Short Stories Mafia Game Thread

[PlainDealingVillain]

I will admit that lurking is suspicious but sometimes people have busy schedules or lives and don't post very often so basing suspicions on lurking isn't necessarily going to work well for this. In the last game, the lurkers tended to be town and not scum with the exception of the demon so it isn't necessarily a good idea to use that logic with this particular group in general. Also, I will try to be less lurky but I'm still not good at sharing suspicions or posting in general so it will be difficult for me to come up with constructive things to say.

And I (the demon) lurked just as much as town the previous game, IIRC. I agree, lurking is not very good evidence either way. (He says, as one lurker quoting another.)

Re: mod hedge about lynching, are there any characters that could have a "if X and Y die, go insane and kill everyone" hidden/not power? Or does "giving information about win conditions" just mean that some townies/not have win conditions that require events other than death?

There might be something where, for example, Fairies still have some amount of control of people they've named, even after their 'death'?


Anyway, I have no serious suspicions and will probably just let my vote be handed out at random, since I probably won't be checking again between now and the end of day. My instincts for this game aren't good enough to generate independent suspicions, and I have found most of the suggestions sorta plausible but not convincing.

[jalapeno_dude]

He's mathy enough and strategic enough that I'm really surprised to see him advocating against a lynch on the first day. This *is* tempered by the honestly very worrying revelation that murder may not in fact be the answer to all our problems, but I think that even knowing that, we should still kill *someone* today.

Fair enough. Let me try to explain my logic in more detail.

As far as I can tell, the argument for a Day 1 lynch is that a small probability of lynching scum on Day 1 outweighs a large probability of lynching town on Day 1. Say there are 4 scum in this game (so 11 town). Then if someone is chosen at random to lynch there's a 4/15 chance that 3 scum are left (25% less scum) and an 11/15 chance that 10 town are left (only 9% less town). The assumption is that 1 townie less doesn't make much of a difference (i.e. that most games aren't likely to be extremely close). But clearly losing 1 scum *does* make a difference, especially if there are multiple scum factions.

So far so good. But this ignores 2 things:
1) We're not allowed to chose randomly this game, and even if we were we seem to have decided not to do so.
2) Not all townies are equal. (That's also true for scum but I think less important here.)

I think everyone would agree that 1) shifts the odds away from lynching scum, for two reasons. First, no competent scum is going to act suspicious so people who get accused for an actual specific reason are more likely to be town, even when the accusations are being made in good faith by actual townies. (As several of us have said before, scum automatically filter what they say. Townies with perfect play should do the same but in practice they don't--I know I definitely don't.) Second, scum can manipulate the voting (as we did intensely last game). Because of this, I think it's good policy to be even more suspicious than usual of people starting/jumping on bandwagons.

2) is true even in standard mafia games (it's really bad if you accidentally kill the cop on Day 1). I think it's more likely to be important here, based on 3 factors:
-The previous games we've played on this forum
-My own role (you obviously need to replace this with your role when evaluating this)
-The post from Nemo I already mentioned.

Conclusion? I'm already iffy about a Day 1 lynch in an unpowered game if we're not allowed to use RNG (and I agree that we shouldn't because it's unfun). In a heavily powered game where we as Town need to do things beyond simply killing? I just don't think this is a good gamble to make.

[Shoal]

The argument for the day 1 lynch is that after we see how they flipped (town/scum) we can look at who was pushing the lynch, who was resisting it, who voted and why, who was defending the person, who was arguing with the person.

no lynch on day 1 just means that we have less information available to us on day 2.


you say “no competent scum is going to act suspicious on day 1” but assuming competence is probably the wrong way to go.

I remember how we manipulated the voting last game. So do you. You remember what we were trying to do. You remember how we achieved it. We’ll spot it if someone does it again.

[jalapeno_dude]

I remember how we manipulated the voting last game. So do you. You remember what we were trying to do. You remember how we achieved it. We’ll spot it if someone does it again.

To quote you, "assuming competence is probably the wrong way to go." Do you *really* think people will spot scummy manipulation of the votes? Last game we switched votes to try to lynch Aestrix on Day 1 within an hour of the deadline, incredibly blatantly in retrospect, and as far as I can tell absolutely no one picked up on it despite an explicit warning from Aestrix! If people can't pick it up something that blunt (and to be fair I'm sure I wouldn't have as Town), I don't think we'll pick up on something subtler.

EDIT: Also, Shoal, I have no idea how you plan to come out of this without looking suspicious after I flip as Town. It seems uncharacteristic of you to risk so much. I am confused.

[Shoal]

I remember how we manipulated the voting last game. So do you. You remember what we were trying to do. You remember how we achieved it. We’ll spot it if someone does it again.

To quote you, "assuming competence is probably the wrong way to go." Do you *really* think people will spot scummy manipulation of the votes? Last game we switched votes to try to lynch Aestrix on Day 1 within an hour of the deadline, incredibly blatantly in retrospect, and as far as I can tell absolutely no one picked up on it despite an explicit warning from Aestrix! If people can't pick it up something that blunt (and to be fair I'm sure I wouldn't have as Town), I don't think we'll pick up on something subtler.

I will spot it.

[Shoal]

i mean, to be fair, it’s not an exact science, but I can at least say what I think about each vote that was cast and why, in light of how the person flips.

I remember my own vote on Aestrix last game was so wishywashy and appologetic.

[Shoal]

EDIT: Also, Shoal, I have no idea how you plan to come out of this without looking suspicious after I flip as Town. It seems uncharacteristic of you to risk so much. I am confused.

The nice thing about being town is that I don’t have to care about how I look. I can focus on finding scum instead of maintaining appearances. it’s quite freeing, actually.

[jalapeno_dude]

I remember how we manipulated the voting last game. So do you. You remember what we were trying to do. You remember how we achieved it. We’ll spot it if someone does it again.

To quote you, "assuming competence is probably the wrong way to go." Do you *really* think people will spot scummy manipulation of the votes? Last game we switched votes to try to lynch Aestrix on Day 1 within an hour of the deadline, incredibly blatantly in retrospect, and as far as I can tell absolutely no one picked up on it despite an explicit warning from Aestrix! If people can't pick it up something that blunt (and to be fair I'm sure I wouldn't have as Town), I don't think we'll pick up on something subtler.

I will spot it.

Wow, I can't believe you actually just said that. If you're Town you just challenged the mafia to kill you. Even if you survive that (which probably means you're scum) you just set yourself up for a near-guaranteed lynch tomorrow once I turn up as Town.

[jalapeno_dude]

EDIT: Also, Shoal, I have no idea how you plan to come out of this without looking suspicious after I flip as Town. It seems uncharacteristic of you to risk so much. I am confused.

The nice thing about being town is that I don’t have to care about how I look. I can focus on finding scum instead of maintaining appearances. it’s quite freeing, actually.

...are you out of your mind? *Of course* townies need to maintain appearances! Trivially if you're a powered role, but still obviously so even if you're not. You've played more mafia than any of us, as far as I can tell; you can't possibly expect me to believe you're being sincere.

[Shoal]

Let me break this down for you, then.

I don’t think scumhunting makes anyone look bad. I think lack of scumhunting makes people look bad.
I have run into trouble being too obviously too townie actually, it tends to get me nightkilled but it’s hard to turn it off. As a power role it’s better to hang back a bit, not too much or you get lynched. Stick your neck out too far and it gets chopped off.
You’re contradicting yourself: Why would the mafia nightkill me if they think i’m setting myself up to be a good mislynch target tomorrow?
One of the best ways to find scum is to look at who is trying to maintain appearances. Who is more worried about themselves and how they look and who is focusing outwardly on others?

Do you remember that gigantic wall post I wrote in LYLO about myself? That was scummy. It was seriously scummy. Why the hell was I spending all that time talking about myself instead of trying to figure out who the last scum were? I then tried to make up for it by doing wall posts about other people too, but there were scummy things about those posts too (they were wishywashy and my conclusions didn’t match my analysis very closely).

Flail harder, jalapeno.