I am keeping my options open. As with story, being timidly town hasn’t worked for me, and when I’ve been aggressive and pushed votes and pushed envelopes I tend to hit scum more often. So I’m going to play aggressive.
There’s another key point in here–I don’t believe there to be a hammering mechanic (that is, I don’t remember seeing one) and frankly an early-day vote on a spawn is putting no pressure at all on a suspected scum player. As townies, votes are a weapon we have to use, and voting on spawn may be necessary later in the day for the correct strategic play (lynching a spawn) but early in the day putting a vote on the spawn effectively neuters half of your ability to put pressure on the people you have suspicions about.
You raise good points. I just figure we can do all that with one vote in other games–why do we need two votes to stir things up? I mean, I guess if we have them, why not use them. I’m just not all that convinced we need to vote as often as all that. Though I’ll consider unvoting spawn and voting for yet another scummy person if someone other than peekercpa pings me.
Since players will die both to lynch and kills a 11-10 player-spawn is very unlikely. And since Freudian didn’t want math, I’ll just count on my fingers:
17 town - 4 scum - 1 spawn, dual player kill D1, lynch dual spawn on first lynch or lose (marked with ):
14-4-2, 12-4-2, 10-4-2, 8-4-2, 7-4-1*, 6-3-1*, 5-2-1*, 4-1-1*, 3-0-1 and 3-0-0
And without:
15-4-1, 13-4-1, 11-4-1, 9-4-1, 7-4-1*, 6-3-1*, 5-2-1*, 4-1-1*, 3-0-1 and 3-0-0
Lynching two players now forces a dual spawn lynch one Day for lynch or lose would normally happen. But Storyteller original idea was to keep two spawn until the end.
14-4-2, 12-4-2, 10-4-2, 8-4-2*, 7-3-2*, 6-2-2*, 5-1-2*, 4-0-2, 4-0-0
What if we hit scum before lynch or lose and double lynch players after that?
14-4-1, 13-3-1, 10-3-2, 8-3-2, 6-3-2*, 5-1-2*, 4-0-2, 4-0-0
That looks like a situation where it doesn’t hurt too much (still a loss in information in the vote record though).
What of we ignore the Spawn?
14-4-2, 11-4-3, 9-4-3*, 8-3-3*, 7-2-3*, 6-1-3*, 5-0-3, 5-0-1 and 5-0-0
But if we hit scum
14-4-2, 12-3-3, 9-3-4*, 8-2-4*, 7-1-4*, 6-0-4, 6-0-2 and 6-0-0
Or go safe after the scum lynch
14-4-2, 12-3-3, 10-3-3, 8-3-3*, 7-2-3*, 7-1-3, 5-1-3*, 4-0-3, 4-0-1 and 4-0-0
Again with an early scum death a dual player lynch doesn’t hurt so bad.
Quick quick with 16-5-1:
14-5-1, 13-4-1, 10-4-2, 8-4-1, 6-4-1*, 5-3-1*, 4-2-1*, 3-1-1*, 2-0-1 and 2-0-0
Yup, I would consider a double player lynch only if we get a scum first. Otherwise a single lynch gives better information. Of course depending on no extra spawns or a vigilante would would kill then.
Another thought in that redirect: I could see a power role who could ‘buy’ a spawn vote. Probably some sort of virus :).
My point is, Meeko normally posts about a fifth of the traffic in the game. I think he’s been getting better at cutting down the posts-per-word ratio. Is he getting better, or has his behavior changed so much we should lyse him?
Since when is posting a lot a bad thing? Better a wealth of posts than a dearth. At least then if someone IS scummy they’re more likely to slip up and we can analyze their posts if need be.
And I guess this will test the theory that Meeko only votes for and suspects people who disagree with him.
I mean, in Consipracy 3, he voted to Night Kill me because I was disagreeing with him…and we were on the same Scum team.
I’m certain that I’m not the only one who has noticed his predisposition to find scummy those that disagree with him, and to trust people who agree with him. It’s probably true for all of us, it just might be more noticable with Meeko because he has been so prolific in the past.
I mean, are people worried that there is a risk that Spawn won’t be lynched if Zeriel doesn’t vote for it? At this point? With however many votes the Spawn’s already garnered?
OK, last word on the double-PC vs. one-PC-one-NPC thing from me. I think I favor a double-lyse this Summer iff we have two compelling targets, because the main portion of the downside - that one Spawn will linger thereafter, until we deal with it somewhere down the road - just doesn’t seem particularly compelling to me. I think we stand a chance to generate a lot more information. Look, many of us have played together repeatedly in the last few years (since 2007! Holy shit!). How many times have you seen the following play out on Day One:
(1) Day One ends with vote leader and secondary target; (2) vote leader dies and is Town; (3) because whatever caused the initial suspicion of secondary target hasn’t gone away, Day Two winds up being a discussion about secondary target anyway; (4) Secondary target is eventually lynched, possibly Day Two but certainly by Day Three-ish.
Let me phrase this differently: how often have you see a Day One where there was a significant secondary target where the secondary target didn’t eventually get lynched? That secondary target almost always gets lynched eventually (unless he/she has a confirmable role), because that initial suspicion sticks with them like a stinky cloud. Thus - if and again only if there is a strong second option - the double lyse essentially just accelerates a lynch that is very likely to happen anyway, and saves the next Day or two from being about the second option. All at the very minor cost of a single lingering Spawn.
So that’s my last pitch. It is clear that this is a minority opinion, and that’s OK; I don’t think it’s an especially critical decision, especially not on Day One. I feel more strongly about the sachertorte proposal that we enforce some kind of unanimity in double-PC-voting vs. one-PC-one-Spawn voting.
No.
Wait, that wasn’t strong enough.
Hell, no.
I object to such a policy. In fact, I absolutely refuse to follow such a policy. I also categorically refuse to give any sort of pass to a player who uses such a policy as justification for a vote. I am opposed to creating any rote mechanism. Every player should have to explain every action, every time. Are you voting Spawn with one of your votes? Fine. But you need to defend that choice, each time; you don’t get to have the fallback of “well, we decided to be unanimous, so here’s my contribution.” You’re responsible for your votes, whether they be for a PC or a Spawn. Eventually, we will look at your record and the choices you made and see how they stack up. Every vote I make in this game will be a reflection of my own current opinion on the gamestate, and I expect every player to have to live up to that same standard… it’s where and how we will find the Scum, if we find them.
Unanimous anything is a pipe dream, so good luck with that, sache.
While justified votes are certainly ideal, anyone who would try and justify a Spawn vote merely by saying “we said we would” would be an absolute idiot whether Town or Scum, which is going to make the vote record review a challenge as both Townies and Scummies have their different reasons for voting Spawn but will only be providing the Townie-sounding ones in public.
NETA: But the challenge is something we’re just going to have to deal with, imho, and I’m not so afraid of it as to discourage votes for Spawn on principle or suspect those who vote for Spawn on principle.
I think I’ve just got time for a quick post before dinner so I’ll chip in on this:
Everyone has two votes - even people voting for Spawn.
Everyone should use both those votes to vote for the entities they think are most suspicious.
Spawn are *exceptionally *suspicious. We know that they are (lowercase) scum. We know we have to lynch them to win.
People are free to say that they find two people more suspicious than Spawn. But that implies a **very **high degree of confidence that both their targets are (uppercase) Scum. Because short of that degree of confidence, there is a very clear target for one of your votes.
I take Zeriel’s point that votes also have value in putting pressure on Scum. But if you finish the Summer with two votes on players, you had better have made very good cases for both of them. Getting a second lyse of Pond on “Oh it’s just a hunch” or OMGUS or similarly weak reasoning is very bad play - because you were under no pressure to put that second vote on anybody.
And the Catch-22 here is, I’m not sure how to respond, with out increasing my post count total.
Overall, I think my play is getting better. This is only my seventh game. Frankly your last question implies you might be holding a grudge. If I am doing something scummy for this game, call me out on it. If I have done something scummy in other games, please call me out on it, in those games.
I don’t see why. Granted, he was scum in the last game (hey, so was I), but he’s posting a lot of good stuff so far, and I’m finding him quite helpful and pro-town.
And agree that unanimous anything ain’t gonna happen. It’s such a bizarre thing to put in which seems to hamper voting for spawn. I’ll
On the Meeko issue–I think he learned a lot from being Scum in the last game. It’s a lot easier to figure out how to play Mafia when you have a team of experienced players helping guide your posting.
I also completely agree with what amrussell just said about Spawn v. Scum. Unless you’re damned sure of that 2nd vote, it should probably be on Spawn, because they are essentially Scum, especially at this point in the game.
Keeping our options open is important. Hell, toward mid-game, after we get one or two Scum down, it might be strategically sound to try to keep a couple of Spawn alive just to potentially screw with the scum’s NK targets. I’m sure one of the math geeks in the thread could figure out when doing something like that might be advantageous. But for now, when we’re not sure, the best thing to do is probably to play it safe.
I’m not feeling the peeker lynch right now. To me, he’s doing nothing different than what I’ve seen him do in every game where he’s Town. He gets early suspicion because he’s peeker and gets angry about it. I think he made it perfectly clear that he was going to be making a pseudo-random vote for one of two players just for the hell of it. There was transparency there, and people still jumped on him for it. He could very well be Scum, but he’s also a convenient and easy bandwagon for Scum to jump on.
My suspicions are tending toward fluiddruid. First, there’s the “Scum wouldn’t do that” argument. I think pretty much everyone agrees that there’s nothing that Scum wouldn’t do anymore. I’m not saying this is the case, but an experienced player like storyteller could be playing the Devil’s Advocate argument as Scum, precisely because too many people would think “Hey, story is a good player and wouldn’t put his ass on the line like this as Scum.” So saying that Scum aren’t going to be advocating a double-player-lynch because Scum don’t advocate for things that are obviously in their best interest is probably wrong. See Colorless, where a Scum Freudian tried (for a moment) to advocate a leash-the-Vig strategy, even after I (also Scum, natch) said that Scum would love to see it happen. And then there’s the piling on of peeker for completely non-game reasons. It’s an easy way for Scum to hide.
Free advice–playing with a chip on your shoulder like that looks inherently scummy. It pretty much always, no matter who’s saying it, comes across as “if you vote for me, you’re just being a mean person” whether or not that’s how you intend it.
I’ve said it before, in previous games and in this one, I can’t make anyone else do anything they don’t want to. I’ve stated what I think is best for town. You are free to disagree, but voting for someone because you disagree on tactics is beyond stupid.
You raise good points, but I just think it was stupid of him to say he’s going to make random votes for the hell of it. That’s fine before we actually start and someone’s joking around but now it’s the actual game. If anyone else did that we’d stay they were being stupid–peeker shouldn’t get a pass. If he’s getting a lot of votes because of how he acts and it’s how he always acts, then maybe he needs to re-evaluate the way he plays.
Don’t really feel you on the fluiddruid thing but there’s not a lot to go on since she hasn’t posted much just yet. “Scum doesn’t ______ because it’s not in their best interest” is, granted, not true. I think if a poster is all, “No, I’m not scum because I did this blatantly unscummy thing, how could I be scum,” then that in and of itself doesn’t mean anything. Because scum would go out of their way to try to be unscummy.
So I don’t really see fluiddruid’s response as being a tell either way, not yet anyway.
