Lurking - Valid Strat?

[Mgm]

But it is a good idea to lynch people who continue lurking after picking up a prod.

[Yosarian2]

Yos, the lurker is NOT always scum. How can you make that statement? How can you prove that they just weren't away, or flaking? Thats why I think mod's should alert players when others pick up their prods.

Well, it's not so much that "the lurker is always scum", that was obv. and overstatement. More like "when the town lets lurkers get away with lurking they almost always regret it."

[Yosarian2]

I'd be willing to admit that some subset of the lurkers is scum. But unless you can convince me that the percentage of lurkerscum is higher than the percentage of nonlurker scum, lurker lynching by itself is not a good strategy.

Any subgroup will have a percentage of mafia in it. That doesn't mean focusing on one subgroup is a good thing.

(shrug) Even if it's the same % (and I do tend to think scum lurk more then townies), letting the lurkers live is bad. If you get into an endgame with several lurkers, one of whom is scum, you're not going to be able to tell the difference, and even if you can you probably won't succeed in lynching him because the other lurkers won't be paying enough attention to tell the difference either.

[Thestatusquo]

It is not a valid strategy to refrain from posting. IMHO. I'd replace anyone who didn't post regulalry, and wouldn't accept "I'm lurking" as an excuse. It's not how the game is supposed to be played and it spoils it for others.

Remind me to never sign up for a stoofer moderated game. To me, lurking as scum is something that one should do when one can get away with it. This, conversely means one should lurk at least a little bit as town, to avoid meta gaming.

Just because something is unfun for YOU in particular to play with does not make it against the rules, OR the spirit of the game. If lurking helps me win, I'm going to do it, and you can go to hell.

[Kelly Chen]

You think one should lurk as town in order to be able to get away with it as scum?

Again in many or most games the rules

do

state a certain minimum frequency of posting.

[Yosarian2]

Remind me to never sign up for a stoofer moderated game. To me, lurking as scum is something that one should do when one can get away with it. This, conversely means one should lurk at least a little bit as town, to avoid meta gaming.

Yeah, I agree with Kelly here. It's silly to say you should lurk as town so that you can lurk as scum.

[Thestatusquo]

Thats not true. People attempt to do appear town in order to not get meta -gamed, I see no reason why one should not appear a little scummy to avoid meta gaming as well.

I'm talking in moderation, here. One does not do PBPA (generally) on ones scumbuddies, and one does not refuse to post completely as town. (Not that I think it;s a good strategy to avoid posting entirely as scum either.

[Yosarian2]

Thats not true. People attempt to do appear town in order to not get meta -gamed, I see no reason why one should not appear a little scummy to avoid meta gaming as well.

Because that dosn't make any sense.

Look, assume for the moment that action A is the "correct" pro-town action, and action B is not as good for the town as action A is. If you're pro-town, you should always do action A, as it both helps the town and makes you look more pro-town at the same time. If you're scum, then perhaps you want to do action B, but you still might do action A to look pro-town if you think people are paying attention. That's all correct play. However, doing action B when town, just because you think you might then be able to get away with doing action B when scum, is incredibly counter-productive; it hurts the town, it makes it more likely you'll get lynched, it makes it harder for you to go after scum who are doing action B, it makes it harder for the town to figure out who the scum are, and it generally hurts your side in that game.

Hurting the town in one game in the hopes that you can get away with hurting the town later as scum is just terrible, from any point of view. It dosn't matter if you don't think action B hurts the town that much; if you know action A is better for the town, then you always should do action A when town, and often do it while sucm.

[Oman]

I like the theory of "Play the role, not the player". Anything that hampers your chance of winning THAT GAME is incorrect. Much of it is what Yos said about

However, doing action B when town, just because you think you might then be able to get away with doing action B when scum, is incredibly counter-productive; it hurts the town, it makes it more likely you'll get lynched, it makes it harder for you to go after scum who are doing action B, it makes it harder for the town to figure out who the scum are, and it generally hurts your side in that game

Basically that game should be your focus. You change tabs, then change mindsets.

[Zindaras]

This is a good read for stuff like what Yossy and Shea are arguing about.

You play to win every single game.

[Yosarian2]

Out of my last several games, a huge number of them have been lost in large part because they let scum get away with lurking:

MAD mafia: The townies all nuked each other while 2 out of the 3 of the scum just lurked in the background and were ignored.

Near vanillia maifa: 2 out of 3 scum were lurkers in the early game; they were both replaced, but one of the replacements started lurking later on. The town would have been better off if they had started lynching lurkers during day 1, if they had lynched the lurker in lynch or lose, or anywhere in between. Also, the lack of activity in general caused the town to fail to lynch by deadline in lynch or lose at all and thus lost.

Assasins in the palace: Ok, the town won this game, but we very nearly lost it because we let Sarc lurk all the way through until endagme, totally ignoring the lurker scum while lynching active players for weak reasons.

Normal Mafia 62: Lurking in general really hurt the town this game. While Raffles, the SK who won, wasn't all that much of a lurker compared to everyone else in the game, it's worth noting that the mafia godfather basically lurked all the way though until endgame and only lost at the end because the mod had decided that SK wins ties.

And there are also any number of games where the town lost because the town lurked, or were abandoned because the town lurked. It really seems to me that the town suffers pretty consistantly when they fail to pressure lurkers, and that very often by later in the game, the lurkiest player who has managed to not get replaced is probably scum.

[Zindaras]

Ask Glork about Calvin&Hobbes.

Seriously, do it. It's funny.

[IH]

Bogre phails at life.