Re: Baker Street Irregulars Dethy² - Game Over

[mpolo]

Since I have begun to chronicle the work of Sherlock Holmes, I have encountered no small number of unusual and deadly cases. But perhaps the strangest case in the course of my collaboration occurred in the year of our Lord 1899. Strange, because the master himself was not present, and I was forced myself to assemble the Baker Street Irregulars to crack the case.

It was a cold day in October, and a stiff breeze rattled against the windows of 221B Baker Street. After my service in India, I found the day somewhat uncomfortable, and had just lighted a fire in the grate. A middle-aged woman knocked on the door and soon was sitting opposite me in the sitting room.

The tale she spun was strange, to say the least. A secret society, a mountain retreat, a costume party. The only solution that I could find was to call in the Irregulars.

So I assembled a group of the older boys and sent them in. Surely, they would be able to sort out the situation before Mr. Holmes returned.

General rules:

Spoiler:

1. You cannot post in this thread unless you are alive and included in the player list.
2. You cannot talk about this game outside of this thread, unless in an appropriately titled spoiler in the discussion thread.
3. You cannot edit your posts or PMs.
4 You cannot quote private messages from the mod.
5. You cannot lurk.
6. You cannot ruin the game for other players.
7. You cannot say, imply, or pretend that a hammer vote has been cast unless it is obvious from counting the public votes in the thread.
8. If you break any of these rules, you will lose, be removed from the game, and shame will be heaped on you.
9. You can unvote before changing votes, but you don’t have to. Only your most recent vote will count.
10. Once a player has received the majority of votes (“hammer”), that player is dead. The day ends immediately and players cannot talk or change votes.
11. Every player has a single vote and there are no vote-rigging mechanics of any kind.
12. In the case of a tie, there will be No Lynch.
13. Votes will reset if there is a modkill. A deadline extension would be given as needed.
14. The mod will give the players a deadline for the end of each day. Once the deadline has been reached, players may still post and change votes (unless hammer has been reached). However, once the mod announces the end of day, all votes are finalized and players may not post.

Setup:
There are three members of Moriarty's gang. They have names, but only as flavor (no special powers).
There are 2 each of 4 flavors of cops:
- Sane cop: Correctly receives a result of town or mafia.
- Insane cop: Incorrectly receives a result of mafia or town (town cops as mafia, mafia as town)
- Paranoid cop: Always receives a result of mafia, regardless of the investigation target.
- Naive cop: Always receives a result of town, regardless of the investigation target.
There is 1 Deputy (New recruit): Inherits the flavor of the cop who is killed N1.

1. There is no cop head-start, the first investigation will be N1.
2. In order to keep the game moving, scum will have daychat. There will only be a brief twilight for actions to be sent in, they are encouraged to do their discussion during the day phase so as to keep the nights short. You may send actions early to make sure you don't miss it. If needed, these may also include a conditional.
3. Sanity is not revealed on death. Death reveal will consist entirely of "Baker Street Irregular", "New Recruit" or "[Name], member of Moriarty's gang."
4. The mafia wins when they control the lynch and cannot be stopped from killing everyone else. The cops win when the mafia is eliminated.
5. Cops cannot target dead players or themselves. A cop will receive a valid result even if their target is NKed on the same night.
6. You may vote No Lynch to end the day without a lynch.

Player List:
1. Sabrar Killed N2: Baker Street Irregular
2. adnapemit Lynched D6, Moriarty's Gang
3. emlightened Lynched D4, Moriarty's Gang
4. Diemo Killed N3: Baker Street Irregular
5. jimbobmacdoodle Killed N4: Baker Street Irregular
6. Mikemk
7. Snark Lynched D5: Moriarty's Gang
8. Madge (I will not be offended if you bump me to replacements for balance purposes)
9. Carlington Killed N5: Baker Street Irregular
10. Suzaku Killed N1: Baker Street Irregular
11. Esthr
12. Dimochka (well since you said 12...)

PMs

Spoiler:

Town:
You are a member of the Baker Street Irregulars.

Deputy:
You are a new recruit in the Baker Street Irregulars.

Mafia:
You are [Sebastian Moran/Fred Porlock/Neville Parker], member of Moriarty's gang.

PMs are out, and you can begin directly, without waiting to confirm. I will be away from keyboard from May 13th–17th, hence the longer Day 1. I might manage to get on to put this into twilight over the weekend, if Hammer has been reached, but don't expect me to manage to process the night.

Deadline clock.

[Sabrar]

Hi everyone! Very fitting flavor, big thanks to mpolo for running the game! Initial thoughts:
- we can have up to 5 No Lynches to collect information before we need to act.
- Deputy shouldn't claim D1.

PS: special shoutout to Esthr, I promise I'm really Town this time.

[Suzaku]

Egoposting while at work and with a question.

Is the new recruit the same as the deputy?

[mpolo]

Is the new recruit the same as the deputy?

Yes.

[Sabrar]

- Deputy shouldn't claim D1.

This was maybe written in haste. My reason for it at the time was to give Mafia a chance to kill the Deputy N1 so we don't lose any investigation results.
However there's another alternative: Deputy claims D1 and we all investigate him/her N1. That way the number of possible setups will reduce significantly. What do you think?

[jimbobmacdoodle]

I foresee that my brain is going to hurt by the end of the day here. Some thoughts:

1) There is no need to do 5 No Lynches in a row before lynching someone, if we are sure in our logic.
2) I'm pretty sure that in dethys it's best to claim your result each day. However, see 4).
3) The deputy is a fixed point (as noted by Sabrar). I'm assuming that mafia won't counterclaim it.
4) If we claim every day, the deputy will either have to reveal themself by D2 or make up results.
5) I like Sabrar's D1 deputy claim idea, but am a little cautious (see 7).
6) Behaviour analysis should not be ignored.
7) In addition to 6), we will likely catch scum through logical deduction. Scum's results will be inconsistent and/or our results will clearly indicate who is scum and town.
8) A late game deputy claim could allow us to identify scum, but is risky, since a counter-claim is more likely.
9) We should be careful not to allow a single player to dictate our strategy. Obviously suggestions are good, but everyone should consider alternatives as well.
10) I believe it would be beneficial for each player towards the end of the day to post a claim order for the next day. Then, we claim in the order suggested by the dead person. Alternatively, we let whoever seems towniest dictate that order.
11) We should be careful to spread out our investigations over the game enough to cover everyone (or nearly everyone). However, early on, it may be more useful to be focused - e.g. Everyone target the deputy or everyone target the same player two nights in a row (not necessarily as each other, helps confirms insanity).

I'm willing to consider the deputy claim idea, but want to hear what others think first.

[Madge]

On its face the deputy claiming seems like a great idea since we'll be able to identify the paranoid cops immediately; the other option which tends to get a lot of approval is "investigate the person above/below you", giving us a good cross section, and ensuring almost everyone gets investigated.

I don't think scum will be more likely to kill the deputy N1 though, they really want to hope they get lucky and hit one of our sane/insane cops because that will mean we're behind a result, so I don't think the deputy is in danger.

[jimbobmacdoodle]

I just realised that I mis-remembered what an insane cop was, so yeah, no point really investigating the same person twice. Carry on, nothing to see here...

[Sabrar]

There is 1 Deputy (New recruit): Inherits the flavor of the cop who is killed N1.

Just to be clear, can the Deputy investigate on N1?

[adnapemit]

Sherlock Holmes flavour! Awesome!

On its face the deputy claiming seems like a great idea since we'll be able to identify the paranoid cops immediately.

Am I missing something? We would still need at least one more night of investigation to determine between sane cop/naive cop and insane cop/paranoid cop.
Even so if the deputy does claim then working out who is who will be a lot quicker.

I agree with Madge that scum would hope that they killed a sane or insane cop(although even killing one of the other cops could set us back a bit) so claiming deputy would make it unlikely for that person to be killed.

Ninja'd by Sabrar while writing:
I was assuming the deputy couldn't investigate N1 but if they can then everyone investigating the deputy would be the best option.

[mpolo]

There is 1 Deputy (New recruit): Inherits the flavor of the cop who is killed N1.

Just to be clear, can the Deputy investigate on N1?

No

[Suzaku]

Quick train post - in depth analysis will come later.

First, absolutely critical point: no townie of any flavour should ever, ever lie about their results. Dethy is a game of logic as much as of Mafia, and lying townies invalidate the premisses we have to build our arguments on.

Second, no cop should ever investigate the same player twice, all players should be investigated by as many cops as possible. We should agree on an investigation strategy (generally one place down the list on N1, then one place up on N2... We can go to 2 places after that) and anyone not following it is instantly flagged as likely scum.

Everyone should claim their results in their first post the following day, at least early on. Claim orders may be useful later in the piece.

More information is ALWAYS better, as it will allow logical impossibilities to crop up which will identify scum, especially with more than the normal number of results.
Therefore it is extremely likely we will NL until LYLO.
At LYLO no one votes until we have agreement that it's OK to do so. With 3 scum speed lynch is hard, but remember they do have day chat to coordinate it if they can.

As I'm typing and thinking, I'm suspecting that the Deputy should not claim today, but (of course) shouldn't lie about results tomorrow. Not certain of this, and will do the analysis later.

Finally, please read this game to see some arguments for why I'm saying some of these things.

[Sabrar]

10) I believe it would be beneficial for each player towards the end of the day to post a claim order for the next day. Then, we claim in the order suggested by the dead person.

I don't like this idea as scum can use it to manipulate the claim-order. I think there is a better solution that guarantees that won't happen (example given for beginning of D2 claims):
- Suppose we go with the Deputy-reveal plan and mass-investigate him/her.
- Scum will probably kill someone else to deny 1 piece of info (method still works if scum decides to kill the deputy, just becomes a bit more messy).
- Beginning of D2 we have 10 players who need to claim a result (12 - '1 Deputy' - '1 dead'). List those players in the order of the sign-up, numbering 0-9. E.g. jimbob is Deputy and I was killed N1 the list becomes

Spoiler:

0. adnapemit
1. emlightened
2. Diemo
3. Mikemk
4. Snark
5. Madge
6. Carlington
7. Suzaku
8. Esthr
9. dimochka

- Take the last digit of the minutes part of the time-stamp when the mod declared day-end. The player whose number matches the digit claims first and claims proceed in the order of the list. This is impartial and impossible to manipulate.

Ninja's by Suzaku, will react later.

[Carlington]

I am very keen on this flavour.

Regarding the deputy claiming, scum has no reason to kill a deputy N1, and it would be a bad play for them to do so in terms of trying to keep useful information out of town's hands. On the flip side of this, it improves their odds of hitting a sane or insane cop from 4/9 = 44% to 4/8 = 50%. Hand in hand with this, a deputy claim ensures scum always kills cops. Additionally, they'll know who the deputy was, and so can deprive town of two results by killing the ex-deputy N2.
This does not mean that we get no information from the deputy, though - if the deputy claims, as Sabrar points out, we get a whole bunch of useful information out of N1 - it effectively uses the deputy to start calibrating everyone. That could be a worthwhile trade, and I'm inclined to feel that it is - but I urge the deputy not to claim until everyone has had a say. You may think you have some infallible reason to claim, but you may have missed an infallible reason not to that someone else could bring up.

[Suzaku]

Actually this is important:
if the deputy is killed on N2+ will he be revealed as deputy or as a cop? Assuming a cop dies N1.

[Sabrar]

Quick math background:
# of possible setups = 12!/(2⁴ * 3!) = 4,989,600
If we all investigate the deputy, 2 possibilities will be cleared for everyone (except the Deputy who will have 4 possibilities) so the remaining scenarios can be bounded from above by 3¹⁰ * 4 = 236,196 (and it's actually much lower but I'm currently too lazy to work it out). I think it is clear why I would it prefer this option. In addition D1 is the only time when we are guaranteed of this play so we need to utilize the Deputy's specific position now.
Regarding Suzaku's points I basically agree with everything else he said (no lying, consensus on investigation strategy, always claim results in first post). I think claim order is useful early as well but could be troublesome with so many players.

[Sabrar]

More math regarding Deputy claim:
With no death N1 we would get 4 town and 4 scum results with town meaning (sane or naive) and scum meaning (insane or paranoid) cop.
With scum-kill and 3 scum lying, we will get either a distribution of 7-3, 6-4 or 5-5.
Suppose we get 7-3 in some form (say 7 town, 3 scum). We would immediately know that the 3 players who received scum are Town leaving 2*[7!/(2²*3!)]*[3!/2] = 1,260 possible scenarios.
Suppose we get 6-4 (with 6 town). Two possibilities:
a) scum killed a Cop who would have gotten Town as a result and all 3 lied about getting Town: 2*[6!/(2*3!)]*[4!/2²] = 720 possible scenarios
b) scum killed a Cop who would have gotten Scum as a result, 1 one of them pretended to get scum, 2 pretended to get town: 2*[6!/2³]*[4!/2] = 2,160 possible scenarios
Total 2,880 possible scenarios.
Suppose we get 5-5. Two possibilities:
a) scum killed a Cop who would have gotten Town as a result, 1 one of them pretended to get scum, 2 pretended to get town: 2*[5!/2²]*[5!/2²] = 1,800 possible scenarios
b) same thing but with town and scum reversed, gives same result.
Total 3,600 possible scenarios.
So yeah, the above boundary was way over the top.

[mpolo]

Actually this is important:
if the deputy is killed on N2+ will he be revealed as deputy or as a cop? Assuming a cop dies N1.

Cop

[mpolo]

The original that I took this from started on N1. As such, I am going to forbid claiming by the Deputy here on Day 1. From Day 2 on, he can claim at will. Thus you get the benefit of some discussion to organize your investigations, but you don't get a "free" confirmed town.

[Sabrar]

Apologies if this broke the game. Scum has 1-in-9 chance of finding the Deputy whose claiming on D2 is crucial, so please do not discuss anymore his/her identity.

[Madge]

On its face the deputy claiming seems like a great idea since we'll be able to identify the paranoid cops immediately.

Am I missing something? We would still need at least one more night of investigation to determine between sane cop/naive cop and insane cop/paranoid cop.

Sorry, I meant we will be able to identify who cannot be paranoid, which sounds a LOT less impressive. Humph.

Given that the deputy now can't claim, I'm going to go on record as wanting to go for the 'investigate the person below you' plan, and with that in mind I'm happy to vote a no lynch at will.

I think the deputy should claim ASAP on Day 2. And I mean proper ASAP. Try and be the first post of the day if you can. Otherwise if the deputy claims late in the day it could be scum trying to gamble on the odds of them having killed the deputy by accident.

[Sabrar]

3. Sanity is not revealed on death. Death reveal will consist entirely of "Baker Street Irregular", "New Recruit" or "[Name], member of Moriarty's gang."

According to this we should know if the deputy was killed N1.

[Carlington]

That answers the question of what the deputy ought to do nicely: I can't figure out any scenario where it makes a difference if the deputy claims, unless that claim happens D1. So, given that there should be no lying town, the deputy ought to claim tomorrow morning. Unless I've missed something?

That leaves the questions of who to target and how to claim - I think that one method is as good as another for today, since we have zero information. So, everyone should target the player below them on the signups list tonight, and tomorrow we should claim using the timestamp method that Sabrar suggested, IMO.

(WOW, TWO NINJAS?!?! Ninja me once, Sabrar, shame on you... )

[Carlington]

Tomorrow, we all claim and then assuming the deputy is alive, follow through with what we had planned for today and everyone target the deputy N2. Even if they are then NK'd that night, we still get results. I think that's the best play.

I'm not going to vote NL yet, but that is only because only six of twelve players have even posted yet, and it wouldn't be very fun for them to miss D1 entirely.

[Diemo]

So for today, everyone investigates the person below them.

Seems good.

[jimbobmacdoodle]

I can't think of anything obviously wrong with the suggested plan, so I concur with the above. I'll post more thoughts tomorrow if we're still going.

[mpolo]

I have been thinking about the whole "Deputy" situation, and I feel that as I implemented, it detracts from the game. The good news is that we can correct this without any major problems.

1) All people who received town PMs are now just "Members of the Baker Street Irregulars".
2) One of you is secretly the Deputy [I will re-randomize only among townies], and will silently receive the alignment of the cop who is killed. And the appropriate result. For example mpolo sends in "Cop Gojoe" and he is actually the deputy. However, the Mafia kills Sungura, an insane cop. Mpolo receives the result of an Insane Cop on Gojoe, and then is an insane cop for the rest of the game.
3) If the deputy is killed, I will just refer to him as a "Member of the BSI".

This means that

1) Town is guaranteed to get 8 real results (and three made up by scum, of course).
2) Town does not get a "free" townie to auto-vet somebody on D2.

Sorry for the confusion here, but I think this is fairer for both sides and more in the spirit of the logic puzzle that is Dethy.

[Sabrar]

I assume this also means that the previous Deputy is forbidden to claim that fact ever again (otherwise we once again have a confirmed Town)?

[mpolo]

Exactly

[Esthr]

It seems I missed most of the D1 discussion. With Deputy shenanigans out of the picture, I agree the best strategy is to target whoever is below you in the player list. I'm fine with Sabrar's claim order method.

PS: special shoutout to Esthr, I promise I'm really Town this time.

On principle, IGMEOY.

[Sabrar]

- I'm okay with everyone investigating the player below them on the list.
- For the record the timestamp method no longer works as described as we will have 11 results instead of 10. Of course with a slight adjustment we can make it work: take the whole minute part modulo 11 and go from there. This gives a slight bias towards lower numbers but nothing too serious.

On principle, IGMEOY.

Fair enough.

[Madge]

Yep I concur with everything, now.

Will investigate the person below me on the list

Vote: no lynch

[Mikemk]

I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to be doing, but, sure, I guess I'll vote no lunch

[Snark]

Really glad I got here after deputy shenanigans got sorted.

Disagree with:

Take the last digit of the minutes part of the time-stamp when the mod declared day-end. The player whose number matches the digit claims first and claims proceed in the order of the list. This is impartial and impossible to manipulate.

and I plan to claim in order of signups.

Agree with the standard plan of investigating the person below you.

Vote: No lynch

[Madge]

Just a reminder that this is a pseudo-nightless game, so I advise everyone to submit their action (investigate the person below you - in my case Carlington) as soon as possible, I want to get onto D2 already!!!!

Also - Snark, what's the problem with the pseudo-random claiming thing? My cynical side says that scum might want to push claiming in order of sign ups if by chance a few of them are towards the end.

[emlightened]

I feel like we're running the risk of too many sane/insane cops dying at night as it comes down to chance, but there's not really any better plans, as far as I can tell.

Vote: No Lynch

Voting NL does stop us from being able to analyse players as much, but we should have enough info on everyone to not need to, by D6.

I'm fine with going down the list in order (for investigating) for tonight; I'd suggest going by day-start rather than day-end, though, because that is less likely to be almost on the hour.

(Just to let people know, I'm probably going to be pretty inactive over the next couple of days.)

[Carlington]

If we're getting 11 results tomorrow, the timestamp method isn't really useful anymore, so I agree with Snark that we ought to just claim in signup order.

Vote: No Lynch

[dimochka]

Hi, skimmed this because I was away for interviews (just finished). not doing anything useful for the next 3 days so once I land in a few hours I'll have time to be of more value.

Two questions:
1. I may have missed it, but what's the argument against all targeting one (whoever) person and instead targeting the person below on the list? Or do I have to go to Suzaku's link? If so, I will.
2. What's the argument for no lynch? Most D1s start with some arbitrary RVS and someone gets lynched. How is this different? WAIT never mind I found the argument HOWEVER assuming deputy survives I think we should stop at LYLO+1. Will analyze the probabilities of this making sense later.

[Suzaku]

Action in to investigate Esthr

I really don't see that there's any particular advantage to any claim order, so I plan to claim in my first D2 post and would urge others to do the same. (@Snark - that plan you disagreed with was Sabrar's, not mine.) If nothing else, this will stop the game from stagnating if one player high on the list happens to be unable to post for a few days.
I will, of course, follow a claim plan that a majority agree on, provided there's some reasonable logic behind why it would be beneficial.

Ninja:
1. If we all target the same person each night, we end up with results on only a few people, and potentially no useful way to check sanities (eg. we target cops N1 and N2, everyone will get identical results proving only that the people targeted were co-aligned). If we target evenly, we are guaranteed to get results on everyone, and we can fairly easily logically deduce most people's sanities.
2. Since no one (including the Deputy themself) can now identify the Deputy, I don't believe there's any real difference between them and any other cop.

[Carlington]

Hi, skimmed this because I was away for interviews (just finished). not doing anything useful for the next 3 days so once I land in a few hours I'll have time to be of more value.

Two questions:
1. I may have missed it, but what's the argument against all targeting one (whoever) person and instead targeting the person below on the list? Or do I have to go to Suzaku's link? If so, I will.
2. What's the argument for no lynch? Most D1s start with some arbitrary RVS and someone gets lynched. How is this different? WAIT never mind I found the argument HOWEVER assuming deputy survives I think we should stop at LYLO+1. Will analyze the probabilities of this making sense later.

1. If we all target the same person, the only information we gain is potential cop types for each player. If everyone targets the person below them, we still gain information on which cop types are possible for each player, but we also gain the ability to retroactively condemn or exonerate players if we later confirm someone as in/sane, and no matter who scum kills we will be able to narrow down the possibilities even further (actually this last bit might be flawed)

2. The more players we keep alive, the more information we gain - and in any case, if we lynch until LYLO+1, we go back to no lynching tomorrow anyway.

FOS: dimochka, for going against straightforward good dethy strat.

Ninjad by Sabrar, postan anyway.

I submitted to investigate Suzaku