Mafia 83 - Game Ended Scum Win!

[Yaw]

Aw. I love you too, Cow.

And on that note, I'll

Vote: Battle Mage

, since I've never gotten to do that before.

[Yaw]

I didn't say I was a fan. Just that while playing relatively few games over the past while, I'd missed out on what seems to have become a rite of passage.

[Yaw]

Plus, three players have yet to get here. It's been about a day and we're on the second page. We're not doing horribly.

[Yaw]

I'm all for getting a bandwagon going, but I prefer to at least have a fig leaf of a reason. Killa seven may be a chronic lurker (I haven't played with him, so don't know), and I'm more than in favour of promoting the environment where lurkers die for their lurkitude, but I'd like to see him lurk in

this

game before ringing him up for it. Especially since we've only been playing for less than 48 hours and two players have yet to find the thread.

[Yaw]

That said, if Alvinz95 and/or Killa Seven don't get here and start participating by, say, Wednesday at the absolute latest, I'll be sending a bandwagon their way. Post or perish.

[Yaw]

Killa Seven has confirmed and posted in two other large normal games yesterday. Alvinz95 has confirmed and posted in two mini games yesterday. So no, they don't need replacement. They need to stop lurking.

[Yaw]

Sigh. That said, I'm feeling nice. I put in a prod request that both of them be reminded of the existence of this thread. But I still advocate we deal with lurking ourselves, especially in this case. They're active on the board, so there's absolutely no excuse for them not being active here.

[Yaw]

It seems there's a couple posts in there lacking in referencing. Tovarish's is an answer to BM, but quotes would really help to put that in context. I don't know about Xtoxm's at all. What does, "I think it's ok" refer to, Xtoxm?

Also, good to see killa seven has shown up. I hope this is on your watched topics list and you'll be participating regularly from here on out. (I

will

be counting posts periodically.)

[Yaw]

Speaking of counting posts, Jebus and Netman haven't posted since Sunday, and both have posted only once. The latter in particular felt like he was following along, so in combination with the lurking,

Unvote

,

Vote: Netman

.

(I usually have better first bandwagons. I'm disappointed in the quality of discussion. Hopefully this will at least pick things up a bit.)

[Yaw]

Or notice we were on page 3?

[Yaw]

No. Killa seven entered after I got the mod to poke him.

Chaz -- I decided before playing this game that I wanted to try to promote a meta in which lurking got punished. First of all, because lurking is inherently a scummy action (it reduces the amount of information on that person in thread, making it harder to catch them by their actions). Second, because there's been far too much lurking and replacing lately, which I believe bogs games down and makes them go longer. So a meta in which people aren't allowed to lurk is a beneficial meta.

Besides, if scum is going to win, I'd rather they have to put in an effort to do so.

[Yaw]

Netman seems to need more encouragement to post. Hop on, everyone!

[Yaw]

My sig appears to be wrong. Apparently it's

activity

that breeds suspicion.

[Yaw]

I don't think multiple scum groups are allowed in Normal games? At any rate, for a game this size, 3 scum is what i'd expect. Maybe an SK too.

Why are you answering questions intended for Jebus with demonstrably false information? (Of course multiple scum groups are allowed in normals. It's happened many times before.)

FOS: Xtoxm

[Yaw]

No. What's the point? Nobody other than the scum has the slightest clue about numbers, and the scum don't have the slightest clue about anything outside their group. Until we've had a night, there's no information to be gained from that sort of exercise.

[Yaw]

Well, I don't think it's useful overall. There's always the possibility of stuff like cults (though I certainly hope not) to screw with numbers. It's useful to know how many groups there are, but we're going to know that more or less by how many kills there are at night anyway.

There's also the problem that 3-person groups are standard, so everyone's going to assume that anyway, meaning you've wasted everyone's time to get no information at all -- nobody, including scum, would know how many groups of scum there are in this game. Besides, any plan that assumes idiocy as a prerequisite for success isn't a good one.

[Yaw]

If we're going to get people for lurking, can we go after the actual lurkers? Netman's posted exactly once. K7's posted twice. BM appears to be entirely away from the site, and isn't seriously a danger to stay in the background. He may be scum, but it's not for the reason of lurking.

We basically have to decide here -- are we going to go hard after lurking, or not? If we are, let's bandwagon up someone who's really lurking. If we aren't, then people are going to have to make some good arguments as to why a player that's posting is scum. (I happen to think it's to our benefit to go after lurkers early unless there's a solid rationale for a posting player to be scum. If it's a well-balanced game, we have at least two lynches to give, and it would reduce the game to active posters. This would mean that scum would be easier to catch, because they're posting, and we wouldn't have to worry about trying to get lurkers to the thread to vote in order to get lynches to happen, which bogs the game down.)

[Yaw]

Jebus -- Post or perish is a pro-town meta. You're seriously accusing me of being scummy for pushing a pro-town meta? Either we get lurker scum, or we get rid of someone who's going to make it harder for us to get a lynch to happen in the future. It's all upside, really.

That said, I went back and looked at Netman. He hasn't posted anywhere since Tuesday. Feh. Let's go with number 2.

Unvote

,

Vote: killa seven

.

[Yaw]

True, I don't expect cults. I've been against putting them in games since getting burned by a recruiter in OO1. That said, on day 1 without any nights, it's best to at least consider all possibilities.

I had not seen BM around. At the point I mentioned he was fully away, I checked his posting history to confirm it. Obviously, that changes if there's evidence to the contrary.

And in this game so far there have been a lot of people either not posting, or posting without saying much of anything. There are a few notable exceptions, but not enough. I really need to be able to root through content to catch scum. (And as of my last post, you were part of the problem.) Which is why the lurker hunt -- if it can stir up people to post (which seems to have happened a bit with you, though I find your implicit defense of lurking problematic), that means more content gets posted, which means more information to go on to catch scum.

[Yaw]

Mod:

Vote count please?
Also, can we have a

beating

prod on Netman?

Thanks.

[Yaw]

Welcome, qwints!

Mod:

Yes, vote count please. Also, Netman's only post this entire game is on page 1. Please look into this.

Otherwise, I wouldn't go quite that far regarding Jebus, but I do want that contradiction explained. (I'm also worried about about our chances for getting lynches if she(?) insists on being

that

certain about voting.)

[Yaw]

I don't get it. You're complaining about being in a closed setup? That's how things usually are around here.

There are a few things around you could comment on. Choose one and dive in.

[Yaw]

And don't you know you're supposed to bring up that somebody made a contentless post during lylo, to engineer a town loss by lynching an innocent person? You don't have any idea how to play as scum do you?

I'm sorry, what? Where did that comment come from? What is it referring to? If it's another unrelated game, why mention it here at all?

[Yaw]

At the risk of answering for Cow, this is a pointless line of questioning. BM has already said exactly why he's voting for Cow -- he found something in post 95. (You'd have to ask BM what precisely he found in post 95. Asking Cow to mind read for you isn't likely to be productive.)

In fact, if I did have some strong opinions (but no real facts), wouldn't it be best to bring them up

tomorrow

, when I have more information to go on? In fact, the only reason I can see to throw around suspicions right now is to make myself look less like scum trying to lurk. But again, if I have strong opinions, I want to look scummy enough to survive the night, given that scum often kill the least-suspicious pro-town player.

This makes no sense. You might be dead tomorrow. Unless you have a good reason for keeping things quiet (for example, having an innocent result as a cop), it's best to get your suspicions out in the open for other players to evaluate. It's not about avoiding looking like scum. It's about giving town information to further discussion.

Your given about scum kills also doesn't necessarily reflect reality. It really depends on who the scum are as to why they decide to kill who they do. If you go through a lot of games, you'd be hard-pressed to find a solid rule, particularly one that could be expressed in one sentence clause.

Anyway, now that we actually have participation, I'll probably be re-evaluating my vote and rereading. But I seriously need a vote count beforehand. It's been three pages since the last one.

Mod

, please make this happen.

[Yaw]

Just to let you all know, I am V/LA now.

For how long?

[Yaw]

What? How is the comment in 194 wrong? Have you read Netman's post 191? Did you notice this part of it?

And yes, I also know that someone 20 pages from now is going to say, "hey, Netman made a post without any content on page 8, let's lynch him"

Netman admits in his own post that it has no content!

How is it then wrong to state about Netman's post something that's explicitly there?

For 207, 210, and 198, Netman has no logic. It's pure bullshit. If you want to nail someone on distancing,

go after the guy that's actually doing it

. Which, if Netman's theory about BM and Cow being scum together were correct, would be BM. (And yes, I have lynched people in the distancee position before based on this, and caught scum that way. But not by analyzing the distancee, because

he's not doing the distancing

.)

Please don't make me bang my head against the keyboard anymore. It's bad for my health.

Oh, and

I'm dreaming of a new VOTE COUNT, just like the ones I used to know...

[Yaw]

Thank you, Mrs. Not Playing In This Mafia Game, for your insights.

[Yaw]

@mood of the search - I thought you seemed scummy, so I was searching for posts to back it up.

See, this is my big problem with what you did. You weren't looking for scum. You were looking to ring someone up. And the shoddiness of the "evidence" you found backs that up.

Unvote

,

Vote: Jebus

[Yaw]

Also, I voted for Jebus in 257. Which would mean we're at lynch-1, so nobody else vote for Jebus right now.

[Yaw]

Yeah, that looked weird when I saw it a second time. I just saw it was at 5 with two votes not counted first time around. Better to be safe.

Ok, so lynch-2, I think. Start defending.

[Yaw]

Mod:

Out of curiosity, who is being replaced? Might be relevant, in case it takes a while to fill the spot. Thanks.

[Yaw]

Unvote

. Reread coming.

[Yaw]

Rereading Thoughts:

alvinz95 -- Still way under what I'd expect for participation, both in terms of number of posts and content. I can wait for that big post we're promised today, but there had better be something good in there.

BM -- Frenetic, but I've heard that's normal. Has good content, though. That said, do I have to explain why lynching a claimed doc on day 1 isn't a good idea? I think Jebus's logic and play so far have been absolutely scummy as well, but surely waiting for tomorrow on this one can only help. Oh, and I still don't have a clue what the hell he saw in that post that in any way implicated Cow.

chaz -- No objections to his logic or posting amounts so far, but he doesn't vote. At all. That kind of extreme hesitation worries me -- it shows me he's not willing to put his money where his mouth is.

cow -- Lots of posts. All but one are one-liners. Really unfairly targeted by Jebus and Netman. Doesn't mean he isn't scum, but solidifying the alignment of one of the other two would make that a lot clearer.

iam -- Posting's a bit on the low side, but was one of the first people on Jebus for contradictory statements. Don't like that he's willing to lynch a claimed doc day 1, but he at least provides a rationale for it.

Jebus -- I think the issues here are pretty much established. While I know I've been saying you don't lynch a claimed doc day 1, if absolutely necessary to get a lynch before deadline I'd support it. Lynch is better than no lynch, and that claim was just fishy enough that I could see a viable rationale for it. I'd rather look elsewhere at the moment, though.

killa seven -- 6 posts total. No content. I see what people mean about chronic lurking, because this is ridiculous. Either scum for lurking, or deserves to be lynched mercilessly until he decides to actually play the games he signs up for.

Mana_Ku -- Lots of positive, fawning posts about other players that are really raising my scumdar right now. Problem is, there are so many possible connections I'm not sure where to begin on who she might be scum with.

Gnome -- Also a poor vote count. Same as killa seven, but with admittedly more content. Which makes post 109 suitably ironic. I think I'd go for killa seven over him as I know Gnome's at least capable of better...though on the other hand that makes his lack of participation worse.

Netman -- Really bad logic overall. Admits he's way more concerned with the optics of how he looks to the town than in finding scum. Has gone back to lurking once the pressure left him and went to Jebus (no posts in this game since Tuesday).

Tovarish/qwints -- Nothing from the former. The latter hasn't been great either, but has had a lot less of the game to post in. Lots of one-liners, so I'd really like to see more content to be able to judge anything.

Reclusion -- Really do not want to see her replaced. She's been contributing in really positive ways. Comes off as pro-town to me so far.

Xtoxm -- Lots of posts, but not much content. A lot of one-liners. Tried to push suspicion on Cow twice with no reasoning. Unwilling to back it up with a vote. (Still, even if he were at the top of my list, I don't think it's fair to run up a bandwagon on someone who's V/LA with an upcoming deadline.)

So, lots to choose from. I think Netman has the big trifecta of scumminess, though.

Vote: Netman

[Yaw]

*ears perk* Well,

that's

not standard. Count me in as someone who wants an explanation.

[Yaw]

First of all, we get a chance to explore other players for scum. After all, there's certainly more than one person in this game who is evil.

Second, if Jebus were really a doc, there's pressure on the scum to night kill him(?) tonight. Tomorrow, based on whether or not Jebus is still alive, it can indicate something about scum thought processes, and gives us more information about Jebus's culpability (if he(?)'s still alive, that is). Besides which, we have some days remaining before the deadline and may as well make use of them. (Also, is lynching Jebus today all that different from lynching Jebus tomorrow? The only case I can think of in which it really makes a difference is if Jebus is a SK.) There's a bit of WIFOM in here, but in general real outed docs have such a target on their heads that they don't last too many nights, especially if there are other higher value roles they can protect -- the longer a claimed doc lasts in a game, the more likely they are to be lying scum.

Of course, all of that assumes a "normal" doc claim on day 1. This has some elements that aren't normal, so I can see some justification for lynching Jebus today. I think at least that should wait until he(? -- seriously, Jebus, use a gender icon) gets back to us about self-protection.

[Yaw]

Of course, all of that assumes a "normal" doc claim on day 1.

Yes, I already addressed that. You'll also note my original reread occurred

before

Jebus claimed self-protection abilities, which was when I made the point you've taken issue with.

Anyway, Jebus can't get away with failing to answer about this point, so I see no reason not to look at other people in the interim. If he(?) doesn't answer, we lynch him(?). Simple.

[Yaw]

And as part of your large post, alvinz95, you might want to explain how exactly you think these two ideas work together:

I don't like Jebus's claim.

BM is semi-lurking for his meta. Wants to kill claimed doc.

[Yaw]

alvinz95 -- You said you would make a post. There were several of us hoping, given your relative lack of content thus far, that you'd remedy that with some actual paragraphs.

Explaining the text I quoted would be a good start.

[Yaw]

The problem with a self-protecting doc is that it's broken in at least the same way a bulletproof role is broken. Actually, self-protecting docs are probably worse, because not only could you end up with a dominant pro-town player scum have no way to get rid of, the doc can also form part of the doc-cop combo (the dominance of which caused changes in Newbie setups). Way back in Hobbit Mafia, I was a cop that gained the option of a bulletproof ability night 3. To use it, I had to give up my investigation for the night. So, I never investigated ever again, while picking off scum from what they said in thread. (Of course, that game was broken for other reasons as well, but that's not relevant here.)

Long story short, giving a player the ability to simply not get nightkilled is broken, because if a Jeep or MeMe joins your game and gets that role, the opposing side has very little chance of winning.

Also, I'm kind of surprised that in none of the games you finished, Jebus, you didn't notice upon seeing the night choices that the doc didn't

protect him/herself the entire game

, which would clearly be the optimal play.

What do we have to do to get this moving? Posting has been painfully slow recently. There's only 4 days until deadline. I'm worried we won't get a lynch because of inactivity.

[Yaw]

Well, Gnome and Iamausername are still voting for Jebus, and Iamausername refused to unvote before BM did. So why BM over either of the other two?

[Yaw]

Screw it.

Unvote

,

Vote: Jebus

The deadline's in three days, and nobody is doing anything to get us a lynch here. That at least gets us a deadline lynch. Want someone else lynched? Do some work convincing people to do it. The lack of people actually playing this game has left me with little alternative.

Mod: Can we have a deadline time (including time zone), please?

[Yaw]

Oh, I have time to be around before deadline. That's actually why I voted now -- to send the message that a lynch is better than not having a lynch, and as of now this is the only option that feasibly gets a lynch. If anyone doesn't like it, there's a couple of days left to do something. I'm not averse to changing to another bandwagon.

Of course, that would require players to actually post relevant content. Given what's happened in this game so far, I'm not holding my breath.

[Yaw]

Sorry, chaz. Looks like nobody else cares. I'll join you in being very disappointed in the other players if it's any consolation. I can't fathom why anyone would join a game if they don't intend to play.

I'm not unwilling to support a bandwagon on either of your three most likely picks. But there's just not enough popular support at the moment (or even activity) to make it happen before deadline. Anyone's welcome to start proving me wrong at any time...

[Yaw]

While I agree, if I and chaz switch back that brings us to 3 votes. It's not enough for a lynch. Besides which, he isn't around to answer for himself, which sucks this close to deadline. So voting for Netman means we'd have to be willing to blindly lynch a lurker. (Not that he doesn't deserve it, but is a blind lynch an acceptable thing here?)

[Yaw]

Marathon Day seems to be overwhelming the server. There might be an argument to be made for an extension if nobody can access the site for long periods of time while this is going on.

And yes, if I, you, and qwints move that would make 4. If I move, it would drop Jebus to 3, which would produce a Netman lynch. So it is doable. Do you think a blind lynch is acceptable? That's really the big issue here.

[Yaw]

Ok, I'm willing to pursue this.

Unvote

,

Vote: Gnome

That brings him up to 3, and it seems like there's enough around to make 4 at least possible. (And if quints moves to Gnome, that would put Gnome at 4 and Jebus at 3.) Gnome hasn't disappeared to my knowledge, and the lurking is scummy, so it would be a justifiable (and probably not blind) lynch if it happened.

[Yaw]

I think it's better to hold off on that determination right now. If you declare Gnome to effectively not be in danger of lynching, it's less likely he'll feel the need to answer for himself. I'm not going to tell you to move your vote. Just help us to make him defend himself, and determine then.

[Yaw]

Fair enough. With the lack of participation lately, I wasn't expecting another vote to be possible. Looks like I was wrong. (And I'm happy I was, to be honest. Now can we have even more participation?)

[Yaw]

I believe no lynch is bad in most cases -- either a lynch kills scum, or if it kills town it at least gives us information we can use later on. No lynch does neither. In fact, with no lynch we're likely to start off tomorrow in exactly the same situation we're in today with respect to the amount of information we have to work with, while lynching someone advances the game state. Even/odd does matter in that with one of them a no lynch effectively results in losing a day before lynch-or-lose is reached, but that also depends on the number of killing groups in the game (something we don't know yet). That said, a no lynch doesn't create a situation that we can't recover from, especially if it happens early.

There are some cases in which no lynch is optimal strategy (the most common is when there are only 4 players left, exactly one of whom is scum -- no lynching gives scum the chance to kill down to 3, raising town's chance of winning from 25% to 33.3%, while lynching wrong just gives scum the win). My personal opinion is that it's best to lynch unless there's a good reason not to.

[Yaw]

Good job pulling that off, Bionic!

Overall, not badly played, with the exception of killa seven's lurking and alvinz claiming scum on day 2 (seriously, what the hell was that?) I kind of hate dying early to someone who's not even bothering to play, but such is Mafia sometimes.

SSK -- The setup looks to be pretty good here (from what I've seen so far), but there are some

serious

modding issues you need to work on. I'm listing a bunch of the ones I've noticed in the hopes you'll look at this as an opportunity for improvement. I think I speak for most of the players here in saying that these led to some big frustrations that were entirely unnecessary. I believe you'll find that fixing these problems will lead to better running of future games, and less friction with your players (as well as making it easier to find replacements).

1) Vote counts. Yes, I know I requested they be posted rather than edited at the beginning of the game, which you weren't in favour of. That said, regardless of the method used, vote counts absolutely must be done in a manner that is timely, and they must be as accurate as possible. Yours were neither. What this means is that you should be aiming to get a vote count on each page (where possible -- sometimes the game goes too fast for this) regardless of where it is on the page. Vote counts should be accurate up to the point where the vote count occurs (so none of that stuff like in your mini, where you edited in a vote count at the top of the page and stated it was correct to something like post 63 -- it's confusing for players to read). Also, watch the accuracy -- many of your vote counts had errors. I personally use the strategy of placing all the players in a "Not Voting" list, and then cut/pasting the names into different slots as they vote. It doesn't solve all problems, but it does ensure that you will never have anybody double-voting.

2) Away time. Yes, people get busy. No, I'm not blaming you for getting busy. But when you do get busy, at least PM your backup to let them know. There's no shame in relying on a backup when it's needed. I've done it before.

3) Replacements part 1. There's a few here. First of all, you have to be careful that nobody can read player roles from night choices (or the lack thereof). Reclusion should have been temporarily replaced when she requested it. Not doing that potentially lets players determine whether or not she had a night choice based on whether or not she was around to make it. Not what you want. Also, be up front about who you're replacing when you start looking for replacements. I don't think I was the only one confused when you said you were looking for a replacement for Reclusion, then had Panzer replacing Netman (who you didn't say was being replaced at all).

4) Replacements part 2. The small text on the front page has to stop. Players need to be able to read what player replaced whom at a glance. They shouldn't have to highlight your text and paste it somewhere else to do so. It's completely unnecessary and annoying. (It's also less work for you not to use tags to make the text small, so it saves you a bit of work.)

5) Replacements part 3. With respect to Panzer replacing in, there were a number of issues. First of all, you should always, no questions asked, give replacements their predecessor's night choices when they receive their role. The expectation is that they should have this information, because they're becoming the same person. Second, you have to make clear when a player replaced in. Panzer replaced during Night 1, which means he made all the night choices. But your post saying he replaced came several posts after the morning post, which implied that he wasn't in the game during the night at all. These two points combined meant that when Panzer claimed, you were

telling the players that he lied about his claim

, which is what got him lynched. Mods should

never

put themselves into a position where they are contributing to a player lynch, and this could have been prevented by seeing what was going on in thread, and correcting the record.

There are probably other things I'm forgetting, but those are the main points. Again, I'm posting this in the hope you'll take this as practical advice on how to improve your modding in the future.

[Yaw]

Called Yaw out, though xD

Sure, but could you have made a case for it that would have stood up to scrutiny?

I don't like dying early, but I'm not too disappointed with my play. I didn't get lynched, and nobody could connect me to either of my scum buddies. As far as I'm concerned, that's mission accomplished. Sure, I'd prefer to die to a SK that was actually putting in an effort to play the game, but we can't have everything.

As I said, the pace of the game favored scum. 6 game days and only 31 pages is pretty light.

I didn't really mind the pace, in terms of days and pages. Around 30-50 pages is a good size -- it's long enough that there's enough information for town to look through, and short enough that reading through the game isn't a huge chore. I think the town was hurt more by the number of lurkers early (killa seven, Netman, alvinz to name a few), which inhibited information gathering.

[Yaw]

For the record, I was being sincere when I said I was impressed with the way you were playing, Reclusion. Had I survived much longer I knew I'd have to nightkill you at some point because I couldn't see a way to get you lynched, and I wasn't convinced I could snow you for a full game. Was very sorry to see you go, and hope things die down enough that you can play more in the future.

[Yaw]

Better question: Why did you claim scum? Even jokingly?