[TM] Sleepytown Mafia - Day 4 - Rise and Shine, Sleepyheads!

[Aardvarki]

In Sleepytown, not much happens. Everyone sleeps in, not much work gets done, and their newspaper is terribly uninspired (not unlike the flavor). After the Mafia moved in, everyone was still too tired to notice. Even when people started dying, the newspaper still printed some pretty boring stories.

This is an open setup. The roles are as follows, there are a few slightly new roles and a few very new roles. All will be explained below.
Town: Wins when Mafia is defeated.
1x Cop
1x Doctor
1x Newspaper Reporter
1x Naive Miller
4x Sleepyhead (vanilla)

Mafia: Wins when they control 50% of the vote. Night-chat and know each other's identities.
1x Angry Newspaper Editor
1x Roleblocker
1x Godfather Torturer

The Newspaper
Each morning starting with D2, a newspaper will run publicly announcing the results of either the Reporter's or the Editor's (if he chooses to use his ability) investigation (Tracker). The article will be written anonymously. The Editor overrides the Reporter, but the Reporter still gets his results given to him privately.

Scum Power Roles:
Angry Newspaper Editor: Tracker who, if he uses his night action, writes about it in the next morning's paper. The results are always honest, but posted anonymously.
Roleblocker: Standard Roleblocker. His ability does not work against the Reporter.
Godfather Torturer: Standard Godfather (returns "town" to a cop), has priority on choosing the mafia NK target, carries out the mafia NK, and has a one-shot "torture" ability. If killed, the roleblocker then Editor will take over, but only the Godfather has the "torture" ability.
Torture: Is used along with the NK, one use per game. Improves the mafia NK to penetrate doctor's protection. If used against the Reporter, he will write a story exposing the identities of the Cop and the Doctor in the next day's paper before dying.

Town Power Roles:
Cop: Sane Cop with nightly investigation. Receives "town" or "scum" result, depending on alignment. Receives "scum" alignment on Naive Miller, and "town" alignment on Godfather.
Doctor: Standard Doctor with nightly protection. Cannot target themselves. Torturer's one-shot Torture ability can penetrate Doctor protection.
Newspaper Reporter: A well-trained Tracker who goes out at night, and writes a newspaper story for the next day, publicly announcing his results. While tracking, he cannot be role-blocked or targeted by the Angry Editor's investigation (if targeted by Editor, will show up as sleeping in the morning paper). He must use his ability every night (it's his job!). If he is targeted by the Torture ability as part of the mafia NK, he will publicly announce the identities of both the Cop and the Doctor in the next day's paper.
Naive Miller: A miller who is told he is just a vanilla townie. Returns "scum" to the cop's investigation.


Living Players:

Spoiler:

5. Not A Raptor (New mechanics? I'm going to have fuuuuuuuuuuun!)
8. Mavketl (I wanna be 8!)
9. Adacore
10. RoadieRich (Is Sleepytown twinned with Amnesiaville?)

Dead Players:

Spoiler:

6. Lataro (Vanilla Town)
11. Dr Ug (Vanilla Town)
2. mpolo (Roleblocker)
7. AngrySquirrel (Doctor)
3. Kellsbells (Editor)
4. ElectricHaze (Cop)
1. Silknor (Godfather)

[RoadieRich]

Confirming. Hi Kells!

[Aardvarki]

Sleepytown Times
Day One Begins!
Today, the town of Sleepytown arose from their beds at the early hour of 4:00 (p.m. that is!) Nothing interesting ever happens here.


11 Players Alive, 6 to Lynch!
Deadline in approximately 96 hours!

(This is a Turbo, please post frequently!)

[kellsbells]

*yawns*

Hi Rich!

[Silknor]

Rolespec will come, but first I have a few questions for the mod.

The Newspapers reports that X is sleeping if the editor investigates the reporter (X). Right? So I take it then that if say the editor investigated the miller, it'd also say X is sleeping?

Assuming no action means sleeping, is it accurate that the miller and vanillas show up as sleeping, but every other role shows up as active if they choose to do at least one of their actions? If they choose to do nothing, are they shown as sleeping?

Can you post a sample tracking result? I assume it's X visited Y's house right?

If someone is roleblocked, for purposes of tracking are they considered as if they had no action or as if they weren't roleblocked?

Warm welcome back to kells! Good thing Une See isn't here..., I'd be shuddering.

[ElectricHaze]

*Stretch*
ahhhh, good morning everyone.

[Not A Raptor]

ohmygodagamewithKells!yaaaay!

*deep breath*

The naive miller is an argument against simply using FTC. A scum result is a very good reason for examination, however. Beyond that, the reporter and editor mechanic is strange to my eyes. The reporter gets to watch whoever he wants and tell the town anonymously... unless tortured, or only watch if the editor uses his power. Further, if tortured, we're out a doctor and a cop. This game's scum is unusually strong. We need to be wary.

[Lataro]

ohmygodagamewithKells!yaaaay!

*deep breath*

The naive miller is an argument against simply using FTC. A scum result is a very good reason for examination, however. Beyond that, the reporter and editor mechanic is strange to my eyes. The reporter gets to watch whoever he wants and tell the town anonymously... unless tortured, or only watch if the editor uses his power. Further, if tortured, we're out a doctor and a cop. This game's scum is unusually strong. We need to be wary.

While it certainly is bad for the reporter to get tortured, it isn't a total loss. If the cop has a scum result for the same night, once they are exposed, scum wouldn't be able to claim cop and stir up wine. We'll all know who is the real cop and be able to trust them and the results. Additionally, if the doc and cop are alive when this occurs, if the roleblocker is dead, we'll have one more cop result since the doc can just protect the cop, and the torture ability will be consumed already for us to have been in this situation.

Overall, I can see this doing enough good for town that we shouldn't be overly concerned about it, especially since the torture will undoubtedly be saved for killing a claimed cop if the doc is still alive. The whole game could easily go by with this ability never being used due to scum feeling they might "need it" later.

As to the miller situation, I assume on death they will show up as the miller? If this is the case, if we lose a lot of vanilla to early lynches and NKs, if it gets down to just say, one other vanilla and the miller who thinks he is vanilla, they should both claim. This would allow us to have two confirmed townies, or if scum jumps in on it, with random lynching, we'd have one scum on the hook among them to sort out, or more if scum would be that kind as to have multiple people claim vanilla from their team.

[Dr Ug]

Also confirming. And Hi to Kells who I haven't played with before.

The Newspaper editor is an interesting role. I think it is going to be very difficult to interpret, as it opens the floor to oh so much wine. Also interesting that the newspaper reporter is unblockable and untrackable -

Another question to the mods:

does the untrackable bit work in reverse? (i.e. if the reporter targets the editor, and the editor is using his action that night, what is he told about the editor?

[Mavketl]

Confirming (hello!)

Just to make sure:
Is the article the reporter 'writes' actually written by them, or is it just the mods reporting the results in a standard format?

[AngrySquirrel]

Hi, I'm here! This was the game I signed up for, wasn't it?
Yea, it was.

So...Some interesting roles, post analysis is probably going to be more useful to us, than relying on powerroles to save us. I'm a bit wondering how the newspaper is going to work, but I guess it's one of those things we'll just have to wait and see about.

[Mavketl]

HI'm a bit wondering how the newspaper is going to work, but I guess it's one of those things we'll just have to wait and see about.

But what about... WILD SPECULATION?

[mpolo]

Wow. Interesting setup. I'm not sure where to start. The torture ability is limited by being one-shot, so as long as the reporter keeps his head down, we are not all so likely to go down that road. The reporter is going to get us a lot of information, although that information has its price -- it's likely to force power roles to claim early. More thoughts later.

[Adacore]

I'm just posting to confirm for now, I'll think more about the setup later.

[Aardvarki]

Let's see... Lots of questions!

Silknor - the tracking result is always "X is sleeping" if X is vanilla, was roleblocked or withheld their night action. A sample result would be either "X is sleeping" or "X visited Y's house", and there will be a couple lines of flavor that will be random "news" and have no meaning whatsoever.

Lataro - the Miller is revealed as the Miller when killed.

Dr Ug - The untrackable does NOT work in reverse. Only the Reporter is untrackable. If the Reporter (A) targets the Editor (B) and the Editor targets the Reporter on the same night, the Reporter will see that "B visited A's house" privately, and the newspaper will read "A slept last night".

Mavketl - I'll be writing the newspapers, the editor/reporter won't even see the results until they see the paper.

[Dr Ug]

Silknor - the tracking result is always "X is sleeping" if X is vanilla, was roleblocked or withheld their night action. A sample result would be either "X is sleeping" or "X visited Y's house", and there will be a couple lines of flavor that will be random "news" and have no meaning whatsoever.

And if the miller is targetted it will read what?

[Aardvarki]

The Miller will also show up as "sleeping" - they don't have a night action to perform.

[kellsbells]

Hi to all I've played with before, and a fond hello to those of you as yet unknown to me.

...And with that bit of formalism out of the way, let's break it down:

The standard vanilla-ness of this game is pretty dramatically overruled by the newspaper dynamic. If the reporter/editor's investigations are aimed at townies (or the miller) we'll see nothing, but considering the amount of power roles in this game I'm sure a lot of their investigations will show us some serious information. I have a feeling that once targets start being revealed this game might trend quickly towards roleclaiming, which (if you know me) I rarely ever support. Especially with the torture option that reveals the cop and doctor, we are probably going to need to play close to the vest as long as possible.

[Mavketl]

Alternatively, we could play it like assassins, and all players claim cop or doctor!

Yeah, no. I agree with kellsbells that we should be careful, especially in the beginning of the game.

[ElectricHaze]

Seems simple enough to me.... Every role is fairly standard. Cop, Doc, Watcher, Roleblocker, Godfather. Only two things in the game are new: Torture, and the Newspaper. The newspaper is simply the watchers results posted publicly. The problem with that is that we don't know whether the results are from our watcher or the scum watcher, so we have to be careful about what we do with the paper results, really the only result we could trust is if X visited Y, and Y was also the NK target, though I don't know that we would ever get a result like that. It seems like the editor will be posting scum info in the paper every night... I don't really see much of a reason for them not to.

Torture looks like a mechanic designed mainly to prevent to town reporter from claiming. If torture didn't exist we could get our results from the reporter since he could claim, get doctored every night, and be unroleblockable. With torture in the mix the reporter needs to be very careful because if he gets outed early we lose all our power roles. Mucho bad.

I dunno, there's really not much else to say, mass claim doesn't really work in this setup, uh so yeah. I hate Day 1s...

[Adacore]

Yeah, I think the main thing that really needs discussion on the setup is what our reaction should be to a newspaper report result. Or perhaps more meta, a discussion on whether we should even have that discussion, since knowing what we're going to do with any given result could influence the Angry Editor to choose to investigate either a scumbuddy or a townie.

[ElectricHaze]

Yeah, I think the main thing that really needs discussion on the setup is what our reaction should be to a newspaper report result. Or perhaps more meta, a discussion on whether we should even have that discussion, since knowing what we're going to do with any given result could influence the Angry Editor to choose to investigate either a scumbuddy or a townie.

I'm of the opinion that we should not have this discussion. Scum is the only one with an active role in choosing what goes into the paper, so any discussion on how to react to newspaper postings can only help the editor decide on strategy. If we get a posting that requires a reaction we should probably just talk about it then.

[RoadieRich]

I'm not sure what it is, but I'm getting a ping from EH's last couple of posts. Perhaps it's that he seems to know more info about the newspaper mechanic than he perhaps should, and I'm pretty sure the reporter wouldn't be that obvious.

FoS: Electric Haze

[kellsbells]

On the contrary, I'm hardly going to treat someone as a suspect for actually giving some real thought to the game dynamics. I know it's Day 1 and everything is a bad decision, but isn't that a little hasty, RoadieRich?

[ElectricHaze]

It would be nice if you are going to FoS, if you could point out something I said to make you suspicious. You seem to not like my talking about the newspaper mechanic, specifically that I seem to know more about it than I should, which is impossible since this is an open setup, unless I am cheating and getting extra info from somewhere else. I don't know anymore about the newspaper mechanic than what is in the OP. Or is it bugging you that I actually seem to have thought about the brand new mechanic? In which case, why?

ninja'd
Exactly that.

[Silknor]

Scum is the only one with an active role in choosing what goes into the paper, so any discussion on how to react to newspaper postings can only help the editor decide on strategy.

I think the problem with this is that the scum have plenty of incentive to think about this now. So they'll already think about it, because it's clearly important for them. Some townies, if we don't have a discussion, probably won't think about it much.

But there's no reason to think that the mechanics and strategy of tracking will only affect the tracking decisions. There's generally lots of overlap and spillover between areas, and so thinking about this can help us in other areas too. If tracking mechanics are inclined to produce a scum strategy that does X, and X goes well with Y, then Y becomes a scumtell. So the town should care about who will be picked.

Needless to say it probably affects town night actions too. So don't dismiss the value of strategic discussions too readily.

[ElectricHaze]

Good point. I have given it a lot of thought because it is an interesting mechanic, and it is new. I assumed most people gave it a lot of consideration, and if they didn't they really should. My main concern is that a big strategy discussion now seems like it serves the purposes of the scum by giving them insight into how we are going to be looking at results in the paper. My conclusion is that it would be best for people to do that on their own and start up strategy discussions after a few newspaper results or when a non-sleeping result comes up, because that is when it becomes most important for us to deal with them. At least that is how I see it. Of course if there is some good reasoning behind how discussion now would be better than waiting a bit, I'm all for it.

[kellsbells]

This meta-discussion about the merits of discussions kind of makes my head hurt. Jumping to a different topic, I just want to clear this up for myself since I'm unfamiliar with the roles:

The Reporter and Angry Editor, when using their abilities, discover who their target *acted upon*? And is the identity of the target going to be unveiled in the morning paper, or just the target's target?

Maybe I'm just rusty but this still seems a tiny bit unclear to me. I'm sure it'll make plenty of sense tomorrow morning, but I'd prefer to get as much sorted out about the mechanics now before we get entrenched in real suspicions.

[mpolo]

I think that Electric Haze contemplating the actual meaning of the newspaper mechanic is very helpful for us, because they are connections that aren't obvious without a little bit of thought (our mod seems to have given a lot of thought into balancing this). I do agree that there is a lot of danger of a claim-fest here, since "suspicious" information is likely to come out on our town power roles. As stated above, the only really sure information is that we have X visited Y and Y shows up dead -- and even there there could be a cop or reporter involved in addition to the kill. (Or even a doctor, if the torture was used.)

[Mavketl]

I was working on a bit of newspaper analysis, but I stumbled upon a pretty big hole:

Are nightkills also trackable actions? If so, can only the Godfather be caught in an NK (since he is the one who carries it out)? The Godfather is 'cop-immune' but not 'reporter-immune', right?

[Aardvarki]

Kells - Correct, the reporter/editor learn who their target acted upon. In the paper, both the reporter's target and the reporter's target's target will be announced.

Mavketl - Yes, the NK is a trackable action. The scum team does not get to choose who carries it out, it is always carried out by the Godfather if he is alive, the Roleblocker if the godfather is not alive, or the Editor if he is the only one left.

[Mavketl]

1) So, if we read in the paper that X has visited Y tonight, and Y is alive in the morning:

X is a doctor
X is a cop
X is a godfather (Y got doctored)
X is a roleblocker


2) If we read in the paper that X has visited Y tonight, and Y is dead:

X is a godfather (or the scum that carries it out after the godfather is dead)


3) If we read in the paper that X was sleeping:

X is a vanilla townie (most likely, considering the odds)
X is a miller
X is a reporter
X is an editor

X is a doctor, cop, godfather or roleblocker who didn't use their action.


2) would be super lucky, and instant lynch.

1) gives us a 50% chance between town power and scum - this would probably be bad, because if it's a town power, scum will know. If it's scum, town power does not automatically know.

3) seems to make it more likely that X is town, because it seems unlikely that people would hold back their action (especially in N1). The annoying thing is that even with a cop and a reporter, we can't distinguish between the miller and the editor.

Thoughts?

[AngrySquirrel]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I really see no reason as to why the Angry Editor would not use his power (provided there are no limitation on how often he can use them).

The reporter is going to target randomly, with chance of finding both scum and pro-town powerroles. But the editor already knows who his scumpals are and is thus only going to target townies. Which means any results saying that people visited other people the Editor finds is going to be town powerroles. The reporter can't counterclaim if town decides to go on a "x visited y and now y is dead, LYNCH X!"-spree because doing so would mean giving the godfather his target to torture and thus outing and removing 3 powerroles for the price of one.

The torture-ability is luckily one-shot, so there's a chance that the godfather might waste it on someone else than the reporter. But I don't think we'll get to know that? Or?

Dear Mod:
Will we get to know if the torture ability is used on someone else than the reporter?

[AngrySquirrel]

EBWOP; didn't see Mavketl's post.

2) If we read in the paper that X has visited Y tonight, and Y is dead:

X is a godfather (or the scum that carries it out after the godfather is dead)

As far as I've understood it could also mean that X is the cop who has visited the same person that was targeted for the kill by the mob.
Or, that X is the doctor and the torture ability was used on Y.

[Mavketl]

As far as I've understood it could also mean that X is the cop who has visited the same person that was targeted for the kill by the mob.
Or, that X is the doctor and the torture ability was used on Y.

Crap, you're right.

Well, so far for at least one clear-cut scenario.

But the editor already knows who his scumpals are and is thus only going to target townies.

That would be good for his own information-gathering (he can try to find power roles). It would not necessarily have the desired effect on town lynches, especially if town expects the editor to always use his power, and never on scum. That way, the newspaper would always give us townies.

[Silknor]

My main concern is that a big strategy discussion now seems like it serves the purposes of the scum by giving them insight into how we are going to be looking at results in the paper.

There's no reason the town should ever come up with a hard and fast rule that the scum could exploit. It doesn't matter if it's D1 or D4, the town wouldn't and shouldn't do that. So I'm not sure I understand the concern. I think it's obvious that anyone in the paper will get some special consideration, but that's just because they're prominent, not because we suspect them or think they should be lynched for their 15 minutes of fame.

Here's an example of a useful thing to realize though:
If the visited person does not die, the visitor cannot be the godfather unless the visited was doctored. (So either the doctor knows, or we all know if the doc is dead). I'm making a small assumption here, which I'll confirm: that torture being an ability used "along with" the NK means that the godfather can't kill someone (or no one) and torture someone else. This information could be quite useful late game if we have a cop still alive.

Must torture be used on the NK target?

Which means any results saying that people visited other people the Editor finds is going to be town powerroles.

You are joking right? You don't think there's any possibility, at ALL, that the scum would see this and create wine at some point by tracking one of their own?

[Aardvarki]

The torture ability is not announced, and is an improvement to the mafia nk - it must be used on the nk target.

[Adacore]

Mavketl - I think you missed some possibilities in your analysis. Ninja'd: AS has already pointed the obvious ones out.

It's probably logical to assume that the roleblocker and angry editor would never target the scum NK target, but theoretically it would, at least, be possible. Based on this assumption, though, if the newspaper report is about the scum NK target, that means the editor did not use his power that night. I'm not sure how that's remotely useful knowledge, but someone else might see something I don't.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I really see no reason as to why the Angry Editor would not use his power (provided there are no limitation on how often he can use them).

The reporter is going to target randomly, with chance of finding both scum and pro-town powerroles. But the editor already knows who his scumpals are and is thus only going to target townies. Which means any results saying that people visited other people the Editor finds is going to be town powerroles. The reporter can't counterclaim if town decides to go on a "x visited y and now y is dead, LYNCH X!"-spree because doing so would mean giving the godfather his target to torture and thus outing and removing 3 powerroles for the price of one.

There's wine all over the place in that, though - if we assume the Angry Editor is always going to use his investigation and he will always target townies, that would mean anyone investigated is confirmed town. Thus, uncertainty over the whether the Angry Editor is using his action is valuable to scum. I agree, he's highly likely to use his investigation every night, but the fact that he doesn't have to means we can't just assume all report targets are townies (but I suppose even if he had to investigate every night he could deliberately target one of his scum-buddies to throw us off).

The torture-ability is luckily one-shot, so there's a chance that the godfather might waste it on someone else than the reporter. But I don't think we'll get to know that? Or?

I think I agree with Lataro here, having thought about it. The torture is likely not to have too much effect on the game, and even if it does it would be just as likely used to take out a claimed cop than to take out the reporter. If the godfather tortures the reporter, the identities of the cop and/or doctor (depending on whether they're still alive) are disclosed and they are both confirmed:

- If both are alive, that means the doctor will protect the cop that night (and die himself), giving us a free investigation, the cop tells us all his investigation results and dies the second night.
- If the cop is alive but the doctor is dead, that means the cop tells us all his investigation results then dies the following night.
- If the doctor is alive but the cop is dead, the doctor dies that night.

In both cases 1 and 2, we should get a minimum of two confirmed cop results (unless we lynch the doctor). None of those situations are massively beneficial to scum, I think they're more likely to use the torture ability as an unblockable kill in case they need to take out a claimed cop.

I think in general if a power role is uncovered by the newspaper report, they shouldn't claim unless the other town power role is already claimed or dead. The 50:50 chance of the uncovered role being a cop vs doctor (assuming it's not the godfather or roleblocker, either through the reporter's investigation or a mafia ploy) means the scum would have to decide whether to use their torture power with the kill and, thus, might end up either wasting their torture on the doctor or failing to use it on the cop. I'm not completely sure about this though (I was going to write the opposite, until I thought about it), so it might need some more thought.

Final note - if we manage to lynch the editor, we'll have a much easier time interpretting the newspaper reports.

Also ninja'd by Silknor and Mavketl, who raised some of the same points.

[Mavketl]

Mavketl - I think you missed some possibilities in your analysis. Ninja'd: AS has already pointed the obvious ones out.

Yeah, I was being all optimistic and overlooked some complications.

I think in general if a power role is uncovered by the newspaper report, they shouldn't claim unless the other town power role is already claimed or dead. The 50:50 chance of the uncovered role being a cop vs doctor (assuming it's not the godfather or roleblocker, either through the reporter's investigation or a mafia ploy) means the scum would have to decide whether to use their torture power with the kill and, thus, might end up either wasting their torture on the doctor or failing to use it on the cop. I'm not completely sure about this though (I was going to write the opposite, until I thought about it), so it might need some more thought.

This seems like a great idea, maybe with one exception... if the cop is uncovered (while the doctor is still alive and unclaimed) and he already has a scum result, maybe he should claim? There is a pretty big chance that he's the next NK, after all, and that is useful information. Well, unless it's the miller. So now I'm not sure.

[Adacore]

This seems like a great idea, maybe with one exception... if the cop is uncovered (while the doctor is still alive and unclaimed) and he already has a scum result, maybe he should claim? There is a pretty big chance that he's the next NK, after all, and that is useful information. Well, unless it's the miller. So now I'm not sure.

I think you're right there. For the sake of completeness, I should point out that the downside of not claiming in general is that it will be far less likely to expose mafia roles if they are investigated. If we went the opposite direction, and said that people reported as active in the newspaper should claim instantly, that would mean the scum would almost have to use the editor every night to target townies, as any scum player targetted would instantly be caught in a counter-claim and exposed within 2 days. That's why I think it might need more discussion/thought.

The best option, I believe, might be for townies to claim the day after they are exposed as a power role, unless (as Mavketl suggests) they are a cop with a scum result, in which case they should claim immediately. Actually, cops might want to claim as soon as they get a scum result anyway. I know, it's only a 2:1 chance the result is correct, but that's better than nothing. Obviously if the miller is already dead the cop should claim immediately on finding scum.