Lynch All Liars is bad, and metagaming is bad in general.
Contradiction right there. As a townie, you have no reason to lie. Only in very special cases, which will be judged individually anyway. LAL rules, it catches scum a lot, it lynches town in a very few cases.You have a duty toward your fellow players to maximize your team's chances of winning in the game you are currently in.
Yes, butI think most liars should be lynched. But to me, "Lynch All Liars" implies more than that; it implies you should lynch even liars that aren't scummy, otherwise it'd be "lynch most liars". As a townie, you should lynch exactly those liars whose lynch you expect to help the town more than the alternatives; no more, no less, even if lynching more liars than that prevents future bad play.
That is wrong. You can sometimes deviate from it, and that does not take away its power. Its still a valid reason to vote someone in the next game.LAL does mean you simply MUST lynch everyone who lied, otherwise you're not applying LAL properly. It's that extreme which makes it a debatable principle, but also that extreme which makes it powerful.
And lynching a townie harms not only our chances of winning, but everyone elses in our side. i fail to see the moral dilemma: you cannot claim that LAL harms your chances, except when you have 100% sure evidence that the person lying is in fact innocent. thus the same rule should apply as by hammering a townie: you could not have known better.When we have a situation like enforcing a metagame strategy, and in the process harming not only your chances of winning but everyone else on your side's, it is arguable that within the context of the game that is unethical behaviour.
This is a contradiction in itself, You cannot be "relatively sure he is town" if he is caught in a lie, exactly because of LAL...We're looking specifically at a situation where we're relatively sure the liar isn't scum, but we lynch him anyway purely to maintain the metagame strength of LAL.
But, the situation cannot come up where you have to make that decision, because you cannot know you are doing that. The only case in wich this decision would come up is if you are 100% sure (via copinvestigation or otherwise) that the lying person is in fact a townie. And in that case, enforcing LAL is clearly stupidity. But that case does not make LAL less viable in any other situations.There's a tradeoff between good play (that is, achieving a win for your current team (ignoring cults for the moment)) on the one hand, and achieving your personal goals on influencing people's behavior in future games on the other hand. (Possibly those goals are shared by your teammates, possibly not.) You're weighing the interest of one group of people against the interest of another group of people (including yourself). To me, that makes it an ethical issue.
How am I playing worse if I apply LAL? The ONLY case... I feel like repeating myself here.But then at least admit that you're choosing to play worse to increase play quality in future games
No. I dont think applying metagame ploys is immoral. Its part of the game. Like when I know someone who gets nervous and jumpy when scum, I vote for him based on that, and I dont think Im doing an evil thing. Pokerface is a skill that players should evolve. If someone lurks and is active elsewhere on the site, I draw conclusions form that. These all enhance the chances of winning whatecer side Im on, so not applying them would be the unethical thing, IMHO.which is that metagame ploys are bad.