Ethics: Type-2 Metagaming

[Adele]

You forget to ask the question, "

Why

are most liars scum?" - this is a result of the LAL mechanism.

Say I'm in a C9 newbie, I'm vanilla, and I'm being bandwagoned Day 1. What do I claim? In a LAL universe, I'd almost certainly claim vanilla, and continue to try to talk my way out of it. In a non-LAL universe, I might choose a different action - fake-claiming gives me a 50% chance of no counterclaim, so improves the towns' odds, if people believe me. If they don't, I can explain why it was a legitimate pro-town action for a pro-town player, and then what?

The LAL is to discourage such behaviour which otherwise, I think, could easily slip into being standard practise (with WIFOM variations, naturally).

[Adele]

We're getting a little obsessed with the "LAL" example here.

I argued in a recent game that someone was being rude and unpleasant to the other players and, in the absence of any useful leads, he made sense as the D1 lynch. If there were a metagame policy of "lynch all who are overly discourteous", I think that even the worst offenders would temper their language to an extent and upset less people - and, as we've seen, some people really do take offence startlingly easily, and should they be the ones to adapt, necessarily?

Of course, even if the rule were just "be more willing to lynch those who are impolite", it would likely adversly affect the game at first, then improve it - perhaps this better represents the issue, namely (as I understand it)

"should one be willing to sacrifice a current game for future gameplay?"

[Adele]

It seems to me like a clear-cut example of a case where if you can lie convincingly you can significantly increase the chances of a town win.

An interesting side effect of LAL is that it actually makes it more likely that scum will believe townie lies, because everyone knows that good guys never lie.

heh, reminds me of an interesting case - guy got a "townie" role pm, and decided to claim unnightprotectable cop so as to "waste" a mafia kill. Turned out later he was a

triggered doc

(he hadn't been triggered when all this happened). Just goes to show that you just shouldn't try to produce fiction when you can't know if you're in possession of the facts.