Mini 848 - Second String Muppets Mafia - Game Over.

[ekiM]

/romantic info

[ekiM]

The Incredible Hulk is an obvious alt; maybe they haven't checked that account and seen that the game is ready to go?

[ekiM]

Vote: ~Jordan`

.

<sob> I have such bad luck.

Explain.

vote Ectomancer

what're you rushing for? Are you antsy in fear of the scum we get to put into a paper bag and slam against a wall tonite? YOU MAFIA SCUMMM!

What does this mean? How is this scummy?

all sadness and anger must be vented, less one fall into a depression.

Its pre-Day 1; have some fun!

lol

Why are you trying to laugh off a serious question? Don't like attention?

I will vote you when day starts.

Just so you know.

What is the point of posting this?

2)My role is a screw role, I have a PR which is apparently antitown, but my PM hints at possible protown effect if I use it. I've decided that the way I'm gonna play it is as follow: within this post is a cipher, if I decide to use my PR at any given time I'll use the cipher in one of my post so I can ref back to it.

The reason I'm softclaiming now is as follow: a)I'm not sure of the positive effect of my PR which is hinted to be huge b)but i'm pretty sure attracting a kill won't do too much harm to the town since there is a downside to my PR.

You have a choice whether to follow your post restriction? What kind of downside? You won't be able to communicate certain types of information? How much can you tell us here?

Unvote:

Vote: ~Jordan

Wagons are a good thing. Ending the RVS early is a good thing.

Why did you random vote initially? Jordan would be an obvious target for a non-random vote.

[ekiM]

Fair enough, Malcolm. What do you make of SpringLullaby?

[ekiM]

Welcome, Eldritch Lord.

---

I think Jordan is YAVI. Get playing, dude.

unvote

.

People should NOT be fishing for more info from SL.

Vote: MonkeyMan

. Jordan is directly answering a question about the people on his wagon. That's not OMGUS. I agree that Jordan should add more on why you and Kirby are "strange", but your calling this OMGUS is scummy.

Just because you're answering a question doesn't mean it obsolves you of having to provide examples. And I don't think the question was directed on the wagonee so much as those who might be less biased.

Implausible. The question was "You have 5 votes on you Jordan. Do you believe that scum is on the wagon? Which players are the most likely candidates?".

Look right here. He is reluctant to touch Spring's softclaim because he's trying to determine the motives for it. Really? Then what makes Jordan's any different?

Monkey wasn't sure that it was a softclaim and wanted Jordan's response to gauge whether he did or not

. Wait a second, I thought he was cautious and tries to figure these things out? And it isn't as though the "bad luck" topic wasn't already broached to Jordan by me and responded to by him. Yet "cautious" Monkey needs to route out a softclaim? I thought he found that exaggeration leads to mislynches? Calling Jordan's first statement a softclaim isn't an exaggeration?

Monkey needs to be lynched.

Ecto is clearly reaching here and upset that he has been connected to Jordan. He is not defending himself, but choosing to attack me with what is essentially a psychoanalytical case, not any case based in strong logic. Note that he completely ignores the Jordan wagon, suggesting that his "case" on me is stronger than what's already been presented against Jordan, which is based on several observations, not just a weak psychoanalytical presumption. I never said I was cautious in everything, I said it was important to balance observation and attack, rather than just recklessly attack, especially once you have been targeted(which is essentially what Ecto is doing).

This is just terrible. You're working very hard to try to discredit Ecto's line of attack, which tells me that you're actually taking it very seriously indeed. You're leaning heavily on rhetoric because Ecto has you worried.

Vote: MonkeyMan576.

[ekiM]

And to whoever asked me why I didn't comment on SL's "claim," I don't think there's much to comment on. If her PR (

which I take to mean Power Role, but I could be wrong

) has a condition for her to be sided with either town or scum, and we don't know concretely which side she's going to choose, isn't that much like how each of us is now, that no one knows for sure what side any given player is on?

In addition, I think it is more important, at least on D1

, to lynch scum than Indies;

correct me if I'm wrong

.

You're picking your words very carefully, aren't you? How many times did you re-write this post? The obsequiousness rubs me the wrong way, too.

[ekiM]

Reasons I'm happy with my vote:

• Monkeyman continues to burn pixels badmouthing Ecto's arguments instead of just responding.
  
• Continuing to fish for role info from SL. Just stop.
  
• Asserting that defending another player is a scumtell. It isn't. Kirbyoshi used this one, too.
  
• Ignoring 88.
  
• Pushing for a claim when the thread has barely been open 24 hours!

Note the absence of "He posted with an alt". . It is unhelpful, though.

[ekiM]

I think I've presented a fairly strong case. It may not have been strong in the beginning, but I think their behavior since then has reinforced my case.

This is a real gem. You admit your case isn't strong, and assert anyway that Ecto and Jordan just must be buddies; after all, why would a townie disagree with a weak case like that? That's an... interesting... thought process to go through.

[ekiM]

I should have said earlier---saying that L-2 is a good place to ask for a roleclaim is anti-town. A claim should be requested when someone is ready to drop the hammer. Forcing claims too early helps scum.

I think I've presented a fairly strong case. It may not have been strong in the beginning, but I think their behavior since then has reinforced my case.

This is a real gem. You admit your case isn't strong, and assert anyway that Ecto and Jordan just must be buddies; after all, why would a townie disagree with a weak case like that? That's an... interesting... thought process to go through.

I didn't say my case wasn't strong, I said it wasn't strong in the beginning. The more I heard from the two, the more it reinforced my case.

You admit that your initial case was weak, but in the same breath argue that Ecto disagreeing with that case makes him scum with Jordan. Why wouldn't a townie disagree with a weak case?

That's not what I'm doing at all. What's with all the psychoanalyzing? I have actual semi-hard evidence of a connection between two players and people are coming up with all this fluff stuff.

You're using "psychoanalyzing" as a synonym for "trying to discern the motivations of", which is the essence of the game of Mafia. It's not a valid reason to dismiss an argument.

Wherein has Ecto been grasping at straws? You certainly haven't provided examples as yet.

Alright, let me put it another way:

Actually, I'd prefer if you answered the question. I think pretty much every point Ecto has raised has been worth consideration, apart from the thing about posting as an alt. If you disagree then please give some examples of him grasping at straws.

Your question was "Jordan seemed to shut up after you stated that he made a newb mistake, experienced scum hushing up the less experienced?" I'm not sure what you were expecting Ecto to say here. That is, how else can someone answer that other than with a yes or a no? Seriously loaded question.

I wasn't looking for a yes or a no in particular, just a real response.

Please give an example of a response you would expect a townie to give to that horribly loaded question.

as far as the quick turnaround on monkey goes, it was quick... ie spastic. Although more so on ML's part than ecto. Ecto just seemed to be leading it.

What does this mean and what does it tell you about alignments?

[ekiM]

Hi all, sorry for not getting on over the weekend. I will try to catch up this evening.

[ekiM]

Welcome, charter.

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Unvote

. There's a lot going on here. I don't really have my head wrapped around everything. Trying to get back up to speed.

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Claim theory discussion

• Claims are for stopping power roles getting lynched. Apart from that function, claims are bad. They let the scum know whom to target.
  
• Unnecessary claims are really bad. Claims should happen when a clear and solid majority wants to lynch someone. Not before.
  
• Don't ask for a claim too early. Just because someone is at L-1 doesn't mean "it's time for them to claim". Only if everyone currently on the wagon is still gung-ho for a lynch, and someone else is ready to hammer. L-2 is ridiculously early.
  
• If someone asks you to claim and you think it's too soon, don't just submit. Argue against it.
  
• Vanilla claims should never stop a lynch, if the claim was requested at the right time. If they did, it means they were asked too early. (N.B., it's not scummy to claim as vanilla, it's just a bad idea. Argue the wagon instead.)

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Monkey's vanilla claim

This was requested early. EL put Monkey to 6 votes and immediately asked for a claim, backed up by Elvis. Then the wagon started to fall to pieces. There wasn't a consensus that a Monkey lynch at that point was apropos, so asking for a claim was inappropriate and unnecessary. I'd like to know why those two thought that was a good time for a claim. Unnecessary claims only benefit scum.

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charter's PGO claim

If this is true, this is excellent. The trouble is, knowing if it's true. I don't like Ecto's ideas for "confirming" it by having town PRs targeting him. Too high-risk, too much to lose. Potentially losing some or all of our power roles and still not having true confirmation doesn't sound good to me. I thought the best way would be to observe his play and see if it's pro-town. But the problem is, if we allow that then as scum he's free to bus hard and coast to victory on a pseudo-confirmation. So I'm not sure yet what's best here. Never played in a game with one before.

One thing I will say is that Kirby's question is something scum would badly want to know, and I don't think charter should answer it if he knows.

---

I'm going to come back to this this evening, hopefully. Long weekend made me behind on all my games, and I have two more I need to catch up on. :\ I'll give my full comments and suspicions later, but my first impressions are something along the lines of...

Town-ish: DDD, Ecto, Jordan
Neutral/unsure: ML, charter, Monkey
Suspect: EL, Elvis, Kirby, Snix
AWOL: Spring

[ekiM]

Indeed, charter. It occurs to me that this sort of speculation and strategizing might be more useful on later days when we have some idea of how many kills we'll be seeing a night...

[ekiM]

I am not fully caught up yet but I have had a full read through just now and I've observed something interesting.

---

EL on the ML case and wagon...:

139 - "Regardless, Ecto/Jordan/Monkey are all lynches I would be okay with if we were to hit the deadline right now seeing how as none of the cases are particularly strong. Still, given the choice I'd take Monkey over Jordan over Ecto."
145 - "Because in relation to anything I've been able to build myself, your case looks very powerful indeed."
147 - "I would prefer not to allow deflection to occur. The focus should be on Monkey, Jordan, and yourself for the moment."
166 - Votes for DDD for putting Monkey at L-1.
173 - "You're very careful with your wording DDD, you weren't just voting, you were setting someone up to be hammered. There is a scary amount of finality and certainty to that given your lack of recent posting.

This is a good question Macavity, one I've been asking myself, actually. I suppose I'd like to hear more from DDD before hearing a roleclaim from Monkey.

I was kind of on the same boat as Snix, just waiting for someone to do something that I legitimately identify as scummy. Ecto and Monkey are both definitely still on my radar, but I can't pin them down beyond cases that make way too much inference."
194 - "That said, I was never too particularly attached to the case against Monkey and spent most of my time trying to understand exactly what the case against Ecto was rather than pursue Monkey directly, though I think the Ecto/Monkey debate certainly deserves the great deal of scrutiny you've provided knits. I think, out of my strategy, we got several interesting dodges from Monkey which led me to believe it was a case full of hot air -- possibly scummy hot air."
196 - If the majority of town feels that they're ready to choose Monkey, I'm alright with that choice, I feel that he's slipped up enough to warrant a lynch...... I don't understand why everyone seems to eager to hold a guy at L-1 to force a roleclaim when we have posters who haven't posted since page 1."
197 - "I do think the cases against Monkey and Ecto are weak, the slip ups that have occurred during discourse, however, put Monkey in a very bad light for me."
203 - revotes MM. claims "everyone" wants to see a roleclaim
205 - requests claim.

Let me summarize some of that...

139 - All cases are weak, Monkey is best.
145 - Monkey case is very powerful (compared to nothing?)
147 - Please focus on monkey/jordan
166 - DDD is suspect for voting for monkey
173 - Not ready for a monkey roleclaim, case is not legitimately scummy, based too much on inference
194 - Not particularly attached to the case on Monkey, full of hot air, possibly scummy
196 - Too early to force a roleclaim, despite what "everyone" says
197 - the case is weak
203 - "everyone" wants a roleclaim, so votes Monkey.
205 - requests claim.

I do not see what changed between 196 and 203. At all. In 196 he didn't see why "everyone" wants Monkey at L-1 and forced to claim. A few posts later he did exactly that. None of the people he was missing had spoken up.

Looks like he wanted to force a totally unnecessary roleclaim but was looking for cover by claiming it was what "everyone" wanted. If that was true, his 'reluctant' vote wouldn't be necessary. I think forcing the claim then was a blatantly anti-town move, and trying to avoid responsibility for it just makes EL look worse.

Vote: Eldritch Lord

.

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@ekiM, there pretty much was a consensus that MM would be lynched at that point, at least that is what I thought. Otherwise so many people wouldn't have been voting for him! He was L-1 and I was thinking about voting him. Perfect time to claim.

People were voting him, but it was an early game wagon and some people on it hadn't spoken in a while. How were you so sure there was a "consensus" there? Why force the claim without seeing responses to him being back at L-1?

Did you notice EL's sudden shift of stance I catalogue above? What do you make of it?

---

I still want Snix to answer this:

Your question was "Jordan seemed to shut up after you stated that he made a newb mistake, experienced scum hushing up the less experienced?" I'm not sure what you were expecting Ecto to say here. That is, how else can someone answer that other than with a yes or a no? Seriously loaded question.

I wasn't looking for a yes or a no in particular, just a real response.

Please give an example of a response you would expect a townie to give to that horribly loaded question.

It strikes me that asking loaded questions isn't very pro-town behavior. It's not designed to determine alignment, it's designed to make the subject look bad no matter what their alignment.

[ekiM]

Mod and others: I will be V/LA Fri 25th to Sun 27th.

[ekiM]

Monkey, Jordan is imperfectly presenting the ideas from this thread. It's true that if a claim is asked for at the appropriate time (when a lynch has a firm consensus and the claim is purely to avoid lynching power roles) then a vanilla claim shouldn't stop the lynch. It's true therefore that a vanilla townie would usually be better off arguing that the claim request is inopportune then giving a claim. That's all he's saying, and it's not controversial.

I think you're both likely town. Stop spamming the thread with inane and unproductive argument. Pages 10 and this last one are totally useless.

[ekiM]

Uh, was that a hammer? 'cause I don't remember Kirby being asked to claim.

[ekiM]

Well, I'm not called a paranoid gun owner in my role pm, but I kill people that target me at night, so I made the connection. And yeah, if you look at Crazy Harry, he quite clearly uses bombs and stuff.

What

are

you called in your role PM?

[ekiM]

It doesn't make sense to me that ML would die because he targeted charterPGO, because why would scum be targeting a claimed PGO? And I think it's very unlikely ML died targeting someone else, because that would mean charter just happened to fakeclaim the rare role of PGO in a game where a PGO happened to be. Unlikely. So I think we have another killer/killing group. Probably vig or SK.

About charter's claim, I don't think he's confirmed town, but I don't see why anyone other than scum would want to lynch him any day soon. Obviously it's a good role for a scum to claim, but it's also very good for town if he's kept alive and is townie. Later on when we know more we can decide if there's good reason to think he's mafia/SK. Starting the Kirby wagon is a very slight scumtell, but I don't exactly remember anyone standing up and arguing strongly against that wagon. Kirby dug his own grave IMO. I disagree with EL in 417 quite a lot though "[Claiming PGO and derailing the monkey wagon towards Kirby] would be one hell of an elaborate plan for building towncred" --- err, how is that elaborate at all? Weird thing to say.

[ekiM]

I still want Snix to answer this:

Your question was "Jordan seemed to shut up after you stated that he made a newb mistake, experienced scum hushing up the less experienced?" I'm not sure what you were expecting Ecto to say here. That is, how else can someone answer that other than with a yes or a no? Seriously loaded question.

I wasn't looking for a yes or a no in particular, just a real response.

Please give an example of a response you would expect a townie to give to that horribly loaded question.

It strikes me that asking loaded questions isn't very pro-town behavior. It's not designed to determine alignment, it's designed to make the subject look bad no matter what their alignment.

+ what Ecto says about him.

Vote: Snix

.

I don't like the way EL is trying to direct people's analysis and scumhunting. Telling us in 409 things have to be focussed on DDD and ML. 412 - asking us to focus on the NK. Also don't like the push on DDD.

I think DDD is town. This is his usual playstyle I think. Monkey looks more townie even than yesterday, based on ML interactions.

Elvis, why did you say you were willing to hammer without doing so if you weren't looking for a role claim?

[ekiM]

Unvote; vote DDD

. Because fakeclaiming cop with one scum already down would be suicidal.

What muppet are you?

[ekiM]

Bleh.

unvote

just because thread has been open like two days and we're in no rush. I'd love to know any sane explanation for why that would be a fakeclaim though.

[ekiM]

Vote: No Lynch

.

And that's all I'm going to say today.

[ekiM]

I think Jordan should speak before we move to night.

[ekiM]

No lynch today, mass claiming tomorrow. It's pretty basic Mafia logic. There are six of us, so we have a roughly 33% chance of finding scum. If we don't lynch then tomorrow we will have a roughly 40% chance. And we shouldn't be talking about anything else today if that's what we're doing, because we don't want to help scum find the best night kill.

[ekiM]

I'm Pops, vanilla.

I'm out of the house literally all day today. I may be able to post on lunch, otherwise tomorrow morning.

[ekiM]

I'm Pops, vanilla.

I'm out of the house literally all day today. I may be able to post on lunch, otherwise tomorrow morning.

[ekiM]

There will be two scum left. Two scum out of twelve is just about balanced in mountainous, let alone with a town vig, cop, and possibly roleblocker too. Probably both power roles, something like redirector or framer to explain EL.

I'm not bothered that Jordan claimed not to be vanilla, I could see a new player like him doing that.

I'm trying to remember why I thought monkey looked town earlier. He certainly doesn't today.

Ecto's logic on not lynching either Snix or Elvis is sound, unless there's some stronger evidence on either one than I've seen so far. Anyone who disagrees, explain why. His reasoning is here: http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopi ... 87#1911387

I think I need a full re-read but it's Friday and I'm tired.

[ekiM]

What is the flavor justification for Hilda being a roleblocker? According to http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Hilda she is a seamstress.

[ekiM]

Hey Snix, why didn't you answer my question in 708 right away?

What is the flavor justification for Janice being a roleblocker? When you say you're "the town prostitute" are you saying it says that in your role PM?

Why did you want a name claim yesterday?

Why did you feel the need to continue the lie today?

That's also why I was so interested in why a lot of people thought there were 3 scum total. It was an unknown number and people acted like they knew it as a fact.

2 scum out of 12 with town power roles is not remotely balanced, and if there were 4 scum the game would already be over. I'm finding it difficult to believe you really couldn't reason that out.

I again would like to reiterate why I believe Elvis is scum: I see no point to scum pulling a gambit like this, to not NK and hope to push a misslynch with a higher number of town votes necessary. It would have been much easier to push a misslynch if there was 1 less town.

We NLed because we decided that allowing scum to NK would favor town. Why do you find it so hard to believe then that scum would decline to oblige us?

[ekiM]

I am not Hilda, I used that as a name because it was 100% confirmed (by mod) unused in the game (I.E. no one could counter claim truthfully).

The reason I did this is because my real name is Janice from Electric Mayhem. (and the town prostitute apparently) The rest of Electric Mayhem is scum (trying to change the show to all music). There are 3 of them: Dr. Teeth, Floyd Pepper and Zoot.

I know that they are scum and they know that I know. So I'm a prime target for Night Killing if they knew it was me.

Now if I understand Snix correctly, He is a bit of a snitch, because he knows the role names of his targets, but not which players have that name.
Now, I don't know if scum would have gotten a hint about Snix's role or not, but possibly. That would explain why Snix would need a valid fake claim name.
Now, Snix's role is a bit of a flavor cop, so long as he can get another member of Electric Mayhem to say their flavor name. That also explains why he would try to instigate an undercover mass claim like that.

This all doesn't make sense to me. If scum didn't get safe fake claims and know that their real names were unsafe to claim then that's bastard modding. If they did get safe fake claims then what would be the point of giving Snix their real names?

[ekiM]

Snix's claim doesn't add up on several levels.

I still don't believe the flavor. A prostitute. On The Muppet Show. What the heck?

We've seen a town cop, watcher, and vig. A roleblocker on top of that seems excessive, even if both remaining scum have power roles.

This business of knowing the scum's real names makes no sense. It's either bastardly (scum don't know about it and get screwed randomly) or pointless (scum do know and fake claim). It doesn't tie in with the roleblocking stuff.

He's protesting too much when he says he doesn't believe scum would No Kill. He voted for No Lynch yesterday, so he should understand that scum night killing could help town. I think he's faking obtuseness.

It makes more sense that he used his fake name claim yesterday then came up with this claiming roleblocker schtick at night, not thinking through the flavor implications. He's tried and failed to salvage that by claiming his real identity (as part of the mafia!), but it still doesn't fit together with his claimed role.

Vote: Snix

[ekiM]

Good game, everybody. Thanks to Zorblag for some quality modding.

---

I think our scum team put in a solid (if un-flashy) performance. There were a couple of points where I was sure we would lose, but we held it together. Town did most of the heavy lifting for us, but I think we had our fingers on the fulcrum most of the time.

Macavity and Elvis were great teammates. Thanks guys.

I did lurk a lot this game. That's a reasonable tactic when the town is composed of loose cannons, I think.

---

About the set-up: I liked it. I think it was balanced, if fairly swingy. The flavor was cool and fun.

Compulsory vig is swingy but fun to include. Watcher and roleblocker are fine choices.

I don't think having a paranoid cop is unfair at all. It balanced out the town power a little, and was a bit of a skill/open-mindedness tester. You gave enough hints in the role PM, and even a cursory research of the source material would've given further clues that he might not be sane.

Having Janice be a "town prostitute" was interesting. It was a fairly oblique and original interpretation of her character into a mafia role. I don't think that would be a problem if the other power roles were similarly lateral, but they were all played straight (Crazy Harry is a vig because he blows stuff up. Sam the Eagle is a paranoid. etc.). That made Snix's claim easier to undermine, because a prostitute is obviously out of keeping with the original source material, and none of the other roles were.

I think you had fun coming up with the body swapping stuff, but it was fairly inconsequential in practice. We had to know our given fakeclaims might be unsafe, so we weren't going to use them without extreme caution. The janitor role got killed without doing anything, but I don't think it would've done much even if it went into effect. Maybe it would've been simpler to have that slot be a townie and leave the "body swapping" as a flavorful explanation for giving us fake claims.

[ekiM]

Heh, just noticed this:

Night Actions:

Night One:
elvis_knits (Zoot, mafia goon) kills kikuchiyo

Night Three:
elvis_knits (Zoot, mafia goon) kills kikuchiyo (blocked)

Night Four:
elvis_knits (Zoot, mafia goon) kills kikuchiyo

What you got against the lady, Elvis?!

[ekiM]

I'm fine with that.

[ekiM]

Also, this game lasted just over a month. I don't know about you guys, but that made it WAY more fun for me, and easier to maintain interest. I've had some days last nearly that long in other games.