Mini 1023 - City Watch Mafia - Game Over!

[Mysterio]

I, [recruit's name], do solemnly swear by [recruit's deity of choice] to uphold the Laws and Ordinances of the city of Ankh-Morpork, serve the public trust, and defend the subjects of His/Her [delete whichever is inappropriate] Majesty [name of reigning monarch] without fear, favour, or thought of personal safety; to pursue evil-doers and protect the innocent, laying down my life if necessary in the cause of said duty, so help me [aforesaid deity]. Gods Save the King/Queen [delete which is inappropriate].

[Mysterio]

Hi.

Also, my vote counts as two votes. @jimfinn YOU DUN GOOF'D

But I won't bring the hammer down with you at L-2.

Vote: TheButtonmen

Why are you so eager to wagon jimfinn? Using the wiki doesn't tell me anything except that he might be a little new.

[Mysterio]

@Mysterio - Do I look like Buttonmen to you or something? That vote is two kinds of fail wrapped in baclava...and I dislike baclava.

Eh, what? I'm referring to Buttonmen's following post:

Leading question into seeming change of opinion makes me all sad.

I would say that scum wants to increase the number of people on a wagon in order to create pressure on a player, in the hopes that they make an exploitable mistake, yet when that player flips town, they will note be blamed for the lynch. With seven to lynch, 3rd vote is not to blame, but starts the ball rolling (same could be said of 4th, I suppose).

EBWOPDTCOT: I would say that to get the ball rolling would be a reasonable thing for scum or town to say, and is thus a null-tell.

Please explain how Thor being the third vote is major scum tell yet getting the ball rolling is a null tell.

He seemed pretty eager to defend you against jimfinn's wiki strategy. Why did you assume my post was referring to you?

[Mysterio]

It was mostly due to his accusation that jimfinn was unreasonably changing his opinion. Coupled with his two posts defending Thor, it made me take note. So, I voted to pressure him.

[Mysterio]

Super sketchy.

Your comment at jimfinn is that he goofed up which reads to me like you know his aligment (goof'd as opposed to scummy).
Secondly since you stated a wilingness to vote Jimfinn then said you found my attack on him suspicious as he is obvnewb, explain the dissonance there?

Careful. You're skirting pretty close to OMGUS.

The comment toward jim was a joke. Notice how I mentioned my vote counts as double, and he was L-2. I could have brought the hammer if I were a huge douchebag, hence the joke. Thus, there is no dissonance. My suspicion of you is the only reason for voting. I would like you to explain why you thought jimfinn was changing his opinion unreasonably? And also why you felt the need to make multiple posts defending Thor?

Mysterio mind explaining?

Is this a serious question? Obviously, the mod isn't going to reveal my power in a vote count. Have you never played a game with someone who had a double vote?

[Mysterio]

I already explained where I felt Jimfinn displayed what I found to be a fair amount of cognative dissonance. Also mind quoting the multiple posts where I defended Thor?

That doesn't explain anything, considering you just linked the very same post that I cited to Thor. It seems to me jimfinn's post was in line with what he was arguing from the start, given his response in post #47. So, at this point I'm trying to understand what made you conclude that he was being unreasonable when he acknowledged that the reason for voting was a "null tell", but not the vote itself? Your answer will help me figure out what point of view you're approaching the game from.

Also, why do you need me to quote your own posts? Posts #39 and #46 which you linked earlier are the ones I'm referring to.

The mod isn't going to reveal your double voting power on the vote count?

Obviously, not. As that would have given away both my power and my RC. Also, there may be other reasons why the mod didn't add it to the vote count, and trying to outguess the mod is stupid.

I don't understand. If your vote actually counts double, it's the most logical thing to have it appear in a vote count. Unless my irony detector is off.

And, is the double vote the power of "CHARISN'TMA"? In which case Mysterio would be Cpl. Nobbs?

The bolded line answers the first line. And yes, I'm Corporal "Nobby" Nobbs. Don't stare at my boils, please.

so are you really claiming double-voter or is it some sort of joke? if it's a joke, stop it. if you are seriously claiming, explain why you would claim so early, I could see no reason to do so.

That part wasn't the joke. I am indeed a double-voter. And I claimed as a way to give town some valuable information, but also to see what reactions I could pull from the other players. There is a special "catch" to my power, but I'll reveal it after I gauge a few more reactions.

[Mysterio]

Well, I guess I don't need to hide it anymore. Yes, my power is only good for today. Tomorrow I will revert back to a VT. Hence me not really caring about claiming early, since getting NK would only mean that town lost a VT. However, the information and discussion that has taken place as a result of my claim should be valuable to town.

No one cc'd him, and I was assuming Col. Nobbs is town-sided.

But that

is

a good point.

Do you really expect a counterclaim this early? And Nobbs isn't exactly a pure character. In fact, he's

very

shifty in the stories. Why exactly do you assume that Nobbs would be town?

so you want to know my thoughts?

well tbh i got nothing but nulls right now.

How? At the very least, you should be suspicious of me. Do you honestly have nothing useful to contribute after all of this discussion?

[Mysterio]

I think it's pro-scum; why would Mysterio hammer the point home that he his a townie when no one was asking for a roleclaim?

I can't think of a single reason.

Why not? It doesn't mean someone is being scummy because they're doing something that you can't figure out. In what way does my RC hurt town? Once you answer that, then you can start making the case for me being scum. So far, my RC is 1) uncounterclaimed, 2) revealed the nature of the CHARISN'TMA power for today, which can give us clues to any future powers it might give, 3) tells us that the main characters of Discworld are in use, so if someone tries to fake claim a really obscure character to avoid counterclaims (assuming no fake claims were given by the mod), we can call them on it. Although, even if fake claims were given, it depends on how many main characters are used. There are only so many.

You're going to have to do a little better, KHG.

I think the only way massclaim helps town is if scum haven't been given fakeclaims. I haven't found a mod yet who doesn't give fake claims in theme games.

Even if the mod has given fake claims, you can still pigeon hole certain claims once the game gets moving. Most of the time, all town roles tend to have something obscure (or sometimes not so obscure) in common that we can usually use against the fake claims. I think this game would benefit from everyone RCing.

Unvote: TheButtonmen

Vote: jimfinn

to pressure for RC since he has the most votes on him.

[Mysterio]

Don't claim any powers. Just tell us who your character is. Once you do that, we move on to someone else. Once we get all RC's out, we can then look for any anomalies.

[Mysterio]

@Mysterio - could you link me to a Day 1 Massclaim where town gained useful information?

I haven't played many games on this site. But I could link you to a Narnia game I played on another site (you would have to register) where mass RC's helped win the game due to a large number of main characters being used. The fake claims were eventually pigeonholed and allowed town to win fairly easily. Obviously, I can't say for sure if the same will happen here, but it seems to me RCing has very few downsides for town, but very many downsides for scum.

[Mysterio]

I'm not referring to you claiming Cpl. Nobbs, I have no qualms about that, and your post above is absolutely correct. The bizarreness I was referring specifically to was in post #106, where you claimed vanilla townie:

Tomorrow I will revert back to a VT. Hence me not really caring about claiming early, since getting NK would only mean that town lost a VT.

I'd just like an explanation about why you wrote that. I'm not intending to be confrontational, that claim is just

Mysterio

us (ha) to me.

I see. That was intended for those worrying that I outed a power role that would be useful beyond just today. It would be quite different if I permanently had a double vote, since revealing that would have hurt town. But given the fact that my power is a one shot for today which scum can't do anything about, I'm making it clear that my RC/PC was indeed calculated.

I am fairly new to this site, but from what I got by looking trough old games, the vast majority of them is totally massclaim-proof... you are trying to outsmart the mod, that won't work... so, let's look at pros and cons of mass-claim:

pros:
basically nothing, since scum will have a way to protect themselves from being exposed (fake claim or something like that)
I doubt looking for main/secondary characters will help at all
the only pro I can think of is that it's more difficult for scum to come up with a good claim later in the game. But I think that's a risk we can take as such claims are usually easy to expose (and if they deviate from their fakeclaim they are likely going to be counteclaimed). And even if we massclaim, that would still be possible, since they could still invent abilities which are consistent with the role-name.

cons:
1. powerful town roles might get exposed. Assume e.g. someone claims Vetinari or Vimes, Scum would have a perfect NK-target and probably hit a town-PR.
2. I assume that every day someone gets an ability, if we claim roles, scum would always know who has which abilities, that would definitely hurt town.

well, I think it's kinda obvious we should NOT massclaim...

I certainly concede that games could be played very differently here. Each site you play this game in has different quirks that make the game progress very differently. But to address your points:

Pros:
All fake claims can be analyzed for their veracity when compared to other role claims. You could have a fake claim that was not too obscure and uncounterclaimed, but you can still pick out things that don't fit if indeed all town roles have some attribute in common. I agree that outguessing the mod is stupid, but my point is it doesn't matter what the mod has done. Mass RCing can give us clues as to which characters are most likely town, and make it much harder for scum to hid behind the unknown of not knowing what characters are in use. Especially in theme games where there are "main characters" and every other character, that is the easiest way of picking out anomalies.

Cons:
There is certainly the issue of inadvertantly outing a power role if someone was assigned a huge character like Vimes or Vetinari, and that's one of the downsides for town I mentioned. But we still don't know the mechanics of the power roles, such as the existence of protective roles or self-saves. And neither will scum, so even if someone is pressured into revealing their role as Vimes for example, there's no guarantee at all that he will be night killed. And we still get the benefit of knowing that huge characters are in play, which makes it even harder for scum to hide.

[Mysterio]

Yes, mass RCing does assume that the flavor plays a role in the game. I've never been in a theme game where the flavor meant nothing, but perhaps that's how things are done here. Obviously, if the majority do not agree, then it's pointless for me to try and pressure jimfinn. And with so many votes on him, scum could jump in and hammer. So, I'll

Unvote: jimfinn

.

Here's my question, if we don't go the route of analyzing RC's to find scum, then where do you suggest we proceed?

[Mysterio]

I can't believe we have to argue about this...

I really can't believe you believe what you are saying... translation:
"well, who cares if we out a huge power role, since there might be a doctor to protect it. And even the PR dies, well, at least we know it was there."
this is total nonsense...
just because something is

possible

(the PR not being NK'ed), it doesn't mean it is

probable

. In fact, I think the probability that an outed PR won't live long is really high and is definitely not worth the minimal benefit you

maybe

get out of the mass-claim.

you either are incredibly stupid or you are scum (or both).
in both cases I don't want you in the endgame...
UNVOTE:
VOTE: Mysterio

Your overreaction is quite telling. If indeed a PR is lost (this assumes a bunch of things that would not be revealed by RCing), but we gain information on scum that narrows the field down, then what have we really lost? Your reaction seems like an obvious attempt to sound pro-town, while at the same time avoiding a tactic that could make it harder for scum to blend in. PR's are not to be protected at all costs, which your overreaction seems to suggest.

[Mysterio]

With so many votes on jim? When you posted this, jim had 3 players voting him.

How could scum "jump in and hammer"? I think you're just trying to find an excuse to unvote him and keep your vote open.

With my vote, it would have been essentially 5 players voting for him, putting him at L-2 with 7 other players who could have jumped on the bandwagon.

Anyway, my lynch seems inevitable, so when I flip town, be sure to note the one's who were most eager to get me out of the way: Tasky and KHG, with Narsis pretty much contributing nothing the entire game and then comes back to immediately jump on the bandwagon forming on me.

[Mysterio]

@Mysterio:

Twice now you have used "information and discussion that has taken place as a result of my claim should" as a reason for your claims, mind explaining what information you got from them and anaylising some of the relevant discussion?

We never really got a chance to get some reactions to my claim, but that's essentially what I was going for. It also occurred to me that RCing could be a really good way of boxing in scum and forcing them to have to fake claim, and just by doing that we would be limiting their ability to blend in. But no one agreed with that. However, all is not lost. As I said, there were a couple people who were insistent on lynching me, as well as Narsis who very obviously just jumped on the bandwagon. So, even if I do get lynched, that's some valuable information right there.

[Mysterio]

I didn't ask about mass role claiming, please answer the question I asked.

Eh, what?

We never really got a chance to get some reactions to my claim, but that's essentially what I was going for.

The very first sentence of my post. Not sure how that was missed. Reactions to claims can be invaluable, since scum usually react in two extreme ways:

1. They either completely believe the claim and never bother to be at all suspicious about it (when they arguably shouldn't know what my alignment is).

2. They overreact and flip out, trying too hard to sound pro-town.

But as I said, we didn't get much of a chance to flesh these reactions out before the discussion switched to RCing.

[Mysterio]

Well, I'm still here. I might as well go back to work.

@Mystery:

You already claimed to have gotten reactions / discussion.

Yes, if you didn't notice, right after I claimed we had two pages of discussion about it, which I think finally took the game out of RVS. But it switched to RCing before those reactions could be fleshed out. However, since my last post, discussion has started up again.


Narsis is obviously jumping on the bandwagon. Even after being pressed, he has failed to give any reasoning for his vote on me. In post #197, he simply repeats yet again that he found me to be more scummy than anyone else. He's clearly appealing to the consensus that built up against me without bothering to actually explain his vote at all. There is also VasudeVa who is also bandwagoning. He jumped on the bandwagon against me, but then switched his vote to Narsis without explaining it at all. He then admits to wanting a bandwagon to form against Narsis in post #186. Not sure how much more transparent that vote could possibly be. You also have to wonder why he decided to vote for me, if he was simply going to change his vote to someone else when I was at L-1.

Putting a vote on Narsis would put him at L-1, so rather than do that I will

FoS: Narsis

. Please give us a clear explanation as to why you think I should be lynched.

@VasudeVa Why did you vote for me in the first place? Do you still think I'm scummy?

VOTE COUNT

Mysterio (5): KHG, Tasky, Narsis, jimfinn, FakeGod
Narsis (4): Plum, Budja, VasudeVa, Thor665
jimfinn (1): Chronopie
VasudeVa (1): TheButtonmen

Not Voting (1): Mysterio

With 12 alive, 7 votes are needed to lynch.

[Mysterio]

I was voting for you, and now Narsis, in order to gather information about your alignment. Some pressure is needed to properly squeeze out a player's alignment, and I've been abusing my vote for that purpose.

Fair enough.

Bandwagoning is a legitimate strategy D1 as it is a good way to gather information. There is a way to differentiate scum-bandwagoning from Town-wagoning but that's a story for another day~

Please elaborate. What makes your bandwagoning pro-town as opposed to anti-town?

Query: Do you have any idea why you were chosen for your power?

Too early to tell.

Non-game but flavor related questions: Is this City Watch thing a good read? What's so good about it? *looking for stuff to read*

Don't want to get too sidetracked, so I'll just say I highly recommend the

Discworld

series.

[Mysterio]

@Mysterio: I'm still waiting for an explanation of your opinions regarding D1 massclaims. Please do so, or I will not move my vote.

No clue what you're referring to here. Are you asking why I think massclaiming could help? If so, just look back at my previous posts on the subject.

@VasudeVa You never gave an explanation as to why your bandwagoning was pro-town.

@KHG Now you've unvoted me and are jumping on the Narsis wagon. What about my previous scumminess has changed?

Narsis' response to me is consistent. He didn't find my early claim to be especially scummy, but found my opinion on mass claiming to be scummy and so he voted. That is a much better reason for voting someone than what either KHG or VasudeVa have posted.

Mysterio, please take a stance! do you think bandwagoning is scummy or not?

first you say Narsis jumping on your wagon is scummy.
then you say VasudeVa is scummy for jumping on your wagon.
then you say VasudeVa is scummy for jumping on Narsis' wagon.
And then YOU jump on Narsis' wagon

(even if you didn't vote, I still consider your attack a bandwagonjump).

This is weak. Suspecting someone is NOT the same as bandwagoning. Narsis jumping on the wagon that formed on me without much explanation, so I pressured him. There is a difference between what I did and what VasudeVa or KHG are doing. And as you grudgingly admitted, I didn't even vote for him. To make it clear, I think bandwagoning is scummy. Which is why I'm still waiting for VasudeVa to explain how his bandwagoning is helpful to town.

[Mysterio]

@mod I will be V/LA until Wednesday.

I'll post my thoughts when I get back.

Noted.

[Mysterio]

Tasky's posts make little sense to me. He just got finished laying out why I was scummy, but then switches his vote to KHG...why? Because the bandwagon on me died out? Now I'm only suspicious and not scummy? Either you're backtracking and don't think your reasons against me are that strong (but still want to quietly keep me under suspicion), or you're simply opportunistically jumping on the KHG wagon.

As for KHG, he claims to have changed his mind due to subsequent posts I made, but has failed time and time again to actually cite any examples or give any concrete reasons for unvoting. He's since been on the defensive and hasn't really done any scumhunting, which is suspicious in and of itself, but not altogether his fault. He been getting peppered with questions by numerous people, and so he has naturally switched into defense mode. @KHG, let me ask you what specifically about my posts caused you to unvote me? Don't give me the generic "your posts seemed pro-town", actually cite a specific example.

I would like to see a response from Tasky and KHG before placing my vote.

[Mysterio]

Both Tasky's and KHG's responses were weak. Tasky essentially admits to opportunistically jumping on the KHG wagon, since he knows he can't get a lynch on me. And KHG cites posts that previously made me suspicious to him, but suddenly makes me look pro-town. Both are scummy, but KHG especially. Plus, your claim is one that I would consider to be a "safe" fake claim given to scum, since there are much bigger characters to choose from.

No reason to delay any further...

Vote: KHG

[Mysterio]

Hab! Good luck, townies.