You know, I kind of wish I were Scum and that was some deliberate move on my part, because that is quite brilliant wording on my part if I am. But I’m not. It was purely a miswording on my part. Let me set it in stone:
I am Town aligned
But really, that sentence would still catch me out, probably. If I say " I see no harm in saying I am Town aligned whether or not there is a lie detector", that is false if I am Scum. I would see the harm in saying that. Saying it would catch me in a lie.
Besides, I’m not really a careful poster. I have my good days and my bad days. I try, but my failures of wording are many.
Exactly what I was saying. This situation makes lynching a claimed Doc less a bad idea than setups where we think or know there is only one Doc. However, having said that, since Day 1 lynches are almost without exception failures, I think voting for peekertoDay is a bad call, unless we really have nothing else to go on. I just don’t want him excluded from the pool of lynchable players for the rest of the game.
Not to sound like a broken record, but I think the source of this truism is because scum will always claim a power role and town always moves on to a weaker target when they do.
I am relatively new to this game, but I think we should start moving away from giving scum these ‘safe’ first few days and holding the course more often on the first day.
No, the problems come from numbers and lack of data. Voting randomly, we would expect to hit Town. Add the fact that any case is harder to commit to on Day 1 than any other Day and Scum have a decent chance of deflecting suspicion, and it goes a long way to explaining why Day 1 is a frantic mess of bandwagons and mislynching.
Discounting the ability of scum to claim and get a free pass then the odds are not good for town, but when scum can expect an automatic pass just for claiming a power role then it becomes almost certain that we will hang a townie.
I dunno, it seems that it is too easy for scum to control the lynching on the first day (at the very least). Especially when the odds are (slightly) higher that we would hit a scum than the relatively few unverifiable roles.
I just think we should not automatically move when someone claims doctor (for example). Sure, check our reasons and facts more closely but not immediately rush off to hang the next weakest target.
When I turn up dead, I hope everyone…wait, MOST everyone realizes that the tie between me and peeker was broken by something this weak.
Seriously, why on earth does this make me sound bad? Great, instead of 23/24 people potentially assuming that he was saying he was one of many, it’s really 21/24. Bully for you. Now tell me why it matters all that much.
Well, that’s true. But here is something to consider when suggestion we hang a claimed Doc (should it come to that, for example):
a) If he really is a Doc, then we lose the Doc entirely. It was as if we never had the role in the first place. This, obviously, hurts Town badly.
b) If it is a Scum, then Town buys itself an extra mislynch and that is all. The Scum team can still operate with its NKs and all. Also, one Day doesn’t provide much material to analyse.
If it is a VT, it doesn’t cost Town much to risk them. But for a claim, waiting for a few Days either lets them use their power a bit (if truthful) or build up a record for analysis (if lying). As much as it sucks, that does help us out.
I agree, it is not an ideal situation, though this is what I was referring to earlier with the risky success (gambling on it being a scum claim) versus a definite failure (we let scum shunt us onto townies).
By letting a claim always move our votes means that we will never get scum in the first day or two. Is a Schrödinger doc worth a couple of days where the scum have free reign and we kill our own? (A cop is a much harder decision in my opinion.)
Docs can be just as valuable as cops. And even if Peeker is scum and we hang him, the scum will still be around and able to sow discord (since I’m pretty sure there’s more than one scum in this game!). Gryff is making it sound like if we don’t move our votes when there’s a claim then we’ve lessened our chances of hitting town – I’d say that is unlikely to be true in any given specific case. I do agree we should evaluate each claim on its own merits, but I don’t see anywhere here that we aren’t doing that.
Also, I have seen a number of games where scum have been bagged day one. Normally there is an attempt at a claim, to be sure. I think we shouldn’t be making policies that might prevent people from claiming truthfully. Scum won’t be intimidated by such a plan, only townies.
I think this is a pretty scummy argument.
FOS Gryff
I’m no longer confident in the case against Drain Bead, though she is still suspicious: I’d still like to hear her explain her comment about the potential lie-detector being bad because of allowing scum and third parties to find each other.
If she doesn’t explain that bit in a reasonable way (as she has some of the other points against her), I’ll probably vote her again.
I tend to side with this portion of the analysis, which is why you won’t see me making a self-preservation vote on peeker even though his behavior has been spotty (this recent vote is insane–a smart Doc in a tie vote with a claimed Vanilla would be making the self-preservation vote, I’d think). Honestly, I think I’m about 60-40 that he’s scum, but that 40 is too much for me to run the risk that we save a Vanilla at the expense of a Doc. I think the voting breakdown today will be really helpful, particularly in analyzing the first and second tiebreaks.
Would you care to point out the flaws in my reasoning?
As **AllWalker ** said, losing an actual Town Doc (cop, whatever) is undoubtedly bad, but my argument is the effect of always accepting such a claim at face value means the scum control our early lynchings. Do you disagree with that?
This is mildly distorting my argument. The argument is not about odds, it is our actions giving the enemy a free pass. If the scum know (as they do) that a claim of Doc will get them a free day or more then it guarantees we will only get town people (or terminally stupid scum).
To give a simplistic example;
Through the actions of gastardness we are at lylo with no more information than we would have at day 1.
Through pure luck we vote the one remaining scum, but he has a cunning plan. “Aha! But I am a doctor” he declares, while twirling his moustache.
The town then swiftly moves to the next person in their list and starts stringing him up. He, being a bright and honest town person, feels honesty is the only policy that can save the town states “No, you have the wrong person, I am a hard working but humble Town Villager!”
On Preview I see BrainBead comment;
I agree that this plan of mine is not the be all and end all of Mafia strategy, but if we always let claims move us then we give additional weapons to the scum.
I agree, Gryff, that we should not always let a claim move our votes. If we all agreed that any claim was a get out of lynch free card, then scum would have free reign, but I don’t see that being the case. I’d say peeker is getting plenty of challenges and is hardly getting off scot-free. I think his claim is odd, but it’s not odd in such a way that it seems scummy to me. Others clearly feel differently.
I don’t mean to distort your argument with bringing up odds. That is more my extension; if we don’t consider claims strongly, then it seems to me that the result you worry about may be just as likely to happen.
I guess what puzzles me is that I haven’t seen any reason to be worried that what you say is going to happen will happen. The scenario right now is between two claims: VT and Doc. They have been getting about equal attention and votes. Many people have pointed out (including the VT-claimant on the block) that as a matter of risk-assessment they’d prefer to take the risk in this case with the VT-claimed lynch. Others don’t believe the claim and have happily voted for the doc-claimaint.
In short, I don’t see that we are unquestionably accepting claims or are in danger of giving scum an out to always claim.
This may be clear as mud, but I hope I’ve gotten across what my issue is with your remarks.
Jimmy, I’m guilty of a number of newbie mistakes, sorry. I will not use that excuse again however.
Thank you for questioning my vote - I trust you do this in the best interests of town.
I gave no reasoning for my vote. In all honesty it’s been quite hard to catch up and I thought it was safe to neither unvote nor vote without more information.
Peeker seemed a good candidate for lynching given the early and ambiguous claim. I understood there was a possibility of Peeker being a scum doc or equivalent but have since seen that the PM sent to Doc usually start with “You are a Doc” and not “You are THE Doc” and so the claim loses some of its ambiguity but remains dubious so early on Day 1.
I can’t really bring myself to vote for any of the three vote leaders. While I suspect peeker based on the hounding of Tom Scud and the mysterious claim which, apparently, was supposed to baffle Scum more than Town, I can’t bring myself to vote that way Day 1. jpei’s case is largely been dealt with, and I don’t really know about Drain Bead.
One person who keeps popping up for different reasons is BSPI. First vote went to Alka for an antiTown idea. Then there is voting for Tomminutes before changing his vote to agee with Tom, which smacks of carelessness. Whether Scum-carelessness or Town-carelessness I don’t know. Then there is the vote on peekerfor claiming Doc. Looking back over it, it is just Boozy being Boozy. If I had suspicions, and I don’t think I do, it would not come from any individual post.
Firstly there is pressuring Wanderers into full claiming. I don’t think Town needed the details of his powers yet, but Scum would no doubt be curious. I took great issue with post #328:
As I have already said above, he could either lie, ignore the question, full claim or soft claim. These were his only options given the circumstances.
Here he is, much later, still saying that Wanderer should fully claim.
My main concern was that if (hypothetically, of course) one Scum group figures out who is in another Scum group, it gives our power roles a smaller pool to hide in. I’m glad that people agreed with me that it’s best just in case that everyone claim Town alignment and the point is now moot, though.