Self-Voting: is it always a bad idea?

[Thestatusquo]

I think there is one situation in which a protown player can feasably self-vote without getting utterly destroyed.


Nobody has managed to name that situation yet.

When you notice Eon is on the player list, and you don't want to force anyone to have to deal with him either.

[Adele]

I once self-voted. There was a reviver in the town. I didn't know that I was a bomb, and the person who hammered me would die. (Plus the mod was a bastard, and didn't kill the scum who hammered me, but the town that joke-voted me post-hammer).

Self-voting out of emo-ness: crap. Don't. Also, when playing soccer and losing, don't take a pin to the ball or score deliberate own-goals. It's petulant. It's pathetic. It's an attack on

your

side and an insult to the other one, and the mod besides. Play to win.

Always

, no matter how long a shot it is. It's not over until it's over - trust me.

Self-voting hammering oneself because you think it'll help your team long-term: describe your situation to your team (if you can, obv) and ask whether,

presuming for a moment that you're telling the truth

your death is beneficial. Give the town their input; they will

very

often be helpful in pointing out flaws in your "perfect" plan.
If you're a townie, always remember, you're surrounded by allies. They just don't know it and you don't know who's not. But discussion? FTW.

Self-voting as part of a cunning plan, or to cut off discussion at a time when it'll reflect

really

badly on someone on the other team (Seol did this to me once, sigh): can be good. Only for A-list and B-list players (I'm way harsh in listing, only about 12 people on the

whole site

are A-list. A-s and B-s are the ones who've really advanced mafia theory in a significant way and have a flawlessly analytical mind. I don't qualify and would seldom if ever pull this stunt).

[gorckat]

Hi. I'm gorc and I'm a self-voter.

I did it in Open 25 (Jester Maf) certain the second scum was pushing for me to go down and that he would go down the next day. Instead, the Jester went down the next day and I was wrong on the second scum.

It sucked.

FWIW, Guppy did this in an ongoing Newbie game.

[Adele]

don't talk about ongoings!

[Thestatusquo]

don't talk about ongoings!

Shhh...Maybe if he does it moar he'll get banned.

[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.

[Yosarian2]

Right. Surviving is not more important then winning; however, defending yourself is still important, because the side that is better at not getting lynched generally wins.

[Prof. Guppy]

don't talk about ongoings!

Who's talking about an ongoing? Not me, I'm just saying, in general, is self-voting stupid or what?

I think we have a consensus here, Self-voting=bad gameplay. It just seems odd that you all are in agreement. I know you want to lynch me now, so...

Vote: Prof. Guppy

[Andycyca]

Hammering yourself when you're scum can be sound strategy when you are certain to be lynched (for instance, if there is a cop guilty on you.) It cuts off town discussion, and gets the game to night without the town power roles being able to coordinate any kind of strategy.

Second this. This happened in my first mafia game (newbie 436) and got us townies completely confused and without info for the next day. Selfvote should be the last resource.

[Thok]

I think there is one situation in which a protown player can feasably self-vote without getting utterly destroyed.

Nobody has managed to name that situation yet.

When your name is Lloyd? Except he never self-hammers, which seems the issue.

I'd guess Town A self-hammering in a Town A, Town B, 1 scum from group C, 1 scum from group D endgame is OK, especially if Town B is clearly identified as a town and town A's role seems to be up in the air. Basically you're making the Prisoner Dilemma completely clear.

[Streeflo]

Main problem is that the hammer vote can be the most incriminating. Since you hammer yourself, the hammerer is thus obviously innocent, and it's one less risk the scum may need to take to get a lynch. So just be patient and wait to get lynched next time. While you're doing so try to behave as pro-town as possible so that townies are less likely to make the hammer. Alternatively you can just post your role PM when you're at L-3, if you really want to help the town.

LOL!
Let's refrain from referring to ongoing games now shall we?

[pickemgenius]

self voting is alright with me.

[UltimaAvalon]

Self Voting is great. It's fun seeing every time I start a new game how many ways people can react to such a harmless vote

[Mert]

I self-voted as town in Newbie 254 on Day Two (though it was not the hammer). My reason for doing so was that I replaced into that game on Day One and my predecessor had played a fairly scummy game so far. Things were drawing to a close for that day and I knew that despite doing my best to change people's opinion, going into the endgame with four players, one of whom was me in a rather precarious situation was less preferable than going into endgame with three and having suspicions on me no longer an issue.

Now that I'm a bit more experienced, I think I might have been able to get out of that situation without it being necessary to self-vote, but at the time and given that it was my first game I felt it was best for the town to remove myself from the equasion. Town did win in the end, so I guess it wasn't too horrible.

I'm not sure if it was the

correct

thing to do, but it certainly wasn't so strategically unsound that it warranted a beating around the head (at least not in my opinion).

[Adele]

don't talk about ongoings!

Who's talking about an ongoing? Not me,

No, not you - Gorkcat, directly before the post you've quoted here.

[Thesp]

I think there is one situation in which a protown player can feasably self-vote without getting utterly destroyed.

Nobody has managed to name that situation yet.

When your name is Lloyd? Except he never self-hammers, which seems the issue.

I'd guess Town A self-hammering in a Town A, Town B, 1 scum from group C, 1 scum from group D endgame is OK, especially if Town B is clearly identified as a town and town A's role seems to be up in the air. Basically you're making the Prisoner Dilemma completely clear.

This happened at MeMeMeet. Pooky played it brilliantly as A. C killed D, but D killed B.

[vollkan]

In Mini 486, a D1 self-vote by Nelly632 was bandwagoned upon by a number of people until he unvoted and claimed vanilla.

Anyway, I was a dayvig-mason and I decided that it seemed strange for scum to do what Nelly had done and, thus, he was most likely town. On that basis, I went ahead and began interrogating Oman, who was one of the wagoners, figuring it was likely that one/some were scum. Oman, who turned out to be mafia, made a fatal slip in response to something I had said and I dayvigged him, D1.

So, yeah, self-voting is not always a bad idea (though this particular example depended on a lot of luck).

[Seol]

Self-voting early is a deliberately provocative act. Sometimes a deliberately provocative act can generate useful discussion, however making yourself easy to attack will mean it's easier for scum to attack you in a way which blends in with how the town attacks you. As such DPAs more often lead to noise and confusion, although self-voting is not really any more egregious than any other DPA.

If the town is incapable of generating discussion any other way, a DPA is useful, but most of the time it is a suboptimal way of getting people talking.

The other applications are the self-hammer, which is often valid for scum and very, very rarely appropriate for town, and the appeal to emotion self-vote which should always,

always

lead to lynch (ie, the correct approach to an appeal to emotion is to deny).

[Thesp]

In Mini 486, a D1 self-vote by Nelly632 was bandwagoned upon by a number of people until he unvoted and claimed vanilla.

Anyway, I was a dayvig-mason and I decided that it seemed strange for scum to do what Nelly had done and, thus, he was most likely town. On that basis, I went ahead and began interrogating Oman, who was one of the wagoners, figuring it was likely that one/some were scum. Oman, who turned out to be mafia, made a fatal slip in response to something I had said and I dayvigged him, D1.

So, yeah, self-voting is not always a bad idea (though this particular example depended on a lot of luck).

This does not mean self-voting was a

good

idea, even though you were able to deduce information out of it.

PPE: Seol beat me with wiser words yet again. Curses!

[Seol]

bwahahaha

[Gaspar]

I think there is one situation in which a protown player can feasably self-vote without getting utterly destroyed.


Nobody has managed to name that situation yet.

2 townies, 1 mafia, 1 SK endgame.

Winner.

(Functionally identical situations, such as the one Thok described with two mafia, count as the same situation.)



Shea: For practicality, random voting stage doesn't count, because the votes are clearly not intended to be serious.

[Thestatusquo]

Thats not true. You should see some of the ridiculous attacks I have seen against townies that have voted themselves in the RVS

[Mert]

I voted for myself in a Newbie I was in with Thesp because I wanted to emphasise the point that being at L-2 on the first couple of pages wasn't something to be scared about and certainly wasn't worth the big deal some of that town were making out of it. I had suspicions that at least one of those people going crazy about anyone placing a second vote was opportunistic scum and so I decided to put an end to it with a typical baiting of the scum along the lines of "come on, quicklynch me and out yourselves, hopefully we can wrap this up before teatime".

Unfortunately I was lynched, though probably through other elements of sub-optimal play on my part and not specifically for the self-vote. So while I wouldn't take self-voting in the RVS as meaning anything in particular, I know some people will go potty about it and see it as a much bigger scumtell than it probably is.

[shaft.ed]

Main problem is that the hammer vote can be the most incriminating. Since you hammer yourself, the hammerer is thus obviously innocent, and it's one less risk the scum may need to take to get a lynch. So just be patient and wait to get lynched next time. While you're doing so try to behave as pro-town as possible so that townies are less likely to make the hammer. Alternatively you can just post your role PM when you're at L-3, if you really want to help the town.

LOL!
Let's refrain from referring to ongoing games now shall we?

Oh that example is purely hypothetical. I surely can't imagine anybody doing that.

[Elias_the_thief]

It's a perfectly viable strategy to self hammer as scum, to cut off discussion in general, and also to make others look bad, as Adele said. I dont see why only the top players can do this. Its really not that tough.