If we don’t analyze, we’re just lynching randomly and will get killed off one-by-one. Or, well, three-by-three. There’s a tricky strategy to it, though, because if you analyze too well and become too much of an asset, you become a target. If you don’t analyze or you offer up completely bogus suggestions, then you might be scum.
You can’t go hog wild in either direction, essentially.
Dang. Happiness that someone actually noticed and remembered one of my posts: 12 pts. Unease that someone called attention to one of my posts: 18 pts.
Did Chrisk honestly admire my idea? And has s/he drawn danger down on her/himself as a result? (Ooops. Sorry!) Or is s/he a sneaky scum trying to make others make mistakes, and incidentally painting a target on my back? 
I still think the idea might work – but that was under the old game’s rules: only one seer, and he always got true info. (Except for the Alpha Wolf exception.)
But now we have (possibly) multiple cops and some/most of them will be getting wrong info… it makes my head ache just trying to figure out how to extract info from random claims in the circumstances.
Now, I have a theory of my own: mafiosi are more likely to eat food with garlic than vanilla townsfolks. So don’t mind me if I seem to be getting real up close and persona: it’s not a come on, I’m just sniffing your breathe. 
I think, as you point out, that people learned from last game some of the strategies that can be employed, specifically lurking vs. standing out. All things being equal (though they’re not), I’d rather say more because it makes the game more fun. Sure, I could probably sit back and say little and hope to escape the noose and the gun for the next couple of days, but what’s the point of that. Also, because we have the no lurking rule, if you’re only going to say a little bit and you say something that makes you look suspicious (either as a mafia or as a townie), you have less opportunity to push suspicion away from yourself.
That said, I hope I’m adding some valuable incite to the discussions, especially since it looks like we’re going to have a harder time pinning the mafia this time considering the enormous amount of luck that befell the town in the last game by getting the alpha-wolf in the very first lynching. Also, by posting more, it let’s other people determine for themselves whether or not I’m trustworthy AND it encourages them to post which allows me to gauge their trustworthiness.
Granted, a good mafia player will likely have a similar strategy, except with their added knowledge, they will be trying to not only steer suspicion from themselves, but try to cast it from their comrades as well. Thus, that is why I like the “trust vs. mistrust” idea, because we ought to be able to justify all the people on our lists, and if I see another individual who has too many people I don’t trust on their trust list, I’m going to be very suspicious of them.
The bottom line is, as it appears to me, the mafia will be normally be reactionary, because they’re just trying to dispell their own suspicion, or they’ll jump on bandwagons to look like the crowd.
Basically, it’s a cost/benefit analysis; talk a lot to try to gain the trust of your allies, but risk gaining suspicion, or lay low and give no indications that you can be trusted or not. Clearly, because there’s less risk for your average town folk and more for your mafia as the gaining of suspicion is much more dangerous since there’s comparatively so few of them, I’m going to tend to trust people who speak more than those who don’t UNLESS they foolish tip their hands, like it seems a couple have.
Similarly, I’m going to guess the mafia realize this, and will only kill loud townies that have foolishly tipped their hands toward a special role, otherwise, they’ll probably stick to the quieter ones at first who may be key roles hoping to lay low for a while and gain information before saying much.
Ok, I’ve decided to take over for dnooman on the spreadsheet, under the theory that if the Mafia doesn’t want us to have this information, we should definitely be tracking it. Here’s the spreadsheet:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p3HS8nygukL1Aa4mFhZWjdQ
First off, you’ll see in the top left corner, it says “As of #336”. This means that when I last updated it, post #336 was the most recent post in this topic. On the vertical are all voters, and on the horizontal are the votees(that is, players who were voted for). At the intersection of the two will be a list of all days that the voter voted for the votee.
For example, if you go across from Enfant Terrible to the Autolycus column, there is a 1. That indicates that Enfant Terrible voted for Autolycus on Day 1. This will stay there even if Enfant Terrible unvotes Autolycus today. If Enfant Terrible subsequently votes for dnooman on Day 1, then a 1 will appear in both the Autolycus column and the dnooman column, indicating that at some point on Day 1 he voted for them.
I’m also tracking the order in which votes are placed:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcgggqmr_1gkm9gc
That will list all votes(and unvotes) in chronological order. It also gives a count of the number of times the voter has voted and the number of times the votee has been voted for. Finally, I give a quick summary of the voter’s stated reason for voting for that player.
My head hurts.
Honestly, there’s just way too much going on here for a guy to read at work. I’m going to go home, have a beer, and reread the thread.
Even though it had a slight backfire at first, because of that, it looks like he’s gained a degree of trust because of the extra attention it brought him. Why would a mafia be inclined to draw that sort of attention. Even though he said he’d back off, I’d encourage him to keep going. I can’t see the mafia killing him for fingering someone as a vanilla townie; I’m more interested in seeing what will happen if he fingers someone as a mafia or some other role.
As far as I’m concerned, I can’t see myself voting to lynch him today. But I might grow suspicious if he doesn’t continue, or keeps pointing out vanilla townies or whatever. There’s at least two or three other people of whom I’m far more suspicious. However, I’m not prepared to start throwing around votes, and unvoting, because it makes it difficult to keep track later.
That said, NAF, when you do post vote updates (I’m not requesting one now), is it possible that you can also show the names of the people who voted for each vote getter? Thanks
Hey, I’m not a bad guy! If you’re going to point at me at least do it for a good reason, like a random number generator…
–FCOD
Kudos to Rysto! It looks like it’s a bit too much information to parse at this point, but it will definitely be a good read at night. I also suppose that makes my request of NAF obselete at this point.
I’ve been thinking about this, though, and it seems like the way around it is for everyone to post as much analysis as they can generate. This keeps the Mafia from targeting the people who do a lot of analysis, because no one stands out in that way.
Plus, it gets the Mafia talking, too, because they’ll have to do it to blend in. The more they do that, the better chance they will slip up and say something inconsistent, or false, or what have you.
I am strangely turned on by that post. :o 
Wow is this thread kickin’! My head is spinning trying to read all of it at the moment.
Autolycus is raising my eyebrows. He is intentionally associating his posts with stereotypical mafia "language '. I don’t believe a true mafia member would be so blatant. Unless it’s a reverse psychology thing where he is using that to fool us. Although I get the impression that he likes attention drawn to himself, regardless of role or reason. Regardless of his true role, by talking almost exclusively in mafia tones it will make it difficult to for us to really decipher anything useful from his posts.
Regarding the veteran players being killed the first night, I believe the best justification for that so far is that it would suck if you weren’t in the last game and then don’t even get to see the light of day in this thread. As far as revenge killings leftover from the last game, I can’t rule it out but it really isn’t in the spirit of the game. Werewolf is over, it’s Mafia now. Plus, some mafia members are probably new players, and I’m sure not every single person who didn’t play last time was rabid with following it. (I know, some were very involved with following the previous game in the forbidden thread.) YMMV, of course.
Rysto, you counted my vote for sturmhauke wrong, putting it in someone else’s row. Good sheet though. Very helpful.
As for my vote, I concede that it’s not a *great *reason, but I don’t want to do the random thing so I’ll stick to this until someone gives me a better one. I’m voting at all because I agree with the theory that voting, not mere accusations, is what yields useful data and because scum are more apt to give themselves away when the pressure is on them.
The problem is, he’s already drawn the suspicion. I’m curious to see his self-defense, especially as he is the current high vote getter.
This was a point I made earlier. Thus I suspect that’s the reason for the VIG and SK kills last night; I’m not convinced it’s why the mafia made their pick. dnooman was a werewolf last time and did a good job of picking out the townie roles. It’s clearly in the mafia’s favor, especially when it’s random, to kill experience or incite, because it’s just as likely as those people are special roles as it is anyone else, so this way you guarantee a higher loss to the town.
I would not be the least bit surprised if another experienced townie bites the dust tonight on the part of the mafia; I WILL be surprised if more than one bites the dust, because then it would seem the SK and VIG aren’t acting in the best interest of the town.
Sure can.
Are you talking about the whole bandwagon voting and later analysis of known mafia and who voted for them? I still feel like a vote at this point is a little bit too random to be useful data, especially with so many random early votes. I’ll probably give it another RL day or so before I think I have enough information on which to vote.
My post was one of the first when the day started. There was nothing to analyze at that time. If you read the first thread, you saw that acting that defensive on a random vote is pretty suspicious.
I’m also a bit suspicious of Enfant Terrible to cast the third vote this early on (for Autolycus), along with what Storyteller said about him.
Well, at least I got my only prediction right. So, I’ve got that going for me.
I’ll be more productive at work at least, and I have much less typing and rereading to do, so I guess it’s not that bad. Besides, this version is just a bit too complex for my tastes, it makes my brain hurt trying to figure out all the possible scenarios.
Since I’m only allowed this one post, I might as well make it count.
I think that the person(s) responsible for my death was:
(in order of increasing likelihood)
Making a random kill
Afraid of my awesome skillz playing this sort of game
Afraid of the spreadsheet I said I was going to create
Killing me to give others a turn to play
Killing me to avenge something from the other game
Killing me because of my tendency to be an a-hole at times
If dead people could bet, I would bet that the idea to kill me came from a person who posted in either of the two Wolf threads. So, that narrows it down to… most of the remaining players.
Rysto’s spreadsheet is almost identical to the one I created for the last game. I had total votes for each person listed under their column, and total votes cast by each person at the end of their row. When someone was lynched I colored their column and row blue, when someone was eaten I colored their column and row red.
I hope my death leads to finding one of the scum at least. Goodbye, and GO TOWN!
I have no fear of being pegged as scum. Lynch me, lynch a vanilla townie. It happens. I’d prefer it not happen, but then, that’s the point of the game.
I’m actually going with my own strategy, which, until I can find a better way to play, seems to be the easiest way to play Townie. Always tell the truth. Full disclosure. If I reach the status of confirmed townie and stick around long enough, hopefully I can actually help with the whole ‘deducing the scum’ part later, but for now all I can do is hope the guys with the guns stay away from me and continue playing Honest John.
I acknowledge that there’s no way for me to really prove I’m a townie unless the detective starts laying breadcrumbs that I’m innocent. That would be a blunder greater than getting involved in a land war in Asia, so I’m perfectly content to lay out the truth and hope for the best.
Man, this thread is moving fast.
Based on a quick once-over, Smitty caught my attention with his comment about Enfant Terrible casting the 3rd vote for Autolycus. Didn’t JSexton say in the the previous game that that tell really only works if the players aren’t aware of it? I know Enfant Terrible read at least part of the Werewolf game, cuz he (she?) posted to it. So, is this a case of a Mafia member waiting to pounce on the first third-vote-caster?
I’m talking about the fact that some scum will crack if put under pressure. Become overly defensive. Make obvious lies. That sort of thing. Not everyone is a good liar, even over the Internet.
He. I love the ladies, sports, and romantic comedies.
Wait. Did I type that last part out loud?