California Trilogy: City of Angels - Off Stage (Game Over)

[Bagel Eating Cowfrog]

If I had to choose someone to be lynched, right now, it would be him. That doesn't entail that I wanted him lynched immediately, without further opportunity to provide more tells as to his alignment

ah ok gotcha now. also, i can't be "downplaying tells" if i don't think they're tells in the first place. i have never played with zwet before iirc (although i know his bad reputation) and these tells that people are saying he's showing seem to come from what they've seen of him in previous games. on that note, can someone link to game(s) where he's shown this behavior before?

on another note, Zorblag's song/message pairings is a good idea but someone who's On Camera should really copy them down because it could be too easy for everyone to mix up which is which and scum would take advantage of the situation.

-dahill

[MafiaJin]

@Gaspar answer my previous reason, since you originally asked the question of me anyways. I agree that SSK's reason is weak by itself. Doesn't hurt though.

Your ignoring a win condition. If the advocate decision is as random as you feel, then you must also feel lynching is random. Both are based on an informed minority and a majority deciding on a path.

We cannot win this game with lynches alone as the endgame will be played on camera with impact made by decisions. By the same token we are unlikely to win with decisions alone as we will be put into endgame at disadvantage. We need both.


-Sajin

[Seraphim]

This game is confusing.

Besides the obvious, I'll reread the thread again and see if I can glean anything from it. Currently, I have nothing to say on how some of the stranger mechanics should be handled and await the game to actually begin before weighing in.

[Mighty Orbots]

My view is that this should be a conduit of the entire off stage group's thoughts. It gives us a way to send information to the on camera players and there's no reason they should just get what Papa Zito and I think is the case. The "we" would be at least a majority of those offstage (ideally a consensus.) I expect the system zwetschenwasser sets up to have the same principle behind it.

I'm going to be posting condensed lists of the messages like I did with my last post if I add any. It should make them easy for those that will be on camera to copy them into some format.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Gaspar]

1) I am assuming that the D1 lynch is more important than the Scene One decision. I have a long and storied history of believing that Day One play is one of the most important parts of any mafia game, if not the absolute most important.

2) Ignoring a win condition? The only win condition I'm concerned about is the Innocent one, which states that one of us must be alive, and all other alignments must be dead (or guaranteed to die).

3) I do not also feel that lynching is random -- your conjecture is entirely baseless, and inherently flawed. Before Day/Scene One has even begun, I've already latched onto a player based on a non-random action taken. But the way I see it: No protown player (except possibly Locke and/or Wiggin) can know whether following Locke or Wiggin is a good idea. None of us know what the outcome of following either will be. However, we know exactly what the outcome of lynching a player is. You have indicated that you want to influence a decision which may or may not affect the town's ability to win the game. Instead, you could influence a decision which will directly impact the town's ability to win the game. Lynching scums helps us win. Period. It means fewer scums are around to make Decisions On-Camera, and it means fewer scums are around to mislead the town. There is a tangible, guaranteed benefit to lynching people by remaining Off-Stage, and you know you can arrive at a completely non-random lynch decision, even on Day One. As far as I can tell, there are no such guaranteeds by going On-Camera.

[GoofballsAndBaloons]

To tell you the truth, I'm still incredibly confused about

how

this game works. I've tried rereading and rereading the rules. . .

Does anyone have a very clear and concise explanation of the mechanics in this game? I don't feel that I can start playing until I understand. I mean, I don't need to understand completely, but I'm really

really

confused about it all.

-Bridges

P.S. All previous posts were made by DGB

[Gaspar]

Also, this:

However, I see that you made your decision before this mod note, so I'm willing to discard that point entirely.

Quote removed. Do not quote the moderator. - Mod

[hewitt]

I'm 99% sure that Count de Morcerf is innocent.

Correct! =)

[Talilan]

meh I'm making the most of having access to this thread while I'm here and have time.

Further, since I can say it while people on camera in scene one can see it we almost certainly want to do whatever the advocates say in the first scene. Unless we got particularly unlucky we should have at least one town advocate in the scene. If the two advocates disagree then one of them should almost certainly be scum so the scum has good reason to fail to deceive us right at the start.

I agree entirely.

MafiaJin: I meant to ask you in my previous post: why did you choose the players you did? (not just yourself).

This assumes that the Off Camera group actually has something useful to say about the On Camera decision, and it's possible (OK probable) that having the Off Camera group discuss the On Camera decision will distract from from having the Off Camera group discuss who to lynch.

I don't see any reason to withhold commentary as it comes to you. See the Parallel Universe games currently taking place. In this case it's much simpler, there's just one larger group of players watching/commenting on a smaller group of players, rather than 3 equal sized games cross-commentating.

We've got 3 other pieces of information that we can pass on through zwetschenwasser and Mighty Orbots. What else do we want to be able to let the on camera people know?

Well, when we lynch someone and find out their alignment, that might be a useful thing for the on-camera people to know, since that could help them figure out if they should trust their advocate or not, if they're keeping careful notes about this thread and who they thing might be connected to who. That's be a pretty simple thing to communicate; all you'd need is a picture of their avatar, and then either a picture of an angel for "good guy" or a picture of a demon for "bad guy".

I agree. The cameraman should probably preserve their pictures for this.

As far as I can tell, the choice we make On-Camera will be largely random, and will not necessarily enable us to find and kill scum.

Where are you (or anyone else for that matter) getting the idea that the decisions made on-camera aren't important, or are at least less important than that of deciding a lynch?

Does anyone have a very clear and concise explanation of the mechanics in this game?

I suggest you ask the mod anything (he will then make it public if it wasn't already in the rules). I agree that the rules leave some of the functionality of the game unclear.

[Mighty Orbots]

In other news, I am confirmed innocent, and I'm 99% sure that Count de Morcerf is innocent.

Wat.

-PZ

I'm still waiting for an explanation for this.


-PZ

[elmosaurian]

As far as I can tell, the choice we make On-Camera will be largely random, and will

not necessarily enable us to find and kill scum

.

Have you checked the "Endgame" section under the Rules?

Confusing game is confusing. Not going to be useful until at least Tuesday, sorry!

Elmo

[Mighty Orbots]

Does anyone have a very clear and concise explanation of the mechanics in this game? I don't feel that I can start playing until I understand. I mean, I don't need to understand completely, but I'm really

really

confused about it all.

Arrite, here's how I think it works. The game is in two phases.

Phase 1

In phase 1, we're split into two threads, on-camera and off-camera. The off-camera crew can see what's going on in the on-camera thread but not vice versa. In order to allow a form of limited communication between the two, the off-camera crew can send two songs and two images to the on-camera thread (via Orbots and zwet).

The job of the on-camera crew is to make a decision about something. 4 of the players in this thread are pre-determined, and the rest are chosen by the director. I haven't a clue what they're deciding, but evidentally they can make a right choice and a wrong choice. There's an Advocate to help them figure out which choice to make, but the Advocate is chosen by the scum so I dunno if we should pay attention to them or not. This has some unknown effect on Phase 2 of the game.

Meanwhile, the off-camera crew is busy lynching people. I'm guessing this functions like a regular mafia game. That weird voting system (which I think we should avoid, really) comes into play here.

Phase 2

Seems there are three potential triggers for Phase 2: either we finish Scene 7, or we lynch all the scum but two, or we lose all our townies but five. The scum will choose the 7 players (5 good, 2 bad) that will make up the final group. Depending on how well the on-camera groups did, this phase will either be easy or hard. I don't know what makes it easy or hard though... maybe one side or the other gets more power roles or something. Also this phase is all On Camera so I guess anyone not picked gets to sit out in the Off Camera thread, or maybe they just don't get to post at all.

Hope that helps.

-PZ

[Mighty Orbots]

And now the giant robot disputes itself.

There are 5 predetermined actors per scene (rather than 4), the advocate (or advocates) are chosen by the scum after the first scene (where they're picked at random), and some details about the choices for each scene are known. It's all in Post 4. Scene one will be a choice of who to follow.

The Condorcet system should only be an issue if we don't lynch people offstage. We can avoid it coming up just by making sure we get majorities. It's not that complicated but it is pretty gamable so it's best if we don't try to let it come up too much.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[elmosaurian]

MafiaJin: To confirm, you did copy down all of Zorblag's codes and what they mean, right? You have those written down somewhere, and aren't going to forget them once you can't see this thread anymore, right?

[elmosaurian]

We've got 3 other pieces of information that we can pass on through zwetschenwasser and Mighty Orbots. What else do we want to be able to let the on camera people know?

Well, when we lynch someone and find out their alignment, that might be a useful thing for the on-camera people to know, since that could help them figure out if they should trust their advocate or not, if they're keeping careful notes about this thread and who they thing might be connected to who. That's be a pretty simple thing to communicate; all you'd need is a picture of their avatar, and then either a picture of an angel for "good guy" or a picture of a demon for "bad guy".

I agree. The cameraman should probably preserve their pictures for this.

Sadly, I was wrong about this, mith corrected my misunderstanding last page. We don't find out the alignments until the end of the day, so it dosn't matter; we won't have that kind of information to send to the on-camera people.

-Yos

(last post was me as well)

[Gaspar]

In other news, I am confirmed innocent, and I'm 99% sure that Count de Morcerf is innocent.

Wat.

-PZ

I'm still waiting for an explanation for this.


-PZ

I have evidently chosen not to explain it at this time.

As far as I can tell, the choice we make On-Camera will be largely random, and will

not necessarily enable us to find and kill scum

.

Have you checked the "Endgame" section under the Rules?

Confusing game is confusing. Not going to be useful until at least Tuesday, sorry!

Elmo

I have read every part of the rules over probably a dozen times. I am aware that the On-Camera decisions will affect the setup at endgame. I have also read over the scene details repeatedly.

That said, I see nothing to indicate that any individual player has any knowledge or preference for one choice over any other choice during Scene One (or Scene Two, for that matter -- though there is a distinct strategy for the Scene Two decision). I currently see the Scene One choice as being random, and I see the Off-Stage/Day One lynch as being non-random. Thus, I would rather influence the D1 lynch over the Scene One decision. Scenes Two and beyond are a different story, because the Advocates are chosen by PNIA, not randomly.

If I'm mistaken on this reasoning, please point it out to me.



On a semi-related note: My best speculation is that the decisions will lead to some kind of C9 variant. Good decisions will award some kind of ability/role in Endgame, whereas bad decisions will either take away roles, or will give the scums abilities.

Nevertheless, I maintain that the seeking and rooting out of scums' is more important than worrying about endgame setup. Supposing there are 5/20 scums in this game, and we find all 5 successfully, who cares what the setup is? We win. This is exactly why I value Off-Stage play more than On-Camera play. Perhaps general behavior has changed over the past six months or so, but I have found in the past that too many people put too much stake in roles and not enough stake in good old-fashioned scumbusting.

[Gaspar]

Elmo/Yos: keep in mind, also, that if we get the scums down to 2, they will automatically be put in their "worst possible" endgame setup. There is EVERY incentive to keep Scumhunting as your top priority. Trying to make good decisions On-Camera is a fine and dandy backup plan, but it should NEVER take precedence over trying to kill the scums off.



Honestly, I don't even see why this is up for debate. I haven't seen a single person actually make a case as to why On-Camera decisions would be more important than killing scumbags, yet I've had three people question or disagree with me on this point. I would LOVE to see some counterpoints if you folks have them.

[Mighty Orbots]

I have evidently chosen not to explain it at this time.

Then I don't see why you brought it up in-thread.

Also: my other half is nit-picky but insufferably correct. heh

-PZ

[Gaspar]

You obviously haven't played a mafia game with me before, and you probably haven't read CT1 and CT2 closely enough.

[Talilan]

I am not sure if I am allowed to quote from the rules post, so I will avoid doing so for the time being, but:

That said, I see nothing to indicate that any individual player has any knowledge or preference for one choice over any other choice during Scene One

It explicitly states in the on camera rules that the advocate gets information to help make the decision. Ergo, the first scene is not random at all. Did you just miss this or is there another reason you think the scene is still entirely random?

Either way I don't understand your point about the second and onwards scenes being

not

random, or at least

less

random than the first. The difference is that the advocates are chosen by scum, rather than randomly. Just because it has a scum-WIFOM filter applied to it wouldn't somehow render it non-random if it was already random to begin with.

Note that the choice isn't "to follow one or another advocate", that's only for the first scene. It doesn't mean that one advocate is town and another is scum, it means that one is the right advocate to follow; presumably independently of their alignment. Note in subsequent scenes the choices aren't tied to specific advocates, and e.g. in Scene 2 there are 3 choices and only one advocate.

So basically, the setup is:

advocate has knowledge to help

advocates chosen randomly for first scene

advocate(s) chosen by scum for subsequent scenes. They will still get the useful information whether they be scum or town. They are kind of like a weird version of night-kill choices for the scum.

I haven't seen a single person actually make a case as to why On-Camera decisions would be more important than killing scumbags, yet I've had three people question or disagree with me on this point. I would LOVE to see some counterpoints if you folks have them.

Well for example the result of the worst outcome in a scene might mean the scum get 5 nightkills that night rather than 1, or 0. We just don't know what form they're going to take. I don't understand why you'd assume that the on-camera action would somehow be irrelevant when it looks like it's designed to be the centrepiece of the game. The players on-camera are a minority whose every move is going to be under particular scrutiny and who can't scrutinise most of the other players. Furthermore there are several devices to relay information to them, albeit subtly. Why would you think the players with limited communication, who everyone can see, would be less rather than of equal or greater importance than the flock of people off-stage?

[GoofballsAndBaloons]

I agree that Day 1 is the most important day and it is not random at all. It's like the first few moves in chess.

I disagree that we should not use Condorcet. Scum lists are often very revealing, and the Condorcet votes are exactly like a scum list. We can use it to ensnare scumbuddies, once we've caught a live one.

I'm going to have to do something I've never done in any mafia game before, namely, read the rules. Until my eyes are burning.

===============

In completely different news, how can I ever hope to amaze the whole crew with my psychic reading of zwet's alignment if he refuses to post with his usual combination of brevity AND especially frequency?

I need some material. Zwet where are you? You're not hiding from me are you?

-DGB

[ThebladethatkilledMufasa]

FYI, it won't let me change the avatar. IDK why

--12Keyblade
Irked by Website issues

[ThebladethatkilledMufasa]

To make the previous post clear, when I play Leonard Cohen's "Closing Time" it means that the off stage thread is ready for the on stage thread to make their decision no matter whether it's been a lynch or not. I hadn't realized that we would be able to talk ahead of time so I prepared Ugly Duckling's "Slow the Flow" as a song to post at the start to remind the on camera folks that the off stage crew might need time to converse and lynch as well as the Leonard Cohen one which was supposed to let them know that discussion had ended.

We've got 3 other pieces of information that we can pass on through zwetschenwasser and Mighty Orbots. What else do we want to be able to let the on camera people know? If there's anything too complicated we can use the stuntman to get someone on camera right away to pass things on but we should try not to use that if unless something unexpected comes up. What else do we expect we'll need those that can't see this thread to know?

Further, since I can say it while people on camera in scene one can see it we almost certainly want to do whatever the advocates say in the first scene. Unless we got particularly unlucky we should have at least one town advocate in the scene. If the two advocates disagree then one of them should almost certainly be scum so the scum has good reason to fail to deceive us right at the start.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

Agreed.

--12Keyblade
Wondering if he should read CT 1&2

Quote and question removed. Read the rules. - Mod

[ThebladethatkilledMufasa]

EBWOTP:

12Keyblade will probably log into this account once or twice per RL day to comment on all that has been said b/w 12Keyblade's last post and the present time. 12Keyblade has not yet seen Mufasa post under this account, however 12Keyblade knows that...nvm, 12Keyblade knows nothing.

12Keyblade
Realizing this tagline bit will be hard to keep up.

[elmosaurian]

I agree that Day 1 is the most important day and it is not random at all. It's like the first few moves in chess.

I disagree that we should not use Condorcet. Scum lists are often very revealing, and the Condorcet votes are exactly like a scum list. We can use it to ensnare scumbuddies, once we've caught a live one.

I do not think we want it to ever come down to a condorcet vote, though; a regular majority is much more informative, and much less, well, random. We should do a "real" majority lynch every day, I think.

-Yos

Tag fixed. - Mod