So what’s the plan. Ostracize first and if we don’t like that, try an execution?
Despite my warnings that we are making assumptions and don’t really know the risk/benefit of an Ostracization. I’m willing to attempt the Ostracization to see if we can get a better idea.
And, before someone says I’m contradicting myself, I’m willing to try it to find out. I still can’t be sure we’ll find out anything or that it will do anything that some people are expecting.
I think you might be missing their/our point as well.
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We/I suspect that we might possibly learn what ostracizing does, if anything other than kicking from the game 2 days(small d) later and allowing night action.
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We/I don’t trust anyone, obviously. However, if the possible secret parts of ostracization are significant enough to affect the town negatively, they will become visible.
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Having been reading along as we go and re-reading some today, I actually think most people’s minds are pretty open. I know mine is, anyway.
Basically, yes. I mean, that’s how I see it for now, anyway.
I was thinking of someone who could remove the seed of sin. it strikes me as a useful doctor-ish role and i’d imagine it’s in here somewhere. no idea if it would need consent though; from a lore standpoint either would make sense (the priest casting out the demon v the priest needing to work with a penitent heart).
So, Night is coming and the votes are scattered. This is very bad for the town, as any competent collection of scum can protect themselves if the vote leader only has four votes. If you’re currently the only one voting for someone, now is the time to start considering whether you want to switch to someone who might actually be cast out. In that vein:
unvote special ed
vote O spurious george
I’m still more suspicious of special ed than george, especially since ed was contributing to the derailing of the discussion today, which effectively forces a choice between **angel **and george.
derailing discussion? forcing a choice between george and angel?
Because I brought a topic up you’re going to accuse me of derailing discussion?. If you’re going to accuse me of something, please back it up.
Show me what discussion was occurring and how I contributed to derailing it.
I’ve voted for someone and made a case. Too many people are throwing votes on spurious without so much as even a comment as to why they are voting for him. Don’t blame me that no one bought into your case. And don’t blame me for the fact that you just voted for someone without stating a reason.
What is your reason for voting him? So that the Scum can’t swoop in and move the vote to someone else? Personally, I’d love to see a last minute vote charge led by Scum.
And, it’s probably part OMGUS, but you’re pinging me now, so I’m going to actually do some research instead of just making assumptions and running on at the mouth.
Posts by **Telcontar **since the fame began.
Post 126
a link to a sparksnotes on Scarlet Letter. He lists 5 names and their potential alignment and/or roles.
This strikes me as general game setup discussion. Though I’d caution allowing the color to influence how we might look at roles, epspecially coming from pede
Post 144This is some discussion of Chronos’ early plan
Post 151
Questions me if voting on principle is worth it.
I obviously thought it was worth it to vote for the only anti-Town and potentially pro-Scum behavior I’d seen so far.
I think we were all feeling this way at the time
Post 198
Questioning **meeko **as to why **meeko **thought **Chronos **might be a power role. He also asks if anyone knows of Chronos’ experience
Post 207
Votes Nanook for bandwagoning.
Post 220
**Telcontar **says he’d go along with Chronos’ plan for a day since it’s anti-Scum at that point (I think we’d dismissed the plan at that point and he was being snarky, so this is just humor) **Telcontar **says he didn’t vote for **Spurious **because he didn’t take Spurious’ comment seriously. He then criticizes **Thing Fish **for voting for AngeloftheNorth.
He’s consistent on thinking votes for **Angel **are bad. But he’s stating very clearly here that he finds the case against **Spurious **weak.
Post 221
Speaks out against LtL. He defends Spurious’ use of execute (which is the reason others are voting for him.) He quotes Spurious’ reason for voting execute “I took ped’s statement to imply that Ostracization was an inferior and unreliable way of eliminating someone. Executing has its dangers, but it works.”
Post 258
He asks me this, “This is mafia, not the f-ing common law. do you honestly think that angel’s color change was part of a scum plot to legitimize editing, or is this just your way of trying to ensure that our first kill is someone not-you?”
Angel’s actions are still the only I had seen that could be explained by pro_scum motivations.
Post 277
He unvotes “of the North” (I think he meant **Nanook **and not Angel. How odd are their names?) Then he votes for me. He accuses me of having a grudge and being out to get Angel.
*Assuming **Telcontar *is Town, here’s where I think his understanding of mafia falls down. He thinks Scum will go out and target someone for lynching. He assumes because I found a reason to vote that he doesn’t agree with, that I must be Scum and can’t be Town. He also accuses me of having a grudge, but doesn’t demonstrate how I have a grudge. So far, I’ve voted for someone and then defended that vote. I don’t think that’s a grudge, I think that’s making a case.
Post 295
In response to me asking for people to make cases, He says, “Well obviously i think you’re the most suspicious. Your case is weak and your arguments fairly nonsensical. I think that means that you just want blood and don’t care whether what looks like a scum tell on the surface is actually a scum tell.”
Fair enough. That’s his case. I still disagree as all I’ve done is vote for the most Anti-town thing I’d seen.
Post 364
He responds to paul’s comments about how Ostracizing might not be what’s been assumed so far. He says he’s not worried and that we’ll find out toMorrow.
Post 378
He accuses me of scaremongering and accuses me of coming up with bad interpretations of the Osctracization mechanic.
What I find interesting here, is that it seems as if he’s trying to stifle any discussion of what Ostracizing might actually mean. That’s interesting since he’s about to accuse me of the same thing. I"m just throwing up ideas and cautioning that we keep an open mind. I’m also pointing out the assumptions Town has been using which aren’t based on anything I’ve read in the rules or in pede’s comments.
NETA, since the game began, not fame.
Also, I’ve tried to summarize his posts (but I’ve included links so you can double check)
I’ve also included my comments in italics afterwards.
AND, I hit submit instead of preview before finishing with the last post. Here it is:
Post 384
He unvotes me and votes for Spurious. He gives the reason that he doesn’t want to votes scattered. He accuses me of forcing a choice between **Spurious **and **Angel **by derailing discussion.
*At this point, he’s voting for someone he said he didn’t find Scummy at all. Not only that, he’s trying to blame me for the vote! Somehow, I’ve managed to hijack the thread and cause everyone to choose between Spurious and Angel. This, despite the fact that I’ve maintained that I voted for and have held my vote on the person I felt had the most Anti-Town action. What he’s done is misrepresent me. Accuse me of derailing discussion and of forcing everyone to vote between 2 people. Then he’s voted for someone he didn’t find Scummy previously, and he’s not given a reason for the vote. In fact, instead of taking responsibility for his vote, he’s tried to lay the blame for that vote on someone else.
*
So, I guess my basic conclusion about Telcontar is that he very well could be Town who’s not playing in a very pro-town fashion. I think he might be disappointed that his case against me didn’t gain any traction. I also think because he doesn’t like my case, he’s gotten some tunnel vision. He’s concluded that I’m Scum and is looking for reasons to back that case up.
He also may be scared of being wrong about Spurious so he’s looking to put the responsibility for that vote on someone else. This isn’t uncommon in mafia players, but it’s not beneficial.
It’s possible that he’s Scum, however, and either
[ol]
[li]He was trying to keep the heat and attention off of Spurious but has finally given up and decided to bus him for Townie Cred[/li][li]He was trying to keep the heat off of Angel, and decided the best way to protect her is to vote for Spurious[/li][li]He was relishing in the fact that the votes were headed towards Angle and Spurious and just sowing discord.[/li][/ol]
You seem to be making a HUGE assumption that Pedescribe intends for this game to be Town Vs. Sinners Vs. Blackhearts. What if he is intending for the town to either join the sinners or die? And at that point the game would be Sinners vs. Blackhearts… in that situation the game would become a simple town vs. scum game.
I’m not scaremongering. I’m being careful about the decisions I make when so few of the rules and mechanics are known to us. I’m sorry if intelligent thought frightens you. There are any number of possible things that can happen from someone being ostracized. I find it very odd that the execution is laid out so plainly with the repercussion of it… but the ostracization is not.
Look at it this way… maybe this is intended to be a turn sinner and fight the blackhearts or die game… Wouldn’t it make sense to have a lynch option that removes the player from the game (intended for disposing of blackhearts) and “rewards” a player with a seed of sin? And the other lynch option being to remove someone from town… but that they “can ignore it”… you don’t know what that means… if it is a way to be recruited to the sinners, then it would make the game more oriented to Sinners Vs. Blackhearts. With town being the idiots getting in the way.
You all are looking at the Sinners like they are a bad thing. In all actuality they are just masons with a different wincon that can recruit from town.
That is all assuming that it isn’t a true three faction game. I could be wrong. But bringing up the possibility for discussion is not the bad thing you seem to imply it is.
Upon rereading this before I post, I realize that it makes it sound like I am a Sinner trying to sway Town to my cause. This could not be further from the truth. I am town through and through 
Are you kidding? That’s almost as bad as the cop claiming and someone saying “Whoever the doc is, don’t protect the cop tonight… if he is truly the cop we’ll find out Tomorrow morning.” I know that’s reaching a little… but both situation benefit someone other than town. And both situations the person is basically saying “why worry about it… lets just sit back and watch what bad things may or may not happen.”
There’s a big hole in your “sinners vs. blackhearts” theory, paul. Tonight, a townie is almost certainly going to die, and they won’t win with the sinners.
Doesn’t this assume Power Roles, TOWN power roles, might I add, that we haven’t seen yet?
:dubious: The problem here, is that if Paul is a power role, it is a step harder to find out, if Paul is a detective-esque power role.
I don’t see the connection between the two situations at all, and sometimes “wait and see” really is all we can do. What’s the alternative, find out right now? How?
On another note, I’ve finally finished the post number/content count I’ve been planning on since the start of the Day. Starting when pedescribe announced Day 1 (since that seems to have been when role PMs were sent out), I classified each post as “signal” or “noise”, and tallied for each player. This was necessarily subjective, of course, and others might come to slightly different counts. A post was considered “signal” if it contained a vote, a question to the mod, discussion of general strategies, discussion of actions of other posters, or other material relevant to the game. A post was considered “noise” if it did not contain any material relevant to the game. A high amount of noise, or a low ratio of signal to noise, is a bad sign, since it may indicate a Scum trying to hide in plain sight: Escape being labeled a lurker, while still not providing any actual information to help the Town. Totals are up through post #390
Player Signal Noise
Joey P 17 5
BillMC 1 2
Spurious George 7 1
Mahaloth 26 5
special ed 36 6
Freudian Slit 9
Sir Dirx 2
Meeko 29 20
Justin Credible 3
Chronos 13 5
Thing Fish 9 3
AllWalker 11
Idle Thoughts 3
AngeloftheNorth 18 1
Telcontar 14
Nanook 1
Captain Pinkies 2 3
paulwhoisaghost 5 2
Rysto 4 1
Bear_Nenno 1
I have not combined the totals for players who have subbed out, since players might have different ways of handling the same role: One scum player might favor lurking, while another does not, for instance. BillMC and Captain Pinkies are notable for having signal to noise ratios of less than 1, both with very low participation overall, and Meeko, who has the most posts by a fair margin, has an SNR of less than 1.5
This is true, we must wait and see. But that doesn’t preclude talking about the possibilities whilst we wait and see.
I applaud the effort, but I’m not sure this holds much meaning.
No, I take that back, it does hold meaning, but it’s also very easy to trick a system this simple.
All a non-Town player must do is post a lot of talk about things already being talked, discuss general game strategy, vote, etc…without really taking a stance one way or another.
For example, you’ve listed Spurious as having a ratio of 7 content posts to 1 non-content post.
His 7 content posts include:
- pointing out an error in the vote count
- A question about who gets the seed of sin in a specific scenario
- A recap of his behavior after Thing Fish pointed out the votes for Spurious were spurious
- A comment that his joke didn’t go over well
- His thoughts on Ostracization
- The joke which didn’t go over well
- A vote solely because it was a bandwagon
and his non-content post was his introduction
That’s not really a good signal to noise ration in my book, but by Chronos’ calculation, it’s a fantastic job. Much better than mine, despite the fact that I’ve been participating my ass off here and taking heat for it.
IMHO, I think it’s much better to look at a person’s entire body of work, as I did with Telcontar, and then decide if they are participating. I fear that Town may fall into the trap of 'taking the easy way out" and just trying to go by memory and what’s happened recently without doing any real leg work. Counting posts is no substitute for actually reading and commenting on those posts. If we’re taking shortcuts on this journey, our final destination will be a Scum victory.
The case against** spurious** is weak, but the case against angel is weaker. Scattered voting is anti town so I was forced to make the best of a bad choice. Honestly I’d be almost as happy ostracizing an entirely random player; the odds are only slightly better this way.
To everyone else:
Make your choices. I think there’s a minimum of 3 mafia and 2 sinners, probably more. The odds of hitting scum if the winning vote total is in the 4-5 range are almost nil.
Oh, one addition:
Paranoia is not pro town. Just because it’s possible to twist a series of posts into a case against a player doesn’t mean it is remotely helpful to do so. I think we’ve had a remarkably low signal to noise ratio thus far because we’ve been focusing on fairly trivial happenings.
Back to O vs E…
I fall into the camp of people who interpreted ped’s comment as an ostracized player may use their Night powers, depending on the power. If they could literally ignore the outcome, as in still participate in voting/discussion,
a) that wouldn’t make sense. Not from a lore point of view, anyway.
b) it makes executing useless. Think about it - we are told the player’s alignment on ostracizing, so if they turn out to be scum, we know they are scum. Known scum cannot sway discussion
c) if ostracizing changes win conditions for that player, who cares? What would they be able to do?
d) ostracizing and hanging around would be seen as antiTown, even if there was any uncertainty
Let’s not overcomplicate things - execution destroys Power role, but potentially spreads Sin. This has its pros and cons. It is possible their is more to it than that, but, froma game mechanics point of view, there doesn’t need to be.
Just a quick Saturday night check-in. This seems like the weirdest thing posted today:
(votes bleached, bolding mine)
Sooo…“the votes are scattered” (**George **led **Angel **7-3 at the time he made that post), yet at the same time a choice between only two players has been “forced”? That makes no sense. And then a gratuitous smudge implying that this situation is somehow all ed’s fault? Very curious.
There’s a tradeoff that has to be made, of course. Certainly, that analysis did lose a lot of information, but to keep all of the information would mean taking 7 pages. I chose what I thought was the best tradeoff between keeping the information manageable and keeping it accurate. I am also separately keeping track of what I consider to be significant events, such as the start/end of the Days and votes. One can also do a detailed analysis of an individual’s contributions, but I’m leery of doing that, since I suspect that if I tried, confirmation biases would come in, and I’d only end up noticing the things that supported the hunch I already had about a player. A simple, quantitative count is free from that bias. And I certainly can’t do a detailed analysis of all players, since that’d just be information overload.
My hope is that my signal-noise analysis can serve as a starting point, primarily for myself but also for anyone else who can benefit from it. It gives an idea of which posters to consider more closely.
Problem I have with signal to noise ratios… often the players with the most content posts also have the most fluff. I usually fall into this category… right now this is shown in Meeko. So what if his signal to noise ratio sucks… he has 29 content posts… who are you to say he can’t joke around? This is a game… I’m here to have fun, aren’t you? As long as he is contributing to the game I see no problem with him also making posts that lighten the mood a little.
Another issue is that often people group their content posts into one post that covers multiple topics… I do that a lot in games that I can’t constantly check on. So I may cover 5 topics in one post that another player may have covered in 5 separate posts… that doesn’t mean they are playing more town or are better players… but your numbers would show it that way.