Micro 173: For Love of Science (Game Over)

[EspeciallyTheLies]

Klaz and I are indeed masons. I feel good about serra-town, which leaves only VM and Jacob.

VOTE: VoidedMafia

[serrapaladin]

VOTE: Voidedmafia

gg.

That's 1 each <3

[Klazam]

wait what

[Klazam]

1 each?

[EspeciallyTheLies]

I don't know. It would only be game over if serra is actually scum.

[serrapaladin]

I am and it is.

It's 1-1 between ETL and me now

[serrapaladin]

Day 1 sort of sucked, and Jacob managed to get a win out of this with a grand total of 2 posts xD

[EspeciallyTheLies]

Goddammit. :'(

[serrapaladin]

[Equinox]

Vote Count 2.01

Voidedmafia (3) - Klazam, EspeciallyTheLies, serrapaladin

Not Voting (2) - JacobSavage, Voidedmafia

With 5 alive, it's 3 to lynch.

The deadline is Wednesday, May 29, 2013, at 11:00 PM EDT (UTC-4), which is in (expired on 2013-05-29 23:00:00).[/area]

---

The death of Maestro was unacceptable. From their hiding place in one of the towers opposite where Maestro had fallen, EspeciallyTheLies and Klazam had seen it all. Unfortunately, the murderer had been facing away from them, so it was a guess at who that rat might have been. Still, it looked awfully similar to Voidedmafia, and it wasn't beyond Voidedmafia to do something like this, especially if he had felt threatened in some way by Maestro. The two of them descended the tower and onto the floor. There were hundreds of rats in utopia now, and it was a miracle that they hadn't rammed into someone themselves on their way down. Klazam peered over the crowd of backs, looking for that familiar shape. After a fashion, they found Voidedmafia by the water tanks. There was no time to waste; the scumbag rats could strike again at any time. EspeciallyTheLies and Klazam lunged at Voidedmafia and were joined by serrapaladin. The shouting of the four rats could be heard throughout the land, even when the four became three.

Voidedmafia,

town vanilla

, was lynched on Day 2!

By this time, fighting amongst the rats had become a frequent event, so the tussle between the four rats by one of the corner water tanks were not worthy of any particular attention. It was probably another territorial dispute. The assistant on duty continued scribbling, and the professor, here on a rare day, stood above the pen and watched. When the first rat died, the other three turned on each other. It didn't matter that there was enough here for all of the rats to live long, healthy lives; there was no room for them to live at all. What did that mean for humans, then, whose population was growing faster and faster with each year? There was a loud squeak, and a second rat fell over. Man consisted of billions now. The question was no longer "if" the collapse of civilization would happen but "when."

EspeciallyTheLies,

town day mason

, was killed in the endgame!

When EspeciallyTheLies lost her fight against serrapaladin, Klazam had fled. All around him was chaos; now that he was running, he noticed that there was more fighting here than before. When was it that they had stopped eating and breeding and began killing? The corner of the world was upon him; the towers to his left and right were filled with rats. He would have to claw his way up. He couldn't take it anymore; there was no room to breathe, no, no room to live, even. He had lost more friends than he cared to count. Halfway up the tower and perhaps dozens of fallen rats later -- no counting, he told himself -- he found JacobSavage. The sight of him there, camped where he was, made Klazam realize that it was all useless. If hell was other mice, Klazam had been dead long before today. JacobSavage climbed down and bit, ever so kindly, on Klazam's neck, and all of Klazam's sins were absolved.

Klazam,

town day mason

, was killed in the endgame!

A win condition has been fulfilled!

The hotel room where they were staying for the conference was plain, but it was enough; it wasn't like they would be in the room for most of the time they were renting it. The two assistants set their luggage down, exhausted from the long car ride. Still, they needed to unpack and get ready for their presentation. One spread the posters they would be presenting on the bed, and the other opened a duffel bag to reveal a rodent cage containing the final two rats that had survived to the end of the experiment. Even with the partition in the middle, the rats tried to attack each other whenever there was enough light to see, and no one in the lab had been able to reach for them without being bitten. It was a miracle that someone had managed to put leg bands on them at all. The one marked "SP" sniffed at the wall, and the one marked "JS" just stared back.

JacobSavage,

mafia goon

, and serrapaladin,

mafia encryptor

, survive and win the game for the mafia!

[Equinox]

Roles

Mafia Encryptor: serrapaladin
Mafia Goon:

F-16_Fighting_Falcon

JacobSavage
Town Day Mason: EspeciallyTheLies
Town Day Mason: Klazam
Town Vanilla: Ineffective
Town Vanilla: Maestro
Town Vanilla: Voidedmafia

Actions

Night 1

JacobSavage kills Maestro (successful)

QuickTopics

Graveyard: http://www.quicktopic.com/50/H/3mGSXr6SP6s
Mafia: http://www.quicktopic.com/50/H/ryjZJv77JdM7 (revealed in post 297)
Masons: http://www.quicktopic.com/50/H/dvYethFS7bfk (revealed in post 290)

---

Thank you all for playing! Special thanks to JacobSavage, who agreed to replace in for a few days while F-16_Fighting_Falcon took exams and ended up being a permanent replacement.

The flavor was based on a study about the effects of overpopulation on mice (Calhoun, 1962). The 1962 article is not publicly available, but you can read about the study in this journal article that was published a little later and in this magazine article that summarizes what happened in Universe 25.

There was a post I deleted at the beginning of Day 2, the contents of which can be found within:

Spoiler:

Aw fuck

With all of that stuff out of the way, I wanted to talk about a few things.

Force-replacement requests should not be taken lightly. In this case, at least up until the modkill, Ineffective was being, well, ineffective, but he was still playing to win and wasn't breaking any other rules; the votes were essentially asking me to remove him for his play style because town didn't want to lynch him, and that's not really how they're supposed to work. It's closer to what Maestro did, which was to replace out of the game if Ineffective stayed because he felt like he was unable to enjoy the game, and the force-replacement preserves game flow (or what's left of it) by forcing out one player in favor of having multiple players request replacement. I'm not saying don't do it, but consider how much you would want to replace out because of this player first.

I apologize if the above sounds condescending; I'm not the best with words at the moment.

Ineffective was modkilled for using his replacement as a wager:

Just because your minds are closed doesnt mean i played bad.... Especially if i am voting scum... Sheep the vote and if it isnt scum ill bow out voluntarily

Once a player replaces out, his/her stake in the game is ended; s/he can't claim the game as a win or a loss. Using it as leverage makes it an outside influence on the game, and, if Ineffective actually replaced out, his slot would have become confirmed town. This is the same logic behind the site-wide rule against avatar bets, signature bets, and trust tells.

But yeah, I'm sorry for how this game turned out. If you guys want another go, I can hop back into the queue and run this setup again or a different one.

[Equinox]

Putting this in a separate post so it's not part of a moderator post...

To be honest, I feel guilty about the modkill and it pretty much makes me a hypocrite, since I've done similar things (trust tells) before, more than once, and not had action taken against me beyond public shaming when the issue was finally brought up in Mafia Discussion. That MD thread led to clarification of the rules to specifically ban the things listed in the last post.

Just a confession, I guess.

[EspeciallyTheLies]

EQ <3 I completely understand and I felt bad after thinking about it for a bit. It was still fun, even if we messed up.

Let's do another!

[EspeciallyTheLies]

Klaz, would you like to post the embarrassing Mason QT, where we talk about how town scumSerra was?

[Klazam]

no, its fine. ineffective was ineffective, but, in the end it didn't matter. Serra did well in manipulating me and etl in thinking he was town.

well done


pedit: but what's important here, you took a stand, and enforced the rules as you believed they should be. (my opnion- mod and player roles should be independent of each other. me as a player might do things me as a mod doesn't approve)

[Klazam]

stop posting, lol.

yes, go ahead post it.

I'll do it. http://www.quicktopic.com/50/H/dvYethFS7bfk

[serrapaladin]

I'm fine with posting our QT. Go ahead Jacob.

Great modding, again. Thanks Eq I knew I recognised the experiment from the flavour, and I've actually read the original paper. Nice job making the theme sciency!

The modkill was unfortunate, but I agree that it was necessary. Force replacements are iffy - I don't like the idea, unless the player has broken a rule, but I equally dislike the thought of other people replacing out because one player is making the game unenjoyable. Policy lynches are probably the best solution, but not really sustainable in small games.

What are trust tells and why are they forbidden?

Regardless, I enjoyed playing with you guys again, even if it was a bit short. I'll happily play with you guys again

Are 2 posts by Jacob or 19 by the both of us some sort of record?

[Klazam]

re: trust tells

there was one player- pooky the magician bear or something like that

in a very small percentage of his games, he'd outright say "pooky promise" or something like that, and it basically meant he was conf town because he would only do that in town games. pretty game breaking, and shouldn't be allowed.

[serrapaladin]

Ah, thanks, makes sense.

[JacobSavage]

Our Home

I'm not quite sure how that happened to be honest...

I think this is the first time I've won a game as Mafia where I haven't hammered, it was sad

[JacobSavage]

Sorry I wasn't more of a presence in this game as I should have been.

Well played to Serra though.

[EspeciallyTheLies]

LOL Jacob that's our QT

[serrapaladin]

Lol, this is ours

[Maestro]

...Why was I killed? I don't feel like reading the QT's

[serrapaladin]

You looked pretty townie and we thought you and Klazam were the masons. So good job baiting the kill!

Our QT is pretty short, and not particularly interesting.