NETA: I notice on posting that the numbers in my fourth paragraph implicitly assume 3 Vanillas. With 4 Vanillas, the situation is worse: only a 20% chance for both Doctor and Cop to go untargeted after three Nights.
I’m rethinking the claim-now thing; we should definitely look to leverage the unique vanilla names at some point.
Except that undecided in almost all situations should be prodded hard to make up their minds, anyway. I know I’ve seen a few situations in the past where not lynching was a valid option, even if my brain is refusing to cough them up right at the moment, but that’s not the same thing.
I’m don’t see how. Astral asked about the roles and how many were likely to be in the game. It seems that even if she’d gotten more players, fluid was setting it up so that we wouldn’t be wholly sure what roles were present and what roles were not (the setup post is full of “may be present”), and that’s with maybe 20 or 25 players. There are 14. I don’t expect more than about half the named roles to be in the game. At those odds I’m not sure I’d be comfortable giving a ton of town cred to even the first claimant (might depend a lot on who that player was), and certainly not the second. But with fluid’s “no comment” responses, the whole topic seems pointless (except as a conversation starter).
I think it’s too early to have an enforced partial-mass claim at this point. But the discussion of it is useful. Players should of course claim as they think it benefits us and discussing it may help them decide.
We have numbers on our side, which we need to trade for information. Claims and other information gives us information at the cost of increased risk to power roles. But the whole point of power roles is to improve our lynches (by lynching better or giving more)–we shouldn’t protect our power roles at the cost of bad lynches. On the other hand, risking more bad lynches may be worth giving the power roles more time to work.
In general, the decision to claim needs to be made by the player with the pertinent information. That is, the player themself, not by the group.
If there’s 4 scum, then I think we’ll have the usual complement of power roles. But if there’s only 3, we may have a very limited number. 14 players means 4 scum gives us 3 mislynches, and 3 gives us 4. I’d guess that with the planned larger playgroup, that the moderator went with more scum and more power roles. And it’s safer for the town to assume more scum than less.
Burn the heretic! 
The classic is a mandatory Vig, who’s been discovered by the scum who has a target-changing power.
4 out of 14 is high. 4/16 is standard, as is 3/12…with 14, I’d expect the mod to err on the side of 3, unless the town filled with power roles, and she can’t do that or a mass claim would be game-breaking.
I don’t follow. A vig who can recruit people? I’ve never heard of that role before.
Sorry, I hate it when people use jargon without explanation, so should be more careful myself.
By “mandatory Vig[del]ilante[/del]”, I mean a town player who is required to kill each Night. Used to be a popular role around here, but haven’t seen it lately. Sometimes scum have a role that let’s them change another player’s target. If that scum finds the mandatory Vig, they can choose who the Vig targets each Night. So instead of trying to kill scum, the Vig is essentially forced to be a second scum kill.
Except wouldn’t that be a case for deliberately lynching Town rather than voting for a no-lynch?
Yep. :smack:
Moving on: anyone have experience with small games like this?
I’ve always played in games with 20+ players to start with. One thing that occurs to me is that the Cop (assuming there is one) needs to be a bit quicker to claim than in a bigger game; maybe 2 Townie investigation results instead of the usual 3?
Well, the game that just finished here that I moderated had 16 players. While the powers were set up very different than here which prevents comparison along those lines, I think we can look at the other tactics. Mostly as an exercise of what not to do.
With fewer players, we’re effectively already in the “mid-game” portion of a larger game, but with less information. Not only no voting records yet, but our power roles will not have had a chance to work yet. That means town can’t rest on their butts and expect others to do the work. We need to put our votes and reasons out sooner, so that others can think and respond.
We can’t expect our power roles to have actionable information until Day Three or later. If we haven’t lynched scum by them we’ll be close to needing to lynch scum or lose. We really need to get one lynch right without our power roles claiming.
It’s more important here than in most games not to get caught up in disagreements over tactics. We don’t have enough mislynches to get away with lynching players because we don’t like how they play the game. Please, when placing a vote, explain why you think they are more likely to be scum, and not complaints about their tone or approach.
I completely disagree with this. We can’t approach the game this way. It’s just the wrong way to think, and I have no idea what Pleonast is trying to say.
Vote: Pleonast
just kidding
Unvote: Pleonast
Vote Tom Scud
For the obviously stupid and pro-scum idea of the vanilla claim…and his quick back-off once it was attacked.
One of the attractions of an early claim would be/would have been that it would be pretty risky for scum; sure maybe you’ll luck out and nobody will be the name you picked out of a hat, but why risk it? Once names start flipping from death reveals, claims under pressure et cetera, it becomes less so.
And I love you too, Maha.
Oh, stop. 
Honestly, I’m surprised I’m the only one to vote you so far. I mean, why hold back? It was/is weird reasoning and I’m calling you on it.
Ugh, been holding off on reading the thread until there was something here.
Initial vote: vote Tom Scud for a blatantly anti-town claiming plan, especially with his additional comments about trusting earlier claims and ostensibly not considering the idea of scum cover identities.
Also, special, I’m’a slap you with a trout.
Let’s pretend we already had the drawn-out argument over whether a on-its-face potentially valid plan that is actually pretty scum-favoring is a voteable offense. Since we did. And the latter position caught you in that game. 
I was very close to voting for Tom when I read his very first post (and am not surprised to see votes for it), but then I thought more about it. This is what I see the potential advantage comes from: we create confirmed town who the scum don’t particularly want to kill. Scum are unlikely to make a fake claim of a unique name because they risk a counterclaim. There may not be all that many people in this game, but it seems reasonable to think that some of the names were used for vanilla. I’m not too worried about there being cover roles given to scum, because there are generic vanilla available for use as well that scum can use if we do a name claim. If the scum were told exactly what names were in use, that would probably have been mentioned in the rules.
The downside is narrowing the pool of people the scum have to choose among when going after power roles. We don’t have an exact idea regarding how many Mason-like folks we have to bolster the ranks of confirmed Town, but I did a bit of sweating last game as scum when the confirmed Town pile started stacking up - and it was much easier to deal with in that game, as we didn’t really have to worry about finding power roles. The only thing there is of course the Town didn’t have to worry about the power roles being killed. How much advantage is there to a stack of confirmed town unless you can have it total more than half the number of remaining players? Glasnost’s scum surrender due to a growing confirmed Town pool was predicated largely (in my view) on there being a Vig whose identity the scum had no idea about, but we don’t have one this game that can shoot indiscriminately (if we even have one).
I think it’s not a particularly great idea that could easily have come from scum, particularly if there are 3 and very few town powers, but don’t see it necessarily as such. I see Tom as either one of 3 scum, or a member of a Masonry that wants to potentially leverage their numbers by increasing the number of confirmed Town. I really don’t have a clue which. I view the early voters with a slight amount of suspicion, but recognize that folks are looking at whatever they can for Day 1 votes and that the scum could just be sitting back and relaxing for now.
I haven’t done one of these in a while! It’s time for a classic Astral Rejection infodump. Let’s tackle a couple of things!
If you just want my vote and analysis of players, jump to the clearly marked break.
First off, Tom Scud. I’ve been giving your idea (and the specific way you worded it) some thought, and I don’t find it as suspicious as I originally did. Yeah, your idea won’t necessarily give us any good information, but I see where you’re coming from. Plus (and I could be wrong on this) I think you’re relatively new to mafia on the straight dope, right? We’ve hashed this out a bunch of times before, but I need to get out of the habit of assuming poor ideas are inherently scummy. This goes for everyone - I want you to toss out your ideas, even if they’re half-baked. Talk is always good.
That said, here’s my crazy half-baked idea, built upon a couple of (possibly tenuous?) suppositions:
1: Per the rules, Lion-O (detective), Panthro (doctor), and Wilykat & Wilykit (masons) are all in the game.
2: At least 2 Thundarians are in the game. For the purpose of this hypothetical, we’ll assume 2. This could be wrong, but they’re mentioned in the rules, and given our reduced numbers 2 is more likely than 3. I guess 1 (or 0!) is possible, but then why mention they’re also masons?
3: Of the 4 ancillary town characters (Snarf, Hachiman, Snowman, and Snarfer), at least 1 exists. Two or three is also possible, but I’m starting from a pessimistic angle.
4: Since I’m starting pessimistically, let’s assume all other town players are Ro-Berbils, Wollos, or Bolkens.
5: For a game this size, with two teams of masons and 2 power roles, let’s assume 4 scum.
6: Given this, 6 players are instantly confirmable by mass claim - Lion-O, Panthro, Wilykit, Wilykat, Thundarian 1, Thundarian 2.
7: 8 players would then be unconfirmed, 4 of which are scum.
Given the ratio of confirmable to unconfirmable, if we can make it through today without lynching one of the confirmable, and if scum kill one of the unconfirmables, we as a town are in a fantastic position. We might even want to discuss a mass claim at this point.
I think I’ve done a clear job of laying out what I see as the most likely game state at this point. I’d appreciate if you guys could look it over and point any mistakes I’ve made. Overall, I’m still opposed to the claim toDay, but I think a claim discussion could be meaningful as early as toMorrow. Hope this all makes sense!
THIS IS THE PART WHERE I TALK ABOUT OTHER PLAYERS!
Plan for the worst, always. 4 is a safer guess than 3, and you can be happily surprised if the game ends a scum death sooner than you thought it should.
So very, very, very much agreed. I still can’t believe we lucked out and you were scum in Glasnost mafia.
Can you clarify what makes his idea “obviously stupid” and “pro-scum”? Giraffe’s math would indicate it might give us an excellent day 1 shot at targeting scum. Plus, you misrepresent him; he hasn’t done anything that could be categorized as a “quick back-off.” He reiterates his interest in the plan, suggesting we could use it or a variant of it, a mere 12 posts before your vote:
The funny thing is, you have the beginnings of a solid vote. Tom Scud’s idea was indeed bad, and for a day 1 vote it’s currently as good as anything. You’re approaching it all wrong, however, and that makes me raise my eyebrow at you, sir.
I’m more okay with this vote on Tom Scud. The effects of Tom’s plan can be seen as anti-town. Not considering using town cover was an egregious mistake on his part. See Mahaloth? That’s how easy it woulda been to justify your vote.
However, my vote’s going on Giraffe for now.
His first post, quoted in its entirety above, is pure fluff. He’s not even close to building a case, and he’s already hemming and hawing over how difficult day 1 is. We know. We’re playing the same game. I was reading the thread on my phone earlier today at work, and this post instantly jumped out at me. It feels all kinds of scummy to me.
His second post is quite a bit meatier. He tackles the maths of Tom Scud’s plan and decides that there’s about a 40% chance of lynching scum on day 1. Shit, that’s fantastic! That’s better odds than you see for the vast majority of mafia games. And then he ignores the ramifications of his projections. He says that by Day 3, scum have a substantially increased chance of hitting the doctor and cop. That’s true, but then we always know that the risk goes up as the game goes on. We have a cop so that they can hopefully confirm town or reveal scum. By day 3, they can give us two results. The cop’s investigation targets also get better as the game goes on, because of the shrunken pool. Plus, our lynch gets substantially better-targeted as well. Overall, I’d say his math suggests we’re in a HUGELY better place after a vanilla claim, because we will never lynch power roles (they’d claim), further decreasing the hiding places for scum.
And yet, he says it’s “not without benefit for town,” which is a fancy way to totally downplay any possibly benefits, and suggests we don’t do it. For day 1, this feels like a solid place to leave my vote.
tl;dr version: Mahaloth seems scummy, but Giraffe seems scummier.
Due to holiday plans I will probably not be around until Monday morning, which I just realized is when the Day ends. I’m not happy, but I can’t change it. Have fun and don’t talk too much.