Open 618 - The Odds (Game Over)

[Ether]

Status:

The mafia is victorious!

Alive:

1/10
20% - Aneninen,

mafia goon

, survived

Dead:

9/10
15% - Spiffeh, vanilla townie, lynched Day 1
20% - ika, vanilla townie, killed Night 1
25% - Bellaphant,

mafia goon

, lynched Day 2
35% - Lady Lambdadelta,

jailkeeper

, killed Night 2
30% - Yosarian2, vanilla townie, lynched Day 3
25% - itlepip, vanilla townie, killed Night 3
10% - petroleumjelly, vanilla townie, killed Night 4
15% - shos

(replaces Aristophanes)

, vanilla townie, lynched Day 5
5% - Murgatroyd and Miss Eliza (Plotinus + goodmorning hydra), vanilla townie, killed in endgame

[Ether]

• Game Flow:
  
  
• Days last a maximum of two weeks. There will not be a lynch if the game goes to night due to this deadline--someone has to consciously place a hammer vote.
  
• I will probably be online when the deadline strikes, and I'll lock the thread at that point. But if I'm not, and you beat me to the punch with a hammer, you can have it. The lynch will go through normally in that case.
  
• You may choose to go to night without a lynch before then, by having at least half of the players
  vote: No Lynch
  . (That's half, not a full majority.)
  
• Votes should be posted in the format
  vote: Anarchy
  or VOTE: Anarchy. I expect them to be entirely bold, but don't try to exploit this to trick someone. I will register misspellings and nicknames if I can figure out who you're referring to. You do not have to
  unvote
  , but you're welcome to do so anyway.
  
• When a player has the majority of the votes at a single point, it is dead and the game goes to twilight. Feel free to post in twilight.
  
• Night deadlines are "whenever I next get online 48 hours after [the lynch scene/finding any necessary replacements]." I will not announce day sooner, even if all choices are in. If I'm missing your choice and I know you're online, I'll contact you and give you a minute to think of something.
  
• Failing that, the game will just have to go to day without you. If any anti-town faction with unlimited shots misses a chance to kill, then a fallback kill will still go through--trying to confirm people through their inactivity is not recommended. This default option only applies to the scum nightkill and compulsory roles. Any other abilities will simply go unused.
  
  
  What is and isn't allowed:
  
  
• Please don't be a giant raging asshole. I'm asking you nicely here.
  
• Unless otherwise specified, living players can't communicate with each other out of the thread. Anyone who's an exception to this rule will get a private topic. They're free to talk outside of it, if they have a method they prefer. Transcripts from that are appreciated, but if you're Skyping or something, don't worry about taping every single thing you say. I trust you.
  
• You
  may
  rant to both dead players and nonplaying friends, although you're encouraged to first make sure that said friends aren't interested in replacing in with you. (I am of course available, sympathetic and discreet. Feel free to AIM me at CaffieneDeity, or Skype me at unvote.) Regardless of where you found them, rantbuddies may not reveal their own opinions on the game, and nothing about your discussion should surface publicly before the game is over.
  
• "Dead" means "dead." Don't AIM the guy who hammered you to tell him what a scumbag he is, and definitely don't keep making game-relevant posts. Just lie there...and think dead thoughts.
  
• Read your role PM and
  summarize it in your confirmation
  . Unless I've posted it publicly, you may not reference its wording in-thread. In fact, don't reference the wording of
  any
  private messages anyone sends you about this game. No timestamps. Nothing.
  
• Do not try to encourage others to break the above rule. Don't push me.
  
• The ooc font and
  tags are my domain. Don't use them. Don't pretend to use them.
  

  The smallest font size you can use is

  size 55

  . Don't use a font color with the intent of making it more difficult to see, either.
  
  

  What to expect from me:

  
  

  Do try to be active, and leave a notification in-thread and/or by PM if that's not possible. I will automatically prod anyone who has not posted over 48 hours--and that's pretty lenient; you are expected to post more than once every two days. If asked, I will disclose the status of any prod.
  

  If you don't post in-thread in response to a prod within 48 hours, I will seek a replacement to take over your role. Future prods must be responded to within 24 hours. (I might bump this back up later at my discretion, but don't count on it.) I may seek replacement for a player who lurks consistently without breaking this rule, but you'll have some sort of warning first.
  

  I'll try to post one votecount per page, as close to the top as possible. If I make errors, please correct me.
  

  I reserve the right

  not

  to replace people on request, or to delay their replacements until the end of the phase. This will be handled subjectively.
  

  I'm one of those "spirit-of-the-game"-type hippies. This ruleset is a guideline. I reserve the right to change it at will, and even in extreme circumstances enforce it retroactively. If a strategy feels shady to you, you might want to take it up with me first.
  
  

  Miscellaneous:

  
  

  Play to win, but do try to have fun while you're at it.

---

Seven players will receive:

Welcome to Mini 618: The Odds! The game thread is here.

You are a

vanilla townie

.

You win when the only living players are town.

One player will receive:

Welcome to Mini 618: The Odds! The game thread is here.

You are a

jailkeeper

. Each night, send me a target. If it tries to kill someone that night, or if the mafia tries to kill it, then the kill will fail and the game will return to day with no new players dead. (However, if the mafia knows who you are, it might roleblock you, in which case your action will fail.)

You win when the only living players are town.

Two players will receive:

Welcome to Mini 618: The Odds! The game thread is here.

You are a

mafia goon

, with

[...]

. The two of you can speak freely at all times. I've made a private topic for you

here

!

Each night, you can choose a player to kill--please also specify which of you will be carrying the kill out. In addition, you share a single roleblock that either of you can use on any one night in the game. The same mafiate can kill and roleblock a player on the same night, and this takes priority over the jailkeeper's action.

You win when at least half of the living players are mafia-aligned, or nothing can prevent this from happening.

Alignments are distributed according to the percentage chances given in the opening post--that is, the 35% player is much more likely to be scum than the 5% player. See here for more setup information.

[Ether]

Roles have been sent out! Please confirm by PM.

By the way, if you want me to send you start-of-day PMs, please let me know when you confirm. I won't send them by default.

[Ether]

It is now Day 1.

With 10 alive, it takes 6 to lynch.
The deadline is in (expired on 2015-12-02 10:00:00), on Wednesday, December 2 at 10:00 am EST.

petroleumjelly will have limited access through Sunday, November 22nd.

[ika]

FIRST

[Murgatroyd and Miss Eliza]

SECOND! HI IKA!

Hey VOTE: Bellaphant, guess which head?

~Murgatroyd

[Bellaphant]

Third!

Also, hi to perto, yos and LadyL, and hiiiiiii to the rest of you

VOTE: pip

[Yosarian2]

Hello, all. Not sure if random voting makes sense in this scenario.

[Murgatroyd and Miss Eliza]

If I remember right, last time, both 25% slots were scum. It's an neat coincidence that those are the slots currently being voted. That's not why I voted Bella, though.

~Murgatroyd

[Yosarian2]

I realize this is going to sound dodgy because of the position I'm in, but I'm going to share it anyway. I ran some numbers before the game started, and if my math is right, lynching the most suspicious person every day isn't a good strategy for town; if town just mechanically does that, scum wins about 61% of the time. (34% chance town lynches 3 town in a row and loses straight out after day 3, another 40% chance town loses after that, multiples out to only a 39% chance of a town win). So yeah, we're going to have to actually play mafia.

(All this math was done before I got my role PM; now that I know my alignment is town, and I'm in the 30% slot, I know that from my perspective town's chances of winning are actually a lot lower then that lynching just using the odds, but obviously none of you know that, so...)

[Bellaphant]

Yeah, Ether did mention something similar in the sign-ups thread. The 25% thing is interesting, though...Murga, was your other reason for voting me rvs?

[Murgatroyd and Miss Eliza]

@Yosarian: I agree; just lynching in order of percentage would be boring and a poor strategy for town. But in that case, why do you say that you're not sure random voting makes sense in this scenario? You propose that we do something other than the usual RVS start, but then you tell us that lynching the high percentages is also suboptimal. Is there a third option in which we skip RVS but also don't pay more attention to the odds than are warranted that you are seeing but not discussing?

pedit: @Bella: yes, and because I haven't said "hey bella guess which head" to you enough recently, and that joke was only funny because I asked you that question literally everyday but I've been slacking and it might stop being funny at then I'd have to think of a new joke.

~Murgatroyd

[Yosarian2]

@Yosarian: I agree; just lynching in order of percentage would be boring and a poor strategy for town. But in that case, why do you say that you're not sure random voting makes sense in this scenario?

I random vote sometimes because I have no information at the start of the game, and a random lynch is theoretically better then a no-lynch; also, assuming you're town, voting for someone who's not yourself is theoretically slightly better then voting for no one.

In this game, I actually do have information; if I was going to vote for someone right now, it would basically have to be Lady Lambdadelta, because right now she's more likely to be scum then anyone else and I have no other information. But if everyone did that, then we would quicklynch LLD, and then me, and then town would probably lose.

You propose that we do something other than the usual RVS start, but then you tell us that lynching the high percentages is also suboptimal. Is there a third option in which we skip RVS but also don't pay more attention to the odds than are warranted that you are seeing but not discussing?

I don't really believe in the idea of a "random voting stage" anyway. There are logical reasons why in a normal game, a random vote may arguably be ever so slightly more optimal then a first post without a random vote, so that's a perfectly reasonable move to make in your first or second post if you want to. But there really isn't any such thing as a "random voting stage" when anyone can do anything they want and nothing counts and nobody is allowed to get serious, IMHO. (shrug)

[Murgatroyd and Miss Eliza]

RVS wagons can be fun, but I think they're more effective on newer players. I don't think RVS voting a good scum player is going to make them freak out and scumslip on page 1.

The thing is that after RVS there is usually the "let's bicker about mafia theory" stage and sometimes by skipping RVS we just go straight into the bickering about mafia theory stage when ideally we could skip both RVS and mafia theory and just be all super serious. But it's okay, at least we've found something to talk about.

Before I got my role pm, I was thinking it would be quite fun to roll scum in the 5% slot because it'd be like godfather-ninja in this setup; if we were jailkept, we could easily posit ourselves as the target of the nightkill not the killer. We'd run into the "why haven't you been nightkilled yet" problem eventually, but I had prepared an answer for that too.

But then we rolled town so those plans were for naught. Probably for the best; hydraing as scum is annoying for everyone involved.

~Murgatroyd

[Spiffeh]

VOTE: Yosarian

He pings me

[itlepip]

VOTE: Yosarian

He pings me

I hate that the s is missing.

While the stat analysis was cool, I think the main argument is on d1. From the newbie games about 20% of the time scum gets lynched d1, so just auto lynching the top scum number would double our odds of lynching scum. My suggestion is to play to day normally, but at hammer time if there isn't a consensus or nobody really scum slipped we lynch the scummiest of the top %s. Also for at least the first few days the 5% person I will treat as conf town.

[ika]

I'm getting drunk fun times

[Aneninen]

Is this on? I'm reading your posts soon, okay?

Until now,

VOTE: Spiffeh,

because you're going to misread me later, convince everyone, and I'll be unable to clear myself, etc. You know what I'm talking about, aren't you? ^_^

[ika]

well i want to lynch yos cus its a lot of info and not real scum hunting right now

[petroleumjelly]

1.)

Yosarian2, do your numbers factor in the chunk of games where a nightkill is missed (due to Jailkeeping or No-Killing)? Those situations give Town an additional lynch. And furthermore, the odds of lynching correctly each day after the first missed nightkill would increase because the game would convert from an even number of players (e.g., 2 in 8 odds, then 2 in 6 odds) to an odd number of players (e.g., 2 in 7 odds, then 2 in 5 odds). And even those hard mathematical stats would not be able to encompass the information gained from a missing nightkill.

2.)

What do players think about having each player give hypothetical Jailkeep targets before each night?

Some pros include making it more difficult for scum to pinpoint the Jailkeeper early in the game (because at that point the Jailkeeper would not have to go out of their way to get this information across) and giving the Town more information to work with in the event the Jailkeeper is nightkilled, as there will be a paper trail. This gets

especially

powerful once the first scum is lynched.

Some cons include allowing scum to use the proposed actions to plan out the safest / most surefire kill (which would in turn make it easier to determine who the Jailkeeper is later in the game by process of elimination), and the fact that we would be forcing the Jailkeeper to decide their action before seeing the result of the lynch.

3.)

As Ether mentioned, please note I am on V/LA through Sunday due to BGGCon.

4.)

Vote: ika

[Aneninen]

I realize this is going to sound dodgy because of the position I'm in, but I'm going to share it anyway. I ran some numbers before the game started, and if my math is right, lynching the most suspicious person every day isn't a good strategy for town; if town just mechanically does that, scum wins about 61% of the time. (34% chance town lynches 3 town in a row and loses straight out after day 3, another 40% chance town loses after that, multiples out to only a 39% chance of a town win).

So yeah, we're going to have to actually play mafia.

¹

(All this math was done before I got my role PM; now that I know my alignment is town, and I'm in the 30% slot, I know that from my perspective town's chances of winning are actually a lot lower then that lynching just using the odds, but obviously none of you know that, so...)

²

(1) You don't say! ^_^
(2) And

that

part makes this whole post strange. I can see not a single town motivation for pointing out things like "the math was done before getting the role PM".

I random vote sometimes because I have no information at the start of the game, and a random lynch is theoretically better then a no-lynch; also, assuming you're town, voting for someone who's not yourself is theoretically slightly better then voting for no one.In this game, I actually do have information; if I was going to vote for someone right now, it would basically have to be Lady Lambdadelta, because right now she's more likely to be scum then anyone else and I have no other information. But if everyone did that, then we would quicklynch LLD, and then me, and then town would probably lose.

Empty speculation.

RVS wagons can be fun, but I think they're more effective on newer players. I don't think RVS voting a good scum player is going to make them freak out and scumslip on page 1.

RVS is still the best thing to start a game, in my opinion. Not only because of possible wagons; there may be strange early posts too which are standing out.

While the stat analysis was cool, I think the main argument is on d1. From the newbie games about 20% of the time scum gets lynched d1, so just auto lynching the top scum number would double our odds of lynching scum.¹ My suggestion is to play to day normally, but at hammer time if there isn't a consensus or nobody really scum slipped we lynch the scummiest of the top %s.²

(1) That's flawed.
(2) On the other hand, this might work.

1.)

Yosarian2, do your numbers factor in the chunk of games where a nightkill is missed (due to Jailkeeping or No-Killing)? Those situations give Town an additional lynch. And furthermore, the odds of lynching correctly each day after the first missed nightkill would increase because the game would convert from an even number of players (e.g., 2 in 8 odds, then 2 in 6 odds) to an odd number of players (e.g., 2 in 7 odds, then 2 in 5 odds). And even those hard mathematical stats would not be able to encompass the information gained from a missing nightkill.

2.)

What do players think about having each player give hypothetical Jailkeep targets before each night?
Some pros include making it more difficult for scum to pinpoint the Jailkeeper early in the game (because at that point the Jailkeeper would not have to go out of their way to get this information across) and giving the Town more information to work with in the event the Jailkeeper is nightkilled, as there will be a paper trail. This gets

especially

powerful once the first scum is lynched.
Some cons include allowing scum to use the proposed actions to plan out the safest / most surefire kill (which would in turn make it easier to determine who the Jailkeeper is later in the game by process of elimination), and the fact that we would be forcing the Jailkeeper to decide their action before seeing the result of the lynch.

I seriously dislike this post.
Not only because he goes along with the speculation, not only because he even

encourages

Yosarian to make more calculations, but he also starts speculating about the Jailkeeper and possible Nightkills. This is very anti-town.

________

As for Setup Speculation: I don't think it helps a lot. Mathematically, only the first player could be considered a kind of semi-Innocent Child. (And obviously, their percentage won't clear them for the whole game. However, it was them who explained it why, which is something that makes me think that they're town.)
Take this example: I, who's in the middle of the list, am 4× more likely scum than them, Lambdadelta, who's at the end of the list, is 7× more likely. But if we compare Lambdadelta's chance with mine, she's less than 2× likely scum than me. Can you see my point?

In short: we should scumhunt instead of speculating about those numbers. So far Yosarian and Petroleumjelly stands out for me and I don't think the Murgatroyd-Hydra won the Role-Lottery by getting the 5% and drawing scum at the same time.

[ika]

Its more cons then pros PJ

lets me work it out

X and Y are scums
A and B claim they will jk X and Y respecitvly (neither are jker)
X goes for nk on C (not jker still)
sums now know A is not he jker and C is confirmed not to be jk)

ill bite too on it. whats with the vote on me?

[Yosarian2]

(2) And

that

part makes this whole post strange. I can see not a single town motivation for pointing out things like "the math was done before getting the role PM".

Because the math is quite different now that I know I am town, obviously.

I random vote sometimes because I have no information at the start of the game, and a random lynch is theoretically better then a no-lynch; also, assuming you're town, voting for someone who's not yourself is theoretically slightly better then voting for no one.In this game, I actually do have information; if I was going to vote for someone right now, it would basically have to be Lady Lambdadelta, because right now she's more likely to be scum then anyone else and I have no other information. But if everyone did that, then we would quicklynch LLD, and then me, and then town would probably lose.

Empty speculation.

...what? That's not "speculation" at all. I was explaining the logic behind why I didn't random vote because Murgatroyd asked me. What are you talking about? I don't even know what you think I'm supposed to be "speculating" about.

I seriously dislike this post.
Not only because he goes along with the speculation, not only because he even encourages Yosarian to make more calculations, but he also starts speculating about the Jailkeeper and possible Nightkills. This is very anti-town.

And PJ isn't "speculating" either. We know what the setup is, it's in the first post. Also, if you start attacking PJ for being too analytical, you're probably not going to get very far, lol.

[Yosarian2]

1.)

Yosarian2, do your numbers factor in the chunk of games where a nightkill is missed (due to Jailkeeping or No-Killing)? Those situations give Town an additional lynch.

True, I didn't think about that.

And furthermore, the odds of lynching correctly each day after the first missed nightkill would increase because the game would convert from an even number of players (e.g., 2 in 8 odds, then 2 in 6 odds) to an odd number of players (e.g., 2 in 7 odds, then 2 in 5 odds). And even those hard mathematical stats would not be able to encompass the information gained from a missing nightkill.

That doesn't affect the way I did the math; basically, if nobody in the top 3 people is scum, town mislynches 3 times and loses (so 65% * 70% * 75%, 34% chance the town loses that way) and town also loses if one of the scum is in the bottom 5 people (80%*80%*85%*85%*90%*95%, so about 40%). So with both of those lose conditions, total odds of a town win are 64%*60%, or about 38.5%. You are right that I didn't take into account the odds of a missed scum kill; that would be harder to calculate.

On the other hand, if we can just clear a couple of people as town (people with higher percentages are much more important here) then we can really improve our odds.

[Yosarian2]

On a side note, the way Aneninen attacked me for "making calculations" and figuring out that mechanically lynching the top 4 people probably results in a a town loss bothers me, especially since if we were to do that the 20% people (IE: Anenien) would be the scummiest people we don't lynch. Basically, if Anenien were scum, he'd have a huge motivation to try to discredit me here, so the fact that he did seems suspicious to me.

vote:Aneninen