Come Dawn, if we all survive I’ll take you to task for that, and/or lament the all too frequent “lynch Ben on Day 2” syndrome I have.
And looking at my schedule, I’ll be AFK Tuesday afternoon. Moving Dusk to accommodate me wouldn’t be helpful.
I can’t leave this alone. I should leave it alone, but I can’t.
Scum claiming Mason is a terrible idea. Ragnarok is not a valid counter example. The creators made a game with no masons and gave scum a mason claim. Without the second part, I truly doubt scum would have fake claimed mason.
As one of those fake claimers I can support this statement. I also site Seekham as an example of the previous time I tried it and failed spectacularly. It’s not really a good idea.
Since we were told we were aloud to talk about this at Night and I missed the discussion during the Day and didn’t want to rehash a mostly irrelevant side-conversation, I wanted to touch on this.
IIRC, the whole concept of “fake peek” first came up on the Dope in Mafia 2 that was modded by NAF and I believe it was suggested by Queueing. Interestingly enough, it was Gadarene and I who were on opposite sides of the discussion. It really was quite the clusterf… mess. After that whole fiasco, I think that pretty much killed the idea. Frankly, it probably wasn’t a very well balanced game and there was a lot of terrible play in it, but it was an early and large game and I think it did a lot to set up the mafia culture here, so it might be interesting to read for anyone who hasn’t.
Anyway, on further reflection, I think the idea of fake peeks could work in certain circumstances, but really only if the town enforces it such that everyone gives a read. Thus, statistically speaking, you’re more likely to increase the probability that non-cops also remain accurate enough for cover. For each day that passes, the amount of cover that the cop has decreases, and it decreases even faster if he identifies scum because of the informational disparity (I’m happy to go over all my information theory stuff, but last time I did it I got lynched for confusing math, so… yeah). So, as a result, you get more solid reads, but you also give the scum an ever decreasing pool of candidates.
Compare that to the methodology we’ve used here on the Dope, we give softer crumbs, but without any direct attempt at cover, you also maintain a larger candidate pool. As a result, you will tend to have more, soft reads, depending on how well the cop can crumb and the town can read it, but with higher variance.
So, from a statistical standpoint, without running through all the hard math, it looks like both run up to be roughly even. That is, the fake peek method will necessarily give solid reads, but it also puts a necessarily lower life expectancy on the cop because the pool decreases not just as a function of the number of players but also by the statistical probability of the non-cops in remaining accurate with their cover. You don’t get that additional drag on life expectancy with the other method, but I think the softer reads and variance also brings down the value per read to be roughly equal.
That said, I think that because of how they operate, either strategy isn’t necessarily equal in all circumstances because the design of the game will dictate which one will likely produce better results. For instance, in situations where the expected ratio of scum to town is different from the setup, it can damage the fake peek method by increasing the rate at which incorrect covers arise. Similarly, it situations where scum have incomplete knowledge about the alignments of other players, like multiple scum factions or PFKs, then the cover will maintain better than expected. The number of cops relative to the size of the game can also play in as a factor. In large games with only a single cop, playing the variance may be a winning strategy for town. At the same time, a relatively high cop number will end up making the guaranteed reads taken more useful.
At the same time, the quality of play by both sides also plays into the efficacy of the strategies. The fake peek method will have a tendency to remove some of the skill involved in playing cop and in finding cop because of the lack of need to cover reads and the necessarily lower life expectancy and lack of variance. In the other method, being able to crumb in a manner that isn’t immediately obvious to scum but also able to be found well after death can turn that variance in favor of the town. Similarly, poor play by the cop or good reads by the scum can turn that variance in favor of the scum. In short, that statistical variance is partially due to random chance, but also due to the difference in town vs. scum play.
The speed of the game also comes into play in differentiating the styles and I think it plays a large part in why there’s a difference between the two fora. Because of the slower style on the Dope, there’s more opportunity for analysis and subtlety; thus, there’s more opportunity for the cop to successfully crumb and of the scum to search those out. In a fast paced game, that really isn’t much of an option, so you just end up with out of control variance. As such, in the fast paced game, it makes more sense to have some guaranteed information.
Personally, overall, I would still say I prefer the method we’ve tended to employ here, particularly because of our slower pace, it favors the increased analysis and thus rewards the side that is better able to control their tells and get good reads rather than simply reward the side that comes up with a favorable result statistically.
Wow, I rambled a bit there, I hope it makes sense.
Nice post. I have missed having you in games BlaM.
Can’t get behind this enough.
Scum claiming Mason is horrible. No idea what idiot would try it.
What? 
On the plus side, it was incredibly entertaining to watch despite the fact that I know that everyone involved was ready to pull out their hair. IRC, it almost worked, but it hinged on the idea that Idle had built enough town cred to overcome the scummy behavior you’d built up and it just wasn’t enough to override the overall better claim and lack of scummy behavior of Cookies and whoever the other monk still living was.
That’s really funny, and I vaguely remember it. Was I on the pro-fakepeek side?
And yeah, nice post.
NETA:
Thanks. I’ve really missed playing and I’ve had the itch for a while, but I’d forgotten just how time consuming it is and how much effort it takes. It basically took all day at work just to catch up yesterday, I’m dreading how much time I’ll have to spend catching up for the time I’ll miss this weekend.
Actually, I thought it was Zuma who made the claim of Mason with me. NAF, why did you think it was you?
Don’t get me wrong, I wish it HAD been you as Zuma seemed off his game there at the end, but I’m pretty sure it was him.
Yeah, I’m sure it was you and Queuing vs. me and someone else. And we were all absolutely convinced the other side was scum, as we hadn’t figured out that bad idea doesn’t equal scum, and of course the real scum were just sitting back and laughing. The only reason I won out was because I was the Vig and so I was verifiable and you got lynched. God, I was frustrated then, but it’s pretty educational looking back on it, and funny knowing just how terribly we were playing.
I think you’re right. Now that I think about it, I seem to recall that NAF got lynched on Santos’s hilarious slip.
It was, but it was my idea. My bad idea.
Idle and NAF, as long as we’re sharing fond memories of Sekham, how is my play doing now vs. back then? I keep asking around for feedback to develop some decent Mafia skills, and nobody’s volunteered anything. So, poke poke.
Oh yeah? I had forgotten that, then. Way to go, NAF! /sarcastic
Heh, kidding.
Scuba Ben, I think you’ve greatly improved, myself.
Cult of Sekham had only been my third game, total, at the time…so I was pretty new myself (it was the first time I was scum, too).
I have just finished reading a book by Robert Goddard called “Blood Count”. In this book the Serbian Baddies (Mafia) were called Wolves. I found it interesting as supposedly there is no such thing as coincidence.
All of that is well and good and true, but that doesn’t change my feelings on the subject: I don’t consider anyone confirmed until either they’re dead or the person vouching for them is dead.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…
So should we explain “Gastard” for the new folks, or is that one of those “you had to be there” things? 
Well if they go back and read the Batman game like I told them to then they wouldn’t have had to be there.
Gatman.