A (very brief) blurb on masons: http://wiki.flyingcowofdoom.com/mafiaWiki/Mason
And of course now that I’ve posted it I realize that the wiki should be edited to say:
"A Mason is, almost all of the time, one of a group of Town players who all know *who each other are and *that their fellow Masons are Town-aligned. Generally Masons can talk privately at night, although this is a secondary benefit.
Thanks, ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies.
If masons are town-aligned and know who the other masons are, why wouldn’t it be most valuable to town if they all claimed straight away?
Because the scum would kill them off immediately. The masons’ goal is to stay hidden(and alive) for as long as possible. It’s way more valuable to have, for example, 3 confirmed Town out of 10 than 3 confirmed Town out of 21.
That is certainly one Mason strategy, but not a very popular one. By staying incognito, Masons can leverage their perfect information (knowing who each other are and that they are all on the same side) to deduce possible motivations on any players voice suspicions about anyone in the Masonry. Also, by outing themselves they reduce the pool of unknown players which reduces the cover for other town power roles to hide in. Also-also, by outing themselves they expose themselves to be picked off at Night by the Scum since there are usually not enough protective roles provided to the Town to protect all of the Masons at the same time, and loss of confirmed Townies like that can be a deathblow to the Town under certain circumstances.
There are lots of other reasons why most Masonry players don’t expose themselves right away, but it has been done in the past. I just can’t recall in which games, and I don’t know if it has ever happened without at least one of the Masons being lynched or killed first.
Wouldn’t a Doc self protect night 1? I can’t wrap “Doctor” around communal organism. As other people have offered, I would have to guess that communal organism = mason.
Well that addresses a question I had.
But this seems to kinda undo it.
**
Digger**
Do you mind clarifying :
How many if hard to say but since the max number on Scuba was 5 I would say the 4 is the max number is scum.
When I was looking at my 5 people, I included Peeker.
**
Digger**, do you mean to include a look at Scuba in your random group of 5, or does he get a pass?
And one more question for Oredigger before I shut up for awhile because I’m posting too much:
Can you point to some specific examples of people who were voicing suspicions about Scuba but who didn’t vote for him? If you can’t, I continue not to follow your logic in your last few posts.
Probably, yes. I was just offering that up as an example of how the lack of information from the mod hurts us.
This part of the color:
leads me also to conclude that this is a Mason role.
I’m in Colorado this week and I have internet access in my hotel, but I’m going to be on the slopes and/or drunk a good bit of the week. I’ll read up daily and post when I can.
vote Spawn
Thank you for the explanations on masons, Rysto and ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies.
Alright, I need some help here. What should we be looking for to help identify scum? I know I’m a n00b but even I could see that the “evidence” that was used to cast suspicion at peeker made absolutely no sense. Does this mean we should now turn up the heat on everyone who voted for peeker? My instincts would say no, because I doubt the scum would be so inept as to all (or even mostly) vote for the same townie on Day 1.
Without having to read up on all the past Mafia games I can find, what are some common tell-tale signs of scummy behaviour? What’s the precedent? I can’t see how we can glean anything out of Day 1 now - as I suspect that the scum didn’t actually have to do anything.
Mmmm…Bota bags full of 100 proof schnapps on the slopes. I have only been skiing once many years ago, but I do fondly remember that part. 
There’s a danger in assuming anything about the composition of subgroups vs. the composition of the whole group, since no given sample group (like, say, voters for Scuba) are a random sample. Basic statistics.
Speaking of which, Special Ed’s numbers were wrong on the cumulative percentages yesterday, but I’m too lazy to do the math (my notes are at work).
Thirdly, on the subject of Masons, I would prefer to not repeat MonkGate if at all possible. And that’s all I have to say about that.
- And what of the people who unvoted Peeker?
- As soon as we tell scum what not to do, they will stop doing it. We don’t want that.
Heh. The game I stop using my Jamie Lee Curtis quote is the one game I need it.
Information comes slowly at first. Once you can nail people down one way or another is when the fun begins,
This brings up another point on information, for Kelly. Re: The apparent mason dynamic in the game.
But, Z, you know it can’t be a " And that’s all I have to say about that " moment.
MonkGate ?
I am willing to bet that at least two players have no clue here, Z.
Do we have anyone working a WOW on Special Ed?
My WOWs were at best long winded. Not to touch the fact that I am only 7 games in. Given that I have been longer winded of late, I am not going to volunteer here.
I am likely to misremember some of the details even though I was one of the gated monks, but I believe there were 3 of us monks/masons left (we may have started the game with 4) and one of the three of us (NAF?) was either lynched or nightkilled, and one of us (sache) went on vacation and was unavailable to confirm with me that he and I were the two remaining masons. Queue two fake-claming mason scum stage left, and it was a big mess.
I thought “masons” knew who the other masons were… so why did you need confirmation?
Public confirmation. Since no one else knows who the live masons are, they claim/confirm each other publicly. With two scum fake-claiming mason, it became a battle of their word against ours’ and the Town had to figure out which two players were lying.
The rest of the town doesn’t though so they needed confirmation she was really a mason - which another mason can do. Unless of course two scum claim mason together.
For that reason, the common mason tactic is to claim if there are only two left - a single mason is just a vanilla town. It’s not unlikely there are now two left (if a communal organism is a mason), but I’m not sure I would advice to claim now (if only two left). For the reason that it is early game and claiming later is more useful as mentioned and the odds aren’t that great another gets killed soon. Up to the masons to make the call of course.
On why scum chose special ed to kill, I can see a motivation to direct the search some have announced to go look in the peeker votes for scum, but it’s just a random guess.
I agree I don’t see how the Scuba wagon was to get a dual player lynch going. If Oredigger wants to argue a scum was feeding it, I would include amrussell in the list with his vote/unvote for Scuba_Ben.
The case had a lot of ‘me too’-ing going on (including my vote), but that had more to do with there being no real case Yesterday and a desire to provide an alter lynch to peeker. And since peeker was town that isn’t a necessary scum motivation (but wouldn’t be anti-scum either unless Scuba_Ben is scum).