Open 804: Popcorn Mafia Redux [Game Over!]

[Imperium]

hi peta what's it like to replace into scum slot

[petapan]

okay give me the gun, tammy dies next for that sass

[petapan]

actually my first game on this account was one where i replaced into a scum slot, funny enough

sadly i don't have that luxury here

[Not_Mafia]

okay give me the gun, tammy dies next for that sass

This is scum banter

[petapan]

tammy did you legitimately scumread the guy with 4 posts

[petapan]

Woohoo!

VOTE: RLotus

Why is hardly anyone putting out an RVS vote *Thinking Emoji* even if we can't vote someone out? It's never really the point of RVS to vote someone out anyway, so we can look at where people put their votes just like any other game and hopefully get some information out of that. Right now we know one person is town, but I don't think we can ever have two people alive at the same time who we know are both town. There is only one mafia kill for the whole game. We should take advantage of any sources of information we can find because there aren't a lot of the usual ones for us to use.

how was this not instantly shot

[Imperium]

tammy did you legitimately scumread the guy with 4 posts

No she didn't, don't freak out.

When we get you shot it will be based on the merits of your own posts, not Rockhopper's.

[petapan]

The concern with voting in this setup is that the town has very little agency to begin with. Only one person has /any/ power, and we know they are town, so we should trust them to have town's back. Now, leashing shots to votes sounds great in theory. After all, it just puts us roughly at "ordinary mafia game", with a final adjudicator. In practice, however, it gives the scum team agency they shouldn't have, and takes away one major town-sided element the gunbearer gives us.

The exclusive advantage that the town has in a setup like this over an ordinary Mafia game is that it avoids the ironclad law of committees being absolute hot fucking garbage at actually performing tasks well. (This law is so ironclad that it's a major component of managerial level sabotage: you load important committees with more than IIRC 8 people, and ensure that at least one of them is dead weight, and nothing will ever get done, ever ever ever.)

Instead of /everyone/ simultaneously trying to herd cats in totally different directions oh and by the way some of the cats have rabies, you have a single point of control. No need to get everyone on the same page at all -- in fact, depending on the gunbearer, having literally no agreement could be a net benefit for sorting. (Just by way of example, I would be quite effective in a situation where every single player in the list was arguing with every single other player here.) No Abilene paradox scenarios come up here, because the gunbearer has no incentive to compromise to try and make the other players happy: if they miss their shot they're out, and if they hit then clearly they were right and it's hard to complain. They can use the rest of the town as essentially independent investigators to help them make their decisions, but they are not required to do what everyone else wants them to do.

I think we should lean into the advantage we have of a single guaranteed pro-town controller of the gamestate, even if it means the normal townies have less agency and control. In the process, we deny scum a large part (obviously not /all/, but I think /any/ advantage is important) of the only agency that they have in the setup while a gunbearer is alive: misdirecting the shot.

With regards to the LAMIST/scumminess of wanting to be shot or not, I feel like the specific vibe I'm getting from Wheme is less "LAMIST" and more "I am the bestest scumhunter ever!" Wanting to be the hero figure. Gloria Cleary did something similar in Death Curse, and the mistake definitely damaged town's chances at the end. People forget that there's a reason there aren't very many hero figures... Obviously there's some overlap in the general themes between "let me drive!" and "look how townie I am!", but Wheme's minimal responses and general attitude here do strongly give me the former impression. PEDIT: My opinion is not changed after the past two Wheme posts.

On the other hand, Norfolk does give me an offputting feeling, to be sure, but I can't place if it's AI or something else. Need more data.

I agree that lurkers are going to be a serious problem. I don't know if we can count on lurking being even a little bit scummy, either, because scum benefits from putting themselves in the front of the gamestate in this setup. (Yes, I'm taking into account that I'm potentially telling the scumteam how to be effective here.) It may be valuable to lean heavy on lurkers as a group effort to forcibly squeeze content out of them.

this isn't a great start either

[unwnd]

Nacho do you still hate me from yesterday? Just curious

[petapan]

tammy did you legitimately scumread the guy with 4 posts

No she didn't, don't freak out.

When we get you shot it will be based on the merits of your own posts, not Rockhopper's.

i'm not freaking out lol i wanted to interrogate the reasoning there if there was something to it, like i've said i've barely read and want to get a sense of what people are thinking

[Imperium]

That was a joke.

[Imperium]

I wish people understood me

[petapan]

Spoiler: Quoted Content

The concern with voting in this setup is that the town has very little agency to begin with. Only one person has /any/ power, and we know they are town, so we should trust them to have town's back. Now, leashing shots to votes sounds great in theory. After all, it just puts us roughly at "ordinary mafia game", with a final adjudicator. In practice, however, it gives the scum team agency they shouldn't have, and takes away one major town-sided element the gunbearer gives us.

The exclusive advantage that the town has in a setup like this over an ordinary Mafia game is that it avoids the ironclad law of committees being absolute hot fucking garbage at actually performing tasks well. (This law is so ironclad that it's a major component of managerial level sabotage: you load important committees with more than IIRC 8 people, and ensure that at least one of them is dead weight, and nothing will ever get done, ever ever ever.)

Instead of /everyone/ simultaneously trying to herd cats in totally different directions oh and by the way some of the cats have rabies, you have a single point of control. No need to get everyone on the same page at all -- in fact, depending on the gunbearer, having literally no agreement could be a net benefit for sorting. (Just by way of example, I would be quite effective in a situation where every single player in the list was arguing with every single other player here.) No Abilene paradox scenarios come up here, because the gunbearer has no incentive to compromise to try and make the other players happy: if they miss their shot they're out, and if they hit then clearly they were right and it's hard to complain. They can use the rest of the town as essentially independent investigators to help them make their decisions, but they are not required to do what everyone else wants them to do.

I think we should lean into the advantage we have of a single guaranteed pro-town controller of the gamestate, even if it means the normal townies have less agency and control. In the process, we deny scum a large part (obviously not /all/, but I think /any/ advantage is important) of the only agency that they have in the setup while a gunbearer is alive: misdirecting the shot.

I don't think we should use a voting system.

I agree, which is why I think we should avoid overthinking and just let the gunbearer have final say and read the room based on what people naturally choose to do. I believe people will most likely use their vote almost as per the usual, as long as the host is keeping track of people's votes. However, if we dwell for too long on it, or have too many detailed posts like yours, Mushshagana, (no offense) then the mafia will have more of an idea of what to do, just as you said.

is this not an immedate walkback of that rvs nonsense when questioned on it, this whole post bad

[petapan]

That was a joke.

I wish people understood me

i was serious every time i accused you of replacing into a scum slot, how rude

(also correct every time)

[petapan]

anyone who's here, give me your top shot picks, any number of names, no context

[unwnd]

anyone who's here, give me your top shot picks, any number of names, no context

Wheme Dunn Duchess (Rockhopper) Norfolk

[petapan]

Well, I missed a lot while getting food together.



For Duchess: detailed posts are going to come out of me on good days, and that's just how it is. I type walls. I speak walls, too. It's a thing, and it's only going to change on real bad days. I have a bunch of those coming, so you might consider yourself lucky.

As for giving scum information: don't be concerned about that from me. I play a very subtle town game, and I often do multiple things with a single post. If I'm giving scum information it's because I have decided it is for town's benefit in some way or another. There's a whole lot of ways that can be the case, if you think about it I'm sure you can come up with a few. Past games of mine will bear this statement out.



I don't really like anything I'm seeing of Wheme so far. So, Wheme, I have a question for you. What /are/ you bringing to the table here? So far we have bad reads but wants the gun, casting entirely baseless shade on one of the few players posting anything substantive (no offense intended to the players who have not posted anything substantive, game basically just started), and shitposting. What do you have that town benefits from? Don't dodge the question or meme about it, I want an honest self-assessment. What are you actually doing in this game to help town out?

eh, might have jumped the gun a bit, this is better, first few posts from mush were fillery but this is something, at least

[unwnd]

Confidence would be

Duchess > Norfolk > Wheme > Dunn

[petapan]

Imperium are you scum?

But why do you ask?

Because I don't know if you are town or scum

But why do you ask?

Because I don't know if you are town or scum

They said they are town already why would they lie

Hm I wonder

Don't think I'll be shooting Dunn this game

If I don't get the gun I will be very happy with my performance this game

I will be keeping that close to my chest for now

cakez man wtf are you doing

[petapan]

I'm making a prediction here: 3. I'll clarify that after I get an answer to the following question from Wheme:

How does it "ping" you? And in what way?

You seem to be throwing shade but trying to stay on the fence which pings me.

what does this even mean lol

[petapan]

anyone who's here, give me your top shot picks, any number of names, no context

Wheme Dunn Duchess (Rockhopper) Norfolk

gonna be honest, struggle to see why a team like this gives notty the gun

[unwnd]

anyone who's here, give me your top shot picks, any number of names, no context

Wheme Dunn Duchess (Rockhopper) Norfolk

gonna be honest, struggle to see why a team like this gives notty the gun

I don't like how sensible this is and you're making me doubt myself lol

[petapan]

Assuming no secret alts?

You Cakez dunn Norfolk. The former three have seen me in pretty dead on games. Norfolk lost to town me (we were competing day one wagons and he died)

oh hmm

[petapan]

It's not so much the commenting on each major event that bugs me there as it is the extremely rigid, strict thought processes that are described in excruciating detail. It took a while to settle on that being the issue, but it's pretty unmistakable: check how there's no simple conclusions reached, EVERYTHING has an extended, multipart thought process involved, with one exception. That exception (Dunn) is left open ended, coming to no conclusions at all.

It rings very false.

why's that necessarily scummy though, idgi

[petapan]

I just noticed something interesting while looking at STT's site post history

It appears that STT is a hydra account

lmao