Newbie 655: Zeroville. (Game Over!)

[MichelSableheart]

I have received and read my role pm, and I fully understand my role.

Hello everyone, hope this will be a fun game.

[MichelSableheart]

As M4yhem mentioned, I'm the other IC in this game.

And unfortunately, I have to disagree with him immediately. In my opinion, a game does not need to have random votes. Votes that are actually based on reasoning, however weak, work better for starting the discussion. If something in the way a player confirmed caught your attention, vote for that rather then just picking a player from the playerlist and vote random.

At the moment, however, I think I can start discussion without voting.

The Pope's Tiara, you voted WhereIsTony because he random voted. J_Slr also made a random vote. Was there a particular reason why you didn't vote J_Slr?

Syphen, you are aware that your vote is the third on WhereIsTony, when five votes means a lynch? Do you think there is a risk of a quicklynch (two more players putting their votes on WhereIsTony in quick succession, ending the day before we had a chance to properly discuss)?

A simple list to keep track of the votes should be enough, JonMW. There are several possible ways to count the votes. The official vote counts usually only show the current count. You could also include a voting history if you wanted to.

This is the (unofficial) votecount thus far:
WhereIsTony 3 (JonMW, The Pope's Tiara, Syphen)
JonMW 0
J_Slr 0 (

M4yhem

)
Yuu 0
Syphen 0
The Pope's Tiara 2 (WhereIsTony, M4yhem)
hohum 0
M4yhem 0
MichelSableheart 1 (J_Slr)

not voting 3 (Yuu, hohum, MichelSableheart)

[MichelSableheart]

Michel- I have never been able to find mafia by the way people confirm. That's some impressive scumhunting abilities you have there.

It's extremely rare to actually find mafia through confirmations. All I'm saying is that votes based on weak tells (which can be found in confirmations) do a better job of starting discussion then completely random votes do.

You wouldn't want to vote off a cop, would you? I mean, we don't know what anyone is, and my user name is p. cool.

Don't discuss town power roles unless you have an extremely good reason. Otherwise, you're just helping the mafia find them.

Why not go for someone who isn't playing? If we vote for the unconfirmed night (regardless of what he is), it will make no difference. He isn't playing anyway.

When you play Soduko, you need a few placed tiles to give you some basic guessing. When you play minesweeper, you need to click that first tile. When you're solving a cryptogram (for all you oldies), you need a hint to the first letter (I guess). Someone has to go or die, so I say it be the guy that isn't playing.

This is a misconception that many newbie players seem to have, and one that is easily abused by scum. There is a lot of information available even if noone has died yet. Who is voting who, and why? How do people react to certain statements? Who is being defended by who? Based on that information, it is possible to lynch scum with a higher certainty then random. If we just lynch someone randomly, we give up that chance to catch scum.

Besides, as M4yhem said, if he doesn't post, he'll be replaced. Let the mod take care of inactives.

Wow, you're taking this very seriously. The main reason I recommended him was because he wasn't me.

The main reason you should be recommending someone is because you believe they are scum. Any other reason to lynch will just give scum better chance for survival.

Hi there! I'm unsure of what to do myself, being first game and all. So I wonder if it's okay just to watch people discuss a little more before deciding on who to vote, or is this an action frowned upon?

That action is most definately frowned upon. If you don't post, don't give your opinion, you make it much more difficult for us to see if you are town or scum. Because of this, not posting (or not posting content) on purpose (as opposed to not posting because you simply aren't there) is considered a scumtell, because only scum benefit from the fact that they are unreadable. Town will want the other players to get the correct read on them, because this means there is a better chance to actually find scum.

The previous may sound like a contradiction with what I said to The Pope's Tiara. For clarity, here is a summary of my points.

• If someone is inactive, doesn't log on to the site, and doesn't post because of that, he will eventually be replaced. It is better to wait for that replacement to happen and base your read on that player on the behaviour of that replacement, then to lynch him without knowing anything at all.
• On the other hand, if a player is not posting because he wants to make it difficult to be read, he'll post just enough to avoid being replaced. In that situation, the fact that the player isn't posting does give us information, and that information may be reason enough to lynch.

[MichelSableheart]

I personally think it's still a bit early to call Syphen an active lurker. The game hasn't been going for that long.

The Pope's Tiara, there is a serious flaw in your plan to no lynch in order to get information. Assume for a moment we have no power roles whatsoever (which has, ignoring information players have gotten from their rolepm, a 25 % chance of happening). Not lynching in that case will allow the mafia to kill a player, leaving eight players alive. If there are lynches and nightkills each day and night after that, we must hit mafia in either of our next two lynches, or there will be two townies vs two mafiosi, resulting in a mafia win. Right now, if there are no powerroles, we have 3 chances to hit a mafiamember before we have lost. No lynching in that scenario would simply cost us an attempt to lynch mafia. And even if we do have powerroles, the situation isn't much better. A doctor is unlikely to receive information (the chance of a succesful protect is pretty low), and a cop may be nightkilled or have his target nightkilled. And if we have both a cop and doctor, the cop may be blocked too. Basically, if we vote no lynch, we give up a lynch for too little gain.

[MichelSableheart]

But wasn't the other person's argument that by not lynching the mafia will kill a townie, thus making it harder for the townies to get enough votes to successfully carry out lynches against the mafia (seeing as how they would work together)?

Maybe it's just a difference of opinion that I'm caught in the middle of, but the two schools of thoughts on why we need to lynch seem rather contradictory to me.

No, that wasn't my argument. My argument was about the number of lynches we have. Each lynch is a chance to hit mafia. If we lynch today, we can lynch a total of two times before we are in lynch or lose (Lylo for short). If we don't lynch today, we only have a single lynch before we are in Lylo.

Michel, what do you think of Jon?

Why should I focus on Jon in particular? I think evaluating all players will give even more info. Note that these are still based on info from the early game, and therefore far from final.

• JonMW - He posts relatively often. However, especially in his early posts, he seemed to base his votes on feelings, which he simply didn't argue about. To remove his first serious vote based solely on a bit of pressure from M4yhem seems strange. His attack on Syphen was better thought out. To summarize, possible scum, but no strong feelings.
  
• J_Slr - Active, participating, contributing. Town for now. On a completely unrelated note: I really dislike that avatar.
  
• M4yhem - Active, and a good IC. Hasn't given incorrect advice yet, nor has he been pushing on wrong reasons. Took on a leader role, but that isn't a bad thing. Town fibe for now.
  
• MichelSableheart - I won't vote for MichelSableheart at any point during this game. But my opinion on him isn't really relevant, you'll be the ones judging him.
  
• somedamnkid - I like the posts he made. They seem well thought out, and there are some good observations there. He didn't post a lot, but what he did makes me believe he's town.
  
• Syphen - Few posts when compared to the other players, and his posts don't have a lot of content either. The lurker accusations seem justified, but he does seem to try to contribute, and there is still time for him to improve.
  
• The Pope's Tiara - TPT gives me extreme newbie vibes. Speculating on a cop, attacking the inactive, arguing in favour of a random lynch, arguing in favour of a no lynch... His behaviour favours scum, but they are all mistakes a newbie is likely to make. However, he did know the term Chainsaw defense (though not it's meaning) indicating that he possibly has more experience then he shows. There are reasons for suspicion here.
  
• WhereIsTony - Very little content for the number of posts he made. He posts a lot of one-liners and QFT's. I would say that he is in fact more guilty of lurking then Syphen.
  
• Yuu - Seems to keep a bit of a low profile, but he participates, scumhunts and is saying sensible things. No strong read either way.

Vote: WhereIsTony

[MichelSableheart]

First of all, I must apologize. With my (holiday) workday eating a large amount of my spare time, and delivering newspapers and dinner cutting that spare time down further, I'm having a hard time being online long enough to read this thread and write a good post. The past couple of days have been an extreme case of this, however, and I'll try to post more regulary in the future.

This post is probably rather egocentric. I'm responding to things jumping out to me, and posts mentioning me are simply more likely to jump out.

M4yhem votes for Tiara, claiming that this is motivated by the "random voting" stage in the game. Take note that Michel - who may have more or less experience than M4yhem (wiki turned up nothing on him) - disagrees with him on this point. Perhaps M4yhem was lying to us? Perhaps Michel was. MAybe one of them is simply wrong, or maybe one of them is taking advantage on us being newbies - we do not know how the game is played.

Peculiar suggestions you're making there, especially if you look at what was being said. M4yhem claimed that random votes are a good way to start conversation. This is indeed the reason that most games on MS start with a random voting stage. I personally believe that it is much more useful to start conversation on topics that can actually be discussed, with reasoning that can be disagreed with.
However, I really don't understand why this disagreement between us automatically would mean that one of us is wrong, or worse, actually giving bad advice on purpose. As an IC, we are here to guide you through your first (or one of your first) games. Giving bad strategic advice or simply lying about how the site works is never part of how a good IC (which I hope I am) plays.
Also, if you click the wiki button at the bottom of my post, you should be taken to my wiki page. There is a bit of information on me to be found there.

Nobody wants to clearly identify themselves wither way - someone who appears to be mafia is going to be lynched. Someone who is accepted as a townie is sure to be NKed, because they increases the chance that a townie will be lynched on all following days.

Sorry, but I believe this is incorrect. Townies should always try to appear as townie as possible. Sure, that means you'll risk being nightkilled, however, the mafia is going to try to nightkill a townie anyway. If all townies try to act in a way that's best for town, is a lot more difficult for mafia to further their own interest without being detected.

Any game is better than no game, so I'll kick this along a bit, repercussions be damned. Can it simply be understood that this action is not motivated by trying to find scum, just to further the game itself?

If you want to see some new action in the game, please try to open a new avenue of discussion. Trying to reach a lynch simply for the purpose of reaching a lynch is never a good move for a townie, because such a lynch would be worse then random (the scum have influenced it after all), whereas town can do better then random by paying close attention to the information available in players reactions. Your immediate unvote was definately the correct move there.

Since my last post, WhereIsTony has started to contribute more, removing my main reason of suspicion for him.

Unvote

. I'll need to take a much more thorough look at the thread to make a well informed vote or scumlist at the moment though. My last post is a bit outdated.

As for Syphen, if we all think he's scum we have four options:
1. Lynch him right away. Probably not a good idea because there's a chance he might be a powerrole. It's best to have him claim and defend himself.
2. Wait eight days.
3. Give him a free pass for today and try to lynch his partner
4. Beg the mod for a replacement.

option 2 is by far the most desirable there. A replacement really bogs the game down, and is not worth the trouble if you know that the disappeared player will return after a small amount of time. Giving him a free pass also feels pretty awkward: it would make dissappearing on purpose a valid strategy for scum, which should, in my opinion, never happen. Winning the game by confusing all other players is perfectly fine, but winning the game by simply not being there should never be acceptable. If we are convinced that he is scum (which I am not, at the moment, BTW), we could lynch him immediately, but it's more polite to wait till he returns.

do you agree that your play is 'cold and lifeless'? What is the main difference between your scum play and your town play?

I am not a very passionate player, usually relying on logic rather then gut to find the scum. I try to think things through before posting, checking and doublechecking the facts. Besides that, I have invested less time into this game then I would have liked. The description 'cold and lifeless' is probably justified because of that.
As for your second question: the main difference is that, when I'm town, I try to find scum, whereas I only act as if I try to find scum when I'm actually scum. I can't really get more specific then that, because I try to remove any obvious discrepancies between my town and scum play by altering my scum play to look more like my town play does.
If you want to get a feeling for the two, it's probably better to try a meta-read if you have the time. All games I have ever played are listed in my wiki page.

question for IC's how long does a first day usually take.

This varies depending on the activity and determinedness of the players and the leniency of the mod. For normal MS games, about a month.