The ZombiePost - A Theoretical Target Claiming strategy

[camn]

Anybody ever play with hypothetical or random targets as a way to communicate results?
I have been thinking about it lately and I think it's a reasonable strategy....but maybe I am missing something. This seems like a reasonable test area to air it out. Or maybe it's been done and I just forgot.


It goes like this.

At the start of the day, everyone dicerolls to choose a player, and cointosses to choose a result AND does another diceroll..and they write this IN SPOILERS:

"If I were a power role, I would have targeted [dicerollplayer], and my result was [coinflipresult] or [diceroll2player]"

I call this the ZombiePost, as it only means anything after I die.

The coinflipresult options be [guilty, not guilty, no result]
The diceroll1 should not include yourself, and diceroll2 should include yourself, but not the result of diceroll1. Bot should include live players last night.

Obviously... If you REALLY WERE a power role, you should insert real values where applicable, and random values where not applicable...if you had results worth talking about....but if you were a vig or something, those results are not worth talking about, and you would randomize.
Really this is for trackers/watchers/docs/cops/jailkeepers/etc.

Then...if you die and flip.. Your night play will be suddenly clear to see.
The randomization precludes a shitload of speculation about "why would you have targeted soandso!" And also precludes and scum tipoffs.
Of course we would all have to recognise that PUNISHING or PRESSURING players based on their hypo-targets is totally akin to rolefishing, and as such scummy and anti-town. We would not speak of it until that player was dead. Thus the name. Ideally, no one even READS it until that player is dead.

What do you think? Is this a terrible idea that totally helps scum and I am just not seeing it? Or is it as awesome as I think it is?

[camn]

It would look like this:

Spoiler: my ZombiePost

If I were a PR, I targeted RadiantCowbells and I got GUILTY, or Katsuki

That would mean the following:
If I am a cop, I got GUILTY on RC...Katz was random
If I am a tracker, RC visited Katz...the guilty was random
If I am a Watcher, Katz visited RC...again the guilty was random
If I am a doc, JKeeper or RBlocker, I protected/kept/blocked RC...and the guilty and Katz came from randomization

You can see it's mad data with no risk.

[camn]

Heck, to make it more cryptic, you could just write the data.

Spoiler: my ZombiePost

RadiantCowbells: Guilty: Katsuki

I really think this alone would elevate townplay site wide.

[RadiantCowbells]

This is called hypoing.

[camn]

Whenever I "hypo" d in the past... It wasn't strict. It wasn't randomly selected, and it was often a huge distraction.

Is it still?

[Cheery Dog]

No provable randomness

[Postie]

No provable randomness

If provable randomness was used in this strategy I don't think it would work.

[Ether]

Normal hypocop just makes it easy for scum to pin down who doesn't have a power role. It's not a very good strategy.

This has the same problem. Randomized results are even worse, because they're less likely to mirror your play, and therefore more likely to out you as not having the roles you're talking about.

[camn]

Ihmm. The mirroring your play thing might be a thing.
Although since the role is not commented in. I wonder. My playstyle might cause me to protect one person vs roleblock another vs track another vs whatever else another.

[Alchemist21]

On MafiaUniverse they have this thing called Cop Cover where everyone claims a hypothetical Cop innocent. You don't do it immediately because you want to be sure your Town check is actually Town. It allows a Cop to leave clear results if they die and provides a screen for the Cop from the scum like your idea. I don't know if they would do it for other roles though.

The main weakness to this is that if a player claims an innocent on a scum player, the scum can immediately rule them out as a Cop, and can potentially find the Cop through PoE. On the other hand, if a player is killed N1 and flips VT, their innocent can typically be assumed to be Town.

Of course most of the playerlist has to be using this method. MafiaUniverse has a site meta like that, and I think they also run a lot of games where the setup is all vanilla except for the cop. It'd be rare to get in a game where you could do something like this, and even when you did you'd have to explain the tactic and convince everyone to go with it.

[Firebringer]

Alchemist you play on mafiauniverse!?!?!?!?
ANd you never said hi to me there?
Rude.

[Alchemist21]

I haven't played there in a while.

[camn]

The main weakness to this is that if a player claims an innocent on a scum player, the scum can immediately rule them out as a Cop,

This is a really good point.
If the randomness generates a result scum knows to be false, it proves vanilla.

[camn]

Well, that's that then. This strategy is broken.

[zMuffinMan]

hypoclaiming works when you know certain roles are in the game; e.g. weak roles in opens, you have everyone hypoclaim the day before

but outside of that, there's no strategy for this sort of thing that doesn't benefit scum - and that isn't foolproof either, but it at least gives you information in the event of a death and means the real role doesn't need to make it obvious when they crumb

[kuribo]

Shoot them anyway, implicating their fake target.

[BROseidon]

This works best in Opens.

Especially Hard-Boiled, except you pre-select because lol hider.

[Egg]

I've suggested hypos before and they always get shot down. I really love the concept though. The only downside I see to doing it your way is if you randomly roll guilty on someone and then don't tunnel them that day, it shows scum you weren't an investigative and narrows their pool. Even going randomly, if you show suspicion towards your innocents, it can do the same thing. It works slightly better if you allow people to insert their own names and results and try to only use town results. If you have a town read you're reasonably sure you won't be pursuing as scum and you haven't expressed that read a whole lot, they are the perfect hypothetical innocent. I'm pretty sure I've only ever suggested doing it in open setups. Not sure I've even seen it tried in a closed.

[itlepip]

I am of the opinion that certain results (confirmed town) should always be obvious post flip by some sort of soft throughout the day, and confirmed mafia should always be claimed that day.

[callforjudgement]

I wanted to comment on this thread a while ago, but I was in an ongoing game where this was relevant (Newbie 1688), so I decided to stay silent until the game was over.

In the game in question, after a no-kill day 1, people hypoclaimed Doc and JK targets. As it happened, this helped out town a lot; it

might

have helped scum locate the doctor but they'd probably have killed that slot otherwise, but on the other hand it confirmed one player as town and another as scum. (I was quite surprised, upon replacing in, to discover that I was confirmed town and someone had counterclaimed me.)

That said, I'm sceptical about hypothetically claiming targets for particular roles working in general, because it narrows down PRs a lot for scum; we might just have got lucky.

One version of this I thought of a while ago to stop this problem is for, every day, everyone to claim their targets either for the next day or the previous day, choosing which makes more sense based on their role. If they're a VT, they don't randomize, but rather come up with a fake power role that they could have and claim which targets they'd use the role on if they had it (while admitting they're a VT if it comes to direct claims). This might also help in scumhunting, because you can see where someone would have targeted a particular action (when VTs claim, they should claim which role they were faking with their hypoclaims).

That runs the risk of scum figuring out the hypoclaimed roles and using it to narrow down who could be a power role, though. So I thought of an alternative, which is kind-of the opposite of camn's suggestion: everyone claims day 1, but each claim has two possibilities, a specific power role or VT. Additionally, any details (modifiers, etc.) are ignored/glossed over. So if you were a 1-shot Cop, you'd say "I'm either a Cop or VT". A VT or full Cop could say exactly the same thing. The main disadvantage is that it makes breadcrumbing results/targets a little harder as scum are more likely to catch the crumbs prior to the flip. It also might need tweaking to deal with roles like Bulletproof. (Miller should probably still be hardclaimed, to avoid issues in which scum claim VT-fakeclaiming-Miller.) The benefit of this approach is that it makes fakeclaiming much harder for scum, as they have to plan out any non-VT fakeclaim from the start of day 1.

[RadiantCowbells]

I wanted to comment on this thread a while ago, but I was in an ongoing game where this was relevant (Newbie 1688), so I decided to stay silent until the game was over.

In the game in question, after a no-kill day 1, people hypoclaimed Doc and JK targets. As it happened, this helped out town a lot; it

might

have helped scum locate the doctor but they'd probably have killed that slot otherwise, but on the other hand it confirmed one player as town and another as scum. (I was quite surprised, upon replacing in, to discover that I was confirmed town and someone had counterclaimed me.)

That said, I'm sceptical about hypothetically claiming targets for particular roles working in general, because it narrows down PRs a lot for scum; we might just have got lucky.

One version of this I thought of a while ago to stop this problem is for, every day, everyone to claim their targets either for the next day or the previous day, choosing which makes more sense based on their role. If they're a VT, they don't randomize, but rather come up with a fake power role that they could have and claim which targets they'd use the role on if they had it (while admitting they're a VT if it comes to direct claims). This might also help in scumhunting, because you can see where someone would have targeted a particular action (when VTs claim, they should claim which role they were faking with their hypoclaims).

That runs the risk of scum figuring out the hypoclaimed roles and using it to narrow down who could be a power role, though. So I thought of an alternative, which is kind-of the opposite of camn's suggestion: everyone claims day 1, but each claim has two possibilities, a specific power role or VT. Additionally, any details (modifiers, etc.) are ignored/glossed over. So if you were a 1-shot Cop, you'd say "I'm either a Cop or VT". A VT or full Cop could say exactly the same thing. The main disadvantage is that it makes breadcrumbing results/targets a little harder as scum are more likely to catch the crumbs prior to the flip. It also might need tweaking to deal with roles like Bulletproof. (Miller should probably still be hardclaimed, to avoid issues in which scum claim VT-fakeclaiming-Miller.) The benefit of this approach is that it makes fakeclaiming much harder for scum, as they have to plan out any non-VT fakeclaim from the start of day 1.

WTF

THIS DID NOT HELP TOWN A LOT.

DID WE PLAY THE SAME GAME?

[RadiantCowbells]

Literally the hypo in the game you were referring tow as a scum ploy to out the doc since the save was not a likely protect target and was pushed solely by the two mafiosos.

And no, they wouldn't necessarily have killed that slot otherwise: I had the scumteam pretty much pinned, I would have townread UTL, and I probably wouldn't have rushed the lynch I did if I weren't irate about being locked into a one day timer.

[RadiantCowbells]

Literally the hypo in the game you were referring tow as a scum ploy to out the doc since the save was not a likely protect target and was pushed solely by the two mafiosos.

And no, they wouldn't necessarily have killed that slot otherwise: I had the scumteam pretty much pinned, I would have townread UTL, and I probably wouldn't have rushed the lynch I did if I weren't irate about being locked into a one day timer.

[itlepip]

Just fake claim from time to time.

[callforjudgement]

Literally the hypo in the game you were referring tow as a scum ploy to out the doc since the save was not a likely protect target and was pushed solely by the two mafiosos.

And no, they wouldn't necessarily have killed that slot otherwise: I had the scumteam pretty much pinned, I would have townread UTL, and I probably wouldn't have rushed the lynch I did if I weren't irate about being locked into a one day timer.

Did you read the scum QT? It's open.

They did figure out your slot was the doctor, but were considering not killing it anyway. When you replaced in, they killed you because they were afraid of your reads. (Also, why do you think having the scumteam pinned makes you

more

likely to survive?)