Scales of Justice (Game over - Town wins)

[webby]

The basic rules (read them, they're good for you):

Spoiler:

Mafia, also known as Werewolf (to infidels, we shall not speak of them), is a game originating in real life, but adapted for a forum setting. Basically, you have a small village of innocent people, but hidden among them is a group of nasty mafiosos, whose sole goal is to have at least 50% of the population belong to their organization so that they can control the lynch-votes. Since they cannot recruit people, the only way to achieve this is bloody murder, but not more than one per night. The rest of the town uses their deductive abilities, along with some special roles, to find these infiltrators and lynch them.

To Vote: You must bold it, if you don't and I miss it, not my fault! It should also be on a separate line such as:
Vote: AngrySquirrel

If you want to change a vote, do it in this manner:
Unvote: AngrySquirrel
Vote: OneoftheDragon

Night—when everything else happens:
People with night-time powers send in their night actions and discuss among themselves etc.

Rules:
1. Do not talk about the game outside this thread.
2. DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE GAME OUTSIDE THIS THREAD. (Unless you spoiler it in the discussion thread, or really, really want to, you are only shooting yourself in the foot.)
3. Please stay on topic. (Or not.).
4. Don't lurk. If you need a replacement let me know and I'll fix it. If you go away for more than a whole day/night without letting me know, you will be modkilled.
5. If you aren't part of the game, please post in a separate, forbidden to players, thread for outside analysis.
6. Once I say that it's nighttime, do not post in the thread AT ALL. Minor off topicness will be tolerated but please, do not discuss the game during night.
7. If you die, don't say anything for the rest of the game except a simple, "Bah, you got me," or "Urrghh" which reveals no information. Seriously, dead people, you are dead, stay that way. YOU ARE DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD!
8. You may not post verbatim or quote from your role PM. Paraphrasing is fine. YOU MAY NOT QUOTE YOUR ROLE PM, anyone who does anything even close to this will be publicly executed.
9. You may not edit your posts. This is to preempt the possibility of cheating by sending messages to other people and then editing them out. Or a for a number of other reasons. DON'T EDIT.
10. Do not assume the game is over until one of the mods say it is.

Alive Players:
1. BoomFrog (You took my spot on purpose didn't you Lataro! Vote Lataro!)
2. mostlynormal (Three is the number of completion)
4. Gopher of Pern (Is my heart heavier than a feather?)
5.TheMaskedGecko(complete newbie, please go easy on me)

Dead Players:
3. t1mm01994

Game mechanics:
1. There are 4 townies and 1 mafia. The goal of the townies is to identify and lynch the mafia player, who has been chosen at random using random.org. If the mafia is the only remaining player in the game, or there is no way to prevent this, they win.

2. If the majority of the players in the game have voted for a player, that player is lynched and takes no further part in the game. If the deadline set by me is reached without a majority, the player with the most votes will be lynched.

3. In the event of a tie, the player who has had that number of votes on them for the longest unbroken period will be lynched. The exception to this is if everyone in the game has voted for those two players, (eg 4 players left and a 2-2 tie) in which case there will be no lynch.

4. The player who has been selected as mafia will choose one of the following three roles:
- Mafia Strongman, in which case doctors and roleblockers have has no effect.
- Mafia Godfather, in which case a cop will get the result of town on all players in the game.
- Mafia Ninja, in which case a watcher will get the result that no players visited their target that night.

The role which is selected by the mafia will remain secret.

5. After this happens, day 1 will start. On day 1 you may vote twice - once for a player and once for one of the following roles:
- Doctor - can target a player and unless the kill is submitted by a Strongman, the target can not be killed that night.
- Roleblocker - can target a player and the target will not be able to target anyone that night.
- Cop - can target a player and will be told whether that player is town or scum, with the exception that a targetted Godfather will appear as town.
- Watcher - can target a player and will be told who, if anyone, targetted their target that night, unless that player is a Ninja.

I will then choose a town player at random to get this role.

6. The mafia may choose not to submit a nightkill.

7. The vanilla town role PM is as follows:

You are a vanilla townie. Your goal is to lynch the mafia.

You should get your role PM soon, you may ask for clarifications to the rules etc., but no game discussion until I start the day in about 24 hours time.

[webby]

Mayor Webby looked at those gathered in his office in despair - only five had turned up to fight the mafia, and he was pretty sure one of them was a spy. Moreover, none of them were particularly skilled. He was tempted to use the town's money to escape to an island far, far away, but instead chose to use it to train a villager. Unfortunately, he was pretty sure the mafia had resources too, that they'd be training.

The five in his office were a last resort and having run out of options, he was willing to let them use the ultimate force, to lynch whoever they suspected of being mafia. First though, they had to choose what skill they wanted. Did they want to have the power to heal someone from what would otherwise be a fatal wound? Did they want to be able to see someone's treachery, to be able to find out whether someone was on their side? Did they want to be able to prevent someone from going out at night. Or did they want to be able to secretly watch someone, to find out whether anyone visted them at night?


Day 1 will have two parts - the first will be the selection of which role you want to be given to a random townie. Votes in bold and on a new line please. You may not vote for the lynch yet.

Deadline for role selection is five days and 6 hours from now,Tuesday 3rd January at 6pm Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time (GMT +11, so 7am Tuesday GMT).

Day 1 starts now, everyone has read their role PMs and mafia has selected their role.

[Mostlynormal]

So, hi everyone. I'm new to mafia but I've done a lot of thinking about this game. I guess our first task is to decide what role to give ourselves, so I'll put my layman's two cents on that.

It seems to me that the watcher wouldn't be very useful. It's way of giving information relies on the fact that the scum submits a nightkill, but the scum doesn't have to submit a nightkill, and as far as I know it wouldn't be in their favor to do one anyway.

As far as the doctor and roleblocker, they'd probably be more useful D2. On night one scum probably wouldn't submit a nightkill anyway (correct me if I'm wrong), and any possible information gathered by who the roleblocker targeted would be useless at best and a lot of wine at worst. On night two, however, they could try to prevent a nightkill (and thus game over) in case we lynched town. I don't know if one would necessarily be better than the other, but maybe someone else would know more about that.

The cop would be useful both days unless the scum was a Godfather. Certainly, if it got a scum reading it could claim right away and the game would be over quickly. And there may be ways to tell whether the scum was a godfather or not. For example, if they weren't a godfather they would probably nightkill N1 in hopes of killing the cop and/or ending the game quickly so that the cop couldn't gather too much information. A godfather would probably prefer not to nightkill N1 because it would reduce their chances of being lynched D2. Of course, wine would factor into this, but overall I think cop might be our best choice.

I'd be curious to see what others have to say. I could have gone totally wrong up there, so feel free to correct me.

[t1mm01994]

One thing that's wrong in there: Mafia almost always wants to nightkill. Else the townies can just choose to Not Lynch, and gather information day after day, while there is no punishment whatsover for it.

[TheMaskedGecko]

Hi, I'm new to this as well. Also I think I'm the only Person in my timezone (GMT) and so I'm unlikely to be active at the same time as everyone else. I'll try to make it count when I am.

I think I see what you're saying about the mafia not killing on N1. If they do kill, D2 becomes 2v1 so they're more likely to be lynched, whereas if they don't it becomes a 3v1 and then a mislynch would lead to a mafia win. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that would seem to be the best strategy.

As far as powers are concerned both blocker and doc seem weak without any other players with powers to protect (Whoop! Alliteration!). Cop would seem stronger than watcher, as he'd be able to find scum even if they don't kill. So the cop has the most chance of being useful. Numbers: doctor has 1/6 chance of being useful (scum is not strongman= 2/3 AND scum targets same player as doctor (including option for not killing) =2/3x1/4=2/12=1/6.)

Chances of role blocker being successful=2/9 (scum is not strongman=2/3 AND scum is targeted = 2/3x1/3= 2/9)

Chances of watcher being successful =1/3 (scum is not ninja=2/3 AND scum makes a kill [complete guess] =2/3x1/2=2/6= 1/3)

Chances of cop being successful =2/9 (scum is not Godfather=2/3 AND cop gets right target=2/3x1/3)

This is only based on pure chance ie. the mafia flips a coin every time they make a decision. I'm also not a statistics student so there's almost certainly some inaccuracy. Also we have to bear in mind the possibility that the scum is a godfather who doesn't make a kill, in which case none of the powers work.

Two questions:
Mod, do the powers get distributed before the first night, giving us enough time to use them?
Also, will we get extra powers tommorow?

At the moment I would support a vote for cop or watcher because they'd have achance of confirming a town for us as well which could really help on the last day.

[TheMaskedGecko]

@t1m: the mafia want this finished as quickly as possible, before they mess up. If we don't lynch, we can assume that they will kill, leaving us in the same situation but with no chance of having killed the scum. The no kill was simply because they have more chance with 3v1 than with 2v1.

[webby]

Two questions:
Mod, do the powers get distributed before the first night, giving us enough time to use them?
Also, will we get extra powers tommorow?

Yes, you vote first for a power, which I will distribute randomly to one of the four townies, then day 1 will continue and you will decide who to lynch.
No extra power tomorrow.

Also, this is generally assumed, but just in case it comes up - for the benefit of the new players - a doctor may not protect themself.

[TheMaskedGecko]

Hmm, that changes life slightly. A doctor would give us a better chance on the last day. Same for role blocker. Not going to vote until we've discussed it a bit more.

[Mostlynormal]

You forgot to include the probability of the watcher targeting the right person in your estimates. That would be an extra 1/4, so I think the total would be 1/12. You also didn't include the possibility of them dying early. That would of course be a lot more complicated, and these early estimates are good, but that's just something to keep in mind.

Also, now that I think about it, we can do a bit better than random. I think timm was right in some way. If the scum didn't nightkill on night one, day two would be 3v1, and we would just no-lynch anyway, because either scum nightkills night two and improves our odds to a 2v1, or we just get all the more time to figure out who the scum really is. So I guess we can improve our watcher estimate to about 1/6 because nightkill or not really isn't a 1/2 chance.

The one situation I can think of in which scum could improve their chances by not nightkilling would be if we choose a roleblocker. Not nightkilling would potentially spread a lot of wine day two as to whether the roleblocker's target was scum, and they could just lay low and then nightkill on night two without consequence. So we couldn't afford to use the roleblocker like a cop because scum could meddle too much. They could be useful during later nights when the scum really wants to nightkill, though.

Also:

2. mostlynormal (Three is the number of completion)

[t1mm01994]

Umm, guys? While all that is useful, I doubt statistics will be the best way to sort this. Especially in larger games, which I hope you'll be playing after this, statistics just don't get the job done.

Basically, we're playing Rock-Paper-Scissors here, democratically, with one person knowing what the opponent will pick. If there is 1 obviously stronger role, scum might very likely pick the power role that counters that.

I myself would always get cop or watcher, for non-complicated results.. Either he's scum or not.

I think we can assume that this will be a 2-day match at most, 2 lynches and 2NKs will leave town dead, so we really only have 1 night to go on...
Unless, of course, the doctor/blocker does its job. I'm going to go with doctor for now, as it's probably not predicted by scum, and it can get us more information.

[Mostlynormal]

I know statistics aren't the best estimate, but with it being the beginning of the game and all it can give at least a rough estimate. I can see where you're going with the doctor thing. If there was no nightkill the doctor could claim and we'd have ourselves a basically confirmed townie in the form of the person he targeted. On the other hand, the doctor would still have a relatively low chance of getting the right person.

I think I'm a bit confused though. You say you would alway's go for cop or watcher and then seem to suggest the doctor. I'm assuming you either mean the doctor as opposed to the roleblocker? Or, what do you mean?

Still haven't heard from GoP, or Boomfrog yet, which is understandable considering our timezone difference. I'm sort of interested to see what they think.

[t1mm01994]

Excuse me, there's 1 line of thought missing. As town, I'd instinctively go for cop/watcher, so as scum I'd go for ninja/gf so doctor is likely not countered. Having that said, I'll wait 4 some veteran input.

[TheMaskedGecko]

I agree, in as far as if I was mafia I would choose either ninja or godfather. However I think that the role blocker would be more useful, as it's easier to pick the person you think is scum than the one you think that they are going to kill.

Also, Democratic Rock Paper Scissors sounds like the worst party game ever

good night

[Mostlynormal]

Well, since the scum can't choose both gf AND ninja, it might still be better to go for a choice between to of the more useful roles. The role blocker and doctor are mostly useful for protection rather than information, since any possible information could be tampered with by the scum. The watcher and cop, on the other hand, could potentially get us more information but we wouldn't have any protection against night kills. It seems to me that information is going to be more important, especially since a nightkill would probably put town in a better situation (as far as odds of lynching scum) anyway. So while the scum may not anticipate a doctor, we may be better off choosing one of the more useful roles anyway, since there's no way they can prevent both watcher and cop.

I do agree, though, that there's not much more to be said without veteran input. I guess I'll wait for now.

Ninja'd by TheMasked Gecko: A roleblocker might have greater chance of success, but scum could very easily screw with us by not submitting. With the doctor, on the other hand, we could possibly get an almost-certainly confirmed townie, as if scum didn't NK then the odds would be 3/4 genuine confirmed and 1/4 "confirmed" townie who's actually scum as opposed to only 1/4 chance of a confirmed townie if they did submit a nightkill. I, at least, would not take that gamble if I were scum, so a successful protection by the doctor would give us an almost definitely confirmed townie, which is better than (in the case of the roleblocker) a probably not confirmed scum. I hope that made since, because I'm not very good at making sense.

[BoomFrog]

I do agree, though, that there's not much more to be said without veteran input. I guess I'll wait for now.

There's always more to be said even without veteran input. Even if you guys are completely barking up the wrong tree with strategy it is still interesting to hear your thoughts because one of us is scum, and I'd love to hear his* thoughts on the strategy. However, if you had said, "Not much more to be said until the two quiet players post" then I'd have to agree with you. Anyway...

If we choose cop and scum choose not-godfather, then they will want to kill because the cop get's info each night. If they chose GF they will still likely kill as not-killing would tip thier hand that they are protected.

If we choose watcher then if the scum withhold N1 then town can no lynch D2 and we basically wait eachother out until scum makes a kill. So effectively the watcher has one chance to catch the scum and is exactly as powerful as the cop.

If we choose the Doctor or roleblocker then scum can withhold their kill N1. We can of course no lynch and they can keep not killing until they randomly one night send in a kill. Then we will not know if any nights that lacked a kill were from a RB/Doc or just random withheld kills. I hesitate to outline this strategy as there is a 3/5 chance that scum is a noob who may not realize this plan, but I think it's better to talk about it in the open and do real scumhunting to win, not get lucky that a noob scum made a mistake. If the doc/RB lives after the first kill then the doc will still not confirm anything, but the RBer will confirm that his target was town. So the RBer is also exactly as useful as the cop. The doc is essentially useless unless we go ahead and lynch at 4 people in which case the "almost confirmed townie" is not really helping our odds.

Having gone through all that I think that it really is a pure democratic rock paper scissors game (except we win ties so to speak). The only difference is that the scum may have not thought things through and thought some roles were better then others. I'm fairly tempted to go with cop as it's "too obvious" so scum probably didn't pick godfather.

Is there any limit to how many days in a row town can NL and scum can withhold their kill?

If we lynch a townie is it possible that they will be the "random" townie to get a power and it dies with them?

* no hers** this game I believe.

** That's weird to not put an apostrophe on "hers" but it's correct.

[webby]

Is there any limit to how many days in a row town can NL and scum can withhold their kill?

Because I think the set-up very slightly favours town (4-1 with no powers is pretty even), I set the win condition of town as 'to lynch the mafia'.

Therefore, town can not continuously No Lynch, or they will fail in their goal of lynching the mafia. To enforce this, I'm going to set an arbitrary limit which is just to force town to lynch eventually - if the game goes more than 7 days, scum win.

If we lynch a townie is it possible that they will be the "random" townie to get a power and it dies with them?

Sorry if there's been a misunderstanding here - day 1 has two parts - the first is when you select the power, then I'll allocate it to someone, then day 1 continues and you can lynch.

[Gopher of Pern]

There are basically 2 ways town can go about this:

First: Town can lynch day 1. This leaves 4 players. If mafia doesn't kill, we NL until they do. This will leave us with 2v1 on the final day, with hopefully a result. If we have a result, it will likely turn into a kingmaker, with scum falseclaiming a result, along with the power role. (Note this only works with watcher/cop.)

Second: Town can NL until mafia kills 2 players, making it 2v1. This will give more chance for the power role to get something, but also give the mafia a good chance of killing the power role.

Both methods I think are best with either the cop or the watcher. So my pick would be between them. I doubt the mafia would have chosen the strongman, but roleblockers/doctors are less useful in this setup.

[Mostlynormal]

So, I think, barring the godfather, cop would objectively be the best role. Here's my reasoning:

GoP's plan(s) would only work if the scum had a motive to lynch, because according to webby the scum can force us to lynch (eventually) rather than the other way around. If we chose the watcher or roleblocker, and scum didn't have the role that countered it, they would have a very good reason not to nightkill, which would force us to lynch with worse odds (It would give us a little extra time for scumhunting, but given that we have two total newbies and one kinda newbie we would probably have little to go on). Even if they had the role that did counter it, they would have no specific reason to nightkill, and would still probably not decide not to. On the other hand, if we chose cop, non godfather roles would have a very good reason to nightkill.

Of course, this all depends on scum not having chosen godfather, but I think that probably scum would decide godfather is a very good choice. This would be where the wine comes in. "Did they expect us to pick cop, or expect us to expect them to pick godfather...?", and so on. I think BF's comment about it being like "democratic rock-paper-scissors" is apt. I'm no game theorist (and I doubt anyone else here is), but I think I read that in situations when there's no clear advantageous choice (which there wouldn't be, because of the way wine works) it's actually best to randomize your decision so that your opponent can't base his decision off of what you would choose. That may be a bit backward since scum already chose their role, but a random decision might just throw them for a loop. We could narrow it down to two by deciding which of the other three roles to throw out (so we'd have the first and second best, which couldn't both be countered by scum at once) Then we'd have to find a way to obtain a "random" decision. Obviously we couldn't just nominate one person to flip a coin, as that person could be scum and just lie about the "coinflip" However, I think I have a three person system in mind which would be relatively random even if one of the three was scum. Before I go into that I want to know if you all think this is a good idea.

[BoomFrog]

A random decision is safest but half the point of the democratic vote is to analyze what people push for to see if we can pick out someone with an ulterior motive. Random choice defeats that.

[t1mm01994]

Well dang, the power role pick just became a coinflip rather than a 3-sided dice. Doc and RB require bad scum play to be remotely useful...
So for now, I'll drink my own wine(nearly new year!) and go with watcher.

[Mostlynormal]

A random decision is safest but half the point of the democratic vote is to analyze what people push for to see if we can pick out someone with an ulterior motive. Random choice defeats that.

Well, part of the problem is that town can have no good motive to choose one over the other. I suppose that could make decisiveness scummy looking, but that would be pretty counter productive. Maybe we could have everyone flip a coin and then give good reasons to chose their coinflip decision, which shouldn't be hard for town as it seems equally likely that the scum is godfather as not, but might be hard for scum because they would be defending a decision they already know is the worst decision for town.

Just throwing things out there. I think whatever we do we should reach a consensus first as to whether roleblocker or watcher is second best. It seems that everybody still has a different opinion on it. For example, I disagree with timm's choice of watcher. Watcher would require bad scum play to be useful for the same reason doctor/RB would require bad play to be useful. Sure, if the scum did play badly, the watcher would be more useful, but we can't bank on the scum playing badly. Also, there is one advantage to a a doctor/RB that the watcher wouldn't have, which would be giving us at least a slim chance to win if we mislynch day two.

[BoomFrog]

Well if we're forced to lynch twice then scum won't make a kill until killing is a winning move so watcher is literally useless. Roleblocker or doctor could give us a third lynch by preventing the kill N2, but RB is strictly better then doctor in every way that I can see.

What happens if there is a "tie" such as Rolblocker and scum are the only two left alive?

[webby]

What happens if there is a "tie" such as Rolblocker and scum are the only two left alive?

Scum win by the 'town has failed to get rid of scum' logic

[Mostlynormal]

I just realized we have about 24 hours left to decide and still no one has cast a vote. I would go ahead with the coinflipping idea, but I agree that randomization might actually be more harmful. I think we might actually be able to form opinions on this. I think I'm leaning towards cop. My reasoning would be this: though we've narrowed it down to a coinflip between two roles, the scum didn't have as long to think and had less information (they probably didn't know that town would be forced to lynch, for example) For all we know, they could have chosen ninja. So, if we wanted to simplify it to a random decision (which it probably was not), godfather would probably have more like a 1/3 chance of being picked. Since cop is our best choice barring gf, it'd probably be better to pick the cop.

Now that I think about it though, that doesn't quite hold up. For one thing, it pretty obviously wasn't a random decision (unless we have a really lazy scum). I don't think the strongman would've gotten as much consideration because the doctor/roleblocker don't provide good information. It's possible that the scum didn't even realize that but it's pretty unlikely. I guess they might've realized that doctor/roleblocker could prevent a loss if we mislynched day two. Still, it's quite possible that the scum actually reduced the decision to ninja vs godfather while we've reduced it to roleblocker vs cop. In this case, the roleblocker would be the obvious choice. I'm not sure this is the case either though.

As you can see this got pretty stream of conciousness. I think I'm back where I started: we should each flip a coin individually and then defend what we get with decent logic and such, so the scum can't hide as easily. I'd love to know if anyone has a better idea though. Maybe someone has a non wishy-washy argument for either side that I missed. If not, I'll flip a coin and post my result tommorrow (along with a description of how obviously superior my choice is and anyone whose coin flipped the other way is stupid and/or scum )

By the way, happy new year everybody!

[webby]

I'm going to extend the deadline by 24 hours because it seems like people have been away/busy over new year.

Deadline is now 2 days, 2 hours, 30 minutes from this post (7pm Wednesday AEDST).

Votals:
NONE

[Gopher of Pern]

Well if we're forced to lynch twice then scum won't make a kill until killing is a winning move so watcher is literally useless. Roleblocker or doctor could give us a third lynch by preventing the kill N2, but RB is strictly better then doctor in every way that I can see.

What happens if there is a "tie" such as Rolblocker and scum are the only two left alive?

If scum doesn't kill until it's a winning move, they would likely have chosen godfather, as cop is the only threat to that plan. RB/Doc can work, but it would have to be very lucky. Thus if they are using that plan, they would have chosen godfather.

Plan: Choose cop, and NL N1 and N2. We get 2 chances to cop scum, and it will be down to 3 people. If scum doesn't kill on either night, then it is likely that scum has picked godfather, and we have worst case scenario: 2 lynches, with 1/5 and 1/4 chance (random). Otherwise we have 2 cop results, and if we pick scum, we're golden. If neither are scum, then we have to assume godfather.

Vote: Cop

[t1mm01994]

There is a huge hole in the above reasoning. I'll be back to post on it soon...

[Mostlynormal]

I don't know about one huge hole in the reasoning but there are several things that I just don't get about GoP's last post.

If scum doesn't kill until it's a winning move, they would likely have chosen godfather, as cop is the only threat to that plan. RB/Doc can work, but it would have to be very lucky. Thus if they are using that plan, they would have chosen godfather.

If cop is the only threat to that plan, then they would use it if they chose godfather, or if we didn't choose cop. So I don't quite see your point here. It is true, though, that if we choose cop and they don't NK then it's pretty likely they're godfather.

Plan: Choose cop, and NL N1 and N2. We get 2 chances to cop scum, and it will be down to 3 people. If scum doesn't kill on either night, then it is likely that scum has picked godfather, and we have worst case scenario: 2 lynches, with 1/5 and 1/4 chance (random). Otherwise we have 2 cop results, and if we pick scum, we're golden. If neither are scum, then we have to assume godfather.

Though I get the whole "roleblocker is not very useful so we might as well pick cop anyway" point, I definitely do not agree on this plan. There's an even worse worst case scenario: scum is godfather but nightkills both nights anyway, leaving us at a day three LYLO with absolutely nothing to go on. It'd be better if we lynched D1 and then NL D2 if scum doesn't nightkill. That way, unless scum is a godfather and declines to nightkill, we'd have some discussion from day one to hunt scum when we're at 2 vs 1, and, if we're lucky, a useful cop result. We can hope that scum isn't godfather, but we can't rely on it for our entire strategy. Really, the more useful point of a cop is it would force scum into 2 vs 1 if they weren't a godfather, thus leaving them more exposed, but if we go into 2 vs 1 without any useful content whatsoever, we're pretty much screwed unless we get a scum result from a cop, which has slightly better than a quarter chance (I worked it out, it's actually 5/16*) of happening if scum is not godfather, and a whopping 0% chance if scum is not godfather, which are odds I'm not willing to bet on. Basically the plan turns the worst case scenario from having to lynch at 4 vs 1 and 3 vs 1 if scum is a godfather to having to lynch 2 vs 1 at LYLO with no real content except for (ironically) the role selection discussion. Even the best case scenario (scum is not gf and nightkills both nights) doesn't look that bright.

I guess Boomfrog was right, not being random can generate some pretty useful discussion. I wouldn't say this is some damning scumtell, but I will definitely have my eye on you once we start lynching. If you were a godfather it would be quite convenient for you if we chose cop and then accepted your plan.

*Statistical speculations on the cop spoilered for boringness:

Spoiler:

If we go with GoP's plan, then there is a 3/16 chance (1/4 chance right target x 3/4 chance of surviving the night) that cop get's it right on the first night plus a 1/8 chance (3/4 wrong target night one x 3/4 survives night one x 1/3 right target night two x 2/3 survives night two) that cop gets it right night two. That comes out to 5/16.

[webby]

Votals:
Cop - 1 (Gopher of Pern)

27 Hours until deadline for the role selection part of the day. There will be no break, I will send the role to the randomly selected townie when the deadline is reached, then you can start lynching.

[Mostlynormal]

Ok, since the deadline's looming, I'm going to place my vote. I think I've finally crawled out of the mire of wine and decided our best choice. If it isn't, then oh well, the worst we can get is a vanilla game.

Vote: Roleblocker

Cop would be nice if we knew scum wasn't a godfather, but it actually seems much more likely that they are godfather than strongman. Scum, I assume, would also be planning for worst case scenarios and godfather gives them a much more desirable worst case scenario than strongman does. Also, I consider GoP the most likely to be scum right now, and if they are then they're probably godfather. Also, if GoP isn't scum it's very likely that the scum is a newbie, and since godfather is the obvious choice, they would be more likely to go with godfather. So there's my decision.

[t1mm01994]

I genuinely agree with mostlynormal there. With deadline coming up, I'll
Vote: Roleblocker
and hope with all hopes that bf isn't our scum
@bad reasoning: if we pick cop, scum has no reason to nl. If we nl, we have 1 chance to kill, hoping that our cop isn't killed by then. Those are not odds I want to go on, especially with the chance of a godfather.

[BoomFrog]

Well I agree that GoP's logic has been bad but I think it is his sincere logic. It may be that he is having trouble thinking like town if he is scum. If we had nothing else to go on I'd go for a GoP lynch D1.

Anyway rolebocker does seem to be the best choice strategically. The extra benefit that I have refrained from mentioning until now to see if others would say it is that a roleblocker can still do his job after revealing himself. If we are about to lynch the power role he can claim and we will lynch someone else unless their is a counter claim. A claimed cop (or watcher, or doc) will be killed for sure the night after claiming because they are confirmed town. But a roleblocker might still choose to block scum and live (and confirm the scum thus winning the game).

However, taking it to the next level of thinking.

GoP if scum is likely a GF.
Mostlynormal if scum is likely a strongman
t1mm01994 if scum is likely a strongman
TheMaskedGecko hasn't contributed enough for me to judge him and he is my other lynch target I am considering for D1.

So I think the two plans are: Pick RBer, lynch one of TheMaskedGecko and GoP, then strongly consider RBing the other. Or Pick Cop and lynch GoP and strongly consider copping TMG.

I'm torn between them, but I think I'll go with:

Vote: Roleblocker

[webby]

Votals:
Roleblocker - 3 (MostlyNormal, t1mm01994, Boomfrog)
Cop - 1 (Gopher of Pern)

That's a majority, so roleblocker it is. I am now allocating that role randomly to one of the townies.

I prodded TheMaskedGecko, but they haven't posted, so I will seek to replace them if they don't post soon.

You have a week (plus 50 minutes) to lynch, deadline is 7pm AEDST on Wednesday 11th January.

[TheMaskedGecko]

Sorry for not posting, I didn't expect to be as busy as I was. I hope to make a longer post later but in case the deadline comes before then I'll
Vote: Roleblocker

Not that it really makes much difference to the vote.

[TheMaskedGecko]

Ebwop: and now i notice that I did miss the deadline. This shows why I shouldn't post in the morning.

[Mostlynormal]

Time to start lynching, as the title says. Ahh, the time honored practice of lynching. Quite a civilized way of doing things, don't you think? We could lock them up, but no, that would be too rational. So like a bunch of terrified townies, we lynch them instead.

Ok, since that's not going to help our current situation, let's get down to business. Currently GoP is our most likely scum, but that's mostly because it's day one and we don't have many likely scum yet anyway. He hasn't posted to defend himself yet (I'm assuming you're a he because that's what Boomfrog calls you and you're not on the gender pronoun thing, speaking of which, I should probably post on that myself. I'm male, by the way.), so we can't really pursue it much further. We should also keep our options open. I think the best idea would be to accuse everybody of being scum for some reason or another, and then see how they respond. That way if they're town we can clear up lingering suspicions and if they're scum they could give themselves away. And that way we don't miss anyone just because they seem to be pretty townie. So here it goes.

GoP, you posted a plan that looked good at first glance but would have been very harmful for town. What do you have to say for yourself?

Timm, most of your posts have been either agreeing or disagreeing with the post above, without adding much. What do you have to say for yourself?

The Masked Gecko, you haven't been very active so you're pretty neutral. I understand real life can get in the way so I won't count that against you. But anyway, we have nothing to convince us you're town. So what do you have to say for yourself?

Boomfrog, you've actually been very townie looking. This means you're either town, or really good at being scum. You are a veteran, therefore you are really good, therefore you are scum. What do you have to say for yourself?

Ok, so obviously you aren't all scum and that last one was kind of joking. But I think it's good to get my suspicions, even my minor ones, out in the open so people can respond to them. Also I would appreciate it if someone would accuse me of something. Responding to myself would just be wine and a straw man attack at the same time.

[TheMaskedGecko]

OK, time to post my thoughts and suspicions so far.
1. BoomFrog: Quite firmly in support of cop at beginning but then changes his mind and votes for roleblocker. He also supports the idea of not lynching, which I don't agree with/ understand*. Everything else he says is well justified but the NL thing and the sudden change of heart to roleblocker seem just the tiniest bit odd. If he's mafia then he's a strongman . He seems quite towny but I haven't ruled out the idea that he's scum.

2. mostlynormal: I really hope I've misunderstood your plan and you're just trying to encourage conversation and not really suggesting that everyone try and defend themselves for some trumped up charge. I can't see a conversation where we all say "I'm not scum because..." being very helpful. However, the rest of what you've done doesn't seem very scummy, especially your call for a random vote.

3. t1mm01994: this is going to seem quite pot calling kettle but he hasn't said much. When he has posted he hasn't done much independent speculation, instead just commentating. The faulty logic he points out in GOP's post doesn't make sense to me.

4. Gopher of Pern: I count two posts, one supporting the no lynch plan that I've already expressed my distaste for, the other has been analysed better than I could by mostly normal. I don't see his lack of activity as beast stilt scummy but the murkiness of his posts is fishy. Also the way he neither defends nor changes his cop vote makes me think that he's trying not to appear too changeable, in case it gives away his scummyness.

*I can't think of a situation where giving the scum all the power over life and death is a good thing. As their night kill comes after our lynch, trying to manipulate them is pretty futile.

I want to give people a chance to explain and clarify, so this is by no means definite but at the moment I would vote for GoP and suggest that the roleblocker blocks T1m.

[t1mm01994]

BF is either the single least steering scum since tge invention of mafia, or he's town. I'd definitely go for town there.
As for me not saying much, I'm kind of busy, usually away from home and composing the majority of my posts from my 3ds after swiftly reading up in the train. I'll be back home soon, with after that posting as usual.
MN is very active, and very controlling on discussion.. Don't know enough about meta to judge, but it just might be a scumtell.
On GoP, I can only agree.
On TMG; too lurky to really judge. Makes sense as far as I can see.

[Mostlynormal]

2. mostlynormal: I really hope I've misunderstood your plan and you're just trying to encourage conversation and not really suggesting that everyone try and defend themselves for some trumped up charge. I can't see a conversation where we all say "I'm not scum because..." being very helpful. However, the rest of what you've done doesn't seem very scummy, especially your call for a random vote.

I admit that I may have gotten a bit carried away by "trumping up" the charges, but the point of the accusations is to shift some of the focus away from GoP. If there really is no one else acting scummy, then it's not like we can't just turn around and lynch him. But I totally disagree with your idea of useful conversation. Conversation where everybody is saying "We should lynch GoP because..." is really unhelpful since he's our primary suspect at this point anyway. On the other hand conversation (at least for a little while) where everybody says "I'm not scum because..." is useful because then everybody is being looked at and forced to defend themselves, not just GoP. So if GoP flips town, we can go right in to day two looking at who's "I'm not scummy because..." is the most scummy, instead of their "We should lynch GoP because..." which is less productive overall.

In fact, just me myself going through and voicing my suspicions made me realize that timm hadn't been contributing much. I'm actually thinking that right now he might be a better target than GoP, though I'm not sure, and I'd like to see their responses before deciding.

I understand your reservations about no-lynching in general, which is what my suspicions of GoP are based on in the first place. However, on a case by case basis, it could have advantages. Specifically, if we could force the scum to nightkill N2 instead of the other way around, a NL day two would make sense, because it would force scum to hide among three people rather than four. So I don't see Boomfrog as looking scummy just for considering no-lynch before webby said we couldn't.

Also, though I guess they might as well target somebody, the roleblocker is probably useless N1 because scum doesn't want to nightkill anyway. If we almost lynched the roleblocker and they ended up claiming, it could be worth targeting somebody because the scum might try to kill them N1 (because killing a confirmed townie wouldn't leave you any more exposed anyway) but even then I don't think their target would be confirmed scum if the nightkill didn't go through.

Ninja'd by timm: Your defense certainly seems reasonable, and now you seem pretty neutral to me. Also, as far as you saying my controlling disucssion might be a scumtell, thank you. That's the kind of thing I wanted somebody to do. So I'll say why it isn't a scumtell: I'm on holiday break, and we didn't have any vacations or anything so most of it has been pretty boring. I've got a lot of time to think and so I've got a lot of things to dicuss.

[TheMaskedGecko]

@mn: If your purpose was to create more conversation then that's fine and dandy. Making sure we don't all blindly bandwagon on GoP with very little to go on is also great. I must have got confused with the idea of randomly charging people fallaciously, just to shake things up (which I think would work better without warning them at the top of the post).

We can't just assume that the mafia won't Nk and it's not like our roleblocks run out. We just have to be careful not to confirm someone as scum because they were blocked and there was no kill.


@t1m: Regarding BF; In this game time is on his side. He doesn't need to steer us much, to protect other scum etc. so subtly would be a better approach. I still don't think it's likely that he's scum but we can't rule anyone out. Maybe I'm just getting paranoid. Regarding your posts; I understand fully. I'm writing on an iPod touch and it takes glossy ages. All it was was that it struck me you weren't writing much and I wondered why.

Also @mn: scum would want to know their tells so they could see what's giving them away. Merely asking the question could, in fact, be perceived as a scumtell. :p