Quiet evening, hmm?
I've already gone into a lot of detail on a variety of things.
What do you want me to do?
I like the why's behind the questions, mostly. Your main or starter batch of RVS questions looked to be icebreakers/playstyle inquiries/light rolefishing, but I'd like to imagine there's something a bit deeper behind at least a couple of them if you're very interested in the responses, yeah? If these are things you can or are willing to share, that'd be nice.
I don't plan anything in advance so there's probably a lot less thought in these questions than you may think.
That said:
roo
hapah for his contrived entrance instead of tbf for his robust entrance.
What about his entrance was contrived?
Legitimately a straightforward and honest question. No strings attached.
roo is my top townpick.
TheBiggerFish
It's 3 man lylo. You're the last mafia, with two unclaimed players. The cop is dead, but nobody has seen the jailkeeper. Do you claim a role? What role do you claim?
I wanted to see if he'd actually think this through. He didn't. Instead, he asked questions.
This is actually a really illustrative point for why TBF's play is bad. The questions he asks here are extremely basic yes/no type questions. If I answered all these questions I would be left with a one word result, with no reasoning or justification made.
Instead, a player such as 4maskwolf would be expected to answer a question like this by
addressing each of these possibilities. In doing this, he would go through a rigorous technical thought process within the context of the present mafia game, and if he annotated his varied thoughts and impressions therein he should be able to produce a short document outlining in part his feeling and state of play for the outset of this game; in other words, it would leak in some small part his role (actually, the information he has, but really that's just his role and maybe some of his reads).
If I went back and did meta-analysis of his past posts, I could probably divine TBF's present alignment. I'm not going to, though, because I'm voting for
town TBF so I don't have to expend any resources in an exotic way to try to influence his vote.
Also, there's a 2/9 chance that he's scum (1/4 or w/e if you want to play it by eye) so I really don't give a shit.
Hapah
It's Day2. A scum player was lynched D1. A single player claims cop D2. Are they the cop? When would it be acceptable to lynch them? Do you pay any attention to their reports?
This was technical meta-fishing. That is, I wanted to get an idea of your meta, and be able to base future actions on that. In particular, I didn't remember you as a technical player so I asked about a technical situation. I hadn't thought the odds through before asking this, and only did so when I saw your (strong) response. I say your response is strong because it was emphatic; there is no 'good' or 'bad' in a question like this, though heartfelt feeling always feels like town.
As it stands, this told me quite a lot. In particular, I feel like your role should become obvious to me throughout the course of the game; for this reason, you're a top choice for me to bring into lylo if I can.
Johiah
It's Day1. The player being lynched claims cop. Do you change your vote?
Two reasons for asking this. The first is that it's an easy test of temperament, to see how much he's thought about the game of mafia and whether or not he should engage in the voting dance that is
the mating call of the modern penguin characteristic of WIFOM, and to see if anyone would call me out for testing the waters with usable hypotheticals (i.e. something I could take advantage of were I scum).
Ironically, Johiah is playing like lazy, bad town. It's possible he's newscum and just needs a player like Leafsnail or whoever to tell him that having three (now four, thanks wuba) votes on him is
scary oooo~oooh but probably not.
He has most of TBF's problems going for him and a worse attitude though, so I don't really care.
Gentelfish
It's Day1. I claim Jailkeeper out of the blue. You are the Jailkeeper. Do you say anything?
I asked this
in lieu of claiming jailkeeper. I avoided the usual dance of RVS fakeclaims because town was struggling to get active as it was and there was no call for leaving actually cold trails for the few posts that there were to follow, since the actual
volume of activity seemed limited by meta concerns.
Gentlefish is pretty easy to place as scum. That's not to say that he's overly scummy, just that his play fits the pattern. That is to say,
he is active, and so has had the chance to actually make mistakes (as it were). I'm making it easy for myself to say that I want to lynch him because I expect to want to pressure him tomorrow.
Doubloon-Seven
It's Day2. You are the cop, but the player you inspected last night died. Another player claims cop in the thread D2, with an innocent result on a third, unrelated player. Do you counterclaim?
Pretty much the standard WIFOM question, almost as common as Web's own.
My limited sight of his posts on B12 told me that he was unlikely to be highly active and could be easily scared off. I really wanted to be gentle here (in comparison to, say Hapah or 4maskwolf) because I expected that RVS could actually echo through the quality of his play.
As it stands, his answer led itself poorly to being read, though there was nothing wrong with it.
He was basically the most stock standard new/bad town you can get. He didn't freeze up, but nobody bullied him so there's no real comment to make on whether or not he was scum.
Webadict
If you could daykill me specifically right now, would you?
In parts a legitimate question, though one that Webadict answered elsewhere in the thread (the answer, as it so happens, was no).
Fundamentally a question about whether the weba would go for a probabilistic advantage over game engagement.
This has been pretty well answered by his other posts.
Webadict has done a lot of work to keep things moving and bring in stray members of the flock. A lot of the Jim Groovester style bullying has been taken up by myself, so in many ways his daygame has changed to be more nurturing and motherly.
You'll notice that I'm not commenting on his alignment. He deliberately town-slipped and pointed it out. Discussing whether or not to lynch Webadict comes down mostly to WIFOM and mechanics. I have more notes written down (in my private quicktopic ooh la-la) on webadict's play than on every other player combined
and not one of them mentions his alignment. It's not that he can't be read, but that I don't want to
commit to a read
because I wouldn't be able to justify it. This means, in particular, that my perception of his alignment is more fluid and so doesn't really factor into how I play around him, because at this stage
his play does benefit the town, so I have no interest in lynching him (today).
4maskwolf
As you can see, I am rolefishing.
What's your role this game?
4maskwolf is a technical player who I have trapped in the horrible filthy webs of my innocent Day 1 plans, both here and elsewhere.
Fundamentally the best outcome here would have been for 4maskwolf to attack me, but he knew that and he didn't. Answering the question as he did was shocking basic, and very cut and dry town, which leads me to believe that he may be scum.
I've got him written down as "probably scum" in my private notes. He's my top scumpick. He
really needs to get aggressive if he wants to shake the evil eye that I'm starting to point at him. As it stands, I've forced him back into a defensive posture, and it's establishing a pattern of selfish and unhelpful behavior that I can catch him on at a later date. Hell, I could catch him on it now,
but I don't need to. It's there. Everyone's seen it. Anyone who wants to make a case on 4maskwolf can easily do so. I will, eventually, but for now I may as well build one; starting with the foundations i.e. baiting out his posts. If he can switch around and look like town in the interim, so much the better.
Tiruin
Are scum going to win this game?
I was waiting for Tiruin's supposed wall of text (failing to deliver; I guess Tiruin really is scum this game), and trying to see if I could get a nod out. Both that and this should serve to sort of create a false undermining of my D1 position, which helps dodge the N1 scumkill and draw the D1 falselynch, both of which are things that I want to do.
doll
Sort of a soft fakeclaim in that it's explicitly anti-town, but irrelevant, behavior. Not really picked up on, which says a lot about a lot of players styles that they are bringing to the game.
Actually pretty useful, but only in the corners of the eye.
Also, I'm town, so that's fun too.
Meta: It's been a while, but what's the policy on lynching folk that are up for replacement? I'd love to just get a replacement, but is leaving a zombie going into the second day a good idea? What's the precedent for this sort of thing?
I'm a big replacement lyncher myself, but it hardly matters this game since the forum has a lot of players and a few (of) games at the moment, hence why this was filled so quickly.
Replacements don't really get lynched that much, though, as far as I'm aware. I think that Tiruin has become such a part of the meta that a lot of things have 'softened' and mellowed out in this regard, such as in this case of apparent kindness or at least lacking savagery.
doll
Hapah
It's Day2. A scum player was lynched D1. A single player claims cop D2. Are they the cop? When would it be acceptable to lynch them? Do you pay any attention to their reports?
I think you almost have to believe him at that point, in a semiclosed game like this. I mean, that would be a bold going on foolish scumclaim: I looked at the role possibilities and two out of the three have an actual cop, right? If you fakeclaim cop as scum D2 and the real cop claims, one of you is gonna get lynched day 2 no question. And good luck talking your way out of that when you claimed Cop and the real one flips. I guess a vanilla townie could claim Cop, but I don't see what they could gain out of it (and it seems like an anti-town move).
Well lucky I'm not scum then because you'd have been fucked.
In games where scum are not blocked, they are statistically likely to be correct in assuming there is no cop (there is literally a better than 50% chance that either they find the cop or there was no cop).
Clearing a mafscum is auto-loss for the town.
Also, the cop will never flip in this game. Mafia 100% have a role-cop. That means that after N1, mafia can kill the player they inspected last night. If that lets mafia close out the victory, then that's what they'll do.
That said, it was a good answer, and it told me a lot.
I've been chewing on this all morning and can't come to the same conclusion no matter how I bend it. The bits the confuse me are bolded for emphasis, can you comment? It's a bit into the weeds but I am genuinely interested.
Re "Moving your vote is a towntell" - Oh yeah, I vaguely remember NQT starting that up. Interesting that it's still holding up after all this time.
1) Ignoring the Jailkeeper, mafia have a 5/9 chance of either detecting the cop if he is here via kill or inspect (and so not claiming in such a way), or being in a game without a cop if a town player is lynched first thing. This is what I was referring to (I incorrectly thought this was 11/21 at that time).
2) Ignoring the Jailkeeper, a lone mafia rolecop has a 11/21 chance of either detecting the cop if he is here via kill or inspect (and so not claiming in such a way), or being in a game without a cop if the vanilla scum player is lynched first thing. This is substantially better than his likely chance of success in winning the game after a Day1 scumlynch.
3) Taking the Jailkeeper into account increases scum's chances in this regard (since they by definition can bail if he interferes so he can't have a negative influence on optimal scum play with regards to this early D2 fake-claim), so he adjusts the numbers in their favor (since detecting the Jailkeeper lowers the chance that there is a cop in the setup, as it were). I'm too lazy to run the numbers since he makes it complex and I'd need to do a lot of special cases but basically his being in the list isn't bad for scum with regards to this strategy.
Mafia who have inspected a player successfully can just kill that player, and so be sure that they are not outing the cop. By repeating this each night (killing the previous inspect result) mafia can know what will flip before they kill it. This will, however, reduce their total knowledge of players roles. If they need to do this in order to keep a fake cop alive, though, they will do it since getting a justifiable fake cop to lylo can easily close out the game for the scum.
The underlying logic of why moving your vote is a towntell is pretty obvious and solid, so it's not that surprising. It's nice to be able to point it out with such a documented history, though.