Mafiascum.net

(This could be percieved as a subset of metagaming, but I felt it was broad enough to merit its own topic)

Is it right to lynch, wagon, force claims, etc. based on knowledge of a specific player?

For example, say a player has a reputation for being a horrible protown player, but an excellent scum player. Should the town come out and lynch him, wagon him, or consider him more suspicious? If he's town, attacking him is a smaller loss than attacking any other player, and if he's scum, it's a great move.

What happens if that player is poor town but good scum ? For example - and this has come up before in Scumchat - some people will refuse to claim if the evidence against them isn't solid (be it a random bandwagon, a massclaim, etc.). This action hurts them if town but helps them if scum. As long as they have the policy of not claiming, is it OK to wagon them by default?

Discuss.

Pie

It's the towns choice...

And it always seem that I always suck as a town role, but as scum, I have a chance of actually doing well in a game.

viper0933 wrote:It's the towns choice...

And it always seem that I always suck as a town role, but as scum, I have a chance of actually doing well in a game.

Noted.

I think that this is a decent metagame strategy; putting extra pressure on one or two people early that are most likely to be good/bad scum may give a wealth of information in the long run.

I consider myself reasonably good as town, but not so hot as scum. Maybe that's why I always get Nightkilled, and rarely lynched......

Pie_is_good wrote:What happens if that player is poor town but good scum

by choice

? For example - and this has come up before in Scumchat - some people will refuse to claim if the evidence against them isn't solid (be it a random bandwagon, a massclaim, etc.). This action hurts them if town but helps them if scum. As long as they have the policy of not claiming, is it OK to wagon them by default?

Refusing to claim when there's no argument against them "hurts them if town"? How? Are you assuming they end up lynched?

Then you ask if it's OK to run these people up, knowing you won't get a claim? Why would you want to throw these players under a train just because they don't want to claim unless they're actually suspected? Shouldn't you wait and see if there's a reason to suspect them?

I see no issues with using knowledge of other players between games.

-JEEP

I dont think its unethical. I do think its stupid tough.

Good place to start bandwagons. Although it's hard to read me, as most of the time I forget my role right after Day phase starts.

It's darn good for getting innocents lynched without any good reasoning and leave the town completely befuddled later.

I love using the "cuz of blah blah blah excuse" to lynch a player as scum, there's virtually no paper trail and the town does it for you.

Nothing unethical about it. However, lynching someone for refusing to claim is just silly. Refusing to claim is often the best pro-town stratagy.

It's also circular logic. "We should lynch anyone who refuses to claim, because refusing to claim is bad if you're a townie, because townies who refuse to claim get lynched."

I'm gonna take counter-point here.

Yes, there is something wrong with it, you know why?

If you bandwagon a person every day 1 to a claim or lynch it's no fun for them, they might as well start claimed or lynched, it's incredibly unfair to these people. I don't mind it so much used in conjunction with information in the game, but just as evidence by itsself, UNETHICAL.

Pie_is_good wrote:(This could be percieved as a subset of metagaming, but I felt it was broad enough to merit its own topic)

Is it right to lynch, wagon, force claims, etc. based on knowledge of a specific player?

For example, say a player has a reputation for being a horrible protown player, but an excellent scum player. Should the town come out and lynch him, wagon him, or consider him more suspicious? If he's town, attacking him is a smaller loss than attacking any other player, and if he's scum, it's a great move.

you're attacking someone for a reason other than how likely he is to be scum. that's not generally very clever. it's a very minor consideration when weighing up all the factors, ok, but it's an easy target. it's like the one you were discussing last night - in certain situations, it has a small amount of merit from the town's perspective, but it's a goldmine when scum if it's viewed as legitimate strategy to pursue people for that.

if he's a weak pro-town player, then he's more likely to get lynched anyway without that being a consideration.

Pie wrote:What happens if that player is poor town but good scum

by choice

? For example - and this has come up before in Scumchat - some people will refuse to claim if the evidence against them isn't solid (be it a random bandwagon, a massclaim, etc.). This action hurts them if town but helps them if scum. As long as they have the policy of not claiming, is it OK to wagon them by default?

here we go back to metagaming. why do they do that? as an attempt to try to undermine the day 1 mass bandwagon to claim strategy, which it's arguable hurts the town (that's their argument, anyway). what they're trying to do here is not say they won't claim, but that they require the wagon to have justification. if lynching people without having them claim is bad, then going for the people you know won't claim is especially bad, 'cos you're deliberately setting up a situation without a claim. using that as a basis for the wagon is scummy as hell, because a) you know it'll have less resistance and b) you're going for it knowing that (in your opinion) it's more likely to hurt the town. basically, you're trying to metagame a metagame strategy via a battle of wills, except the first mgs has merit and yours doesn't.

No metagame strategies have merit, in my opinion, but I'm inclined to look more favorably on metagame strategies to discourage unethical play (such as punishing the no-claim policy) than on metagame strategies to discourage merely bad play (such as the no-claim policy itself).

Ummm...you think not claiming is ???

He thinks people that refuse to claim is unethical.

Yosarian2 wrote:Ummm...you think not claiming is

unethical

???

Not quite... I think it's unethical to have a not to claim (to deter future bandwagons), one that you adhere to even when it isn't in the town's interest.

Fiasco wrote:No metagame strategies have merit, in my opinion, but I'm inclined to look more favorably on metagame strategies to discourage unethical play (such as punishing the no-claim policy) than on metagame strategies to discourage merely bad play (such as the no-claim policy itself).

I think he's saying the no-claim policy discourages bad play but is still unethical (if applied blindly to all situations).

Fiasco wrote:

Yosarian2 wrote:Ummm...you think not claiming is

unethical

???

Not quite... I think it's unethical to have a

metagame policy

not to claim (to deter future bandwagons), one that you adhere to even when it isn't in the town's interest.

Oh. I misunderstood as well, then.

Lets just say that X is easily manipulated as town, and will probably lose the endgame for them is he is stuck in a 2v1 endgame. Should the town lynch X so that he doesn't become a liability?

I have been in several scumchat games when people have been pushed up to lynch for minor things, and refused to claim. If we back away, we could be letting a mafioso off. If we push on, we could be lynching a cop. It's a better thing to have them claim, as town, and save themselves. However, being stubborn and making me very angry, he doesn't claim. Lynch. Oh crap, he was cop. THANKS FOR SAVING YOURSELF AND TELLING US THE RESULTS, YOU TARD.

is there something wrong with this? He doesn't defend himself against the minor things, he just says "that's not right" and won't claim. Are we really supposed to let just anyone off because they refuse to claim?

If there's a good reason to lynch them, do it.

A "no claim" policy is just an extension of the principle that you shouldn't claim for no reason.

is there something wrong with this? He doesn't defend himself against the minor things, he just says "that's not right" and won't claim. Are we really supposed to let just anyone off because they refuse to claim?

In this case, he was excersizing a no-claim policy for a real reason. If people were using craplogic against him, he was an idiot as he could have pointed the fallacy out. If it was something retarded like if he was first to mention SK and they took it as tell (and he did nothing else), then it was a move I highly encourage because it convinces towns not to blindly force players into claims, esp. for little or no reason.

FATty ACid wrote: is there something wrong with this? He doesn't defend himself against the minor things, he just says "that's not right" and won't claim. Are we really supposed to let just anyone off because they refuse to claim?

Nope, you don't "let him off". But you don't "let him off" if he claims either, unless he's a mason or something. You vote for him if you think he's scum, you don't vote for him if you think he's town. You just should base that decision on things other then his refusal to claim.

Fiasco wrote:

Yosarian2 wrote:Ummm...you think not claiming is

unethical

???

Not quite... I think it's unethical to have a

metagame policy

not to claim (to deter future bandwagons), one that you adhere to even when it isn't in the town's interest.

Ok, fair enough. I will claim if I think it's in the town's best interest.

However, I often don't think it's in the town's best interest for me to claim, so I often won't, and I do expect that people will see that as part of my playstyle and therefore not lynch me for it.

Any policy (even "lynch outed scum") is bad if adhered to blindly without regard for whether it will help the town in the specific instance. (The 2-1-1 endgame is an example where "lynch outed scum" as a policy will hurt the town.)