Newbie 178 - Game Over

[Thok]

Welcome all.

vote Prof Binky

for being the last to confirm.

If you have any general questions, feel free to either PM AndrewS, or to ask one of Fritzler, Dragon Phoenix, or me for further explanations-part of the point of these games is to introduce you to commonly use terminology in other games.

[Thok]

unvote Prof Binky, vote Random Acts

-putting a third vote on somebody before he gets a chance to post is way too aggressive for my tastes.

[Thok]

Agreed about wanting to hear an explanation from RandomActs.

I'll also FOS Fritzler (FOS=Finger of Suspicion, you use it when you suspect somebody but don't want to vote them yet), since I find his decision to vote Eucalyptus in that situation weird, even for him.

[Thok]

It's not that you've broken a rule of protocol; rather I find it surprising that a newbie is that quick to but a third vote on somebody without hearing them speak. Many newbies are afraid to place a

second

vote on somebody early on, because they worry that mafia could quicklynch that person (it's not a valid arguement, but many newbies make it). It seems very aggressive of you to put a third vote on somebody for no real reason when that potentially gives scum the ability to lynch somebody quickly.

(Vaughn's claimed interest in putting a 3rd vote on Eucalyptus strikes me as equally interesting).

Fritzler-the reason I found your play weird is that I'd expect you to be a bit more cautious in a smaller game, especially when any single vote can easily become a bandwagon. Also, I'd think you'd have enough experience to realize that the Eucalyptus bandwagon feels like a diversionary tactic, since one of the Prof Binky voters was likely to be bandwagoned once he got a third vote on him.

[Thok]

Vaughn-read post 17 in the thread. You clearly express interest in a 3 person bandwagon.

RandomActs-I suggest you take a quick look over some of the other games in this forum. While it may seem like a long time, one day isn't all that much time on this site-a typical day one might last 5 pages and a week or two.

Incidentally, have you played this game at another site? That might give us some feel for your play style.

[Thok]

I said

whilst the votee is absent

. Once he is there, I will feel quite comfortable putting on a third vote.

I'm glad of that. I just wonder how long that will be before he shows. And by the way, don't count on my vote. If I caught hell for a 3rd vote, I can only

imagine

what #4 would do.

I won't be suspicious of a fourth vote (or a third vote) on a bandwagon if there is a good reason for it. Just trying to speed up the game doesn't seem like a good reason.

As I said before, you might want to take a look at some completed games just to get a feel of the normal pace of a game on this site.

That said, I do think you are doing a reasonable job of defending yourself, and Vaughn's making me more suspicious at the moment.

unvote RandomActs, vote Vaughn

[Thok]

RandomActs-You should be trying to make your own analysis of the game and be basing your vote off of your own best judgement. If we need to beg you to make a vote, then you aren't helping town.

Also I prefer to win a slow game than to lose a quick game. But that's just me.

Eucalyptus-I didn't include my suspicions originally since I wanted to see how players (Vaughn specifically, but others also) would react to me changing my vote.

But for the record, here are the following things I see when looking at Vaughn's play

1. I'm not happy with his answer to my question about post 17-he now claims that he wanted 3 equal bandwagons of 2 votes, but in fact all his vote did was set up 2 bandwagons with 2 votes (the third person had only one vote on him). Plus, that interpretation doesn't really work well grammatically. I think he's lying about the meaning of that post, and there's a standard mafia rule of "Lynch all Liars", since it rarely helps town to lie.

2. It seems to me that Vaughn is trying to make this game seem like a battle between the newbies and the inexperienced challenged. But that's not the case-it's scum versus townies!

3. In a related fact, it seems to me that Vaughn is trying to buddy up to Random Acts specifically.

[Thok]

You are more than welcome to add to the number of posts. I humbly suggest you have some catching up to do in that regard. What's that famous rule in academia, Prof? Isn't it "publish or perish?"

A useful corollary is that it's important to make

useful

posts. We already know you dislike lurkers RandomActs-perhaps you should try making a post about something else?

[Thok]

RandomActs-do you have anything you want to offer in your defense? Do you have any accusations or analysis of other players? Do you wish to claim (you don't have to, and you shouldn't claim if you don't think it will help town)?

[Thok]

RandomActs-part of what worries me is your very specific focus on Binky and Eucalyptus. I'd think a true townsperson would be focused on everybody in town. Do you have anything to say about the other four players in the game? You obviously have some posts from which you can try to infer some data.

As a side note-this is part of the problem with trying to rush the day. You've managed to focus much of town's attention on you, and have made it difficult for us to examine other people.

[Thok]

I personally still think Vaughn is more likely to be scum that RandomActs, but it may be necessary to lynch RandomActs just to keep the game moving. If nothing happens, I'll place the fourth vote in about 24 hours.

People should not look at this as a reason to be quiet for a day-you guys ought to be able to do better analysis than "He cast a 3rd vote! He must be scum!"

[Thok]

RandomActs-it may be unfair, but it's simply numbers-you are much closer to being lynched right now, and frankly we have a valid reason to be suspicious of you and you haven't done anything to justify us not lynching you. I'd personally prefer to look at Vaughn, for the reasons I've mentioned earlier, but nobody seems to want to follow up that lead.

Let me put it this way-if by the time I've allotted you can convince people to follow another bandwagon or you can talk people out of your bandwagon, then you probably won't get lynched. Just saying "Binky and Eucalyptus need to post more" won't do that.

[Thok]

I can tell because you've oversimplified all I've said. Get your head out of the sand and look at what is going on!

RandomActs, I see a person who is focusing too much on a couple people and on one particular issue and is ignoring the other people who are actually voting him. Frankly, if you were as antilurking as you claim to be, you probably would have said something about Dragon Phoenix by now, since he barely has more posts than Prof Binky or Eucalyptus.

Also, if you feel that I've oversimplified your issues, please explain how and where you feel I've oversimplified them-you shouldn't expect to be able to make a claim like that without evidence.

[Thok]

So, can somebody give me an explanation for the Eucalyptus bandwagon that doesn't involve the words "post count", "lurking", or "hiding under the radar"? He may not have posted a lot, but he hasn't actually posted anything I find particularly scummy.

Still happy with my vote on Vaughn, who just did a very wishy-washy analysis of RandomActs behavior. Look! Actual scummy behavior!

[Thok]

What exactly is wrong with voting for someone because of low post counts? This early in the game, there is not a whole lot to go on. Mafia members need to avoid votes, and do not need to gather information because they already know who is town or mafia (sorry, I mean crew or alien). So, one possible strategy for aliens would be to lie low. The fact that Thok is disputing this strategy seems to me to be suspiscious!

The problem is that certain people are focusing

only

on the lurking strategy. So all scum needs to do to avoid being today's lynch is to post a reasonable amount, and let people argue that we should lynch any lurkers. And beause of real life concerns, there are usually some people in the game who are lurking.

Now is as good a time to mention another common Mafiascum acronym-WIFOM or Wine in Front of Me, which is a reference to the Princess Bride and the poison challenge between Vezzini and Wesley. The basic idea is that if you are given a pair of equal choices, then scum are likely to make either choice and you shouldn't focus on one option to the exclusion to the other. For example if you expect scum to only lurk, then they will start acting in the exact opposite way, and you won't be able to catch them.

I'm all for going after lurkers in the absence of any other evidence of scummy behavior. But given the choice between somebody who is actually scummy and a lurker, I will try to lynch the scummy person.

Here's a reasonable challenge-is anybody willing to defend Vaughn and explain why I shouldn't be voting him? In this case we have enough posts to try and analyze his behavior.

[Thok]

Binky you've got most of the items I'd want to analyze. I'd add in a fourth

4. Relationships between players in the games-who is attacking or defending each other. This is partially covered by voting patterns, but not completely.

My comment about focusing only on lurking was aimed more towards RandomActs (although it does apply a bit towards your behavior after unvoting RandomActs).

I'd be interested in seeing your analysis of the voting patterns (although this is a bit more useful on day 2 and later, when we have some information about people's alignments).

You underestimate the usefulness of textual analysis. Remember that town have no incentive to lie, while mafia have a very strong incentive to lie. Mafia also have more information than a typical townperson, and a specific desire to avoid certain lynches. These are differences that can be analyzed in posts.

Vaughn-explain to me why mafia would need to fish for a nonexistent "partner" of a pro-town player. Emphasis here on the word nonexistent.

I haven't bothered to defend myself so far because nobody's accused me of being particularly scummy. Vaughn, you may feel free to vote for me, but right now it's really only justified by OMGUS.

DP, Fritzler, any thoughts about the game so far? I don't want to be the only IC player posting.

[Thok]

Heh, perhaps we should ask our wonderful mod to

Prod Eucalyptus

?

[Thok]

Well, if no-one has the guts to ever cast a third vote, we will still be here by Christmas.

Lead On Cap'n... wondor if there's a captain role on this "ship"

Somebody didn't read the flavor text in the first post. Curious.

[Thok]

Please be careful now, as we are at lynch or lose. One wrong vote could lead to a quick mafia victory.

I suggest rereading the thread, especially now that you know that Eucalyptus and Fritzler are protown.

[Thok]

Thinking in terms of pairs can be useful (as RandomActs points out). Let me give another example: I find it extremely unlikely that Prof Binky and RandomActs are a scum pair, because of the early 3rd vote RA put on Binky. (If they are a scum pair, I will specifically buy a hat for the sole purpose of eating it).

But with that information (and knowing my alignment), I can also conclude that it is extremely likely that at least one of DP and Vaughn are scum (if neither is, then I'm stuck with the extremely improbable Prof Binky-RandomActs pair).

One should be careful, since unlikely pairing can occur on occasion.

[Thok]

Now, the two mafia players KNOW who are townies, and so want to cast suspicion on townines alone.

This assumption (that scum will only try to push suspicions on townies) is not necessarily true. Remember, scum wants to win, but they don't need to win today. It would not be an unreasonable strategy today for scum to start attacking each other, knowing that if one of them is lynched then it will make it look like the other one isn't scum.

[Thok]

I agree in general, but this does not apply to my calculation above, since I know I am town. So, the possibility that a mafia might finger another mafia does not apply here. In accord with all Bayes Theorem calculations, the 67% figure presents my personal probability. It may not be yours. For example, if you are mafia (hypothetically, I am not accusing you at this point), your probabilities are all 0% or 100%, since you have more information than I do.

It does affect your calculation, since it lowers
P(DP votes townie|DP is mafia)=1-P(DP votes mafia|DP is mafia).

As for your other question, if you assume that everybody in the game is a mindless robots, then mafia can become completely random. The trick is to try to gain some insight into your fellow players to get a feel for what they are trying to accomplish with their posts.

[Thok]

Bump.

Everybody complains about lurkers, but nobody does a thing about it

[Thok]

3. The logic he uses to apply his result doesn’t hold water. If Binky sees a 67 percent probability of DP being scum, then the same probability would apply for each townie. (Scum, of course, already know if DP is one of them or not.) But Binky says this is his own personal probability and others need not buy into it.

Binky's argument for calculating his own personal probability is reasonable-he has the additional knowledge of his own role claim. He's really calculating P(DP is scum|Binky is protown and DP tried to attack Binky). We'd have to compute P(DP is scum|DP tried to attack Binky), or possibly P(DP is scum| DP tried to attack Binky and knowledge of your role claim).

I'm vaguely tempted to vote DP (partially because I'm sort of surprised that he's still alive, partially because I'm surprised that he's suspicious of me given that I was the only person against the Eucalyptus bandwagon and I passed up a chance to put the lynching vote on RA). I'm also not ruling out a Binky-DP mafia given that they were voting together on two of the 3 person bandwagons.

However, I also feel like I've got the least information of the people alive, mainly because I feel like I'm the person town has the best feel for.

Or to put it another way, my scumdar is sufficiently off right now that immediately after learning Fritzler's alignment, my two most likely candidates for mafia groups wre DP-Binky and RA-Vaughn.

[Thok]

Now you're just trying to bait me to vote you, DP.

[Thok]

I'm ready and willing to place a vote on either RA or DP, but I want to hear from Thok first, on that off-chance i'm wrong.

A DP-RA scum group seems like a reasonable possibility to me. But I'm going to let you use your own judgement about placing the first vote; you shouldn't need my permission/approval.

[Thok]

Interesting.

Vaughn, what was your reasoning for voting RA over Dragon Phoenix?

[Thok]

I posted yesterday. If you think a day ago is a long while in this game, you are in for some surprises once you play other games.

OK, I will wait a bit longer to confirm my suspicion...but, since the vote, all 5 players have posted, so all have seen the vote...if neither RA nor Vaughn were mafia, wouldn't the game be over, and the time lapse irrelvant?

It's conceivable that scum hasn't gotten their act together, since everybody will be extremely cautious about placing the second vote, so as to keep the original voter from unvoting. There may be real life commitments also.

Part of the reason I'm interested in Vaughn's reason for his choice of RA or DP is that it seems unlikely from his point of view of a protown Vaughn that RA could be scum with anybody but DP.

{From protown Vaughn's point of view)
RA-Vaughn is out because Vaughn is protown.
RA-Thok is out since Vaughn thinks Thok is protown.
RA-Binky requires scum to place an immediate third vote on his scum partner at the beginning of the game. I consider this extremely unlikely, but I don't know what Vaughn thinks.

That leaves RA-DP.

In fact, I've been vaguely expecting a Vaughn vote on DP from close to the beginning of the day, basically by extending the above logic. So I have to wonder why Vaughn voted RA instead.

[Thok]

Posting just to post (and to point out that I have not immediately placed a vote on Vaughn).

[Thok]

Well, that's a lynch. Here's hoping that we have a night 2.

[Thok]

Just posting to say that I am around. I'm not sure which of you two are scum, but I would hope looking over my full day 1 actions would suggest that I'm not scum.

[Thok]

From my point of view, the Binky kill doesn't really tell me anything about the setup; it benefits either DP or RA to kill him if either of them is scum. In fact, the only living person it doesn't obviously benefit is me, although that's WIFOM. Of course, DP seems to think that I'm playing an extreme WIFOM game for the moment.

[Thok]

Incidentally, in trying to which of you two is the last alien, I've been looking over the following issues

1. DP unvoted RA when he was at lynch-1 on day 1. I think that supports DP being protown, but I'm not sure.

2. Neither of you were willing to vote Vaughn when I was pushing for a bandwagon on him day 1. This is, obviously, a push.

3. Vaughn chose to vote for RA rather than DP, even though a DP bandwagon was easier to justify, in my opinion. I think this supports RA being protown, but again I'm not sure.

[Thok]

I am going to bite the bullet and

vote RandomActs

So a curious thing about post 50 is that one of the scum tells I mentioned in that post is that I felt that Vaughn seemed to be buddying up to RA. There's actually a decent amount of evidence for this-posts 37 and 46 had Vaughn giving advice to RA plus they both did the hammer celebration together for Eucalyptus and they both jumped on Binky immediately at the beginning of the game. That behavior is there even though RA repeatedly denies it. But the behavior of RA and Vaughn towards each other is completely different day 2.

I suspect that RA and Vaughn were scared enough by my accusations day 1 to try and change their behavior at night. I guess Vaughn specifically tried to buddy up to me and attack RA in order to counter their day 1 connection.

DP, while he has been fairly aggressive in attacking me throughout the game, has been playing in a manner that just suggests that his scumdar is just not aligned properly this game.

Hopefully I've
a. Gotten this decision right
b. Can convince DP to make the correct vote if he is a townie.

Post soon DP, so I can at least know your alignment and help you make a decision if you are protown.

[Thok]

Once again, Thok, I'm alarmed to see you vote so soon on such skimpy information. It's the same thing that set me off on Vaughn. If DP is scum, he'll jump on this vote and the game will be over. If he doesn't, then I will know for sure who is the remaining scum.

I'm not sure where you expect more information to come from today, other than from discussions and voting and it doesn't seem like there has been much discussion going on. I have to decide between you and DP at some point.

I didn't like Vaughn's retconning of my accusations day 1; your retconning of your day 1 actions doesn't strike me as protown either.

[Thok]

Long post coming up.

If I was mafia, you'd have to think that whole battle with Vaughn yesterday was staged. Believe me, it wasn't. It doesn't make sense, anyway. If I was mafia, why would Vaughn cast a first vote on me at an early stage of the day when the mafia were on the verge of winning? It would be nearly certain that one of us would be killed, and he'd be throwing a major part of his chance of winning down the drain.

With no power roles remaining, it's reasonable play for scum to attack each other; it's in fact a classic scum distancing technique; even if one scum is lynched, it makes the other player seem less scummy. And as I've already pointed out, there's was good reason for you and Vaughn to want to distance yourself from each other after day 1, given my comments day 1. Your argument is that Vaughn and I decided that we wanted to have a chummier relation day 2 after fighting day 1. Why would a scum pair of Vaughn and I suddenly want to suggest a relationship between us that nobody suggests?

If I wanted to direct Vaughn's vote, I could very easily have said something like "Yeah, I'm surprised you hadn't voted DP already" rather than just telling him that the DP-RA pairing was reasonable. I even could have justified it with the reasoning that I gave earlier about the Binky-RA pairing being extremely unlikely. I didn't do that, because in fact I wanted to see which of the two of you Vaughn did vote for.

I didn't vote for Vaughn day 2 because I wasn't sure which of you and Vaughn were scum, although I now know both choices were correct. I did make a post where I specifically didn't vote Vaughn; the point of that post was to let DP know that I did not automatically win if I lynched Vaughn. The implcation to a protown DP is that either Vaughn is scum or both RA and Binky are scum and I had already argued that one of these possibilities was extremely unlikely. Frankly given the situation, if I was scum then Vaughn was dead already and I was likely to have put on the lynching vote without waiting for DP.

RA questioned why I wasn't nightkilled night 1. I'm not sure-perhaps RA-Vaughn were worried that I was an obvious target for doc protection night 1 given my day 1 actions and decided to nightkill the most active player of DP, Binky and Fritzler, or perhaps Fritzler did give off a doc tell. RA bemoaned the loss of a doc at the beginning of day 2; classic scum tell (Vaughn did this also).

I was the only person to defend Eucalyptus day 1.

I also attacked Vaughn aggressively day 1, on fairly reasonable evidence that RA keep dismissing.

I also am the only living person who doesn't benefit from Binky being nightkilled last night.

I also am an experienced player and would have discussed the concept of random votes with Vaughn at the beginning of the game. The beginning of the game would likely be much different if I was partners with Vaughn.

I also had a fairly reasonable oppurtunity to lynch RA with basically no risk attached on day 1 and passed it up.

RA had a fairly bogus argument about probabilities with Binky day 2 and tried to use that arguement to cast suspicion of Binky. (I also argued with Binky about probability, but my point, as Binky admitted, was valid, and I didn't use the arguement to accuse Binky).

Should I add more?

[Thok]

*high-fives DP*

Good job guys. Plus, don't forget, that 2/3 people I voted for were scum. (The other was the cop)

Hey, 2/3 of the people I voted for were scum also, and I didn't vote the cop. Frankly, I've been resisting the urge to say "I told you so!" since Eucalyptus turned up cop.

Also, RA-Vaughn, even though town won you guys did an extremely good job; Vaughn really messed up my scumdar day 2 and RA did do a good job defending himself day 1.

If any of you have any questions or comments, now is a good time to pose them.