Unless, of course, they are being left alive precisely to make us suspicious. A classic example of WIFOM (Wine in Front of Me, from Princess Bride: is it really what it seems, is it a fakeout, a fake-fakeout, a fake-fake-fakeout, &c).
So, just to confirm, Day One has begun today(Monday, February 16) and will run until Friday, when we enter night-time?
If that’s the case, I suggest we try to figure out who we put in the testerizer by Wednesday. If we confirm the final vote for that Wed., will we get results Thursday?
Then, we could vote to exile/kill someone Friday.
Is this about right? I’m not suggesting anything out of experience, mind you. I’m just trying to figure out a timeline for the game.
OK, seems like we can get started.
I think it’s a good idea to testerize an experienced player first, because that’s the only distinguishing information we have right now.
They could do the most harm as a wolf and are otherwise priority targets for the wolves anyway, as I see it.
We only get information from the testerizer once we’ve tested a few people who later end up dead. So a tested person should tend to be protected against wolf-kills since that gives the town information. The downside is that the town will be tempted to lynch tested players to get more information about how the testerizer works.
If we test and lynch the same person on the first day then we get two pieces of information: the player’s role, and the output given by the testerizer for that role.
I guess this may be obvious, but I’ll ask. Are you saying we are told after someone is killed whether they were a wolf, rancher, or farmer?
I think the Testerizer is going to be a good way to get the conversation going in the game. By the time we have enough data to back up what the colors means we will have suspicious activity out the ass. At which point are we really going to trust our analysis of the color pattern or are we going to trust the rest of the analysis,
I’ve already shown what I think about the order we should be voting in. One thing I think is important is that we need to get our real votes in early I would say that we want everyone to have a vote in by the end of the day that we get the results from the Testerizer back. That way we will have time to discuss votes and reasons instead of a last day pile on.
I’m thinking we should, for the first few days, vote for the lynch target to be the one we testerize as much as possible, so as to get an idea of the potential color-to-werewolf mapping as fast as possible.
Note that I am expressly NOT advocating lynching testees until we get a handle on the colors, I’m advocating the opposite of that. =P
I didn’t realize the mapping would be more complicated than one color each role (wolf, farmer and rancher, there are no other roles, right?) but I justed noticed that there will be a two color code…
So Lemur, Oredigger and Zeriel are probably right, figuring out the testerizer is important.
That makes my first choice wide open again, except perhaps a lurker lynch.
We don’t really know exactly how the testerizer works, just that there is some relation between the two color code we get back, and the testees role. There might not be a one-to-one correspondence between test result and role–that is, more than one code could correspond to a role. And it’s possible that more than one role could have the same code…farmers and ranchers might return the same code. Of course, it is also logically possible that werewolves might return the same code as a farmer or rancher, but then the testerizer is worthless.
We should be also be alert to the possibility that the testerizer returns inconsistent (or malicious!) results, although it would be a bit annoying if it turned out to be worthless or worse than worthless.
A few more questions/clarifications
**Do we know how many power roles, and what they are? Are they unique? Are the power roles independent or also assigned rancher/farmer?
When someone dies, what is revealed? Just their wolf/farmer/rancher role, or also their power role (or lack thereof).**
I put these in green as I don’t believe the players know any of this, and perhaps **pedescribe **can answer any of them that we should know.
Just trying to think through what the testerizer two-color output might signify.
Yes, that’s correct. When someone dies, you get full information on their role.
The werewolf testerizer voting closes exactly (approximately) halfway through the day, at which point you will get the results.
I agree. We don’t lynch the guy we happen to test, instead we test the guy we decide to lynch.
Since this is my very first time playing this game, I’m likely to have lots of questions. I was going to jut sit back and watch, but then everyone started talking about lynching the lurkers, so I’ve decided to talk.
Thank you, Lemur866 for clearing up the emphasis on lynching testees and testing lynchees. I was confused before you phrased it that way.
Do we get a list of the ‘power roles’ before anyone dies? It would be helpful to e newbie like me to know what these power roles are, instead of being blindsided.
No. However, you should know that any power roles in this game are: relatively weak compared to other games, and few in number. So it shouldn’t be a huge issue.
But does the testerizer/lynch vote timing work with that? Seems like we’ll be forced into making lynch decisions on less information. Then again, there’s basically no information now anyway.
This is the reason that I love lynching lurkers but it only works if they are around to read the thread and not busy some where else.
I’ve got to disagree with the idea of picking who we want to lynch and then testing them. It’s going to cause two problems. The first being when the lynch target is assured people tend to shut up and having everyone shut up half way through the week is bad. Secondly it eliminates our ability to deal with suspicious behavior later in the Day because it will have time to be forgotten over Night and allow the suspicious person one last chance to do nefarious deeds.
I think the better approach is our traditional random Day 1 stuff and then looking at reactions for our vote. After Day 1, I think that picking the person to be tested at random is as good as anything else because it will possibly prevent the wolves from killing them and if they die, at our hand or theirs, we get the information. By keeping the Testerizer random we can focus our discussion on who we want to lynch which is the critical part. Figuring out the tester is a side game, if there is nothing else to talk about.
If we want to test a player before we lynch them we’ll have to decide to lynch them a few days before the deadline.
Once we figure out how the testerizer works we won’t need to keep doing this. And I agree that it’s a problem that we have to decide very early who to lynch but the advantage of testing someone and then cracking them open to see what they look inside is obvious.
OK, I think it’s fair to assume that the two color output from the test either represents “race” and “alignment” somehow - one color for each - or that it represents race alone. Right? In either case, the question is why two colors. If it’s the former, and for instance testing a farmer will result in color A for “Town” and then color B for “farmer,” then what does the second color signify for a werewolf? Are there two kinds of those, too?
If it’s the latter, then we have to decide how and why it uses two colors to indicate a single variable. It seems like it’s going to take a while to get any meaningful data out of the tests anyway, unless we get lucky and nail one of each of the three major factions and get three very distinct results (like blue-blue, then red-red, then green-green, or something). It also seems to me that it doesn’t matter at all who we test first, except in that they’ll have to die eventually. The information that we get immediately from the test + lynch combination won’t manifest until the next time around, right? So it isn’t necessarily the case that “mistesting” because we have to decide early will cost us anything in the long run.
All of which, in addition to what some others have said already, means we probably ought to be very careful about making decisions based on the test results anytime soon. The test is probably more useful as another vector for weeding out an individual’s motivations than it is as proof of anything in the short term.
Confirming receipt of PM.
I think this is as good an idea as any right now. The experienced players are Freudian Slit, Oredigger77, fluiddruid, and Zeriel.
For testerizing, I randomly vote Freudian Slit.
(For completeness, DaphneBlack and I count as slightly-experienced.)
A reminder to all first timers and my fellow second timer: Doper games are built on analysis, so it’s important for everybody to take part.
Confirming PM.
Testerising tells us nothing by itself. I agree that we should test and lynch the same person today.
And BTW, my hairiness is a sign of manliness, not wolfiness. 