**vote Septimus
**
Having slept on it, I find J. Bravo’s claim more and more convincing. For his to be a scum move, the payoff seems to be too low. It would basically net scum one kill at the most, at the cost of inevitably outing themselves, if not during D1 (if the claim is not believed and claiming scum gets lynched) then definitely during D2 once it turns out that someone was wrongly lynched at the false cop’s behest during D1.
I don’t think there will be a counter-claim. The only candidate for that is Septimus by now but he has been silent so far, the only one not to post during D1 even when everyone’s talking about him. It could be that something happened IRL that keeps him from posting - but then again he’s posted several times today and yesterday. If he did come out of the woodworks now, his claim would not be very believable to say the least. And neither would it be believable on the part of any of the other players, all of whom have posted already since Bravo’s claim, and some of whom have even discussed the possibility of a counter claim. Really, the only way in which a counterclaim could have made some waves in my view would be if it had happened right away.
That said, even if we’re agreed on this there is still one scum among us and we’ll have to be right Tomorrow if we want to win this. I suggest we take a good hard look at the Septimus vote to see where Septimus gets thrown under the bus - noting, of course, that Mosier’s vote is still out. Mosier, you’ve said you’ll vote Septimus unless there’s a counterclaim (post 33). Then you say that you don’t think another scum will claim cop - but you don’t follow through with a Septimus vote. Why not? If there were a claim now from Septimus, how would you evaluate it?
“Why not?” Because the possibility still exists that Johnny is false claiming. As has been pointed out, this is a perfect scenario for a false claim. Scum would be happy to trade one of their members for the cop to out himself today. Let me explain.
Johnny said, This is why I claimed right away, by the way. If I were scum, it would have made more sense for me to wait and see what people thought of Mahaloth’s vote on me. I got really lucky with my investigate, and the only way for us to win is by hitting the scum tonight. I don’t agree with that assessment. Scum claiming cop right away is a very strong scum strategy. Trading 1 for 1 with the cop still leaves town in the terrible position of lynch or lose on day 2, and only a 1 in 4 chance that town will lynch the right person. It’s basically guaranteeing a 75% win chance for scum. In fact, there would have been no other way for scum to guarantee nailing the cop this night, except to false claim this day.
If septimus, or anyone else claims cop, I’ll evaluate the claim based on their explanation for not coming out earlier. I just can’t answer your question definitively yet. Right now, I’m pretty sure that Johnny is telling the truth, but I can’t say I’m certain.
Well I probably wouldn’t have claimed right away if I hadn’t gotten a scum hit. If I’d gotten the scum hit and the doc hadn’t been killed, I think we’d have pretty solid odds.
I think Mahaloth voting during the night was an odd move considering there were several posts about how we weren’t starting during the day. It could have been a conscious effort to “fake bus” a scum by voting for his fellow scummer when the vote didn’t count.
My problem with this theory is that I think if Mahaloth did this on purpose then he cheated, since it would definitely fall under nighttime strategy. I don’t want to accuse Mahaloth of cheating and I don’t think he would do that, anyhow. So after all that, I’m going to go ahead and give Mahaloth a pass on the Johnny Bravo Scumometer.
So that’s 5 votes for Septimus, with **Septimus ** himself not voting. We’re halfway D1, so let’s have a look at the justifications for the Septimus votes.
Johnny Bravo - in terms of justification it’s pretty straightforward, I suppose: his post is his cite. Whether his vote (and most of ours) is justified depends on whether we can believe him. I tend to believe him because I don’t see cop claiming as a viable scum strategy. I don’t want to say there’s no possible pay-off, but I think that it is very risky and the alternative of just waiting it out and see what Town does would seem to bring Scum a similar payoff at a much smaller risk. That, plus there’s no credible counter-claim.
Enderw24 - rolls his dice to determine that **Johnny **is on the up and up and vote for Septimus, in spite of this being a ‘perfect situation to false claim cop’. Subsequent posts address the issue of whether this game setup offers town and scum the same odds, but does not really revisit the issues of whether Johnny’s claim is legit or not, or how likely a scum false cop claim is. So - not a very strong justification all in all.
Mahaloth - I’m not even going to spoiler this one because all it says is ‘neat’. Apparently convinced by Johnny’s reasoning, Mahaloth changes his vote and becomes vote #3. There’s no justification or explanation here, so not much to go on. I agree with Johnny that we probably should not read too much into the night-time vote for Septimus, but all in all Mahaloth’s contributions to this game have not been strong - he’s been a bit trigger-happy, he’s the only one of us to already have three votes in, and none of them particularly well-supported. Again, the night-time vote could just be a slip up but the thought of it being a scum vote accidentally posted in the wrong place did cross my mind* and **Mahaloth **has not very much to make up for his slip-up.
*(the subsequent ‘I’m vanilla town, folks’ kind of undermines that interpretation, but I did check to see if the post had not been edited)
Josef Švejk - guy’s on the up and up. I should note that although my post is kind of structured so that it seems as though Septimus’s absence is mostly an argument for me not anticipating a counter claim, it is of course also an argument for me thinking that **Johnny **is right and **Septimus **is scum.
Mosier - The last to cast his vote for a Septimus lynch. Not sure if I can follow his line of reasoning; first he was going to wait it out to see if there might be a counterclaim, then he thought there would not be a counterclaim, then he goes back to saying that this ‘is a perfect scenario for a false claim’ (but why anticipate no counterclaim then?) which I don’t really find convincing to be honest. Then he says that he’ll “evaluate [a counter-claim] based on [the counter-claimer’s] explanation for not coming out earlier”, but that seems like a cop-out to me. Surely you must have some conception of why that might be (I don’t), if you’re keeping that option open? Anyway, then **Mosier **votes to lynch Septimus after all, but it’s not clear to me really what has changed for him between post #33 when he said he was not ready to vote for Septimus yet.
Perhaps something goes wrong between the points where Mosier says ‘Let me explain’ and my brain - maybe I’m missing something - but at the moment I don’t find this a very strong justification for joining the bandwagon and casting vote #5.
Once you start looking for it, you see scum everywhere. Right now I’m in a place where I think every vote for **Septimus **other than mine is scum throwing him under the bus. I’m going to sleep on this, and I’d love to hear all of your thoughts on this in the morning. I should note that I’ll be around for a few more hours but not until much later than about 6PM EST because I have an early start and a busy day tomorrow. I’ll try and check beck in before EOD but I won’t be around too much tomorrow.
You are misunderstanding my reasoning. Scum claiming cop right out of the gate is a good strategy. Scum counter-claiming now is not a good strategy. Would you like me to explain my reasoning again?
I might be misunderstanding your reasoning, but it’s certainly not because I’m mixing up false scum claim and false scum counter-claim. Your contention is that scum claiming cop is a good strategy, but I’m not so sure of that - to me it seems like the risk would be too high and the pay-off would be too low.
You clearly think differently, and perhaps that’s because you attach greater importance to the cop role than me, I don’t know. In any case, that is where I’m not sure I follow your line of reasoning.
In addition, like I said, I’m not sure I understand what changed for you between post 33 where you’re reluctant to vote Septimus, and post 42 where you end up voting for him anyway. If you haven’t changed your mind about how likely it is for Johnny Bravo to be scum falsely claiming to be town cop, about how strong of a scum strategy that is, then why the vote?
This is where we disagree. There is no risk, and a guaranteed payoff for claiming cop. Consider the following:
Scum claim cop. There are two possible results, either
the real cop doesn’t counter the claim, and a mislynch results (scum win) or
the real cop counter-claims, town nails scum, and scum kills the cop that night. In this scenario, if we assume equal skill from town and scum, day 2 starts in a “lynch or lose” situation, with only a 1 in 4 chance of lynching.
Now consider what happens if scum do NOT claim cop. Either
A) the real cop claims, town nails scum, cop dies in the night, see 2) above, or
B) nobody claims, cop remains hidden, town have a good chance to nail scum in the lynch (2 out of 5 randomly, but in reality with better odds since the real cop is voting with more information than random). Scum probably don’t kill the cop in night 2, and the town gets two full days of voting with an advantage due to information from the cop.
The way I see it, scum had the best chance to win by claiming cop on day one. It took awhile for me to come to this conclusion, but who’s to say scum can’t think faster than I can? That’s why I was waiting for a counter claim on day 1, not because I thought scum might do it, but because the real cop might. Since there has been no counter claim, I’m inclined to believe scum just didn’t think of the false-claim cop strategy, and Johnny is the real cop.
If our cop could have survived night 2, I think town would have a better chance of winning than scum would. Johnny literally made the worst possible move by outing himself immediately, in my opinion. It guarantees scum a 75% win chance.
What changed was time. I figured that if Johnny were scum, the real cop would come out very soon after the false claim. The real cop would have known we can’t afford even one mislynch (so of course, he would HAVE to come out before the end of the day), and wouldn’t have let us waste a whole real life day chasing a red herring.
I disagree. First, this is as open a setup as you can get. We’re at 4 Town and 2 Scum on Day 1. If we don’t lynch scum toDay, we’re down to 3-2. By Day 2, we’re at 2-2. Ties result in no lynch which means both scum can literally say “I’m scum and I vote for X” and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. By Night, we’re down to 1-2 and a scum win.
There is no doctor and thus there is no prevention. If we do not kill scum today, we lose. Period.
Now, are you asking whether maybe Johnny could have kept quiet in the hopes we’d swing Septimus anyway? Sure. But that risks a scum false claim which immediately puts Johnny into the position of coming in second hoping to convince everyone who’d already voted for X to change their vote to Septimus. That’s an uphill battle.
Sure, 50% of the time a false claim is coming from the OTHER scum and then we have both dead to rights. But that’s assuming we believe Johnny up front after another claim is on the table. The other 50% of the time we’re in the position described in the paragraph above which makes it even harder for Town to win than just coming out and claiming right away.
It was only the worst possible move if scum ended up getting lynched without my input. I could have tried to steer things towards Septimus, but he and the other scum would have been steering away from him. The doc getting killed on Night 1 meant that we have to lynch perfectly two days in a row. No exceptions, no wiggle room. I had to claim immediately or risk a false claim obfuscating mine.
I also had to take into account the very short days - there wasn’t much waiting that I could have done.
No, I think my move was solid. It’s only a bad move if you think that a lynch of Septimus could have been otherwise guaranteed, and I don’t think it could have been. Not by a long shot.
I see your point now, and I think that debating is kind of useless right now since it seems that at this point **Johnny **being a cop is a no-brainer. That said, the reason I’m not sure I agree is that a false claim basically means that the first two day kills are going to be 1 Town, 1 Scum. I mean, if **Johnny **were in fact scum and we’d be misslynching poor **Septimus **for whatever reason, then **Johnny **would be getting the axe Tomorrow. Or someone immediately counterclaims and ends up being more believable, and Scum lose their false claimer right on Day 1. So that means that the best possible result that a false claim can produce for Scum by Day 2 is a Town 3- Scum 1 situation.
Now I realize you might see this as an outside possibility, but if Scum just sit back and let town do their thing, they might get lucky if the cop is unlucky, and before you know it you’d be looking at two miss-lynches, and then you have game over by EoD2. Odds are that Town would get at least one kill in, but that puts the scenario with no false cop claim at least on par with the false cop claim strategy. The chances that Town would misslynch twice and that the game is basically over by the end of Day 2 might be small, but the chances that we’d get so lucky that we’d identify both Scum by the end of Day two are even smaller.
All in all, no false claim is a better strategy for scum because it entails a higher probability that both scum are still alive at the end of Day 2.
Looking at my previous point, again I don’t agree that what **Johnny **did was so bad - the alternative might have been a miss-lynch today, a night-kill, and then you’re looking at a 2-2 tie. And even if you don’t miss-lynch (1 in 3 chance) than you still have to hope that the cop is lucky again during Night 2 in picking the one Scum out of four remaining players (1 in 4 chance). Those are chances that **Johnny **could not take - I think he did the only right thing especially given that we lost our doctor.
So now that that’s settled (or at least as settled as it’s gonna’ get…) can we get back to scum hunting?
In my opinion, Švejk seems the dirtiest candidate for lynch tomorrow. He has never wasted an opportunity to steer the discussion away from anything productive, and spent a day hounding me for my late vote, when it came literally the next post after his own late vote. In post #44 he makes an oh-so-helpful summary that does absolutely nothing except cast suspicion on everyone, apparently in the hope that something,* anything*, sticks.
a way to cut Days/Nights short if/when applicable, in order to move things along
for example:
during the Night, once all night actions have been received and the scum has indicated that their decision is made, Night ends - rather than waiting the full 24 hours.
during the Day, if all living players have placed explicit and valid votes, the Day ends
(we could also put a 24 hour minimum on Days, with the hammer only taking effect after that)
So thinking through the game setup, I find it really intruiging from a mathematical perspective. Without a single post by any player, I could, if I wanted to, solve the likelihood of either side winning either before the game or after night one.
So mathematically it’s really kind of cool.
Playing? Well…it’s been a neat experiment. But most everything’s been out of the player’s control.