"We'd be much more likely to kill a townie than a scum"
- Leucosticte
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"We'd be much more likely to kill a townie than a scum"
I hear people say sometimes, especially on D1 when there's no intel, "We shouldn't lynch in this situation because we'd be much more likely to kill a townie than a scum."
Or people say about a N1 situation where a vig is choosing to shoot a random player, based on no intel, "That's dumb because you're much more likely to hit a townie than a scum." viewtopic.php?f=5&t=23994
What about a situation, though, where there's been a D1 massclaim, but you still have five people claiming vanilla, and you're pretty confident there's a scum in there? Normally you would start lynching vanillas, yet if you lynch randomly from that pool, you have a 4/5ths chance of lynching a townie by accident.
Where people mess up, I think, is in only thinking of the immediate effect in the day in which they're acting, and not thinking of subsequent days. Yeah, you're going to bring the game closer to its end if you accidentally lynch a townie, but you're also narrowing the field of suspects. If you have, say, a cop or tracker, you can focus their efforts more.
But even if you don't have anyone doing investigations like that, narrowing the pool of suspects helps your odds on subsequent days. In the scenario above, on D2, your odds are only 3/4ths of lynching a townie, and then on D3, 2/3rds, and then on D4, 1/2, etc.
A point I've sometimes raised is that theoretically the two sides are balanced, so for example, if there are 18 townies and 6 scum, on average each of those scum is as powerful as 3 townies (basically like comparing a knight to a pawn in chess). So even though, shooting randomly, you have a 3/4ths chance of shooting town, it's still potentially a worthwhile risk-reward tradeoff.
On the other hand, in that scenario, you'd have a greater chance of shortening the game (and getting fewer lynches) than you would of hitting a scum (and therefore getting another lynch). Does shortening the game work against you, though, considering that scum also get fewer kills in when you do that, and that their kills are more accurate?
So where do you draw the line and say that a choice of targets is just too random and the possibility of killing a townie (perhaps an important townie) is too great to be acceptable?- Creature
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- Leucosticte
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Leucosticte Townie
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That's what I've always said, but their attitude is, "It's one thing to get killed by scum, but we shouldn't have to worry about getting killed by our own teammates."
Also, they hate the N1 militia shot because it could hit a friendly power role (e.g. cop). I pointed out, though, that the mafia side has its own rolecop who's trying to find and eliminate the townies with power roles.- Creature
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So they'd rather just let scum kill them until endgame? A+ strategyIn post 2, Leucosticte wrote:"It's one thing to get killed by scum, but we shouldn't have to worry about getting killed by our own teammates."Sigh-
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if I dont' have a good enough scumread D1, I used to make this argumentShow"You are the Joker of mafia players" - Oversoul
"last time I was scum with Firebringer
his first post in the scum PT was "yes I rolled scum!"
I decided to post "haha just don't post that in the main thread", but to get up to date on the main thread first.
His first post in the main thread was "yes I rolled scum!" -popsofctown- Nancy Drew 39
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That is usually disallowed in singleball, isn’t it?
**********We just need to tread carefully because if you slip up around her as scum she notices and will tear your spine out and slap you to death with it. (I'm slightly scared of Nancy)~the worst*******Nancy is pretty heavenly ngl~CheekyTeekyNancy-scum feels like a hot knife slicing through butter. Nancy-town feels like a magnifying glass in the sun glaring down at an insect.~Taly- Leucosticte
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Actually, she’s probably trolling. Sometimes, I’m a bit slow.**********We just need to tread carefully because if you slip up around her as scum she notices and will tear your spine out and slap you to death with it. (I'm slightly scared of Nancy)~the worst*******Nancy is pretty heavenly ngl~CheekyTeekyNancy-scum feels like a hot knife slicing through butter. Nancy-town feels like a magnifying glass in the sun glaring down at an insect.~Taly- Leucosticte
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You never know; there are a lot of divergent theories out there.In post 10, Nancy Drew 39 wrote:Actually, she’s probably trolling.- Nancy Drew 39
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I have yet to be in any game where scum deliberately NK’d one of their own and why tf would they, when they could bus to get towncred, which is probably not the best play in most cases anyhow.**********We just need to tread carefully because if you slip up around her as scum she notices and will tear your spine out and slap you to death with it. (I'm slightly scared of Nancy)~the worst*******Nancy is pretty heavenly ngl~CheekyTeekyNancy-scum feels like a hot knife slicing through butter. Nancy-town feels like a magnifying glass in the sun glaring down at an insect.~Taly- Vi
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The latter is the entire point of the social deduction/manipulation and traitor mechanic. There are cooperative games that don't have those and may be more suitable; they're also not Mafia.In post 2, Leucosticte wrote:"It's one thing to get killed by scum, but we shouldn't have to worry about getting killed by our own teammates."
when they're going after meSo where do you draw the line and say that a choice of targets is just too random and the possibility of killing a townie (perhaps an important townie) is too great to be acceptable?
otherwise never
this is not a situation that improves by doing nothingEverything you say and do matters. People will respond in ways you may never see. May those responses be what you intend.-
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callforjudgement Microprocessor
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On this site, it happened in the first Red Flag game (whose mechanic is that town win if they lynch two scum, but scum self-kills don't count towards that total, so it's to scum's benefit to self-kill if they think they'll get lynched otherwise, and definitely not to scum's benefit to bus).In post 12, Nancy Drew 39 wrote:I have yet to be in any game where scum deliberately NK’d one of their own and why tf would they, when they could bus to get towncred, which is probably not the best play in most cases anyhow.
Offsite, I've seen a scum member NK another when there were no special mechanics in play other than a Janitor. I am of the opinion that this was a bad move (and it becomes obvious what happened as soon as you reach the "day after lylo" and yet the game's still going). That said, IIRC scum won that game, so…scum· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·town- Zachrulez
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Ah... the age old argument against lynching. A classic.In post 0, Leucosticte wrote:"We shouldn't lynch in this situation because we'd be much more likely to kill a townie than a scum."
The only thing that sucks more than hearing it is trying to explain why you should lynch to an un-receptive player.- Nancy Drew 39
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Oh really? Interesting.In post 15, callforjudgement wrote:
On this site, it happened in the first Red Flag game (whose mechanic is that town win if they lynch two scum, but scum self-kills don't count towards that total, so it's to scum's benefit to self-kill if they think they'll get lynched otherwise, and definitely not to scum's benefit to bus).In post 12, Nancy Drew 39 wrote:I have yet to be in any game where scum deliberately NK’d one of their own and why tf would they, when they could bus to get towncred, which is probably not the best play in most cases anyhow.
Offsite, I've seen a scum member NK another when there were no special mechanics in play other than a Janitor. I am of the opinion that this was a bad move (and it becomes obvious what happened as soon as you reach the "day after lylo" and yet the game's still going). That said, IIRC scum won that game, so…**********We just need to tread carefully because if you slip up around her as scum she notices and will tear your spine out and slap you to death with it. (I'm slightly scared of Nancy)~the worst*******Nancy is pretty heavenly ngl~CheekyTeekyNancy-scum feels like a hot knife slicing through butter. Nancy-town feels like a magnifying glass in the sun glaring down at an insect.~Taly- Nancy Drew 39
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Tbf, I have actually been in games where a D1 no lynch made the most sense but that was obviously a very unusual exception. Leucosticte is a newbie to this site and this kind of thinking is far more likely to come from newbie players, so taking that into account, I wouldn’t be too critical. Lecosticte will probably change their mind about this as they gain more experience playing. I was opposed to D1 lynches when I first started playing, that ultimately changed, once I began to understand how mafia actually worked.In post 16, Zachrulez wrote:
Ah... the age old argument against lynching. A classic.In post 0, Leucosticte wrote:"We shouldn't lynch in this situation because we'd be much more likely to kill a townie than a scum."
The only thing that sucks more than hearing it is trying to explain why you should lynch to an un-receptive player.**********We just need to tread carefully because if you slip up around her as scum she notices and will tear your spine out and slap you to death with it. (I'm slightly scared of Nancy)~the worst*******Nancy is pretty heavenly ngl~CheekyTeekyNancy-scum feels like a hot knife slicing through butter. Nancy-town feels like a magnifying glass in the sun glaring down at an insect.~Taly- kuribo
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No lynching D1 puts you into day 2 with basically the same information as before, except you have one less townsman and no wagon to analyze for it.
At least with a day 1 mislynched you can glean information from the wagon and from dead's interactions.Join me on my quest to play every NES game! Some of them are awful.
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A simple thought experiment: imagine a 98:2 setup. Assuming you're town, if you lynch randomly, you will almost always hit townies and will almost always win eventually despite all the mislynches. If you no-lynch every day, you will lose. Thus, the random lynches that are highly likely to hit town nonetheless end up benefiting town.
Town-directed kills, as such, tend to help town on average no matter how inept the person aiming them is (unless they actively seek out good townies to kill for some reason).scum· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·town- Awoo
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Typically when you try to play a mafia game with people that are bad at mafia (offsite, irl...) they will try to do this because they're bad at games. As the moderator, your goal is to host a good game, though, not a game where the mafia steamroll and then town cry because there was no bulletproof IC cop to save them in their incompetence. Now, because they are bad at games, even if you try to explain a thought experiment to them, they're still not gonna get it.
When dealing with players who don't know how to play mafia, it is highly recommended to institute mandatory plurality lynches, except maybe in special cases like MYLO, and just tell them "that's just the way the game is played", then watch as they slowly realize that they actually have to play the game, and then they will flourish. Sometimes.- The Fonz
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You can leash the vig to make it work like a lynch though.
Democratically pick a player the vig should shoot at, demand that player claim, move on to another player if the claim is satisfactory, if they claim VT direct the vig to shoot there. Should generate the same information."Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"Copyright © MafiaScum. All rights reserved.
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