OT: The SPF Mafia Game Round Three

[SiTro]

I'm having trouble connecting to the internet at the moment. I don't know how and I don't know why, the only thing I know is that when my machine connects to the network here, it doesn't tend to get a connection to the internet as well. Sometimes tricks like disconnecting and reconnecting or restarting the router work, other times there's no effect. My apologies to skoolbus, I know this game works best with frequent posters.
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That said, onto my thoughts about some of the more recent ideas. I'm just in after an evening at work, so I'm not in the best frame of mind, but then again as Rash said, this isn't a game about logic.

Sint: Nice table, and some good reasoning about who's doing what. You missed my vote for Jaedhann on day one though, but I don't know if that matters too much since I was left off the main list. Still, good effort on putting all that together.

On RK: I first wanted to believe the argument that he's mafia posing as VI as that does seem fairly conclusive. But Jaago's quote of him from before the game started does seem to break that reasoning. Not sure what to make of the 8-ball reference myself. Unsure on exactly what he's doing, needs more thought devoted to it.

On Moar: Regarding her slip-up, I read the post that she referenced and before she made the link explicit I did think that her suspicion of Lord Nikon had been implied by quoting what she did. However, it was only touched on very lightly, and so she could simply be a mafia member using a convenient link in her posting history. She was brought in as a replacement for Neksja, so there could be some merit in the idea that the position has a role and hence a priority to be replaced.

On Drixx: I don't think I saw this idea mentioned, but before Drixx became active again skoolbus had asked for anyone willing to take his place. This could open the door to the same reasoning used on Neksja/Moar being placed on him - that he had one of the special roles. Now, the mafia would know if he was one of them, and so they might have decided to murder Drixx in the hope that that was indeed true.

I still don't trust Jaedhann, again from his unwillingness to contribute to the discussion yesterday. I'm unsure about revoting him based on that though due to him not having said anything today. For all I know he might have had similar issues to myself.

I need to think over this situation some more. Judging from skoolbus' post and my own rudimentary translation of Forum Non-Standard Time, I think Day 2 is ending about half an hour after I get home from work tomorrow. I'll try and post a decision during the day though to be safe.

 

[Cygnus]

I catch your drift on this one.

And I'm sure, so does the mafia. Going by how much Rash has been posting and where's he's been leading us, it's evident he's has a role. If he's not mafia, the mafia understands that he has one of the townie roles. Either way, there's a big bulls eye on his forehead.

 

[RevenantsKnight]

Oh, hi SiTro. Trouble with your alarm clock, hmm? Well, I've always made mine work better by pouring it something tall and frosty. I'm not really sure how it gets around to drinking it, though...

Now, to this Mafia business...Moar is new here, so I don't know her so well, and to top it off, I don't even have anything I can use for a numerological computation. I'll have to start looking around for some material, I guess. Maybe there's a clue in that we knew of the Mafia before she came, though Drixx did die right after...

goltar25 still scares me, but maybe that chart meant some other kind of danger. I think we should hire some security raccoons to watch him and sniff his trash for pizza crusts. I don't see any other Mafia members, though. Maybe they're all just hiding really well. How do we lynch them if they aren't here, though? Do we make voodoo dolls and lynch those? Oooh...actually, that sounds kind of neat. And certainly a lot cleaner.

And seriously, whenever you folks get around to setting up that election, just let me know and I'll gladly run for village idiot...it sounds like something I could do, so the incumbent better watch out!

 

[jrlafrance]

With all of these considerations, my vote is still on Moar. I do have some ideas about the Masons, the Cop, and the Vigilante, and I'm still looking for the Witness and the Idiot. Muzzz, Jaago, and Lister are still on my suspect list, although Lister has become less suspicious since the time I voted him. I wonder if any of my hints came out the way I wanted them to... probably not...

Please expand upon your "theories" for those of us that are not as astute. How could you possibly have an idea on who the Vigilante is? That character is a townie with a special ability, however the person with that ability is never made known to anyone. Please explain how you have an "idea" regarding this character. The role of the Witness is very similar, except that we see who dies the next day.

The Masons can only bounce ideas between themselves at night. The only way to even have an "idea" of who they may be is if they say thing similarly, or start agreeing with each other in the thread.

I find it interesting that you don't mention who you might think who the Mafia members are. A major slip up? :shocked: Very, very possible.

As far as my vote, mine has not changed, and will not until RK can say something sensible.

 

[Rashiminos]

With all of these considerations, my vote is still on Moar. I do have some ideas about the Masons, the Cop, and the Vigilante, and I'm still looking for the Witness and the Idiot. Muzzz, Jaago, and Lister are still on my suspect list, although Lister has become less suspicious since the time I voted him. I wonder if any of my hints came out the way I wanted them to... probably not...

Clearly you could not read the very next sentence, jrlafrance. As for discussing those other roles, why don't we just invite the mafia to this discussion.

 

[jrlafrance]

Clearly you could not read the very next sentence, jrlafrance. As for discussing those other roles, why don't we just invite the mafia to this discussion.

Why don't we? We have nothing to hide. If we don't discuss these things in the open, then we are doomed to be lynched one by one.

 

[Sir Lister of Smeg]

Why don't we? We have nothing to hide. If we don't discuss these things in the open, then we are doomed to be lynched one by one.

I wonder whether the mafia is choosing to be active or to be lying low this time. Since we know they were lying low last time, they might do the opposite this time, on the other hand they might think we'd think that they would be doing something different than last time so they're doing the same, on yet another hand...brain collapses. In short, how much reverse psychology do they employ?

At the same time, what sort of tactic would the village idiot employ? Since he wasn't killed last night, we can be sure that it is not RevenantsKnight (since he was acting idiotic and thus should have been murdered by the mafia if he was the village idiot (I'm tempted to add here `if he would not be mafia'), this was before Jaago notified us of that old quote by RevenantsKnight), that still leaves me with 20 other suspects for that role (of which one was murdered), so the only one I feel safe about to lynch (in the sense of him not being village idiot) is RevenantsKnight.

What kind of tactic the townies with special roles employ is not very interesting in my opinion. The cop could try to send some message in public to another special role indicating that (s)he has identified him or her, but it would be a very dangerous game since it's interceptable by the mafia. It's in the interest of the mafia to identify the cop and either murder or lynch him or her, but with the low chance the cop has of identifying the mafia, the cop isn't very dangerous for the mafia, every death makes the cop more dangerous for them though. The masons can converse at night, and I don't think they'd have any need to show their roles during the day. The witness needs to make sure (s)he is not lynched, but murdered instead. It's in the interest of the mafia to make sure the witness is lynched. The doctor has to try and guess whom the mafia will murder, again (just as for the cop) a hard task and one that is likely to only become dangerous for the mafia after many deaths. The vigilante has to kill a mafioso, but has to be very certain the person in question is not the witness (or we would lose two townies in one go), and preferably very certain about that person being mafia. I think this role doesn't matter very much for the mafia since, unless there are major tongue slips, it is very hard to correctly identify the mafiosi. In general, I think all these roles could employ a tactic of either being very active, or lying low, or anything in between, incidentally, just the same tactic as a mafioso or a townie without a special role could emply. The only difference is that the mafiosi will likely attempt to steer away suspicion from their fellow mafiosi if the ground under their feet would become very hot, the only ones on the town's side who can do this, because they know, are the masons towards each other and the cop after having identified a few townies, the latter needs to be very careful with this however, being the most serious weapon on the town's side.

@Rashiminos: you gave some sort of reasoning why you put Jaago and me on your suspect list, but why Muzzz? (I could go through all pages, but I'm sure you could tell me quicker than I could go through all those pages) I know someone, I think it was Jaago at the time but it might have been you, immediately fell all over me when I noticed Muzzz' slip up on the pm.

 

[Thyiad1]

Vote Rashiminos

 

[Rashiminos]

Why don't we? We have nothing to hide. If we don't discuss these things in the open, then we are doomed to be lynched one by one.

Suppose I'm right about some of my guesses (or I have at least picked out players with special town roles, if not the right one for each player) and I decide to point it out. The doctor can't save all of them. The mafia might take them out if they believe me. If my guesses are good, pointing them out will hurt the next night.

Suppose I'm wrong, then we might lynch a special because that player wasn't on my list. I might also wrongly pick a mafia, who then later would have more justification in impersonating another role and I would have made this mafia harder to detect. If my guesses are wrong, we could kill the roles and the mafia get another cover.

The advantages of openly revealing those roles right now is very slight, they don't have enough information. It's mainly up to them to decide when the time is right.

@Lister: Here's the relevant post for muzzz.

Muzzz had been the glaringly most inactive, having not seen his role for at least 24 hours hours after they came out. He then made a vote on RK stressing on the fact he believed me to be innocent, which although flattering, is a little suspicious in and of itself. That's 'fine' (sarcasm) reasoning even if the vote is on just a townie voting another townie.

 

[jrlafrance]

I wonder whether the mafia is choosing to be active or to be lying low this time. Since we know they were lying low last time, they might do the opposite this time, on the other hand they might think we'd think that they would be doing something different than last time so they're doing the same, on yet another hand...brain collapses. In short, how much reverse psychology do they employ?

If this is in response to my, please be assured that I am no harm to the town.

@ Rashiminos: I disagree with your logic regarding discussion. As townies we have very little information upon which to make decisions, particularly this early in the game. Even by discussing these things in the open, we don't know if we're right or wrong unless someone has made an obvious slip up. If we're not discussing these things during the day, then what are we to talk about? The weather? I'm not that kind of a chatty person.

To this point, I think there have only been 4-5 people who are even discussing who they thing people are. We need much more insight than that to try to make educated guesses as to who the Mafia are, because they are smart, and have and advantage on us. I know that I hate the Mafia for killing one of ours, and know with certainty that it'll keep happening unless the Cop gets lucky, or the Vigiliante scores a hit on them. There is also the witness also.

 

[SiTro]

I tend to agree with Rash on this actually. Discussing roles other than the mafia ones will just give the mafia our reasoning on who we think the masons, vigilante et al are. If the reasoning seems sound to them, we just gave them a murder list and stand a good chance of losing our wild cards against them.

By all means promote healthy discussion in the thread. But I think that particular topic might be ill-advised.

 

[Jaago]

So, what do you guys think of today's weather...

 

[Jaago]

Unvote Moar

Here's a vote tally of the moment:

Moar: 4
RK: 6
Rash: 4
Goltar: 1

What a mess. Also, I must admit that it isn't quite fair to vote for Moar when she's not present to protect herself, she can be lynched later. Thus the unvoting.

 

[jrlafrance]

Unvote Moar

Here's a vote tally of the moment:

Moar: 4
RK: 6
Rash: 4
Goltar: 1

The fact that 2 days in a row now that RK has gotten several votes, but not enough to push it to the edge is very disturbing. The Mafia is protecting him IMO.

 

[Cygnus]

If I counted the votes and the unvotes correctly, this is what I have:

xduckster              No one
RevenantsKnight        goltar
Sir Lister of Smeg     RK
jrlafrance             RK
Jaago                  No one
LORD NIKON             Moar
Jaedhann               No one
Moar                   No one
muzzz                  RK
Rashiminos             Moar
Sint Nikolaas          No one
TouchOfInsanity        RK
Cygnus                 Moar
Thyiad                 Rash
skunkbelly             RK
SiTro                  No one
GoHabsGo               Rash
goltar25               RK
Brak                   Moar
water_moon             No one

The tally:
No one: 7
RK: 6
Moar: 4
Rash: 2
goltar: 1

Could those who haven't voted please, please, please vote? If you haven't made up your mind yet, vote for someone now and later change it if you wish.

 

[Cygnus]

The fact that 2 days in a row now that RK has gotten several votes, but not enough to push it to the edge is very disturbing. The Mafia is protecting him IMO.

That's mainly because a lot of people haven't voted yet! I don't suspect RK, but I'm prepared to change my vote if it makes the difference between lynching and no lynching.

 

[Sint Nikolaas]

The main problem we have here is that we lack information.

If we discuss town roles, it will bring out more information but it will also help the mafia. If we discuss the mafia role(s) then we will likely not to get any further then everyone saying ''nope, I'm not mafia''. It may sound bad but as far as I see it now we will most likely have another day without lynching someone. I think we should discuss the town roles, but if you do see a solid lead on something you can keep it to yourself. The only roles which would be usefull to point out would be the idiot, seeing as he can win the game instantly if he gets lynched. Other then that, only pray that the mafia makes mistakes.
The other reason to keep discussing all roles is that there will be information every time someone dies. Be it at night or trough lynching. People will have less options and everything you say will become more and more important. Even though you think something you say right now might not matter, if you die at night we may see it as a clue.

Right now I'm at a breaking point. I want to hunt down mafia, however all this VI stuff comes in the way. Rev is/was attracting too much attention untill someone noted that he could have announced all this before hand. To me, I think, it will become less confusing with him gone. It is at a direct angle with what I said before, believing him to actually be the VI. However his posts right after I made that statement and the discovery that it could all be a game makes me vote against him. I actually don't like it too much, however (again) to me it will make things less complicated and we will not waste another chance to lynch.

I also think that we should lynch even if we aren't sure. The main reason is that I think the witness is still in. The mafia will have a bigger chance to kill him and take one of their own out if we lynch during the day. I don't advocate random lynching or pushing votes ''no matter what'', but if there is at least some solid ground I think we should go with it.

vote Rev

 

[Jaedhann]

Well, i haven't read much so far, only quickread the last few pages. I must say that Rev gets lots of attention, and that's not surprising. He could very well be the VI, but if he is, he's playing the roll very well. My suspicion goes towards him being a mafia member, pretending to be the VI.

So,,..

Vote: Rev

 

[RevenantsKnight]

Okay, screw it. As much as I’d rather stay in character, which was a lot of fun, and I recognize that breaking cover when under heavy vote pressure looks bad, I also would like the town to win for once and I guess my hints were too subtle (there are relevant post numbers in the numerology post, for instance.) So it’s out there: I am neither Mafia nor the Village Idiot. The overplay of the Village Idiot position was intended to come off as overplay.

I played the way I did because I thought it’d be fun (and it was.) It also had a few uses in terms of strategy, such as the ability to make hidden points and not become a Mafia target (I got picked off right after I posted something straightforward like this last game.) Admittedly, the suspicion helps with keeping me in the game, too, since I doubt the Mafia would go for me with all the attention now. Why get rid of your shield when it’s a 1/18 chance that it’ll actually be a problem, and lower if you consider that overplaying isn’t a good strategy for the Village Idiot?

I’m somewhat baffled by the town’s collective targeting of me and Rashiminos more generally, because the main links there are really that we stand out. There is no reason to jump the people who stand out early, because if they’re not Mafia and dangerous by their presence, they’ll get picked off eventually and there’s no time bonus in this game or anything. If they are Mafia, you’ll have prime suspects later when they don’t die. Furthermore, they can draw the attention of the cop and if you’re Mafia, why in the world would you want that?

Should you still collectively feel like lynching me, go for it; it won’t hurt the town that much and I may run shorter on free time soon. However, you may want to reevaluate some strategies.

For finding Mafia, words themselves are almost useless. Since we’re not playing face to face and there’s plenty of time to plan a post, it’s much less likely that someone will give a tell, to say nothing of someone else actually catching it. Instead, it seems to me that vote trails and activity are far more telling, since it’s harder to misinterpret the eighth vote on a lynching with a threshold of nine: that person is more likely to be either just out to kill someone or be a Mafia member than to seriously suspect the target, because otherwise that vote would have fallen earlier.

Given that, I’m switching my vote for Jaedhann, because all he did today was show up to vote and his lack of posting/discussion is more indicative of past Mafia tactics than it is of a townie who’s actually studying the game and working on winning. And that was a safe vote if I’ve ever seen one, plus one that might not matter if people who unvoted don’t jump back on.

Unvote goltar25
Vote Jaedhann

Others I suspect:

jrlafrance's “I’m voting until you say something sensible†set off an alarm bell, since it’s lazy playing on a safe target. Additionally, it came after a pair of unvotes on me, which means his vote is less likely to deprive the Mafia of its screen unless people re-bandwagon.

goltar25 remains suspicious to me based on his pair of safe votes, and the fact that he keeps voting for a lynch when he says he has other suspicions, yet doesn’t really explain them. His convictions could just be squishy, but it’s odd that he keeps mentioning other names and then throws his vote my way with minimal explanation. That said, though, my vote on him was more to draw attention to his position than actually say that I thought he was dirty.

Neither of these are of course solid and I wouldn't go so far as to call them Mafia, but they’re what I’ve got out there. Also, those who don't say much aren't necessarily suspicious, but forgetting about them and giving them a free pass is a big mistake.

Incidentally (and I PMed skoolbus about this earlier,) I’ll be traveling tomorrow and may not be able to check in. Can I get a Moar exemption? [/sarcasm]

 

[Brak]

The fact that 2 days in a row now that RK has gotten several votes, but not enough to push it to the edge is very disturbing. The Mafia is protecting him IMO.

This is just silly. How can two fellow mafia provide any significant vote protection this early in the game? There are only two of them. Add this in with your insistance on uncovering town roles which ridiculously aids the mafia and you have become high on my suspect list.

But even worse is Jaedhann. Doesn't post for a long time. Says absolutely nothing of importance and then piles on to the highest vote total. It's so obvious I almost think it's just lazy play and not mafia.

Honestly not sure which to vote for.

vote jrlafrance

At least if you're a townie we won't have someone around giving the mafia ideas.

And RK thanks for coming out. Your last post very much changed my opinion of you.