Apprentice to signal the Oracle without tipping off scum.

This is a different case, because I’m not convinced that there is any advantage to the town if the Priest knows the Disciple’s identity; if I understand the rules correctly, the Priest, unlike the Oracle, can’t do anything to increase the Disciple’s effectiveness. The Disciple’s best bet is to keep mum for as long as possible.

568

Post #546

[QUOTE=Malacandra]
I agree. The major problem I have is that my mathematical, game-theorist’s brain has trouble coping with the absence of information. Still, we have to start somewhere. So I’ll vote zuma, not because I especially think I have anything on him but because, in the event of his turning up scum, it can be taken as a minor point in my favour that I was willing to see him dunked. (Not a huge point, admittedly, since scum will cheerfully vote for each other, especially when there’s small risk of the vote actually resulting in a death. But like I say, we have to start somewhere.)
[/QUOTE]
(colour removed)

I’m a bit puzzled by your logic - a random(?) vote, with the usual justification that there is nothing to go on.

But then, in the next post #547, Zuma agrees?!

[QUOTE=Zuma]
Good a reason as any, Mal. Day 1s suck in this game. I think there may be a reason they usually start at night. At least a few people have something to go on.
[/QUOTE]

569

[QUOTE=Malacandra]
I agree. The major problem I have is that my mathematical, game-theorist’s brain has trouble coping with the absence of information. Still, we have to start somewhere. So I’ll vote zuma, not because I especially think I have anything on him but because, in the event of his turning up scum, it can be taken as a minor point in my favour that I was willing to see him dunked. (Not a huge point, admittedly, since scum will cheerfully vote for each other, especially when there’s small risk of the vote actually resulting in a death. But like I say, we have to start somewhere.)
[/QUOTE]

Wait, what? You’re voting for zuma because if he dies and is scum, people will be less likely to vote for you? How does that not apply to literally anyone else for whom you could vote?

Or, in other words: <Tim Allen puzzled noise>

570

[QUOTE=Scuba_Ben]
Something smells in Queuing’s analysis; e seems awfully weak on the dangers to the Apprentice. I’m hesitant to side with em at this point. (Maybe I should start my own list of wary, very wary, suspect, strongly suspect.)
[/QUOTE]

What smells? Weak on the dangers to the Apprentice? Well I figured the dangers to the apprentice are the same as to the oracle. Plus the apprentice is a potentially almost useless character. One of the things I remember from M2 was the many arguments about the beat cop, and the usefulness of said reading. Therefore I have tentatively come to the conclusion that unless the Apprentice is found by the Oracle and trained to improve their reading skills, the apprentice is useless. What I like about the plan is that it would greatly improve the odds of this happening. What I don’t like about the plan is that it would improve the odds of losing the Oracle.

One rules question; the Apprentice can be turned correct? And knows who the Oracle is? So it seems to me that the most important person to be turned would be the Apprentice as it would cost the believers all of their investigators, and with no warning potentially.

On preview: Sachertorte, notice I said if something like 20 people agreed and yelled out a name then it could be worthwhile. I also said that I thought the reward was greater, as the Apprentice being trained is a much greater reward then your plan, which was solely a loss of the very small chance of duplicate investigations. I don’t see how you acknowledge that narrowing the pool of candidates down is bad in the name calling plan yet acceptable in division plan, particularly when the difference in the reward is so huge.

That being said I never thought of the whole duplicate name making it potentially easier for the cult to find the apprentice. Great point, and I reverse my prior (even in this post) position of potential support for the plan.

I instead would like to throw my support behind less math and more IDing of scum.

On 2nd preview: I too would like to make a Tim Allen noise directed at Malacandra.

571

People, all of this talk about the Oracle/Apprentice is doing no good. None. Zip. Nada. And it is frustrating as all get out to come in here and have to wade through it.

None of you can force the Oracle or Apprentice to follow your plans. They will do as they deem best even if every player in the game supported a plan.

What if the Apprentice had come up with a way to get the attention of the Oracle? What if one of you shouted it out for the world? Now the scum is looking for the Apprentice and you have made it easier. It is very easy for you to talk about “acceptable risk” - it’s not you that is being risked! The Oracle and the Apprentice may not see the risk as being as acceptable as you do.

Please, please, please stop it. We need to be trying to figure out ways to find scum.

572

(Note that scum and non-believers are both investigated as non believers)

Post #435

[QUOTE=Zeriel]
I’m honestly of the opinion that it’s in the town’s best interest to treat “non-believer” as “scum” unless proven otherwise. Dang, that REALLY confuses the issue with detecting the convert now that I think about it.
[/QUOTE]

I agree. There is no way to distinguish between scum and non believers, so non believers will need to “take one for the team”.

Post #438

[QUOTE=DiggitCamara]
Again: not so. Though the Non-Believers can win by themselves, they count against the Cultist’s win condition. If we start treating them as “equal time foes”, we’ll be:

  1. Losing votes against the Cultists
  2. Giving their “special roles” (Alchemist) incentive to act against town
    [/QUOTE]

Not really, as I can’t see any way for the non believers to work toward their own victory (they don’t know each other and don’t even know how many there are). If there is a non believers victory it will only happen by accident.

Post #440

[QUOTE=FlyingCowOfDoom]
IMO this is a bad idea. Killing Non-Believers is only a teeny bit better than killing Believers. Let’s not forget that for the Cultists to win, their numbers must be more than Believers + Non-Believers.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, it would be preferable to keep the non believers. But how the heck can they be differentiated from scum? If someone role claims non believer, do we just let them off the hook?

573

I agree 100% with what you’re saying here: these schemes to let the Apprentice reveal himself to Oracle are inherently dangerous. And I’m guessing one of the leading proponents is a Cultist (the rest being duped Townies). Really people, it does not help the Town to discuss our power roles. If our power roles follow any publicly revealed plan, it will sooner or later help the Cult find them.

But, storyteller, I haven’t seen much help from you in trying to find scum. Your posts so far have been very reasonable. So clean that I find you suspicious. Tell us who you find suspect, specifically.

You vote for zuma to make yourself look better if he turns out scum? That seems very scummy to me. It makes me suspect both of you.

I agree with Zeriel that Klutz’s statement seems unhelpful. I want to see more than a vote with reasons from everyone. The minimum is higher than that.

pasta, encrypTed messages, i tHink, are against the spirit of the gamE. and probably against SDMB polIcy anywayS. enCoded messages, hOwever, should be Ok (every message just needs to have an obvious pLain-english meaning).

Here’s who on my list of suspicion:
sachertorte and FlyingCow for continuing the power role discussion. There are others involved, too, but these two are the leaders.
storyteller for flying below the radar.
Malacandra for a poorly reasoned vote.

Unvote sachertorte
Vote Malacandra

I’d like to see votes from everyone by Friday, if not sooner. We’ll need to build a consensus and the next step in doing that is voting.

And, responding to posts that went up while I was typing:

This falls into “slip-up” category that I and others gave for why we shouldn’t talk about Town power roles. I’m happy you’re finally understanding.

I see others have noticed Mal’s post.

574

[QUOTE=Pleonast]

But, storyteller, I haven’t seen much help from you in trying to find scum. Your posts so far have been very reasonable. So clean that I find you suspicious. Tell us who.
[/QUOTE]

Well, the best way I have of indicating who I find most suspicious is by voting for someone.

Which I did (for MadtheSwine). And gave my reasons.

I still haven’t gotten a response to my response to his response, but Mad hasn’t been in much at all lately so I’m happy to wait with my vote where it is.

As for the rest:

I found Malacandra’s last post hinky, for sure.

I’m going to have to read through all these power role posts more carefully before I’m comfortable speculating about the possible motives of those involved in that.

Most of the rest of the town seems an undifferentiated mass at the moment.

Finally, the game just started and Autolycus is already giving me acid reflux. I told him in the Forbidden Thread of M4 (and meant it) that I thought he had played brilliantly in M4 - starting off by aping his behavior from M2, but then moving very gradually toward more substantive posting after a Day or two. Everyone was so happy to see him posting anything besides color that no one even looked at him funny. I think he could have hidden forever as scum, had he not been night-killed. So I don’t know how to handle him, if he starts off by spending a full game Day in the shadows.

575

[QUOTE=Queuing]

Your inability to remember players statements should not be used as a reason to find them suspicious.

[/QUOTE]

I was going to answer zerial (and I will later in this post), but I thought this was much more interesting.

Why not?

Here is my thinking, I have a fairly good memory and after doing a re read of the thread and then looking at the player list, those were the people that I was surprised to see were in the game.

No, not everyone is going to stand out, but would you not agree that the smartest scum strategy at the start of the game is to post just enough that the hard data proves you are posting without actually saying anything interesting enough that you get noticed?

Now, I didn’t FOS them. I didn’t vote for them. MAYBE I smudged them a little, but you know what…all of them got noticed. That was my goal, just get people to notice the players that seemed to be going unnoticed. Zuma, Mal, and Fretful all came back with reasonable posts (at least I think Mal did, I am not possitive about that). Zerial got all huffy and threw a OMGUS FOS and the vote on my. Why was he being so defensive?

I admited in my first post that this was not a list of lurkers per se. Then I followed it up with the post FURTHER explaining my thinking, which you called insanely scummy. Why? Are you telling me that when you looked at that list you thought to yourself “NAF you are crazy, those are some of the most anylytical high content posters we have!”

To zerial, sorry you feel so attacked. All I was doing was asking for a bit more content. Maybe you feel you were posting content, I didn’t notice it but maybe you were. It really doesn’t matter. That wasn’t the point. The point was to make sure you were noticed. Nothing wrong with that right?

Why you so afraid of people noticing you Z?

576

[QUOTE=sachertorte]
I accept that you understand, but I don’t think you can say everyone does. Again, I’m sure many do. But when I see posts like this:
[quotes me]

I see that there are people who don’t fully understand what I’m trying to say.
[/QUOTE]

I’m getting a little tired of your vague disparagements of my intelligence, sachertorte. From what I know of you in previous threads, I know you’re probably being a numbskull because that’s who you are and not because you’re scum in this game. I feel that you probably have a modicum of intelligence and wouldn’t be so obtuse as to out yourself so fabulously.

But as you said in Post 574, you haven’t contributed much to actually finding scum.

So to that end, FOS at sachertorte more out of spite than anything else, but I want to see some substance in your posts that makes me think you’re actually playing the game as opposed to analyzing it.

577

[QUOTE=NAF1138]
Then I followed it up with the post FURTHER explaining my thinking, which you called insanely scummy.
[/QUOTE]

Snipped extensively.

Is this directed at me? If so then you mis-characterized what I said, as I never called anyone insanely scummy, because there is not enough data to even come close to a conclusion such as that. I was just putting down my list of who I might vote for. Malacandra has joined that list, him for a somewhat better reason then Pasta or you.

So my top 3 is:

Malacandra
Pleonast
Diggit Camara

Followed by:

NAF1138
Pasta.

578

Actually, I was just annoyed because I HAD been posting back and forth in the big Oracle/Apprentice discussion–and I stand by my assertion that if someone posting as much as myself and a few others were on your lurker radar, and yet people who’d posted less were NOT on your lurker radar, then the question is what have you and the unmentioned lurkers have to hide?

It’s a vote because it’s the most vote-worthy thing I’ve seen so far. Don’t worry, though, there’s three or four other people (as previously mentioned) who could easily say something ill-considered (or nothing at all) and swing my vote to them.

Honestly, isn’t it just as suspicious that you didn’t notice my existence, despite my contributions and dialogs, until I started pointing at you?

579

[QUOTE=Queuing]
Snipped extensively.

Is this directed at me? If so then you mis-characterized what I said, as I never called anyone insanely scummy, because there is not enough data to even come close to a conclusion such as that.
[/QUOTE]

You are right, sorry. I was conflating your post with a couple of others. My apologies. Also, my use of hyperbole needs to be kept in check.

Chalk it up to not enough coffee before posting and then failing to review my post.

580

OK, I’m not sure I’m reading the same thing in Klutz’s post that you are, Zeriel, but since not even Klutz seems to care that you smudged him there (and I find that weird, him not defending himself at all), and I think you acted in good faith and not scumminess, I unvote Zeriel. I’m also not thrilled about Klutz’s “take one for the team” mentality on non-believers. That seems, to me, the kind of thing a non-believer would say to distance himself. It doesn’t strike me as cult-y, though.

This **Mal-zuma ** thing is interesting, though.

And where the HELL is Mad?