Self-Voting: is it always a bad idea?

[Mr. Flay]

Self-lynching is only useful as a Jester (a role which IMO shouldn't exist) or as scum. I did this to good advantage in Newbie 436 to throw off the town's read of D2 (after successfully arguing cicero out of doing it himself on D1). It cuts short discussion, throws off vote tracking, and otherwise disrupts with scumhunting.

It's NEVER a good idea as town. Anyone who threatens to do so should be lynched or beaten severely about the head and shoulders.

[Mr. Flay]

I do not agree, however, with the people who think that a townie should always play to keep themselves alive.

Good thing that's not what we're saying then. There's a world of difference between playing to

survive

and playing to

win

, and another asteroid belt between rolling-over-and-dying and self-voting.

[Mr. Flay]

It cracks me up that cicero and I are talking about the same game, where self-voting was the

wrong

choice for him and the

right

choice for me....

[Mr. Flay]

Allow me to necro to state some things clearly for everyone:

1. If you are part of an Uninformed Majority (
   i.e.
   Town) in a game I am moderating and contribute to your own lynch by self-voting, I will consider you modkilled for violating your Win Condition, absent other circumstances^*.
   
2. If you contribute to your own lynch as a pro-town semi-experienced or IC player in a Newbie Game, as List Moderator I will ban you from ICing ever again^**.
   
3. If you contribute to your own lynch by self-voting (absent other circumstances^*) and turn out to be pro-town, I will not knowingly play with you again.

That is all.

^* I will never run a game with Lynchers or Jesters. It is possible some other mechanic could make this a viable strategy, but I will make that explicit in your Role PM.
^** There is an ongoing NG where this happened; please don't discuss it here until that game is over. I've already spoken to that player.

[Mr. Flay]

I've banned a few people from ICing for being spectacularly bad examples. I'm adding self-lynching as town to the list, yes (and looking at the list, 2/3 of the people already there have done this as at least one of their 'offenses').

mith is free to override me; that goes without saying.

[Mr. Flay]

Flay: Of your 3 rules, do any of them change if a person self-votes while genuinely believing they're doing the right thing to help the town (even if you disagree)?

I don't understand your question. That may be because I disagree with the postulation that you will

inevitably

be lynched/NKed.

As part of the Uninformed Majority, it is part of your role to make it as difficult as possible for the Informed Minority to win. Anything which intentionally narrows those odds isn't working toward your Win Condition. Can you give me an example where you think it would beneficial?

[Mr. Flay]

Hypothetical scenario:

You're modding a game. A vanilla townie is close to lynch. They decide to vote for themselves (but not necessarily hammer), because "the discussion is distracting the town."

Now, most reasonable players (including you, the mod) would agree that this is a completely terrible reason. However, the self-voter genuinely believes they are doing all they can to help fulfill their win condition. Is this still a modkillable offense?

I think you're misreading me slightly; simply voting yourself isn't going to get you modkilled.

Being on your own lynch will!

I understand the 'frustration vote', even though it's patently unhelpful, as you say. I discourage it, as a player.

What if it were a lights out situation, would it not be pro-town to self-vote at the point of an impending lynch in order to expedite further lynches that day?

Lights Out and other lynch-trigger would probably fall under extenuating circumstances, yes. It's still suboptimal to lynch yourself, but if it allows the town some breathing room going forward with the rest of that day, that's different.

There are probably a few obscure role-based reasons (for example, I once won a game as town because scum had claimed to give me lynch-immunity. I self-hammered to test the hypothesis - I died, and the final scum was lynched the next day).

Sure, that would be an extenuating circumstance.

There are a few late-game situations, such as the prisoner's dilemma with 2 townies and 2 SKs

I'm not sure I understand why one Townie is better than two in this situation - won't the surviving scum still face the Dilemma? If anything, it complicates their odds, because they could double-kill one Townie.

I would argue that, early on, a townie's self-lynch is better than a NoLynch, because it allows the town to move on with their lives. If the townie reached lynch-minus-one, the odds are very good that they will eventually be lynched anyways - so it might as well be now, so that the town doesn't waste a lynch on it later.

Absolutely disagree. I've seen many early-game wagons get to L-1 and later that person is either NKed, investigated, claims, or otherwise becomes non-trivial.

Say it's mountainous; 7 alive, two of which are scum. I would self-lynch rather than NoLynch as a townie, because if we NoLynch we'll have to do so twice. Basically meaning: either the scum gets to decide who participates in the 5-player endgame, or their options are limited (they only get to decide one of the two deaths). Self-lynching in that case limits the scum's options with no drawback to the town.

Absolutely disagree. You should be trying to lynch scum, not get to a five-player LyLo in the first place.

[Mr. Flay]

I'm really not seeing the compelling reasons for self-lynching, guys. I see a couple of very far-fetched or improbable cases where getting yourself killed makes probabilities collapse. I see a lot of "but it's better than No Lynch!", which isn't my problem. If the Town isn't willing to lynch, that's a larger problem. I've NEVER been in a game where the town was totally unwilling to take a risk on a lynch; occasionally someone fell aslee/got ill/got drunk before they could come on and make the deadline lynch stick, but not a complete lack of initiative.

That said, if that many people think it's unfair, I'll probably strike rule 1. 2 and 3 I'm firm on, though...

[Mr. Flay]

I believe any Town player should do anything they can, short of self-hammering, to avoid a No Lynch. But by making the choice yourself, you're taking away data from the Day. I don't see why everyone is ASSUMING that no one will be willing to lynch you. If you're so scummy-seeming, why won't someone else lynch you? If you're not that scummy-seeming, why are you trying to die so fast?

[Mr. Flay]

Aha, I get it. As a moderator, I would

never

schedule a deadline to end while players were V/LA, and I only VERY rarely do so when someone

might

need replacement.

It may make my games last somewhat longer, but it's detrimental to the game to not be playing with a full complement of players. So that situation wouldn't occur in one of my games.

[Mr. Flay]

Are people just not able to read my posts?

This only applies to you if you're town.

If you're scum, there are a couple of valid reasons to self-lynch, or even kill yourself overnight to save the town the trouble (the old newbie setup led me to that conclusion a couple of times).

XreyoX, I don't understand your point. I can

believe

something that is 100% wrong. People pick up stupid habits all the time, but i don't have to endorse them in games I play or moderate, and I don't believe I have to see them propogated in our newbies.

I haven't seen anyone give a compelling reasons why self-lynching as Town in a Normal Game would be reasonable. But I'll PM mith, right now, to see if he wants to override me on this.

[Mr. Flay]

If you know 100% that a VT is clear, ie they are cop cleared, then I agree killing them is pointless, you should keep them around.

So you don't know your own alignment?

You should be 100% sure of your own innocence, at least in any Normal Game. This directly contradicts your "inevitability" argument above.

[Mr. Flay]

Actually, I'm saying it DOES make the game less fair to your fellow townspersons, especially in a Newbie Game where a) the size of the game is smaller to begin with, so you have less time to recover, b) bad play is already rampant, we don't need help from the supposed 'experienced' people in how to screw things up for your side.

Not all theories have merit. Not all plays are good ones. Outside of a few VERY specific and unlikely scenarios, I still have yet to see a good reason why a pro-town player would self-lynch.

[Mr. Flay]

Right, Yos, and that's one of those "very specific examples", so I'm not going to be banning anyone for doing it (like I didn't remove SensFan's ICness for doing so in the effectively-over NG 638 on D2). But when it's just done out of frustration or spite, it's a completely asinine behavior, and nothing I want propagated to our newbies.

If mith says that Newbie Games can just forbid self-voting having an effect, then so be it, but it IS still a good move by scum occasionally. This seems easier, and nobody has shown a tactical advantage to it (in your case, the incompetent town is forcing someone's hand, but they ought to be able to lynch SOMEONE that day). At best, a few outside situations show a neutral effect; most of the time it's just sour grapes.

SensFan: Of course, scum are in no way inhibited by my rule. They can, and should, self-hammer on occasion.

farside: I'm waiting to see if anyone shows a reason I shouldn't put it fully into effect before propagating the rule far and wide. Consider this the "comment period".

[Mr. Flay]

This probably deserves its own thread, but:

Is a better rule

"Don't be an idiot/asshole when you're ICing, or you'll lose the privilege?"

?

Because that's really what I'm getting at, and I've already exercised it a few times in the past. If this 'dogmatic' approach is what's chafing people, I'll switch to something more nuanced.

[Mr. Flay]

I'm worried, though, that I'm just going to get people arguing "but I didn't THINK it was stupid/being an asshole!". Which is a fairly dumb defense, but it puts the onus back on me to argue with people when they're being bad ICs. I was trying to avoid that, but apparently I can't...

[Mr. Flay]

Yeah, often it's other ICs or a moderator, though a surprising number of newbies send me PMs about problems in their games.

Yos2: We're back to "What if I didn't feel it was detrimental?", though. I'll concede that there was some loopholes in my original 'rule', but this isn't really any better. *sigh* I've only banned a few people from ICing, and usually it's for repeated, egregious stuff. Without naming names:

• Mod messaged in March 2008 about this IC driving players away. Lurking hardcore in NG ### now, since I'd forgotten the older warning... self-hammered in NG ###.
  
• ... asked for replacement in NG ### and NG ### due to "fights" with other players, according to his moderator. Not reliable to see the game through.
  
• ... modkilled in NG ### (before he was an IC) for quoting his role PM. Self-hammered in NG ###. Seems to be doing alright (not stellar) in NG ### right now, but it'll be some time before he's ready to IC.
  
• ... self-hammered and acted like an ass in NG ###, not a good example. Maybe sometime down the road, but not anytime soon. Both the mod and another IC let me know about this one.
  
• ... has a penchant for self-voting and disruptive playstyle.
  
• ... lurks more often than not.