Is it bad to lynch truly randomly during RVS?

[Leucosticte]

Your choices at that stage are, (1) No Lynch, (2) Random lynch, or (3) Lynch based on arbitrary non-random factors.

People say it's frowned upon to, say, roll dice to make a truly random D1 lynch choice, because then the votes don't reveal anything about people's allegiances.

My thought about that was, on the other hand, if you let someone give some arbitrary justification, e.g. "avatar bias," for a D1 lynch, then that could make the lynch more susceptible to influence by scum, since at that stage of the game, usually scum will be the most-organized faction.

So it's a question of, do you want to gain some information about who the scum might be, in exchange for giving scum a chance to cause a mislynch of their choice. Are you really getting very good information, though, or could it just be that some misguided villagers are mislynching on their own initiative, essentially taking a trip to Abilene together? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox

If you propose a truly random lynch, the argument you'll often get is in response is, "We're more likely to lynch town than scum if we do that, so we may as well No Lynch if we're lacking any intel." People would prefer to wait till maybe another day has passed and it's possible to see which people are falling into the lurker category. Also, they figure town's investigative roles may be able to subtly steer the vote in a certain direction even without claiming.

Another common argument is, "If we try to lynch on D1, we may end up forcing someone to claim who should've stayed undercover." On subsequent days, there's a stronger possibility that if those investigative roles haven't claimed yet, the reason is that they're dead, rather than that they haven't gathered any useful info, so people are more inclined to force a claim.

Either way, you want to look at the options longitudinally, and consider not just the immediate effect of the decision but how it's going to affect the next day, and the day after, etc.

[chennisden]

Nobody random lynches

Also nightkills have flips (vt/pr)

[OkaPoka]

If u look at newbie stats, town has lynched scum at a greater than random chance

[Ankamius]

Lynch the slot with the highest information attached to their flip that simultaneously has >=rand odds of being scum

[chennisden]

No

"Information lynching" is a really easy way to get manipulated by scum

[Ankamius]

You want both chenn

[chennisden]

I know

If you info lynch scum just has to manipulate their mislynch into giving info which is... really not that hard

I get the idea that "if there's gonna be something that shocks us out of town's wrong read of the gamestate it needs to be sooner than later" but you can just try to read the gamestate instead of wasting a flip

Info flipping gives scum more people that are viable mislynches.

[Ankamius]

I think we are thinking of information differently

I am more thinking of lynches that are more informative for your own reads rather than raw information about the game

If you're just blindly looking to lynch your top scumreads without really thinking about it, you're stuck once you're wrong since you aren't thinking about the game as a whole and how the flips read into it

Generally when I have multiple scumreads, I try to lynch the slot that has the most reads attached to that scumread rather than whatever one is my strongest scumread because it is the flip most likely to result in correct reads down the line no matter how they flip

[chennisden]

I like to assume SR is town and see where I'd go from there

But once I start assuming SR is town i kinda see that they are

actually

town but town is just too deathtunneled on SR, which ends up being my fault

In fact I think that's like, the only way I've lost games

[Ankamius]

Mafia is really just an information game where you really just need a specific amount of outside (relevant) information to solve the game

Skill just means you need less of that information

I like to play to get as much of that information as possible for myself so I can get other town the information they need to reach the right answer too

Scum flips are useless by themselves and that's a huge reason I don't like D1 scumflips

[chennisden]

d1 scumflips can be achieved without scum bussing/scum being forced to bus

i think the reason people remember d1 scumflips as "bad" is because if the scumteam topples like dominoes you just remember it as "scum sucked" or "wow town op"

but in games like gay dance or fire on the mountain you remember "well the weaker scumbuddy fell d1 but we got no INFO so the SCUMTEAM TRAMPLED" when the real difference is just in one case the weaker scummember has no good scumbuddy and the other case is that the weaker scummember gets that fat carry

[Ankamius]

Yes I rarely ever see a close game with a scum lynch d1

Occasionally scum topples but most of the time the rest of the scumteam stomps

I've done it multiple times

[Vi]

honestly, no
I'd argue that town accuracy tends to be lower than random in many games that don't have D1 wackiness (i.e. themes)
keep in mind that times may have changed since my "data set" was compiled

that said this theory question tends to be what ends RVS

[northsidegal]

honestly, no
I'd argue that town accuracy tends to be lower than random in many games that don't have D1 wackiness (i.e. themes)
keep in mind that times may have changed since my "data set" was compiled

according to the newbie 2d3 stats town lynches scum greater than random day one

from my own data on the 2018 normal games, scum was lynched day 1 10 times out of 33 games (~30%) when i think at random given 3:10 it'd be ~23%. keep in mind this might be a bit off given that not all games were 13 players

(interestingly, in both the newbie setup and what i have, town seems lynch about 7% better than random. another random fun fact from normal games – out of the 23 games that weren't already over on day 4, scum was lynched an incredible

16 games

! that's nearly 70%!)

[Nancy Drew 39]

You can random vote during RVS but you should at least try to lynch whomever you think is the scummiest player.

[Not_Mafia]

RVS is the best part of the game and if you disagree you're a cunt