Mini 60--GAME OVER

[mathcam]

Ya know, even if people don't make their "random votes" actually random, they typically at least pretend that they did. Sheesh.

Cam

[mathcam]

Not you, mlaker. Shelper. I like kerplunk's philosophy.

Vote: shelper

Cam

[mathcam]

Then again maybe I should shut up for a while, because It woul be extremely annoying to get lynched day 1 in my first mafia game because I talked too much.

It sure was. I mean, would be.

Cam

[mathcam]

Hmmm? What was scummy? Kerplunk's post? I agree.

I don't see where you guys are reading scummy in Kerplunk's posts. I find this all a little suspcious.

Unvote: Shelper, Vote: MeMe

Cam

[mathcam]

That

was funny.

Cam

[mathcam]

But my policy beats random, ask Cam.

Hmm...I'm not so sure. It does seem fairly clear that it's no

worse

than random, so I certainly have no suspicion on that front. Anything not worse than random is certainly not a strategy worth punishing by lynching.

But the attack on Kerplunk is ludicrous. He's being attacked because he keeps explaining himself, which is happening because he keeps being attacked. All his attackers feel like they're building up more incriminating evidence, while all Kerplunk does is re-explain himself over and over.

Retrospectively, Kerplunk's first vote (against shelper) could have been to attack a person voting for you...and now you look like you may be coming to Kerplunk's defense, 'cam. Hmmm.

Now do I seem like the kind of mafia player who sticks up for the inconsistencies of his fellow mafia? I basically ran the crusade against my co-mafia in No Frills. It sounds to me like you're strecthing, MeMe. Would Kerplunk really vote for shelper as retribution for him randomly voting me? And then turn around and undo it?

Cam

[mathcam]

What do you want besides a "stretch" on day one?

I think the original "Look, he explained himself twice before anyone even said something" wasn't a stretch. I just personally didn't find it suspicious. And subsequent posts by Kerplunk

were

just explaining what he had already said in those first two posts, yet they were quoted against him as "repeatedly explaining himself."

I agree...back-up doc is rather easy to claim, though. It's a very easy claim to make, as the only way we'll find out about the lie right away is if there

is

a backup doc in the game who contradicts the role claim, which more often than not, there isn't (I think).

I guess we have to decide the odds he's telling the truth. If it's medium or small, then we should lynch, because even if he's not lying then we haven't lost an extremely powerful role. If he's probably telling the truth, we should move on.

Thoughts?

Cam

[mathcam]

I'm mispelling Kerplunck?

Great, now he's misspelling misspelling ("mispelling"). He

must

be mafia. In any case, he has now demonstrated that it's not a role requirement to misspell names, though of course it could be that he gets some weird perk for doing it. It seems fairly unlikely to me, though, and even if it were true, it might be for the good of the town anyway.

Of course, the 5th vote thing is still a little suspicious. Often it's some newbie jumping and putting on the next to last vote. But CoolBot's no newbie, thus making it even more suspicious. I don't seem to be convinced enough to vote, however.

Cam

[mathcam]

Why do I feel like I'm totally backwards this game? I didn't find kerplunk at all suspicious until you guys unvoted him, I didn't like the bandwagon on CoolBot, and now that the bandwagon's started on MeMe, the person I've been voting for most of the game, I'm no longer that suspicious of her. Weird.

I'll

Unvote: MeMe

, for now, but it might go back on later.

MeMe, why wouldn't hte imediate conclusion be that this guy's the serial killer? If nothing else, if he's one of the roles cop, doc, or SK, there's an a priori 1 in 3 chance he's a serial killer. This combined with the fact that CD woke up dead seems to catapault the odds in our favor. Plus, we gain information about you. I don't see any reason not to reveal and lynch.

Cam

[mathcam]

Well, maybe we could

make a request of our mod to elaborate

.

Cam

[mathcam]

Whew, at least everyone's reading the thread. That's a relief.

Cam

[mathcam]

That's a pretty long jump. You can get a long way in an hour.

I'm inclined to believe CuratinDog was killed by a serial killer. We know someone who targeted him (or, at least, MeMe does). I feel like it's worth the risk of lynching a cop. Plus, note that it's not risking the lynching of a doc, since if he was a doc and targeted CuratinDog, CD wouldn't have ended up dead (probably). So, in conclusion, I think are odds are pretty good here that whoever targeted CD last night was evil.

Cam

[mathcam]

1) MeMe knows that a specific person targeted Curtain Dog last night.
2) CurtainDog was dead in the morning.
3) There are two possibilities. Either that player killed CurtainDog, or that player happened to randomly target the guy that got killed last night. The latter option is significantly more unlikely (say 1 in 11 or so). Thus, there's a very good chance this player killed Curtain Dog.
4) MeMe thinks the information with which she was presented implies that the killer acted alone. Now, if only there were a common role that acted alone and maliciously killed people...

This is why I think the person MeMe has found is the serial killer. I had discoutned the option of a vigilante, so that's a good point, but I continue to believe it deserved discounting. Why would a vigilante make a kill night one?

I'm becoming more and more confident that MeMe revealing is the way to go.

Cam

[mathcam]

No, so we're not guaranteed to be better off by lynching whoever MeMe knows about. If there was a guarantee, we probably would have done it by now. Now we're just playing the odds.

Cam

[mathcam]

MeMe, I think we can all agree that your guests can entertain themselves. And your pasta can stir itself. (Or Dirge could do it )

Be reasonable, though...is 24-hour mafia dedication, forsaking family and friends, really that much to ask?

Cam

[mathcam]

We have plenty of time until the deadline. And if we feel rushed, we can always petition Gaspode for more time.

Cam

[mathcam]

Well, when I made my request, and I didn't realize that you were so strongly opposed to it. I thought you wanted input from the town on how you should proceed. So change my request to "Reveal unless you still have very strong objections to doing so." You're the one that got the PM. Maybe your gut feelings about the player are good enough to merit holding the name secret. Just remember that if the guy

is

a serial killer, it's quite possible that he and the mafia will both go after you tonight, and we could lose this information.

As for the probability discussion, I agree that Night 1 choices are not random, per se, but it's certainly not as well-defined of an algorithm as you make it out to be. Smart players (I'm not saying I'm one of them),

will

target essentially at random. Plus, even if your algorithm was accurate, this game is

filled

with "middle-of-the-road" choices.

Someone targeted CoolBot. CoolBot is dead. We know one guy who targeted CoolBot. It seems extremely probably to me that this guy is evil. I agree that there are scenarios where this guy is innocent (i.e. the double-targeting, the ineffective doc, etc.), but the rule in this game is not "innocent until proven guilty," it's "more guilty-looking than the rest." It would take an incredibly strong gut feeling to make lynching anyone else a better target for lynching.

Unvote: MeMe

Cam

[mathcam]

Er, yes.

Cam

[mathcam]

Yeah, that was my big unknown in my last post. The stuff primarily left to your gut feeling was how the person was responding to the talk of all this stuff in the thread.

How about this?

Plan Proposal

: We insist that everyone who targeted CurtainDog last night reveal themselves in the thread, without revealing their role. MeMe doesn't say everything until everyone has said whether or not they targeted CuratinDog.

Analysis of Plan

:
Possible scenarios (Let's call Player X the person MeMe knows about):
- One player, Player X, confesses to targeting CurtainDog. As they were the only player to do so, they probably killed him. Kill Player X.
- One player, not player X, confesses to targeting CurtainDog. Then Player X lied to the town and we lynch him.
- Two players confess to having targeted CurtainDog, one of whom is Player X. Then the two people are equally likely to be guilty, but having a 1 in 2 chance of killing mafia is pretty good, especially when you can kill the other.
- Other scenarios are somewhat unlikely, but follow a similar pattern to above.

The first option is optimal, as the latter two require the inadvertent exposure of another role that targets player (note, though, that this other player doesn't necessarily have to be pro-town).

Conclusion:

This seems good to me. We're virtually guaranteed to get someone evil, and the worst possible thing that could happen is we get an evil but we also expose a cop (whom, of course, a doc could protect).

I say if there is no major qualms, we enact the plan immediately.

Cam

[mathcam]

You're kind of right, MeMe, but this is part of the point of the plan. The evil targeter of CurtainDog has no idea whether or not he's the one you targeted. So he has to take a risk: either come out and be subject to public scrutiny, or keep quiet and hope for the high heavens that he wasn't the one you picked. So staying quiet (the option you say it's clear that the mafia should take) is an equally big, if not even bigger, risk.

But perhaps I should amend the line you quote to not so strongly insist on killing Player X, then, to say "Listen to see what the player says and check his past posts and look very critically in his direction."

Cam

[mathcam]

Why don't we let all players say if they targeted CD: yes or no?

This is exactly my plan, Kerplunk:

Plan Proposal:

We insist that everyone who targeted CurtainDog last night reveal themselves in the thread, without revealing their role. MeMe doesn't say everything until everyone has said whether or not they targeted CuratinDog.

So, in short, good idea.

Cam

[mathcam]

I agree. This is a nice improvement.

Cam

[mathcam]

Nope. Prizm?

Cam

[mathcam]

Son of a ... Bah.

Cam

p.s. My plan worked. Nanny nanny poo poo to the mafia.

[mathcam]

Hey sweet! wait, who killed CoolBot?

Cam

[mathcam]

Very nice, Prizm. Way to take a risk and have it pay off.

Cam

[mathcam]

That we ferreted out that mafia scumwad massive by the "Reveal if you targeted CoolBot plan" just as hoped. Admittedly, this by all means was not entirely my plan, but I was pretty excited about having it work nonetheless.

Cam

[mathcam]

Oh yeah, that too. I tricked the mafia into killing the town's only doc. Woohoo! Oh wait. Crap.

Cam

[mathcam]

Yay first to vote Random Vote mathcam

Good to know...randomly voting for mathcam as the first vote on day one means you're evil.

*eyes Stewie suspiciously in Pokemafia*

Cam

[mathcam]

I agree. That's very clever, though it puts a lot of weight on him...if he gets killed night 1, we lose our vig, our back-up cop and our backup doc. But I guess this is balanced by the fact that we had a doc and a semi-cop to start with.

All in all, I don't think it was as unbalanced as this one playing of it made it out to be. We got some good choices in and were a little lucky. The game seemed balanced enough to me. In case my opinions hasn't been made clear, great game, Gaspode.

Cam

[mathcam]

People, people, people. When will you learn? I'm Captain Observant. I have no need to actually check info before I start spewing opinions based on it. Sheesh.

At the time, I was thinking of MeMe's role when I said semi-cop.

Cam