I'm still not on board with random lynching day one, and I don't think I'm going to be convinced, but I'd like to mention that I genuinely think BSS is innocent, from her posts and a general knowledge of what she's like outside of the game.
I think we're not giving the possible friendly templates enough credit here, guys. I am inclined to agree with BSS on the entire game being very template heavy, and as such there's likely a lot going on here, behind the encrypted messages. Yes, in an ordinary Mafia game it's smart to lynch someone day one because it's a better chance to get a mafia member rather than letting them at definitively good townsfolk, but here it only makes it more likely we'll kill off a useful template before they even get to use their power, and then a mafia member kills another. It's also possible that mafia friendly fire's possible, that there's a single serial killer outside of the main group of killers. Ultimately, it's a huge, huge risk without a big enough reward to be worth it.
Effulgence Mafia Game Thread
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ozymandias
- Posts: 7
- Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2014 10:52 am
- Pronouns: They/them/themself
Re: Effulgence Mafia Game Thread
i just realized a problem with the crypto. Which is maybe obvious but I am sharing in case other people didn't think of it.
Killers have an incentive to lie about whether they are killers. There are very few circumstances in which a killer will want to reliably prove that they are a killer and a lot of circumstances in which they will want to prove that they are not. In addition, a clever killer will probably want to prove that they are an investigator-- that way, they can direct suspicion away from their fellow killers. We should definitely not trust any people claiming to have investigator powers. I'm not sure if we should trust townies; it depends on what level of "I think that you think that I think" they're on.
Killers have an incentive to lie about whether they are killers. There are very few circumstances in which a killer will want to reliably prove that they are a killer and a lot of circumstances in which they will want to prove that they are not. In addition, a clever killer will probably want to prove that they are an investigator-- that way, they can direct suspicion away from their fellow killers. We should definitely not trust any people claiming to have investigator powers. I'm not sure if we should trust townies; it depends on what level of "I think that you think that I think" they're on.
Re: Effulgence Mafia Game Thread
I don’t have anything useful to say about the day-one lynching, but I do think I have some useful things to say about cryptography.
First, @ozymandias: Part of crypto-posting the role now is to enable more trustworthiness with later roleclaiming. At some future date, we can say “Ok, almost everybody’s roleclaimed either publicly or privately now. Everybody, reveal the private key you used for that! If you don’t, we’ll all be really suspicious and probably lynch you”. Then, you won’t be able to tailor your claimed role either to the present situation or to what other people said. If I were a killer and I thought along those lines when creating my fake role, but at the time of the mass roleclaim I would prefer to be a protector than an investigator, I cannot do that. Moreover, if I claimed to be an investigator, and I picked Mark as my role, it will look really suspicious if somebody else also claims Mark. People have pointed out that this isn’t necessarily useful; some games have the killers given “safe” fake claim roles. The first part, about being unable to tailor your lie, is still useful though.
Second, not everybody is posting the pubkeys. Therefore, it isn’t always possible to tell if different messages have the same key or not. I am, BSS is, most other people aren’t. I think the communicative value of “these have the same key” is more useful than stopping another means of illegal private communication when, if people want to privately communicate, they already have a huge number of possibilities.
Third, I get that sometimes people might want to say something later while being able to prove they knew it now, without even saying what “it” is now. That is a thing that might happen with some roles. For example, if there’s somebody who has private information now, they might not want to admit that, but they might want to prove later that they came up with the information now. It’s suspicious if they might have set up different possibilities now, but that can be mitigated somewhat by using the same key or by labeling messages whenever possible.
I personally haven’t posted anything marked as random noise; everything I’ve posted has a stated purpose. It’s possible I’m lying about that purpose, but if I say “Here’s the private key to the thing I called my role” and that thing is “HAHAHA SUCKERS! I’m not revealing my role”, or “That other player is a Joker’s Dad, get him!”, or something, you will all rightfully be really suspicious of me. Similarly, the closest I’ve come to random noise is my will; if I reveal the key to that and it says my role, but I don’t reveal the key to the thing that I claimed is my role, that’s suspicious. Because I label everything like this, I literally cannot set up a Choose-Your-Own-Lie game like people are suggesting.
Basically, there might be reasons to post things without telling people what you’re posting, and we shouldn’t be suspicious when people do that unless they reveal some but not all of the messages. At the same time, saying what you’re posting when you post it helps with suspicion if that’s a thing you can reasonably do; the people who label what they post cannot convincingly do post-hoc lies about the things they label.
First, @ozymandias: Part of crypto-posting the role now is to enable more trustworthiness with later roleclaiming. At some future date, we can say “Ok, almost everybody’s roleclaimed either publicly or privately now. Everybody, reveal the private key you used for that! If you don’t, we’ll all be really suspicious and probably lynch you”. Then, you won’t be able to tailor your claimed role either to the present situation or to what other people said. If I were a killer and I thought along those lines when creating my fake role, but at the time of the mass roleclaim I would prefer to be a protector than an investigator, I cannot do that. Moreover, if I claimed to be an investigator, and I picked Mark as my role, it will look really suspicious if somebody else also claims Mark. People have pointed out that this isn’t necessarily useful; some games have the killers given “safe” fake claim roles. The first part, about being unable to tailor your lie, is still useful though.
Second, not everybody is posting the pubkeys. Therefore, it isn’t always possible to tell if different messages have the same key or not. I am, BSS is, most other people aren’t. I think the communicative value of “these have the same key” is more useful than stopping another means of illegal private communication when, if people want to privately communicate, they already have a huge number of possibilities.
Third, I get that sometimes people might want to say something later while being able to prove they knew it now, without even saying what “it” is now. That is a thing that might happen with some roles. For example, if there’s somebody who has private information now, they might not want to admit that, but they might want to prove later that they came up with the information now. It’s suspicious if they might have set up different possibilities now, but that can be mitigated somewhat by using the same key or by labeling messages whenever possible.
I personally haven’t posted anything marked as random noise; everything I’ve posted has a stated purpose. It’s possible I’m lying about that purpose, but if I say “Here’s the private key to the thing I called my role” and that thing is “HAHAHA SUCKERS! I’m not revealing my role”, or “That other player is a Joker’s Dad, get him!”, or something, you will all rightfully be really suspicious of me. Similarly, the closest I’ve come to random noise is my will; if I reveal the key to that and it says my role, but I don’t reveal the key to the thing that I claimed is my role, that’s suspicious. Because I label everything like this, I literally cannot set up a Choose-Your-Own-Lie game like people are suggesting.
Basically, there might be reasons to post things without telling people what you’re posting, and we shouldn’t be suspicious when people do that unless they reveal some but not all of the messages. At the same time, saying what you’re posting when you post it helps with suspicion if that’s a thing you can reasonably do; the people who label what they post cannot convincingly do post-hoc lies about the things they label.
Re: Effulgence Mafia Game Thread
Well said Daniel.
I will add that killed templates will be revealed.
After that, people who have falsely crypto-claimed that role cannot reveal without getting caught.
Come second turn not having a labelled "this is my template" post will be pretty suspicious, since there are very little innocent reasons not to have one.
I will add that killed templates will be revealed.
After that, people who have falsely crypto-claimed that role cannot reveal without getting caught.
Come second turn not having a labelled "this is my template" post will be pretty suspicious, since there are very little innocent reasons not to have one.
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michaelblume
- Posts: 35
- Joined: Sun Mar 23, 2014 5:48 pm
- Pronouns: he/him
Re: Effulgence Mafia Game Thread
Hi, I'm really really behind on this thread, but I want to help with crypto stuff.
If you want to register that you have some information such that future you can reveal it and be like no really this is the thing I was talking about, you don't actually have to do full public-key cryptography.
For example, if I'm a Ripper, I can just take the text "I'm a ripper" and put it in the form at http://www.xorbin.com/tools/sha256-hash-calculator and it'll spit out e392c1a039453419d18225919ec2477c8b9713713fc4a6a56c1e31a5e4f89dbd and I can paste that in the forum and no one will know I'm a ripper, and then later, I can be like, hey guys, I was saying "I'm a ripper" and anyone who wants to verify that can put that in the tool and see the same hash (you can try it now if you like)
Kappa *very correctly* points out that just making your statement "I'm a ripper" is not actually a good idea because then people can just plug "I'm a joker", "I'm a sherlock", "I'm a miles" into the tool until they come up with a matching hash, so, like, "hello, it is bright and sunny out and I just ate a peanut butter cup and also I'm a ripper" or something is better. But remember the exact text you put in, because if you're off by like a comma or a space or a capital letter the hash will come out completely different.
For more complicated protocols (say if you're worried someone's going to hijack your account or something) public key crypto can be useful, but there's almost never a case where you need to give out a private key. Just about any useful protocol will still allow you to keep those private from beginning to end.
If you want to register that you have some information such that future you can reveal it and be like no really this is the thing I was talking about, you don't actually have to do full public-key cryptography.
For example, if I'm a Ripper, I can just take the text "I'm a ripper" and put it in the form at http://www.xorbin.com/tools/sha256-hash-calculator and it'll spit out e392c1a039453419d18225919ec2477c8b9713713fc4a6a56c1e31a5e4f89dbd and I can paste that in the forum and no one will know I'm a ripper, and then later, I can be like, hey guys, I was saying "I'm a ripper" and anyone who wants to verify that can put that in the tool and see the same hash (you can try it now if you like)
Kappa *very correctly* points out that just making your statement "I'm a ripper" is not actually a good idea because then people can just plug "I'm a joker", "I'm a sherlock", "I'm a miles" into the tool until they come up with a matching hash, so, like, "hello, it is bright and sunny out and I just ate a peanut butter cup and also I'm a ripper" or something is better. But remember the exact text you put in, because if you're off by like a comma or a space or a capital letter the hash will come out completely different.
For more complicated protocols (say if you're worried someone's going to hijack your account or something) public key crypto can be useful, but there's almost never a case where you need to give out a private key. Just about any useful protocol will still allow you to keep those private from beginning to end.
Re: Effulgence Mafia Game Thread
There are currently 17 people who have posted cryptography, and three people who have not. Unless I missed it, only one person has publicly claimed, and that person later posted cryptography. I am currently organizing the cryptography information in such a way that it will be easier to work with when it comes time to start decrypting stuff. Then, I will attempt to decrypt every encrypted message with all the private keys I have, even my own private keys (both to test the system and to try to catch attempted private communication¹); I’ll keep doing this whenever there’s a new message or a new private key. I’ll post a zip file (except for the parts containing my own unrevealed private keys) publicly every (in-game) day so people can verify my work², but I probably won’t bother writing instructions (most of the people here could probably figure out how to work OpenSSL on their own if they were actually going to).
Also, michaelblume correctly points out that public-key cryptography is going overboard with this kind of thing. I still think it’s useful because we’re already using it, it allows you to more easily reveal a bunch of stuff at once³, it automatically takes care of adding the random values, and it’s easier to store a bunch of gibberish character-for-character than something actually meaningful character-for-character (because if you try the latter, you might accidentally make a meaning-preserving change like forgetting a comma).
EDIT TO ADD: Also, if we were to use hashing, somebody would want to use MD5 instead of an SHA. And then somebody else might realize that engineered MD5 collisions are possible. So, to be clear: I will not believe anything you say in MD5. You could have pre-engineered the kind of scenario where you can “verify” one of multiple possible things.
¹ And then I will reveal all attempts I catch at private communication, for the mods to deal with. I might not reveal the contents of the messages except to the mods, if they contain private-to-me (and whoever found it) information and are encrypted for a private key only I have, but I don’t expect to find any private communication at all, and especially not that type⁴.
² Although you of course can’t trust that I actually put the right information into those files. I will attempt to, and won’t treat myself specially, but you needn’t believe me and I might make mistakes.
³ And make me do all the work, which I would do anyway.
⁴ Especially not now that I said what I plan to do if people attempt unauthorized private communication.
Also, michaelblume correctly points out that public-key cryptography is going overboard with this kind of thing. I still think it’s useful because we’re already using it, it allows you to more easily reveal a bunch of stuff at once³, it automatically takes care of adding the random values, and it’s easier to store a bunch of gibberish character-for-character than something actually meaningful character-for-character (because if you try the latter, you might accidentally make a meaning-preserving change like forgetting a comma).
EDIT TO ADD: Also, if we were to use hashing, somebody would want to use MD5 instead of an SHA. And then somebody else might realize that engineered MD5 collisions are possible. So, to be clear: I will not believe anything you say in MD5. You could have pre-engineered the kind of scenario where you can “verify” one of multiple possible things.
¹ And then I will reveal all attempts I catch at private communication, for the mods to deal with. I might not reveal the contents of the messages except to the mods, if they contain private-to-me (and whoever found it) information and are encrypted for a private key only I have, but I don’t expect to find any private communication at all, and especially not that type⁴.
² Although you of course can’t trust that I actually put the right information into those files. I will attempt to, and won’t treat myself specially, but you needn’t believe me and I might make mistakes.
³ And make me do all the work, which I would do anyway.
⁴ Especially not now that I said what I plan to do if people attempt unauthorized private communication.
Re: Effulgence Mafia Game Thread
It's not only killers who have things to hide. Further, I would like to point out that upon the suspicious random lynch becoming unconvincing, you switched to advocating the lynching of the person who was most outspoken against random lynching. I'm not going to vote to lynch you this round, though.Shoal wrote:I'm getting inept vibes from BSS, not guilty ones. I also now feel it would be folly to continue down the list in order, potentially outing all the people with useful town roles as they try to defend themselves, giving the killers useful information without giving the townspeople useful information, because at this stage any people with investigative skills haven't had a chance to investigate, any people on our side who get actions at night haven't had any chance to use them.
I am changing my vote to Alphabeta because Alphabeta because random noise crypto only helps the people who have something to hide, the killers.
We knew when we picked a random number that it had a 5-10% (depending on my current guess for how many killers there are) of getting a mafia member with the first try, which is better chances than the 0% of no lynch.
I also don't think having a life outside of this forum is indicative of anything, guilt or innocence.
Re: Effulgence Mafia Game Thread
Aestrix was more outspoken against random lynching, I thought.
Anyway you should vote to lynch whoever you think is most likely to be a mafia guy. If you think that's me, then you should do that. You'll be mistaken, but I expect to also be mistaken about some of the opinions that I form in this game, so I won't hold it against you.
Anyway you should vote to lynch whoever you think is most likely to be a mafia guy. If you think that's me, then you should do that. You'll be mistaken, but I expect to also be mistaken about some of the opinions that I form in this game, so I won't hold it against you.
Re: Effulgence Mafia Game Thread
Further thought.
We might later get a conflict where two people claim to be for example Chris.
One of them has a crypt that says "Tonight I am going to shield X"
And an attack did later bounce from X.
I know who I would vote for.
IOP8pf86cNpXbTsWAk75ugI82/G6dVgcAcXDnQH5RWdD9Ls+n+yVK1+k1yo8nfyARP2OPD9dRLieJ4l0pFZkkdUQNPTld9E5CAMpBVAkhNbquKg20r6Yg25ywGKUNzl6W1rxlZhcviVdVOyPe/iDtSxfUqMvhbhxBtv2PNyap48=
I'm not worried of private messages. It has been stated to be against the Rules.
If people want to break the rules, PM is much easier to use and can not be detected.
I have faith in people here being more civilized than that.
We might later get a conflict where two people claim to be for example Chris.
One of them has a crypt that says "Tonight I am going to shield X"
And an attack did later bounce from X.
I know who I would vote for.
IOP8pf86cNpXbTsWAk75ugI82/G6dVgcAcXDnQH5RWdD9Ls+n+yVK1+k1yo8nfyARP2OPD9dRLieJ4l0pFZkkdUQNPTld9E5CAMpBVAkhNbquKg20r6Yg25ywGKUNzl6W1rxlZhcviVdVOyPe/iDtSxfUqMvhbhxBtv2PNyap48=
I'm not worried of private messages. It has been stated to be against the Rules.
If people want to break the rules, PM is much easier to use and can not be detected.
I have faith in people here being more civilized than that.
Re: Effulgence Mafia Game Thread
Would everybody know that the attack bounced from X? Or we just know that X didn't die that night (like the rest of us that didn't die that night)? I suppose some people with night actions might know that an attack bounced, but a killer who was planning to attack Y that night could write that they were planning to shield X.