Screamers Mafia

The Game Room
641

I voted for Peeker because I though his scum buddies were trying to save him with some good old fashion bandwagoning. While Peeker may or may not be the doctor I think looking at Drain’s bandwagon might reviled some interesting things. I went back and pulled all of the vote posts on Drain from the historically scummy third to the end. I’ve trimmed them so they reflect the case against Drain.

So here we have the historically scummy third vote basically Alka agrees with the case already presented by Amrussel but asks a question to try and get some more information. I think this is a pretty good vote post since it both state the reason and tries to find out more.

Again we have a vote explanation, the vote was in another post about three later. This is about all you can ask for on Day 1 agreeing with someone else’s case but giving explanations so there is a trail to follow in later Days.

Hmmm . . . I think there is a reason in there but it seems to be that Drain is saying that Scum can’t claim to be town. Which wasn’t the way any one else read it and doesn’t seem to be a good reason to vote in general.

Basically this was a vote for Drain not saying she is town but putting out a list of the people who say they’re town. While it’s already been discussed that it is hard to find where everyone stated that they are town it’s believable that he missed Drain’s post but it is an extremely weak reason to crawl on a bandwagon.

I’m not sure what Tilt’s case is against Drain she seems to be saying that more people need to state that they are town or explain why they are unwilling to which is what Drain had been pushing for.

The last vote for Drain and basically Diver just restates the case against Drain but also adds that her defense hasn’t been the best.

Of these I find Tilt, Cold, and FS to be the most bandwagony and most like to be scum hitching a ride to lynching town. Tilt is pinging as a bit of a confused newbie. Cold has barely been playing with a total of 7 game posts 2 of which were fluff but he did unvote Drain once his accusations were answered. FS has disappeared the last couple of days and so may have just been too busy to post a real vote but I also think that there is too much experience there to be allowed to get away with such a lame vote post.

Vote FS

642

Oredigger, you seem to be assuming I’m town in all this. Which, of course, I am, but I’m not sure how you can know that. This vote analysis is great, but it’s one I didn’t expect to see until after I’m dead.

643

No apology necessary, it’s my fault. I wasn’t really offended, just kidding around.

Shitblood it shall be!

644

I know the doctor is “the” canonical role, but this calculation sounds off. You’re restricting yourself to simply a roleclaimed doctor. If you based it off the same assumptions as you did in your previous post and each scum each RNG’d to see which role would be claimed, you would have a 5:6 odds a claimed doctor is scum, 5:39 odds a claimed cop is scum, and 1:0 odds a claimed roleblocker is scum. Sure, this example was contrived, but cranks out random numbers I’d set an upper bound on the scum:doc/cop/roleblocker ratio of at most 2:1 for a game this size.

I haven’t posted much as I’ve been busy, but I’ll crank out something more substantial when I get back tonight.

645

Hey Mods, I voted for Boozy way back in post 536!

646

No, I’m not assuming you’re town as much as I think scum were pushing a bandwagon. Originally I thought it was to save a scummy Peeker, which is might have been. While it is possible that you’re scum that was being thrown under the bus I really don’t care. There isn’t a case against you that I think is worth a vote but I think the bandwagon jumpers are scummy independent of your role.

Think of it this way. I saw an activity that I thought was scummy, your bandwagon, and decided that it was because of X, in this case saving Peeker, now just because I attributed the reason wrong, possibly, doesn’t mean that the original action wasn’t scummy.

647

I’ve read this five times and I still don’t get it. Can you explain it for the English majors among us, please?

Also, did you realize you’re tied for the lead right now?

648

I think it is true that respecting claims makes it much more likely that we will lynch Town on Day One, but that doesn’t mean we have accomplished nothing; if the claimee was scum, we have forced him into making a claim which can then be tested. The game isn’t won or lost on Day One.

Moreover, since Day One cases are, pretty much by definition, usually very flimsy and circumstantial, “checking our reasons and facts more closely” will usually lead us to logically conclude that the difference in our level of suspicion between Target #1 and Target #2 is trivial. On subsequent Days, this equation gradually changes, until by the time we get to LyLo, all claims should be basically ignored. Someone (I think you) posited a hypothetical above, something like “If we get to LyLo with no more information than we had on Day One”…well, then we’re screwed. Basically, the whole point of the game for Town is to NOT let things get to that point.

So, specifically with regard to peeker, I think he’s the scummiest-looking person in the game, but I strongly oppose lynching him toDay, to the point where I’m quite suspicious of those advocating same. If we lynch him today, the worst case scenario is that we have killed a Doc.

If we wait a few Days, several things could potentially happen which are good for Town: he could be confirmed (one way or the other) by a Cop or otherwise, he could block a nightkill (a net gain for Town, even if we do still end up mislynching him), he could be nightkilled himself (bad for Town, but at least we didn’t waste a lynch on him). The worst case scenario is that we wait a few Days and then mislynch him.

So, by waiting, we give good things a chance to happen, and don’t increase the chance of bad things happening (unless, I guess, he is a scum power role). The caveat is that we do need to remember to keep an eye on him and not forget that we were ever suspicious of him; but I don’t think we should vote today based on the assumption that we are going to be that stupid, because if that assumption is true, we’re screwed anyway.

649

What would you like to hear? My vote is going to stay on jpei, barring some glaring scum mistake.

I am not sure what to think about peeker’s doc claim. Claimed docs are harder for scum to kill, but not much more useful than vanilla townies, however, since they are almost forced to protect themselves every night. So the argument that we can’t afford to lose a doc doesn’t seem to hold that much weight. All of this irrelevant to me for the moment, of course, since I never voted peeker.

I am also not sure what to make of your vote on me. You say above that you think jpei deserves some heat, but you don’t like my vote on him?

650

Quoth Normal Phase:

When compared with a partial claim? I can’t think of any offhand, honestly. Scum just needs to know the “who”, not the “what”.

Quoth Alka Seltzer:

I would have thought my vote made that clear: I think that, given the information I have, Wanderers has a higher probability of being Scum than any other player (though still not all that high, this being Day 1). I also have suspicions of peeker and Drain Bead, for reasons elaborated by others, but those are based on subjective assessments, and I don’t trust myself on subjective decisions.

And could I ask AllWalker for the reasoning behind his vote for me? Even if he’s just using the same case against me as, say, Drain Bead, I’d like him to say so. I’m surprised nobody else (other than Guiri) questioned him on that-- The vote of a Leader should be subjected to a little extra scrutiny, and it’s not like AllWalker to cast a vote without explaining why (especially not a set-in-stone vote).
On other matters: I do think that peeker’s claim, when he made it, is a bit fishy, and I certainly don’t think that a Doctor claim should always be a get-out-of-jail-free card. But on Day 1, we probably should accept it provisionally: If he is Scum, there’ll be plenty of time to catch him later, but if he’s really a Doctor, we’re losing a lot by killing him. Further, even if this policy does increase the chance of a Day 1 mislynch, is that necessarily a big deal? Assuming about 1/4 of the players are Scum, and that there’s only a small amount of active Scummy vote-skewing, the base odds of a Day 1 mislynch are probably around 80-85%. If we accept Day 1 Doctor claims, then that might go up to around 90-95%. It’s not like we’d be guaranteed of nabbing Scum if we ignored all Doctor claims; the odds are already pretty high for a mislynch, and only get slightly higher.
(here’s hoping I have all my paragraphs in the right order-- I somehow got them scrambled when composing this post)

651

Very quick and dirty post here before I head home to disagree with this. This early, a claimed doc is what you say it is. Where it becomes vitally important is when another major power role claims. The scum then have to play the WIFOM game to determine if they’ll kill the doc, the other role (usually a confirmed Mason or Cop), or someone else, based on who they think the doc will be protecting.

652

(Crap, that was a lot of posts at once, making a lot of the following a little behind the conversation).

I believe that jpei is making a different point than the one Gryff was.

The point, though, is that the scum wouldn’t be RNGing at all. Assume the first person up on the chopping block claims Doc.

If we assume that 1. the actual Doc would claim Doc, 2. no other town player would claim Doc and 3. the scum are all going to claim Doc, which is what Gryff’s assumptions were, the chances that you’ve got an actual doc on the hook is (number of Docs)/(number of Docs)+(number of Scum). Discounting third parties, that is.

That’s the situation we’re in now. We have exactly one claim of Doc to analyze, and we might expect that every scum would claim Doc in this situation. If we’re taking it purely on probability, Gryff’s calculation was right for the situation.

All that said, I’m with Thing Fish and Chronos. peeker has already tipped his hand. All we have to do is not forget about him. For Day 1, where it seems the question tends to be how much of its own face does Town shoot off, I dislike the idea of lynching him. To be very clear, though, I think that his claim is a lie. Since we can’t be sure, it is sufficient from my point of view that we’ve forced him into the corner he’s presently in. Failure to lynch him doesn’t mean we haven’t gotten anywhere.

653

Or I suppose they could assume the doc will protect himself and he doesn’t and manages to protect whom they’re targeting. I guess it depends on luck.

654

I was willing to forget it. But if you’re going to be this way about it…

655

Gosh, I love a nice long Day One. Unfortunately I’ve been out the office concurrently with my home PC dying, so I’ve had a lot of catching up to do.

To review the bidding:

Drain Bead: This was my case originally. Reading back over all that’s been said on it, I’m still torn. On the one hand, it’s been explained, and others have agreed, that what I thought was a reversal re. Chronos can in fact be read as completely self-consistent. Also, Drain Bead did claim town and did say that everyone should. On the other hand, I still don’t like the vehemence of her opposition to the idea, or her claim that it would help scum by outing a second scum group. I particularly don’t like her claim that she was actively encouraging people to participate, when the whole tone of her posts reads much more as “it’s a stupid idea, but I suppose you might as well if you insist on wasting your time.”

Peeker: I thought his original case against Tom was beyond weak; while I don’t necessarily believe the claim (and the careful use of the indefinite article smacks as much of pre-emptive defense as it does of a due regard for the careful use of language) I’m not prepared to risk offing the Doc. If he’s not lynched, he’ll be under a lot of scrutiny.

jpei: It’s never good to not vote. However, the explanation sounded to me more like someone who’d honestly struggled to pick a leader and didn’t realise the importance of voting than of scum trying to… what exactly?

So much for the vote leaders. Who else?

656

amrussell, I think the tone I was going for was “I think this was all a really silly idea to discuss in the first place, but since that train’s left the station, here’s how we make the best of it.” I can see how you can get that my overall tone was negative about it, since it sort of was, but it was never negative about the fact that we should all claim. And since most of the early votes on me were due to my “reluctance to claim,” you can see how I might have gotten a bit upset about it.

657

Well, I actually find myself agreeing with DB about CIAS’s vote on her:

What rings false about this is the concern CIAS is showing for his reputation. His problem is that DB’s casual “everyone” overlooks his own stance. We’re all keen that we’re not misrepresented, but as this is one of only 12 posts since the beginning of the thread, it seems to have been a **really **important point to make. It gives me the feeling that he’s reading the game with the primary concern of monitoring how he’s coming across, and making sure that no-one’s saying anything untoward about him, or attributing anything to him without cause. Rather than, for example, catching scum.

Above and beyond that, it’s a pretty weak reason to vote. Yes, using the word “everyone” smacked a little of lése-majesté, but as no-one was attacking DB or anyone else for the assumptions they made about Peeker’s claim, it seems very odd to leap in saying that this was clearly an attempt to “backtrack”. Backtrack from what? No-one was blaming anyone for not understanding Peeker’s wording, so why would anyone be on the defensive?

What else do we have? Working backwards:

Discussion on peeker, as advertised:

Some comment on strategy:

Some strategy thoughts on the leader:

And, going further back, just some comments about timing of the Day, and a one-liner advising OAOW not to claim.

This is all very innoccuous. The one post that has any claim to be scum-hunting, which is our job, is the weak vote on DB. I’m prepared to believe that CIAS felt he needed to vote, and picked the first thing that jumped out at him. As he said, “that’s good enough for me at the mo”. But it looks like getting A vote in was the priority, rather than digging around to find scum.

In the interests of getting a response on this, and because I’m losing confidence in my DB vote, I will:

unvote Drain Bead
Vote CatInASuit

658

Yes, under that assumption, the analysis is correct on all counts. I would not have brought it up except:

  1. I think this assumption is strong, although I wouldn’t have experience in this field.
  2. It contradicts the assumption Gryff made in the post I quoted earlier and the two above. It’s inconsistent to suppose all mafia would roleclaim doctor but still advocate lynching claimed cops and roleblockers.

Let’s assume peeker is scum. Just because he claims doc doesn’t mean he could not have potentially claimed something else, and every chance he may have claimed something else decreases the likelihood that a doc roleclaim is scum. Now, I don’t find a 1/3:1/3:1/3 split realistic either, but I should hope it’s more realistic than a 1:0:0 split.

Now it’s my turn to make up random numbers. Suppose that in this game peeker is one of six scum, and there are two of each of the roles: doctor, cop, and roleblocker. Further assume that only these twelve would claim one of these roles and that town is honest.

If scum would always claim doctor, then Gryff’s analysis would be accurate.

However let’s suppose a scum were equally likely to claim either doctor, cop, or roleblocker. This leads to three parallel universes, one in which peeker claims doctor, one in which peeker claims cop, and one in which peeker claims roleblocker.

Using Gryff’s assessment after the fact, we would conclude for each role that there is a 6/8 chance the claimed role was scum.

On average, however, only two mafia would claim for each role, so there is only a 2/4 chance the claimed role was scum.

“Equally likely” is a tough assumption, but if it were skewed so much, Gryff would have little reason to advocate lynching other claimed roles as well.

659

Vote Count:

jpeg (5): OAoW, TxtKitty, Alkaseltzer, DaffyBlk, GuyinSpain
The One and Only(1): Da’Chronic
Pecear(2): Gruff, Boozy,
The Dread Bean (5): amrussett, Abnormal Phase, Freudian Skit, UPSDriver, KittySoot
M.C. Billy(3): Pecear, JiminiyShitblood, Brainbleed
Da’Chronic(1): AllWalker(leader)
TxtKitty(1): Scudmissile
Boozy(2): MCBilly, FishThingy
Freudulan Slit (1): Arr!Digger77

Fixed

660

amrussell unvoted me and voted CIAS.