Werewolf a game Part 2 (this time with MAFIA!)

The Game Room
3701

I did not acount for this. Somehow I missed that Pleonast was going to switch his vote to Pygmy. I was thinking along similar lines, that if Pygmy was mafia that someone would jump and try to lynch me. I was thinking more along the lines that if someone jumped from Pygmy that Pygmy was mafia. I somehow did not make the logical connection that the jumper might be mafia. I like to imagine that I would have made the connection once it happened.

I guess that would make it a pretty smart move by the mafia for not attempting to finialize my lynch. If anyone jumped away from pygmy, pleonast and me might have very well switched. I did say that I wasn’t going to be able to post until the lynching, but maybe they did not believe me. Maybe they were afraid of Pleonast switching. Who knows anything anymore?

I don’t know if Pleonast was serious or not, or if he intended it this way, but that threat might have prevented the mafia from killing me last night.

3702

The bitch about this whole situation is that I’m the one who came up with the theory. If it had been someone more trusted, I think the rest of the town would be more likely to at least consider it.

In both cases where my theory didn’t work out, I was mafia. So, I propose that (ideally) we lynch Fretful Porpentine or Lakai. If we can’t, as a town, lynch them - then lynch me. I’ll be fine going to the noose under the condition that the town lynch Fretful Porpentine and Lakai if I come up town.

We have one free mistake to make. If I get lynched, that’s the one mistake. But, if that’s what it takes to get everyone to see that I am trying to do what’s best for the town, then so be it. I still win if the town wins, right?

3703

Read my post again. If anyone were to switch from Pygmy to me, then Pleonast and I could have switched toward Pygmy. The threat of that alone was enough for the mafia to risk lynching their own.

3704

Who isn’t considering it? You asked for holes and holes have been shown and now you are calling it “a bitch of a situation”? Relax, step away from the keyboard.

What I, and I think others, don’t get is your sensitivity and your vote switching. You have not come up with a reasonable explanation as to you why you switched the vote inside one hour.

Consider it from an outside point of view:

It makes sense, sort of, that the mafia wouldn’t want to vote one of their own correct?

Therefore it looks somewhat suspicious that someone changed a vote from a mafia member to someone else within 10 minutes of a countdown starting. Then that same person was almost frothing at the mouth indignant about the votes for that mafia member, and begged/pleaded/appealed to authority to try to save said mafia member.

And we are just suppose to say “oh thats just brewha?” And now buy yet another theory that has proven to not be as complete as you claim it to be? How are we suppose to know if this theory of yours is a good one? Or just more of the same from you?

That being said, I am going to go ahead and do this:

Lynch Fretful Porpentine.

I see 4 people I am not sure of. We may have 2 or 3 mafia left. That is either a 1/2 chance or a 3/4 chance that even random guessing will be correct. I think we have more on Fretful then just random guessing. So I suppose I see no reason not to throw a vote onto him.

Tomorrow I think we should lynch either Lakai or brewha.

I bet the mafia kills storyteller tonight.

3705

I admit that that is a legitimate hole in my theory. If you are town and one of the SBS, Queuing,Kat, or Storyteller are mafia, they could have switched at the last minute hoping that it would be too late for Pleonast to switch his vote. If he did have time, then Pymgy Rugger still gets lynched and the move is wasted. If Pleonast didn’t have time, then Lakai gets lynched and the switcher looks suspicious.

I have two problems with this theory. First, it would mean that at least one mafia member started the day by voting for one of their own. Maybe this was done to defer suspicion, but it wouldn’t be suspicious if they just waited to vote instead of leaving their vote on PR. The second problem is that if they had switched and the lynch gone through, they would have taken out a townie during the day, then been able to take out anther that night. Of course, the switcher dies the next day, or PR dies the next day, but the switch vote makes the town lose their only screw up. In this situation, the third mafia member is still well hidden. It would be a gamble for mafia, but it still results in two town for two mafia, with the third mafia remaining hidden. It also forces the town to lose its last mistake. Not an entirely bad deal.

On preview:
Queuing, I didn’t call it a bitch of a situation. I like the like the situation and I think a victory for the town is very possible at this point. I meant that it sucks that I was the one who came up with this theory. I’m not very well trusted and I realize that. I’m the guy who comes up with crazy ideas and I fear at this point I’m like the boy who called scum and no one will seriously consider that I’m on to something.

That said, I will happily vote to lynch Fretful Porpentine today. Don’t take this as a willy nilly throwing votes around, but I’m going to change my vote from one of my two suspects to the other. I am going to hold off on the actual vote until we can come to a concensus. But, for now,

Unvote Lakai

3706

Okay, everybody likely realizes this already, but just in case…

I think the real lesson from yesterday’s lynch is that the townies pretty much HAVE to block vote in order to keep the mafia from being able to pick who gets lynched.

Yes, it could probably work out ‘okay’ if the town managed to split their votes between the final two mafia…but I think hoping for another lucky break like that isn’t a good plan.

Assuming there are no more than two Mafia left (fingers crossed) we have 5 town.

I believe Queuing and StoryTeller and I have each posted that we trust the other two to be town. (Hopefully we’re right!) Of the remaining four, two are mafia who know we are town, and the last two are townies that I hope also have the three of us on their trust list.

What I suggest we need to do is agree on this plan:

If at all humanly possible, Queuing, Storyteller and I must not split our votes. We must debate/horsetrade until we reach a consensus candidate for today’s lynch. The other townies should also debate and vote for whoever they most suspect as we go along – we need input! - but once we three ‘relatively known’ townies settle on a candidate the other two townies should (if necessary) switch their votes to align with us. The Mafia will, of course, also be casting votes and give reasons for why X should be killed – but hopefully they won’t be able to sell the Trusted Three on voting for a townie – and so long as the town votes en masse, it doesn’t matter where the Mafia votes end up.

I’m sorry that this looks really bossy – making the other two townies somehow ‘second class’ citizens – but I think it’s the safest way to keep the Mafia from getting to pick the lynchee, and clearly the choice of candidate will at bottom come down to which person has the strongest case built against him, and the ‘other two’ townies can play a major role in that.
Note: I’m off all day today, but Thursday and Friday I’ll be working from noon to 8pm. plus commute time and possibly time for dinner. We need to settle on our lynch candidate early enough that I can vote for him/her AND there’s enough time for the other two townies to get their votes aligned.
Looking ahead… the Mafia are most likely to kill one of Queuing, Storyteller, and me this night. Tomorrow there will be only five players left, either 3T/2M (ouch) or 4T/1M. Both ways there should still be two of us ‘trusted’ townies – even if we get it wrong today, I suggest the best play tomorrow would be for all townies to again follow the Trusted 2.

Remember, we can still win, we just can’t accidentally lynch more than one townie in the next three days.

3707

I’m entirely on board with this as long as if you lynch me tomorrow, you lynch Lakai the following day. We still get one town lynch, so if my theory is correct, the town still wins.

3708

[QUOTE=Queuing]
That being said, I am going to go ahead and do this:

Lynch Fretful Porpentine.

I see 4 people I am not sure of. We may have 2 or 3 mafia left. That is either a 1/2 chance or a 3/4 chance that even random guessing will be correct. I think we have more on Fretful then just random guessing. So I suppose I see no reason not to throw a vote onto him.

Tomorrow I think we should lynch either Lakai or brewha.

[\QUOTE]

Queuing, can you point me to a post that lays out the case against Fretful?

My plan for today still involves digging into what happened the previous times Pgymy was under suspicion.

3709

Give me a few, but a townie who was about to get lynch begged and pleaded for us to look at fretful. I believe it was Mad the Swine. Here is Fretful’s posting history from Kat and her analysis .

My basic reason for going after fretful over Lakai, brewha or Kat is due to the votes for PR. Kat voted early for PR, and left the vote there. The previous few days both Storyteller and myself had voted for PR. This leads me to think that if scum was going to try to vote for scum they would have voted for someone who didn’t already have 2 townies on his tail. Not saying this is a for sure thing by any means, but its a check in her favour in my mind.

So that leaves us with Fretful, Brewha and Lakai. Brewha I am completely unsure of. My gut says town however, and since I feed it with beer last night it is happy with me today, and I am choosing to go along with it :). This could very easily change, and the more he talks the more I want to lynch him, but that is not a very good reason to lynch right now.

So that leaves us with lakai and fretful. Neither one voted for PR. However Lakai did get a reading from a beat cop that said town. Now I know this isn’t necessarily true, and I am not going to bother with Math. Sure he could be the GF. Sure the reading could be wrong. It could be right to. I have no idea. In light of that though I see no reason to vote for him…yet.

This just leaves us with Fretful. He didn’t vote for PR. He hasn’t acted somewhat crazy. He didn’t have a cop reading. Since I believe that I can firmly eliminate the 3 you have mentioned, I have 4 to choose from. Regardless of the number of scum left (1/2/3) my odds are very good that I will choose right regardless, or we can be wrong a couple more times.

Its really just a process of elimination and I feel that Fretful is the correct choice today.

3710

Sure, it doesn’t sound crazy when you say it.

I 100% agree. That’s why I was going crazy yesterday, because people apparently didn’t understand that.

3711

OK, seriously, this game is getting to me. I woke up at about 4:00AM and couldn’t fall back to sleep because I was thinking about this game. I have thoughts - not exactly a theory on who is Mafia, but more a general idea on how we might approach the remaining 2-3 game Days to maximize our chances of winning. This idea seems to go hand in hand with what some of you are saying already, so let’s see what you all think.

First, assumptions (I’ve done this a lot; it seems to make thinking about everything a little clearer). The following are thing that I am assuming to be true for the purposes of this analysis.

  1. There is at least one, but very likely two, remaining Mafia. This means that, as brewha points out, we essentially can absorb one and only one mislynch without losing the game.

  2. I, Queuing, and StarvingbutStrong are three of the five remaining townspeople. My thoughts on these subjects have been the subject of far too many posts already, so for the moment I’ll move on to:

  3. It is possible that Lakai and brewha are both town, but it is exceedingly unlikely that they are both Mafia.

  4. Combine #2 and #3 and you come to the conclusion that at least one, and possibly both, of Fretful and/or Kat, are Mafia as well.

Now, everything that follows is based on these assumptions alone, so the first step is to decide whether we all accept them. I believe that #1 is pretty much indisputable, yes? #4 follows logically from #2 + #3.

So we’re really talking about #2 and #3. You may want to question my assignment of Queuing or SbS as town, or my own alignment. You may also want to suggest that it is possible that Lakai and brewha are both Mafia. So first, consider these assumptions. Pick them apart. They will become important below the dotted line to follow:

If numbers 1 through 4 are correct, then essentially the lynch choices boil down to two pairs (Lakai/brewha and Fretful/Kat). We then have one of two options. One high risk but with a bigger reward if we choose well today; one is lower risk but lower reward. I present them below:

Option A: Lynch someone from the pair of Lakai and brewha. This is the high risk option.

If the person we lynch under this plan is Mafia, and all my assumptions hold, we will be guaranteed a win. Whichever of the pair we didn’t lynch can be assumed to be town. Tomorrow we will lynch either Kat or Fretful; if we get that one wrong, we lynch the other. Game over.

If we choose either Lakai or brewha and miss, hitting a townie, then we are going to be in a pickle. We’ll have, I think, a 2 in 3 chance of getting Mafia choosing among Kat, Fretful, and whichever of the brewha/Lakai pair we didn’t go for, then a 1 in 2 chance of finishing the job the next day, for an overall 2 in 6, or 33% chance of winning.

Option B: Lynch someone from the pair of Fretful and Kat

If the person we lynch under this plan is Mafia, we will not be guaranteed a win. There will be one remaining Mafia, three remaining candidates, and two guesses, essentially.

If the person we lynch under this plan is town, then we can very nearly be assured that the other of the Kat/Fretful pairing is Mafia, thereby assuring us a successful lynch tomorrow. That puts us at the final day choosing between brewha and Lakai.

So to sum up, our chances of winning given each of these eventualities, from best to worst:

We lynch Lakai or brewha, hit Mafia: 100%
We lynch Fretful or Kat, hit Mafia: Some number <100% but >50%
We lynch Fretful or Kat, hit town: 50%
We lynch Lakai or brewha, hit town: 33%

Thoughts?

3712

Hmm, this is interesting – this is my first chance to observe a bandwagon developing against someone I KNOW to be town. I shall hold off on my own vote until I see how it unfolds. I will say this in defense of my own voting history:

Why did I vote for brewha yesterday? I do not like voting with crowds; I said so early on, here (note the early FoS against FCOD, for whom I subsequently voted). I didn’t want to vote for Pygmy Rugger yesterday because the lynch simply seemed too easy – too many people were pushing, or had pushed, for it – and I’d already made the same mistake with hocow the day before. (I began to suspect Pygmy Rugger was in fact scum after SBS pointed out his slip about the numbers of remaining Mafia, and after that I would have voted for him if I’d seen any telltale jumps away from the bandwagon at the last minute, in accordance with my promise here.) However, I also believed, and continue to believe, that brewha is scum; especially in the last few days, he strikes me as an inconsistent, opportunistic poster who keeps trying to cozy up to townies yet seldom leaves his vote on a Mafia member at the end of the day.

Why did I vote for hocow the day before yesterday? I screwed that one up, and I regret it; if we weren’t down to the wire, I’d say I deserve to be lynched for this one. I didn’t want to leave my vote on brewha, where it would do no good, so I decided to pick one of the other two leading candidates. I had a theory, which I had outlined here, about the voting patterns of Mafia; hocow, who had very few posts, few votes, and only one final vote for a Mafia, fit this pattern better than Pygmy Rugger, who was a vocal poster with many votes and a final vote for Suburban Plankton on Day 3, when it really counted, as well as Aguecheek on Day 5. I was wrong (and so I decided I was going to go with my gut instinct and not peer pressure the next day, come what may). About the only other thing I can say in my defense is that the surviving Mafia in this game are incredibly clever and good at hiding, and I suspect that in casting the crucial swing vote, I rushed in where real Mafia would fear to tread.

What else can I say in defense of my voting record? I voted for Suburban Plankton, a mafioso, rather than Fern Forest, a townie, during the close election on Day 3. I also cast my final vote for Aguecheek on Day 7 (early on, before it became a popular bandwagon). I HAVEN’T voted on a lot of the bandwagons against townies, including Enfant Terrible, MTS, Gadarene, and Malacandra, for the simple reason that I either did not believe them to be Mafia at all, or else was not sure enough to cast a vote.

Why did Autolycus FoS me before he died? I have no idea.

Why did MadTheSwine FoS me before he died? Because, apparently, I had a record of NOT jumping on bandwagons against townies, and because I’d voted against FCOD and kivvik at a time when nobody else suspected them of being Mafia. Apparently my instincts were uncanny, or something. I don’t think they are. I’ve been right on a few occasions; I’ve been really, spectacularly wrong on a number of other occasions; I think I’ve probably been right and wrong in roughly the proportions you’d expect from a townie who likes working out new theories and dislikes voting with the crowd, but is otherwise flying blind.

3713

In his last few hours here are the posts from MtS about Fretful:

post 2915 Fretful changed votes from me to brewha. MtS took this as not wanting to jump on a bandwagon and basically gain some town cred.

post 2920 MtS posts a couple of posts from Fretful, again pointing out that Fretful didn’t want to vote for the condemned in an attempt to gain cred.

post 2926 More posts from Fretful, same reasons given.

post 2933 calls Fretful crazy like a fox (which is just a phrase I have always enjoyed), basically same reasons given. MtS thinks Fretful is always willing to jump off a bandwagon once it has safely flown (that seems to be what MtS is basically saying).

ON PREVIEW: Hmm, another interesting post from storyteller. Which option do you prefer? And of the pair who would you rather hit?

I think I prefer option B. We are close to winning and I don’t want to lose. Plus I think the scum is Fretful out of that pair, giving us a better then 50% chance of winning.

On option A I suppose that I would want to lynch ummm, dammit I just don’t know. Which is my problem with A.

I would like to hear what SBS and yourself have to say about whom we lynch in both pairs.

3714

Before I choose an option or a target, I want to know if people agree with the contention that it is unlikely that both brewha and Lakai are Mafia. The problem with both of my plans is that if I am wrong about this - if Lakai is the GF and brewha his underling, say - then my plans guarantee us a loss. So I want to see what the rest of the town thinks of that assumption before I go further with this line of thinking (I assume Lakai and brewha will both agree with the assumption even if it’s untrue, so the rest of you?).

3715

I was thinking it over and I really don’t like the idea of letting brewha slide because his behavior is too crazy. The only person to be FOSed besides Pygmy was me and by brewha. For the whole game I’ve been assuming that the mafia could be really slick, but maybe they aren’t?

I would like to see brewha die today. If he turns up town I’d go after Kat or Fretful.

No one has come up with a convincing case against anyone right now, so if brewha is not mafia I will be completely lost. The remaining mafia player will be a bitch to catch.

Vote brewha

3716

I don’t know. If they’re both Mafia, they’ve played these last few days brilliantly – but it’s fair to say that the Mafia has been playing brilliantly all along, and deliberately distancing themselves from one another so that they can gain the town’s trust is very likely the winning strategy at this point. I’d also like to float the possibility that there are actually three of them left, and Pygmy Rugger’s “slip” was actually a calculated piece of disinformation; I think it was obvious after we lynched hocow that Pygmy Rugger was next in line no matter what, and plausible that they have planned this overnight.

If there are three left, the endgame could look like this:

Yesterday: 4 mafiosi, 5 townies. Pygmy Rugger, the chosen sacrifice, implies that there are only three mafiosi; other people seize on this. Pygmy Rugger is lynched, with a vote from one or more of his fellow mafiosi, but the town has taken the bait.

Today: 3 mafiosi, 4 townies. The townies believe they have a free lynch at this point. (Ain’t no such thing as a free lynch. Heh.) Two of the surviving Mafiosi aggressively point fingers at each other. Townies come to the conclusion that if one of the pair is Mafia, the other has to be town. They vote to lynch one, comes up Mafia.

Tomorrow: 2 mafiosi, 3 townies. One of the remaining mafiosi is now implicitly trusted by the town. If the townies vote to off one of their own – as there is a 75% chance they will – the game ends with a Mafia victory that night. If they vote to lynch the mafioso they don’t trust, they are shocked to find that the game DOESN’T END.

Day after tomorrow: 1 trusted mafioso, 2 townies. Finger-pointing ensues, but surviving mafioso points to the fact that he has voted against other Mafia, they have tried to get him lynched, etc. One townie votes against the other, is joined by surviving mafioso, game over.

Even if there are only two left, it’s still probably worth one of their lives to insinuate the other into the town’s trust.

3717

I like it and see no flaws in your assumptions.

Here’s what I propose. Take option one. I’ll let you SBS and Queuing decide between me and Lakai as the victim. If you pick Lakai and find him scum, we win because we have a 50/50 between Kat and Fretful and one mistake to make. If you pick me and find me to be town, we use our mistake. But, I hope that will be enough to sway the town to lynch Lakai and Fretful.

If you pick me and find me scum, then it would be wise to assume that Lakai and Fretful are town and that Kat is the last mafia. Likewise if you find Lakai town, You can assume that me and Kat are scum.

(color discluded by me as to not double vote me)

Seriously that sounded bad. I can’t be the only one to think it. If I turn up town, lynch Fretful or Kat? That is ignoring everything I have said (which doesn’t surprise me in your situation). But, that has also completely dismissed what SBS has said. I agree that there is a possibility (in the eyes of the town) that both you and I are mafia. But there is no way we are both town. So, if I get lynched and come up town you should be next.

I never said I should be given a pass because of my crazy behavior. I don’t think anyone else has given me a pass either. I’m fine with my death if it is followed by yours and Fretful’s.

3718

If there were 4 mafia left yesterday they are the dumbest mob ever and should not have made it this far. If any one of Pygmy Rugger, Lakai, SBS, or myself were town. At least one of us has to be if there’s only 4 mafia. There is no reason that a townie wouldn’t have gotten lynched. Even if all 4 jumped on the same bandwagon, got an innocent townie lynched, and completely blew their cover, they still win. It would be 4 town and 4 mafia. Mafia wins. Sure we know who the remaining mafia are, but they’ve already won.

I don’t buy that there were 4 mafia for a second. Do you expect us to beleive that they would rather lynch one of their own to play shadow games and maybewin a couple of days later when than win while it was within easy reach?

3719

Ok, so correct me if I am wrong, but we probably have 2 scum left correct? 5 towns? So we can make 1 mistake right? Don’t we lose if either pair is both scum?

On preview: brewha, but there were 9 people left yesterday, so the scum couldn’t manufacture a lynch all by themselves.

3720

Depends on which option we pick, and whether or not we choose correctly. If there is even a possibility that both brewha and Lakai are scum, though, then my approach falls apart completely. Now Fretful has me worried that this could indeed be the case, but of course if she were Mafia that’s what she’d want me to think, and…

Craaaaaap.