Because it would be a pretty intelligent way to play SK (assuming he doesn’t have to kill every Night, of course).
He’d present himself as town
He’d argue to accelerate the process (via 2 Day lyses)
When (if) pressured about his identity he could easily argue he’s the Vig instead. Who’s to know?
Of course he’d need the Detective (if there’s one in this game) not to investigate him and/or die before (s)he could disclose their result(s) and this technique wouldn’t work if there was a SK and a Vig in the game but I think we can safely rule that possibility out, because, like you said, there haven’t been more than 1 kill each Night.
I’ve got a bit of apathy for the storyteller lynch. I’m personally not feeling the lynch as the right one for today. At this time I don’t feel like the evidence stacks up against him, and it seems like sach is inflating the case, and both are inflating the drama. If I thought that there was only one scum left in the game, I’d be willing to vote storyteller. But considering it is most likely that even if story isn’t the last one, I’m looking elsewhere.
I don’t like KellyCriterion’s play so far this game. I don’t like his case against Mahaloth. It just doesn’t make sense considering the facts of the game. That is to say that town doesn’t know shit about shit, and scum knows who is and isn’t scum. I don’t see the argument that because Mahaloth has voted town, that that means he is scum. Having attempted to point out this erroneous logic, and having been rebuffed by Kelly, I am still suspicious of him.
Next, Natlaw is looking scummier and scummier the more he tries to stick the indictment against Meeko. It just doesn’t fit. Meeko’s play has been somewhat confusing, but it doesn’t fit as scummy. Natlaw trying to make confusing and hapless into scummy is Scummy. Secondly, Natlaw is of the opinion that voting two players is A-OK because spawn is already getting second votes. This play is anti-town IMO. So scummy + anti-town = my vote for today.
Can you explain it to me then? Because I fail to see ANY instance when the death of a player without the reveal of his/her alignment and/or role can ever be an advantage to Town. You might think it is an advantage for the Vig, but that player is on the Town team and shouldn’t be playing for individual advantage but instead for the good of the Town.
I don’t have much to say on this story/sach thing. You guys seem to be talking past each other and the whole argument just looks like noise to me. I’m seeing two very frustrated players right now, but that’s not at all what I’d consider scummy. I will say this: story, even if you are right and sach is scum, killing him won’t do us any good because we’ll never know one way or the other that you were right. You talked earlier about how important it is for Town to find that first scum. If sach dies with no cardflip, we still haven’t found that first scum and worse, our analysis for the rest of the game will be hampered if sach is a perpetual unknown. We win by trading our numbers for information. Killing somebody without getting information in return does not help us.
The only thing that really jumped out at me toDay was a question directed at Diggit, at which point I said “Diggit is in this game?” That’s not a reaction I ever like to have about a player, especially a player who’s been playing long enough that I recognize the name instantly, so I immediately took a closer look.
There’s not a lot here: only 21 posts in the thread(on preview: 22), and about 4 of them are non-game related. Two things have caught my eye: his Day Two vote for Drain Gead and his subsequent explanation of that vote after her claim, and his vote toDay for story. I’ve bleached all votes and unvotes.
This sequence of posts makes no sense from a Town perspective. Let’s review what happened. I voted for Ed late Day One. Night One he’s killed and flips Communal Organism. Drain Gead votes me in response to that vote, emphasizing the fact that Ed was a power role, probably a mason. A minor kerfuffle ensues, because even if I were scum I couldn’t possibly have known that Ed was a mason.
So here’s what I don’t get from Diggit’s perspective. He says that his vote for Drain is based on PIS on her part. But it makes no sense for a scum Drain Gead to have PIS! What knowledge that scum could have had did Drain reveal in that vote? The only way that Drain could be demonstrating PIS was if she was a mason, and why would a Townie Diggit vote for a suspected mason?
You’re really, really reaching here. To respond:
Depending on his win condition, a double lyse could definitely help his win condition. However, arguing in favour of it so vigourously really works against him if he’s an SK. An SK needs to be under everybody’s radar, especially early in the game. story’s made himself a lightning rod by arguing for a double-lynch. I could see a scum story trying that, but as an SK? No way. It’s an almost guaranteed loss.
SKs often care very much about their target’s alignment. If they have the traditional win-stealing win condition, they need to know which side is winning and which side is losing so they can decide whether they should be targeting Town or potential scum. Another SK win condition I’ve seen is “you must reach the final 3”, which means that the SK wants to be sure that they aren’t favouring either side too much with their kills. Either way, the SK needs that information as much as the Town does.
No second death for one Night means nothing. You yourself said that a non-compulsory Vig should lay off early in the game.
On Preview:
So your theory is that storyteller is declining to use his night-kill and shorten the game, when only an unlikely role like a watcher or a tracker could ever tell that he is killing people, while simultaneously arguing for a double-lynch and drawing all sorts of heat and attention? This doesn’t make sense. You are offering arguments that individually make sense, but contradict one another when taken as a whole. This tells me that you are trying to twist facts to fit a preconceived theory, and that’s scummy.
I see that the Sach/Story thing is getting in everyone’s way, but I want everyone to look at Story again. Can anyone explain why Story claimed the whole drawback thing? Why didn’t he just make a full claim originally? Does anyone think that knowing the drawback now is injurious to the pond?
The drawback has me convinced that the claim was a not thoroughly thought out piece of crap.
I still don’t understand your reasoning. It isn’t a question of trusting the Vig or holding a grudge. I frankly don’t care *why *the Vig kills who he does. I just want the information from the dead player to help me find more scum.
What if the Vig kills a Scum player? We won’t know that player is Scum until the game is over. We won’t be able to use his or her interactions with other players to find scum. We won’t be able to look at their voting record. And more importantly, we’ll have no idea when the end of the game may be close at hand (ie LyLo).
Frankly, there is NO situation when keeping the alignment and role of a dead player hidden is EVER beneficial to the TOWN TEAM. Again, you might argue that it is beneficial to the Vig individually, but that’s a spurious argument. I’m even more happy with my vote now that you’re arguing a Pro-scum position.
You are forgetting one of the fundamentals of Mafia. Town has very little information, and are disorganized. Town lynches and vig kills are used to generate information. I think (although there may be others I have not thought of) a vig with story’s claimed drawback should shoot is when there is a claim -> counterclaim -> lynched claimant or counter-claimant comes up town, since the other player is lying. At that point we know the other (non-lynched) player is not town, and it is better to sacrifice the info in favor of not spending a lynch on them. My reasoning is based in the direction that it reduces the number of scum night kills before the claim/counter is resolved.
The other is dealing with absentee players and the mod refuses to mod-kill. These players represent a significant distraction and create cherry picking opportunities for scum.
@texcat, meeko: Here’s a hypothetical (assuming story is town) where story revealing his drawback is detrimental to town. If scum have a redirection role or are able to predict his target when he shoots, then they will be able to make a more informed decision about whether or not to let him shoot. The more information scum have, the more detrimental knowing about this power is for town. If they have a watching role (which is good at finding cops and docs), they might be able to redirect or convince story to shoot a cop or a doc, then claim the role, never to be counter-claimed, very tricky to get a doc claim lynched.
Also, if he is scum, why claim the drawback? This is a sticking point in my mind. It’s a detail that makes the claim less plausible, or at least a huge disadvantage to the town. If he is scum, why make something like that up, if he’s making shit up, why that? To be honest, I’d like to see the power used and the drawback observed before he is lynched. An extra scum kill that can hide alignment is a strong power, if he’s scum and that’s his power it’s very powerful and I don’t think that I would risk not using it last night, since there was a good chance story was going to be pushed again today.
@story, I would advise against shooting sach tonight. Sach has made a lot of comments and a lot of players have commented on his comments. I would prefer to know his align/role if he dies.
But, won’t we also gather information from it as well?
**Would Scum redirect if Story is vigging town? **
You know, Im just gonna not continue this train here. I’m just going to stop for a second and realize that I know what WIFOM is.
And it gives me a headache. Let me take some asprin. Oh hey look here is some wine for me to wash the asprin down with. So many hypotheticals here, So little time.
I would like to think there is a fool-proof gamesmanship answer here. But there isn’t.
…
About the only thing I know for sure, is that to me, there seems to be a LOT of talk about redirection for this game.
And the fact that I don’t know what to do with that information, takes the last remaining sanity from me.
How many degrees of freedom does a redirector have? Can they only redirect if they themselves are targeted? Can they redirect by saying “IF X would be targeted, instead target Y” ? Are the redirects limited by the action type? Can one only redirect for example doctor targets, but not cop targets?
I am finding toDay to be a very exhausting read. For the second time in 3 Days, the lynch leader has basically stated “Things aren’t going my way so I don’t care about this game any more. Good bye”. I find this play strange because it’s probably only acceptable is you’re scum… otherwise I think it just makes you look like a sook and a sore loser if you’re town. Storyteller appears to be taking great personal offence at sach, but under a storyteller = townie scenario, for all storyteller knows, sach is scum which means any conversation being had with him is not necessarily going to be reasonable, rational or fair-minded. That’s the point of the game.
I also wonder if we’re just watching scum theatre, starring sach and storyteller in the leading roles in the play about how one scum bussing another can earn the busser scum some super-cred.
But if storyteller is town, my goodness… it means all we have witnessed is a colossal dummy spit from a townie who just shouldn’t be playing this game.
I hope for non-Cecil-Pond-specific reasons that if storyteller gets lynched that he turns up scum, or else my goodwill investment in Mafia is going to be negatively affected.
Back to the pond…
Why does the absence of a counter-claim make a mason claim more likely?
Oredigger stated:
How do we know that we have at least 2 power roles in this game?
And finally… I think some people are playing this game as if it’s Survivor. I see no reason to “change my vote” on a Daily basis just because somebody that I suspected yesterDay hasn’t done anything too scummy toDay. Similarly, I won’t change my vote just because someone did something possibly scummy toDay when someone else yesterDay did something far more scummy (to me).
Alas, I see no reason for now to change my vote from yesterDay.
vote Mahaloth
Finally: If story gets lynched and turns up town, I think we need to seriously turn the blowtorch on to the players who are not really getting their hands too dirty. If the town is self-imploding, the best thing the scum can do is not interfere. So by all means, scum, cheer if story gets lynched and turns up town, but have it known, if that happens, Town will surely stop lynching the loud and provocative, and instead turn up the heat on players like Alka Seltzer, amrussel, Freudian Slit and USCDiver. I know that Alka has probably been the most vocal of this quartet, but a review of his posts indicates that he often only arrives suited up for a battle after the village cavalry have already gone in and done most of the damage.
That’s actually not what I said, though I can understand why it would be read that way. What I think is that I’ve become a useless distraction. My continued presence in the game is Anti-Town in spite of my Town alignment. I don’t think that the bulk of the people who are ostensibly having conversations with me are actually reading for understanding - they’re reading with their conclusion already held firmly in mind, and only looking for confirmation. Given that fact, me spending the Day screaming at people is worthless, and if I’m still alive toMorrow, it’ll be another Day of the same. My lynch will be a mislynch, but if the Town handles it properly, it will be an instructive mislynch; the way people are reacting to me, my claims, and my statements will be of value once my alignment is known.
Here’s the thing. sach and I have a pre-existing (previously very friendly) relationship dating back many, many games. We have discussed and even planned games together. I have a lot of intellectual respect for him whatever his alignment, and the way he has addressed me in this game indicates that this is not mutual. If you can’t understand why I would take personal offense at that regardless of his alignment, I can’t help you, but play another ten games, develop some relationships, and then have somebody insult you repeatedly on a personal level and see how you react.
Yeah, that won’t happen. I understand your paranoia, but I don’t think that if sach is Scum, I will get anything but the tiniest amount of Town cred for going after him. I have… a reputation.
Thanks! Cool playing with you, too. As a sign of how much I appreciate your comments, I’ll address your questions not related to me.
Say a player, we’ll call him Idle Thoughts, claims Mason. He’s lying Scum. Within the real town are two real living Masons, Roosh and Blaster Master. Roosh will counter claim Idle, and Blaster Master will back him up. At this point, we will lynch Idle (because if BM and Roosh are lying, we’d be trading two Scum for one Mason).
A real Mason generally has no reason to not counterclaim a false Mason; it’s basically a free lynch under all but the most dramatically odd circumstances.
Heh. Well, we don’t, I guess. I know we have at least one, of course, but others don’t.
This is often, but not always, true. I don’t think you can draw any conclusions of any kind from the fact that Town has thus far lynched loud and controversial players and had no success. The Scum may well be spreading themselves out philosophically, and have a loud member and a few quieter members and who knows. I’m Town; does that mean everyone who acts as I am acting is Town? Not necessarily.
Argh. The first paragraph about redirection above has nothing to do with the “drawback”. I agree that knowing the vig is helpful for scum, knowing that he won’t get a result back is not so helpful for scum.
Why claim the drawback? That’s very simple if Story is not a vig. He had to claim some drawback so that we wouldn’t want to test his claim. Why would he claim to be a vig with a drawback, if he’s not? Because he’s scum.
If I wanted to claim something untestable, I could have claimed Alignment Detective, or Doctor. I could have claimed one-shot Vig. I could have claimed regular Vig and just said I was role-blocked. Any of these things would have been simpler and more believable than what I actually claimed, which I claimed simply because it is the truth.
Only that a player died, we won’t know if that player is a cop, a doc, or a vanilla.
Maybe. If we give them an extra kill to spend, they’re presumably going to spend it where it benefits them the most.
Not uncommon in a closed game, as scum fears cops and watchers, town fears their power roles being turned against them.
The last two questions are specific to the game so I have no idea, but generally I’ve seen no such limitations in the past. There are three general flavors of redirector that I’ve seen:
Target Redirector : More common as scum role. They substitute targets. If story targets meeko, and scum redirector targets meeko and red skeezix, story shoots red skeezix instead of meeko. This type can usually self-redirect as a form of protection.
Actor Redirector: More common as town role, hugely powerful as scum role. They change the target of a specific actor. If story targets meeko, and scum redirector targets story and red skeezix. Then story shoots red skeezix instead of meeko.
3.Hiding Redirector: Can be either scum or town. Basically a target redirector who can only redirect away from self. If story targets meeko and meeko is hiding behind red skeezix, red skeezix gets shot. If story targets meeko and meeko is hiding behind story then meeko gets shot.
Having previewed, I’ll come on to the question of what constitutes “posting enough” in a minute. First, however:
On sach vs story:
I find it difficult to see scum motivation for story. All the arguments about him being scum boil down to: “He should have kept arguing until he finally admitted I was right in all particulars”. I don’t see anything inherently scummy about realising you’re not going to convince people even though you still disagree and deciding not to prolong the argument. I certainly don’t see what he would ever have got out of it, as scum, after it became clear that he wasn’t going to convince people. As for his claim, I find it difficult to credit as a scum claim. Even if we assume that he’s part of a scum team which includes some sort of protector so that he’s not vulnerable to a real Vig, the best this strategy could hope for would be an extra Day’s grace, a Vig counterclaim following a failed kill attempt and the exchange of a scum for a relatively weak town power-role. For this to make sense, we also have to assume some good reason for him not to claim Doc or Cop and flush out a major power role.
For sach, it’s easier to see a scum motivation for focusing so relentlessly on story. Except at this point, I think we’ve crossed a threshold. sach has tied himself so thoroughly to the case against story that if we lynch and story flips town (the most likely scenario if sach is scum) then all eyes will be on the man who drove the lynch. It’s an exposed position to be in. If sach is scum and story flips scum, it should buy sach a great deal of cred - except that it’s also bought him so much attention that we’ll be watching him more carefully, not less. We’re all savvy about bussing now, to the point where I think something this theatrical will probably backfire. Ask yourselves - how much townie credit will you give sach if story flips scum now?
That said, I think the whole issue is becoming a massive distraction. Even if one of them is scum, there are still other scum out there. (Unless we’re in Mafia Hell, but I don’t think Chronos would do that to us!). So let’s find one of those scum. Hell, it might give us an extra piece of info we can use to look at the sach/story issue again.
I’ve already got my vote on the person I find scummiest just now. But re-reading, I would also offer for your consideration:
TexCat: Recently, I don’t like his pushing of story’s claim. While I think sach comes across as a committed townie, I might expect to see some scum in his wake, trying to push story over the edge. Looking earlier in the game, I was struck that TexCat was the firstto pop up with a theory about the scum’s kill of special ed. Specifically, that it was done because he was getting too close to Cookies. I wondered then if that might not have been the scum plan - kill someone who was pointing fingers at a townie, and then use that to point more fingers at the townie. Looking even further back, TexCat voted for peeker post-meltdown, which would be a natural place for scum to park a vote. The main point about TexCat is that he’s been pretty quiet - which is why I see his recent suspicion of story’s claim as opportunistic.
Cookies: What? Didn’t I just say that a scummy TexCat was pointing fingers at her? Yeah, but I have to always remember that I might be wrong. Independently of the above suspicions, Cookies pinged me because on Day Two, when it was suggested that the Scuba wagon might be a good place to look for scum, she immediately became very defensive, attacking the idea on several fronts. Looking back, her vote for fluid struck me as a little odd - it seems to contain some pre-emptive backpeddling:
I’ve highlighted the phrases I find troubling. What did you mean by “unsettling and eloquent as usual”, Cookies?
As for Kelly’s suggestion that I’m not getting my hands too dirty:
There’s a difference between posting a lot, and posting substantively. I’ve never had a high post-count in Mafia games. That’s mainly because I’m online during UK hours, which has limited overlap with the US. So I often find that I’m reading c.8-10 hours worth of posts, and then responding when no-one’s there to come back at me. So I tend not to get into prolonged conversations with people.
Time-zone whining aside, here’s a suggestion - rather than smudge me with suggestions that I’m coasting, why not go back through my posts and see what kind of contribution they’ve made to the game? It’s much more accurate than just counting posts. Then if you’ve got an actual case you want to make against me, I’ll be happy to respond to it.