Mini 456: Ultimatum Mafia - Game Over!

[mneme]

Good morning!

This isn't mafia, but should be interesting anyway.

Suggestion: We can't do normal voting bandwagons in this game (there are no "votes" until a challenge has occured), but the hard information gained from bandwagons is still crucial.

Instead of milling around, why don't we informally "nominate" people to challenge? Unless this is terminated by deadline or by someone breaking the process, if we can get a majority "nominate" bandwagon on someone, we can force them to challenge (or be challenged by someone on the bandwagon). And in the meanwhile, we get useful info!

Of course, we don't have much time -- just four days between now and the possible deadline, so we have to work fast!

Thougthts?

[mneme]

Stoofer: your idea is interesting, but it provides no controls against unsubstantive lurking -- in fact, it provides NOTHING FOR US TO POST ABOUT AT ALL!

While if no useful bandwagon has emerged by deadline time, it's entirely reasonable to let the mechanical rule kick in, it's very important that we have something to talk about and where the discussion can go. On a discoursive level, the conversation -must- end up being about more than two people, and not a pure lurker kill -- otherwise, we'll get next to no information out of every day. Since the only advantage the information-less 6 have against the informed sets of 3 is that the scum -must- work together (and thus give up info) to have a better than average chance of winning, our best approach to winning is to produce more info every day, not less. This does mean any challenge without consensus or majority is majorly anti-town (and I, for one, will happily vote against any early challenger who destroys our day this way).

(Fonz: exactly)

nominate: Stoofer

for trying to restrict debate in this way.

[mneme]

unnom
nominate: Carrotcake (come play!)

Given that we've already got a lurker controls, and as players we are quite capable of punishing lurkers on our own, why build a limit our system that removes some of its teeth?

Possibility 1: whoever's nominated gets to challenge whoever they think is most suspicous. Keeps things interesting. If this is a lurker, so be it.

As a contrary idea, if we can manage it, why not run two bandwagons -- Challenger and Challengee, or just let people have two live nominations at once, or combine the idea, and let people nominate two people and have one "challenger" among them at a time? We don't want it ambiguous who's got the onus to challenge! The winner of one of them must challenge the other (at which point, we talk about things and vote one of them off), or be challenged and more or less automatnically lose the challenge.

If we can avoid apathy, it seems like the double-bandwagon idea gives us the most info we can possibly get during the day.

[mneme]

Bah. I nominated Carotcake not realizing that she'd posted (and, in fact, nominated me).

Random will do. I'm going to follow my v2 suggestion, since it seems simple enough. Nominate the two people you want to fight; if you want, mention which one should be the challenger. Explictly unnom; if we can get a majority on two, force (ish) the one of the two with the most "challenger" noms to challenge the other one.

I'm going random -- The people without even vaguely substantive contributions so far are:
Late to the party: DanMonkey, DeanWinchester,VanDamien
Only useless posts: dylan41985, Spinwizard

Sparks has had only one, very short post, but it contains a vote (never mind that votes don't matter at this stage), so I'm leaving him off the list.

Original Roll String: 1d5

1 5-Sided Dice: (2) = 2

Original Roll String: 1d4

1 4-Sided Dice: (4) = 4

[mneme]

unnom: all
nom: Spinwizard (challenger)
nom: Vandamien

[mneme]

Oh, and Nom Count! (curse me for not being able to count to 25...)

Mneme 2 (Carrotcake, Stoofer)
Stoofer 1 (Sparks)
Spinwizard 1: (Mneme)
Van Damien 1: (mneme(2nd))

[mneme]

The scum don't want to either offer or receive challenges -- as both give scum a chance of dying that staying out of the limelight Van Damien's post is nonsensical. I don't know that it's scummy, but I'm happy enough with my vote anyway.

The single bandwagon is idea is that we make them be the challenger -- this lets us make a fairly decent run-off based on who they point to. Their challenge can go either way, but if the winner -refuses- to challenge, the town's best recourse is to have someone challenge them and lynch them like the scum they probably are.

I actually mildly prefer the double-bandwagon approach -- but as long as people are clear on their "first" votes and their second ones, both approaches can be used in harmony, so it's all good.

For those who get it -- the point of the bandwagon is partially to let the town get a better say in who challenges who, rather than have it be entirely random. But the primary point is in fact to let us get more info each day than what people thought of two players, one of whom was now dead. With luck and good play, we'd get people's opinions on a lot of other players each day -- which should make it posisble to play mafia, not just survivor, even with these wacky rules.

Sorry about missing your nom, stewie, I'd missed it in the shuffle.

[mneme]

Yosarian's analysis/explication is a good one. The very idea that in trying to manipulate the town, the mafia won't give us about as much info as they get advantage is ludicrous (and in any case, they get to do the same thing with random challenges, only we get to pay much more for it (<50% of a townie dying) then.

That said, several of Dean's slips make me think he's scum -- clueless scum, but scum none the less.

And Stoofer, your last proposal pretty much matches mine, aside from a couple of very minor points:

1. How the challenger is chosen. Why not this:the challenger may wait until right before the forced challenge unless a majority challengee is chosen. If both majorities are reached, they should challenge the chalengee.
The distinction is in fact entirely one of order -- the first candidate to reach majority is the challenger, the second, if any, is the challengee.

2. How to proceed if no challengee is chosen, or if the challenger refuses to challenge. I can go either way on this. Simply having one of the bandwagoners challenge simplifies things a bit -- otherwise, you need multiple levels of enforcement. OTOH, it sets a deadline appropriately to default to the base rules. It mostly doesn't matter -- in a way, a majority nominating someone as candidate is equivalent to declaring them outlaw -- anyone can challenge them and expect to win (which is what gives the nomination system its teeth -- since people who vote contrary to their last expressed nomination are fairly likely to have been bussing a fellow scum).

unnom: spin
nom:

[mneme]

unnom: spin
nom:

doh! Left this in, and neither removed it nor completed it.

unnom: spin
nom: dean winchester (challenger)

Nomination Count!

(and hopefully I won't cock it up this time).

dylan: 2 (Yosarian2)
Van Damien: 2 (mneme(2nd), Stoofer)
Mneme: 1 (Carrotcake)
Stoofer: 1 (Sparks)
Stewie: 1 (Dan Monkey)
DeanWinchester: 4 (Fonz,Stoofer, dylan, stewie)

[mneme]

I'm pretty sure it means "please! Don't kill my buddies! They're whining at me in chat!" (I don't know, but I've surmised that since this game has no nights and the mod talked about needing to check with the scum to start early, that scum get to confer during the day outside the thread. It would certainly explain a certain sameness of thought coming from certain quarters).

I find it ironic that Sparks is claiming that our using bandwagon challenges rather than "mill around randomly" challenges is useless during later days -- whereas in fact us doing it (and specifically, having done it now) provides its greatest benefit later in the game.

[mneme]

I'm warming to the "first to 7 or highest at X time must challenge" (or be challenged and probably lose) -- without the challenger/challengee split. Sure, as much as I like the idea of forcing the two scummiest people into the ring, and regardless, the fact that the designated challenger has an incentive to challenge someone other people find scummy too just by nature of the process, the most important factor of the nomination system is selection of designated victim (and the benefits we've already described for this).

I'm not sure that going to deadline is that much of a problem, though -- with the nominations on the table, there's a good incentive for whoever is picked by the mod challenging a high-vote player (and if they don't, theyv'e got a pretty good chance of being scum with such a player).

The only explaination for Sparks' "request" I can see is that unlike me, she (he?) knows whether the scum can talk during the day. It's pretty hard for me to credit anything else. I'm not really sure what sparks' "I'm not nominating, I'm voting" thing has to do with anything given that we can't vote yet.

Re multiple nomination: given that we (because our best advantage is served by adding player-designed rules to the game to make it more like traditional mafia) have the opportunity to design our rules so they best serve the town, I think the double-vote strucutre works well, particularly in that it allows us to reach a majority far more quickly than forcing single votes (I could see "vote for as many as you want" working very well indeed and providing a lot of info, but probably too late to go there).

unnom: van damien
nom: sparks (primary)
(nom on deanwinchester kept, demoted to secondary)

Nomination Count!

(hopefully, not discounting my own vote...)

dylan: 2 (Yosarian2)
Van Damien: 2 (Stoofer)
Fonz: 1 (Carrotcake)
Stoofer: 1 (Sparks)
Stewie: 1 (Dan Monkey)
DeanWinchester: 4 (Fonz,Stoofer, dylan, mneme)
Sparks: 2 (mneme, stewie)


Other stuff:

I'm not really sure why Carrotcake thought Fonz's post was nonsense, since it was clearly objecting to a nonsense post by Sparks.

[quote=Sparks]
we should challenge before we have two so we can get some more juicy debates between two people
[/quote]
Because dueling between two players is really what mafia is all about.

I'm rather liking the debate we have between 8-12 people right now. It's much more juice between any debate between just -two- people.

I'm not sure whether Damien's distancing attempt with Sparks means he's trying to bus a buddy or whether they're actually different scum groups. (still thinking both are scum; sparks is clearly scum (and s/he doesn't seem to have figured out how different this is from a "normal" game of mafia. Given two scum groups, someone could have 9 people on their tail and still be scum (and still not have a buddy voting for them).

[mneme]

What catches my attention in Spark's total nonsense is this:

no we should hunt for sucm like in any other game and stop dillydallying around wit hplans especially cuz were under a quickass deadline

Sparks has nearly no content other than insulting other players (explicitly and implicitly) and criticizing the nomination scheme.

Hunting for scum is what the rest of us are doing, Sparks (in fact, we've found some. Joke, my ass) all you're doing is making noise.

re: your playstyle: it's known as "playing mafia badly". If "your playstyle" looks scummy, doesn't find scum, and tends to end with you getting lynched, the solution isn't saying "oh, it's just my playstyle", and play on. It's to learn to become a better player. Pooky, IS, and other -good- players with unusual playstyles get away with it because they're proven good mafia players; -other- people make allowances for their playstyle because they can come down to brass tacks and play mafia when needed. You've shown an unwillingness to do so; acting discourtious and expecting others to read your mind, the result being that instead of just looking like scum, you look like rude scum whose skills stink on ice.

When all the world is against you, the solution isn't to look at what's wrong with them -- but to look, perhaps, a little closer to home.

Carrotcake, thank you for dealing with this yahoo for a while. You've been very patient. I'm a little less patient. For one thing, his posts are making aqueous humor spurt out of my eyes! (ok, not really. but it certainly feels like that)

[mneme]

Sparks: your last post had some actual content and went halfway toward making sense. congrats. Please stop acting offensive, using homosexual as an insult, etc -- there's no purpose to it and it ticks people off.

If you want to challenge me, come get some. I won't have to read to your drivel for the rest of the game, so even if you beat the odds, it's all good.

Your objectiion to "nominating" is totally a vocabulary question -- I chose "nominate" because of the game's theme and because this game -has- a formal voting process -- you know, the thing after the challenge. Therefore the "voting" process earlier has to be something different. Therefore I decided to call it "nominating" rather than "voting."

Re why have rules: because otherwise, the nominations ("votes") have no teeth -- there's no reason for people to vote honestly, and there's no threshold between "if you challenge, we'll kick your butt because you're ending the day to early and hurting the town" and "yeah, go challenge; it's about bloody time." What the rules are doesn't matter so much as that the nominations have to have teeth. It's worth noting that nearly everyone involved in discussing our town agreement (ie, what we expect that nominating/voting means, and what we'll more or less bind people to by expectation) was also playing mafia -- nominating or whatever while they talked.

I'm not sure who "meme" is. I know who MeMe is. and I know who mneme is. But "meme?" I'm pretty sure that's not a player in this game.

Stoofer's been pretty active. But, yes, disappeared for one day. People do that, though he did make two posts in a Newb game today.

Your lurker list is fairly accurate -- dylan and Spin are both very useless.

Dean: tried to softpeddle "scum". Used major craplogic ("if we can figure out who's scum, we'll win!"). Objected to the actual plan of voting, rather than what you've done which more consists of objecting to everything about the plan except that it's close enough to what you're already planning to do to make no never-you-mind.

He also made that crap post (worse than no post), then dropped into dead silence after people pointed out that it was pure, unadulterated craplogic and started noming him for it. Hasn't posted since dawn Friday. I'm guessing the 4 (was 5) people on his wagon are not his buddies bussing him -- could be all town, more likely some combination of town and opposing scum. He made a very nice target there.

And a primary thing:

It's not Stoofer's plan. It's my plan. The outline of my plan was in post 6 (the first player post of the game). Stoofer's first plan was his horrible "let's not challenge anyone, but just let things devolve to a lurker" post 10. I nom'd him in post 13 for that lousy idea, and he reformulated his idea to be much more like mine. His second plan was post 14, which was my plan with a fallback to his original plan (a much better idea, but still not all that great). Later discussion has left us with something between my first plan and my second (double-bandwagons), with not much in between. So please stop calling this plan Stoofer's -- it's not. He's done a great job in putting it into point by point form and changing it to reflect discussion, but if anyone gets credit/blame for the idea, it's me.

[mneme]

And..naturally I missed another opportunity to get a nom count on the top of the page.

Here it is, then (not much change).

Nomination Count!

dylan: 1 (Yosarian2)
Van Damien: 1 (Stoofer)
Fonz: 1 (Carrotcake)
Stoofer: 1 (Sparks)
Stewie: 1 (Dan Monkey)
DeanWinchester: 4 (Fonz,Stoofer, dylan, mneme)
Sparks: 3 (mneme, stewie, yosarian2)

[mneme]

FWIW, I think they're both scum. Sparks, dylan was a great choice, as someone who was acting about as scummy as you were (if in some very different ways).

Sparks has a good point that scum are slightly less likely than town to be agressive, hyperactive, and disrespectful. (that said, the sudden improvement in Sparks' play over the last few days isn't entirely sufficient to outweigh his poor earlier play).

dylan, I agree with Fonz: please explain why you think those six players are least scummy.

Sparks, why did you initially talk about challenging me, then change your mind and challenge dylan instead?

Dylan, please don't talk about a running game.

Sparks: I think it's fairly clear from your play over the weekend that you're not a complete newbie -- as you said, your first game -on this site-. So Dylan has a point that his scummy behavior must be taken in the light of his lack of experience.

DanMonkey's votepost: so scummy. Dean's also pretty scummy (hypocritical).

Re my speculation that scum can talk during the day:I'm still not convinced they can't -- though the best evidence for same is Spark's "joke". Given that the scum don't have a kill, giving them day conferencing is an obvious way to design the game (though if Sparks turns out to be scum, it seems likely that they can't talk during the day, for the obvious reason). It would be a strong power -- not least in that better players among the scum could give advice to worse players. But the results might produce weird posting patterns, which might be noticeable.

In sum? I feel personal animosity toward Sparks because I find his playstyle so unpleasant, and he's been easily scummy enough for me to justify a vote. On the contrary tentacle, dylan's if anything been even more scummy and shown more favoritism, and his speculation that Sparks had a coterie of scumbuddies waiting to pounce shows a misunderstanding of basic mafia principles rivaling only Deanwinchester's own. On the gripping pincer, dylan's inexperience isn't itself a scumtell, and he has no single tell as strong as Sparks' "joke". So I'm leaning toward voting to keep dylan (for now) -- but really, barring the inevitable alignment reveal, whichever this vote goes, I'm happy.

[mneme]

First, Rules FTW:

Roles

You are

the liberal mafia with AAA and CCC.

You may talk with your fellow mafia until the game starts. The game will start 24 hours after the last confirm is in. I will notify you when this occurs. You may

NOT

PM your fellow mafia once the game begins.

Win condition: The liberal mafia is alive and outnumbers or equals all others still in the game.

Please confirm by PM

.

...

I'm highly suspicious of experienced players not reading the roles in an open set-up, but that's for day 2.

It happens. Oddly enough, I don't think anyone remembered this (or pretended not to). I certainly, or I'd never have suggested that scum could talk during the day (not used to open setups; forgot this was one). As it happened, it was pretty serendipitous:

If anything, this confirms my feeling that Sparks is scum (as he apparently hadn't read this either, and didn't use it as the very good answer it would have been when people asked how he -knew- that the scum couldn't talk during the day). If he ducked that question and tried to turn it into a "joke", then clearly he had some other way of knowing this -- like his PM.

[mneme]

(sorry for the misquote there, btw -- I accidentally cut a close. Obviously, vandaimen said the "I'm highly suspicous" line and quoted pablito saying the rest.)

[mneme]

You seem to misunderstand our argument. The reason I want him gone is because he is not only annoying, but illogical, puts little time into reading my posts and making his, and distracted the town from going after other people

Couldn't agree more with this -- just quoting it because there's is no point me saying the same thing in different words.

[/quote]

This is, in fact, the primary reason to want him gone -given- a high scum factor.

Annoyingly (except, you know, not) his play -has- been better since right before his challenge than it was over last week. If I were confident that Spark's play was going to continue at this level rather than the earlier one, I'd weigh his annoyance factor (but not his scumminess, since that's a separate issue) differently.

As for the Scum role PMs, this just confirms what I had said earlier. Sparks lept down mneme's throat for suggesting that Scum might be able to talk at night. How did he know that they couldn't? If he had read the front post carefully I am sure he would have pointed to that,

Day. And yes, exactly.

Sparks, dylan was a great choice, as someone who was acting about as scummy as you were (if in some very different ways).

wuldnt a better choice be challengin someone that was way more scummier than me ?

Lol! menme's point is that

no-one

is acting more scummy than you -- you couldn't have picked anyone more scummy.

Exactly so.

Sparks makes a good point here:

im feelin the same way about a perosn who talked a lot and a persn who barely talekd, then the person who barely talked is probably more liekly to be scum because theres less i could actually find fault in.

This is the anti-lurker philosophy in a badly typed essence. (Yes, Sparks, it really would help if you'd stick to standard English spelling and punctuation. This is a written game, so your writing quality matters significantly)

The roles you mentioned are most of the basic ones -- mafia, doc, cop, townie, and role-blocker (your "pimp" sounds like a role-blocker prostitute (a common chrome for that role) which someone renamed without changing the flavor). This is a -much- weirder game than most of those on scum; even the weird theme games usually have those roles (plus a few more, like mason or godfather) plus a funky theme, whereas this game is only nominally Mafia, if that.

I'm quite aware that my suggestion was "out there" (so was the chorus of "no, black is white, and using a voting structure makes the scum easier to hide!"); it was partially funny, and partially a trap. You got caught, much more than I'd have expected; if you think your "modkill request" was a joke, you've clearly mixed up the levels here.

Ah -- I now understand the Fonz/Stoofer tiff on page 6. Took a re-read. (Stoofer talked about nominating Sparks straight-off on day 2, and Fonz though he said "challenge" and justly objected).

It's worth noting that sometimes when people vote (or nominate) without giving reasons, they're doing so because the reasons are obvious. While persuasion and reasons are useful, they're not the be-all and end all of mafia -- really.

Sparks does seem like he had a brain transplant starting with post 116. Before that, he was still doing stuff like quoting Stoofer's day 1 post as if that had even been on the table since page 1.5 or 2, claiming that he was being nomed on semantics (no, you were nomed for numerous reasons, wheras you personally insulted quite a number of people, including YT, for a disagreement that was apparently semantic misunderstanding on your part), claiming people who were attacked were automatically town, and . Sparks, fwiw, listed the four people he was considering in post 97.

Sparks, did proofreading meant you went so far as to put a bit more care into your posts in general? It does seem like they've taken a significant upturn in quality -- and not just in terms of spelliing, typing, and punctuation (which is still bad -- but with a much better structural style and fewer random insults, largely painless).

[mneme]

-meme was scum
-meme was talkin during the day
-scum couldnt talk durin the day

i liek how you guys are asuming one of them showed i had outside knowledge but the other two were probably false. how is that logical at all?

It's very logical. You never made an argument that I was scum or was talking during the day (wheras in fact, I made a weak argument that the various people making the same weak arguments theoretically could be -- or that you and the people you were defending for no reason shown in the thread could be -- but an argument); you just stated it as an assertion, and in fact went so far as to make a metagame mod request which made the apparent -assumption- that scum could not talk during the day.

In fact, they can't (as Van Damien pointed out). But rather than point to the only way town could have known this (by reading the scum descriptions in the opening post), when challenged you completely ignored the issue -- which argues that you knew this the other way one could -- because it's in your PM.

That said -- to my knowledge, Sparks has never been caught lying.

Dylan has. His "it was random" response is obviously a shameless lie, given context, and I'm inclined to say that absent any proven lies on Sparks' part, mean he should get my vote on principle (LAL, specifically).

dylan: if that vote was random, y did you chose to wait to random vote utnil ur 2nd post and not the 1st?

Answer: clearly, it wasn't. He lied.

Why, heaven knows; it's a really bad lie.

[mneme]

dylan: a random vote that just happened to follow two other votes for the same person and five straight posts about that person. Sure, it was. By "random' do you mean you rolled a d11 and picked "anyone who wasn't you," or what?

The sequence, for those too lazy to look:

42: Dean makes a long nonsense post and makes himself look very scummish by denying the scum are scum.
43: Fonz nominates Deanwinchester
44: Stoofer nominates Dean
45: Yosarian rebuts Dean's nonsense in a longish post.
46: Stoofer weakens his position on Dean to "clueless" from "scummish" (but doesn't unnom).
47: dylan votes Deanwinchester

[mneme]

While I'll really be happy regardless of how this lynch goes, I think I've adequately expressed my reasoning. Sparks is annoying (but getting better) and very scummy. Dylan is even more scummy, and by all appearances, has lied.

vote: Sparks

[mneme]

Sparks, your attempt to deflect-by-attack is noted, but oddly enough, Stoofer isn't on trial right now, you are. It's perfectly reasonable to attack people for scummy behavior -- but accusing Stoofer of lying low (huh? Stoofer?) is a bit of a stretch. As is a naked "why dont you try readin those posts" which just doesn't make any sense. What posts? Where? What did they say that's so crucial to your case?

Stoofer just said "what do you have to say about articles A, B, and C," to which you apparently responded "your evidence is crap because I had cheese for breakfast."

[mneme]

Sparks: if you did so, at least twice, even, it wasn't clear to everyone, or possibly anyone.

Could you list post numbers (or links) for the posts in question? Give us a hint?

[mneme]

Man, no sooner do I vote for him, than Sparks returns to his previous scumadelic behaviour. Figures.

My thoughts exactly.

Sparks? Those posts do a barely adequate job of explaining why you might have thought I was PMing during the day (you didn't). But the "joke" still contains assumptions of how the game works that were never given a good explanation.
What is said may not be unsaid.

[mneme]

Pretty much. I was planning on voting against sparks regardless of what his opponent said -- but Dylan somehow managed to convince me not to.

[mneme]

I think it's probably Dean, given the favoritism shown there. But you never know.

Nom: Dylan

I agree that Dylan, as someone clearly not on the same team as sparks, but also very scummy, is a good pick for today.

Spin and Danmonkey's replacement are also good placed to look. Whee, it's the weekend. But I got prodded anyway.

[mneme]

Battlemage seems likely not to lurk, yes -- that would be good. (though carrotcake did the town a favor).

I love this, btw:

ps carrotcake u shuld vote b4 deadline even tho it doesnt matter cuz i think u are town

Sparks: not one of our most subtle mafia. (I was thinking of commenting on this as it looked like advice to a scumbuddy -- as it turned out, I didn't have to and I was right).

To add a secondary thread to the !dylan topic -- anyone disagree with keeping the "nominate up to two" feel from yesterday? I think it does its job at generating extra info beyond the pure lynch.

Speaking of which,

Nom: Deanwinchester

.

I don't think he's conservative if Dylan is (no love lost there), but it's entirely likely that he's our last liberal, given all the love shown his way from Sparks (defense against dylan's weird voting in 147, his defense of dean in 109, calling him town in 67 and 52), and vice versa.

That said, it's very important that we lynch in highprob->lowprob order, with enough info to be able to win the endgame (which means, really, correctly identifying at least two players as not part of either scum group and being right, though correctly identifying more town players will let us win faster).

[mneme]

To add a secondary thread to the !dylan topic -- anyone disagree with keeping the "nominate up to two" feel from yesterday? I think it does its job at generating extra info beyond the pure lynch.

Eh...nominating up to 2 isn't really harmful, but I don't think we should or can try to pick both sides;

Agreed -- I'd basically dropped this idea by the end of the day yesterday. I just think the secondary votes (and putting more votes in the air) makes it easier for the top voted person to intelligently pick an opponent -- and produce more info, of course.

That's basically what we did yesterday and I think it worked out well.

Indeed.

That said, it's very important that we lynch in highprob->lowprob order, with enough info to be able to win the endgame

So, you're thinking that it's more important to lynch someone who's high probability scum rather then someone we think is more likely to be a member of the conservative mafia?

...and what was a somewhat irrelevant question suddently becomes very relevant, with Damien's claim (an interesting move. Damien -had- been fingered, since Sparks linked to him almost as much as to Dean, but still...). We now have a 100% probabilty scum lynch available -- which generates almost no information.

I think it's more important to avoid lynching town than to lynch the "right" mafia, and to pick our lynches so they give info as well as having a high probabilty of lynching scum. That said, yes, the conservative mafia is a much higher priority, and with our (probably; Damien could be a tory trying to misdirect the town for some reason, I just don't think it's likely) liberal mafia entirely exposed, we've got a few days we can mess around and try to get useful info before lynching our lone Liberal.

BM's reaction to Damien coming clean is very interesting. And possibly telling; Dan was pretty scummy, so this seems like a likely prospect.

Dean %liberal has dropped close to 0 (and his conservative cred depends a lot on whether Dylan is scum, which I'm inclined to think he is), and I'm not interested in sending Damien into the ring, so:

unnom: Dean
nom: BM

[mneme]

True. I crossed with his last two posts or so (which backed off a lot from "ignored the conservatives in the corner"), and I'm wiling to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. But I'm still a bit suspicious of him.

Come to think of it, Dean's big scumtell is still around (ie, "no, we must not call the scum scum -- we must call them a 'group of three'" , and if dylan checks out as a tory, there's a case to be made that the stuff that lead to dylan's lying was him busing Dean and then getting caught at it.

unnom: BM
nom: Dean

[mneme]

I think Dylan's big scumtells were lying about his 'random' vote, and refusing to explain his list of people he thought were townies, personally.

And lurking. Don't forget lurking.

Yes, my point is that given that Dylan lying about his "random" vote was specficially lying about the random vote on Dean (after saying he though Dean wasn't suspicous when D was the only person he'd voted), that this does possibly produce a link.

[mneme]

If we lynch Van now, that leaves them with three of nine, requiring three mislynches in a row to win. If we save him until the first con is caught, that means we'd have to mislynch four times in a row to lose.

Alternative possibility. If we let things get too close to the wire, we're opening up the possibility of Van changing his mind.

While I don't think it makes much sense to lynch him today, I think there comes a point when we're better off lynching him than lynching someone less likely to be scum.

Most of this is pie in the sky stuff that evaporates if Dylan's a con, though.

[mneme]

@mneme: I really don't get your stance. You say twice how you think there is a good chance Dylan is scum, but both times you nominate someone else. BM than Me. What?

I nommed Dylan in my first post today (233) and never unnommed him. The other twiddling was with my second nom.

If we let BM get away with this insanely anti-town move, we're encouraging people to practice day killing (which is what an early challenge amounts to if it has any chance of working -- doubly so, since it's both killing the day and killing -during- the day). Only scum have an incentive to challenge early, especially in a way that contradicts the town debate. Therefore, anyone who's acted this way has more or less announced scummishness.

vote: VanDamien

And while BM cut things off, I think it's impotant that there be at least -one- nom count, especially when things can get confusing.

==============================================

Final Nomination Count for Day 2

dylan: (mneme, yosarian2, stoofer, stewie)
dean: (mneme (2nd nom))
==============================================

My theory, FWIW, is that either BM just doesn't understand what we're doing with the nomination system, or that he's scum who knows damned well but figured we won't stick to it, and that this will save his buddy (dylan) for another day. If that's true, then we're four scum up and well on the way to winning. If not, it's still very important to lynch Battlemage -- since without enforcing game discipline, we end up with a game where anyone may end the useful day at any point without reprisal, vastly increasing the odds of a scum win as we zero out the information we can get during a given day.

As it is, Battlemage ended the day after we'd gotten merely three datum:
1. VD is scum. (probably liberal, but concievably con running a gambit)
2. mneme, yos, stoofer, and stewie are probably not scum if dylan are. Probably.
3. mneme is probably not scum if BM or dean are. Probably.

Compare this to the wealth of info we got on day 1, and we see how horrible BM's action was.

[mneme]

Come to think of it, Dean's big scumtell is still around (ie, "no, we must not call the scum scum -- we must call them a 'group of three'" :), and if dylan checks out as a tory, there's a case to be made that the stuff that lead to dylan's lying was him busing Dean and then getting caught at it.

I don't quite get this. Are you saying that you think Dean and dylan are scum together?

Yes, that's likely.

Dylan dropped a third vote on Dean, then listed Dean among the players he thought was town when questioned.

I'm not going to doing anything without thinking it over, but my immediate reaction is that we

have

to make an example of Battle Mage.

Exactly so.

Given his action, the odds of BM being scum are fairly high -- and even if he isn't, the loss in info/day of letting him get away with this substantially outweighs the loss to the town of a mislynch.

BM, the only advantage of today vs a debate tomorrow is an open possibility of a choice of lynch today. By constraining the lynch to two players (yourself and VD), you've just cut off that debate, dramatically reducing the info we can get today -- you've also over-ridden the plurality lynch choice of the town (ie, dylan, who had 4 nominations, two short of a majority).

The reason we need a "system" and game discipline is that the game allows players to 1/2 daykill another player. That doesn't mean players should do so -- and in fact, it's a superbly bad idea.

Since you've engaged in it, I have to assume you don't have the town's best interests in mind.

[mneme]

ooh yikes. It doesn't make sense to me that Battle Mage would put himself on the chopping block if he was a conservative after many of us agreed to keep Van Damien around.

It doesn't make sense that Battle Mage would put himself on the chopping block unless he was a conservative after many of us agreed to keep Van Damien around.

IOW, this is a WIFOM argument.

[mneme]

I finished reading the thread, and I find mneme

highly

suspicious. I don't like Fonz much either. I'd rather expose my reasons after today's challenge, if you don't mind.

I'd prefer you exposed them now, actually, before we see BM's alignment.

If you don't mind...

[quote ="Albert B. Rampage"]
For now, I would disagree with lynching BM based on principle, because I don't think it will discourage other players to do the same thing
[/quote]
It will certainly discourage BM from doing the same thing this game.

Also, how do you know BM is town? I certainly don't.

FOS: Albert

[quote ="Albert B. Rampage"]
And he's usually town -_-
[/quote]
No more than anyone else...

[quote ="Albert B. Rampage"]
In all seriousness, his posts seem pro-town until the point he issued the challenge. He looks more like a tori sure of himself than con or lib. [/quote]

Tori=conservative.

And no, they don't. He started with "we should lynch vandamien" (rather than try to get any more info today on other scum). When people argued, he backed off briefly, then forced the issue.

Not pro-town. Not pro-town at all.

Leave BM alive and he'll just pull this shit again tomorrow. Leaving us, taking things ad absurdium, at LYLO with no more info than we have right now.

Unless people think that A. BM is inarguably pro-town, and B. that he can telepathically hunt down mafia with the power of his gigantic battle-matic brain, we're better off lynching him today.

[mneme]

As it is, Battlemage ended the day after we'd gotten merely three datum:
1. VD is scum. (probably liberal, but concievably con running a gambit)
2. mneme, yos, stoofer, and stewie are probably not scum if dylan are. Probably.
3. mneme is probably not scum if BM or dean are. Probably.

Compare this to the wealth of info we got on day 1, and we see how horrible BM's action was.

This troubles me. Two of the three things we apparently learned today are that you are probably not scum if three different people are. I get the impression that you are not the kind of player who generally likes to analyse potential connections involving himself.

I don't. It's a COI, and this is why I kept all the "probably"s in there.
But since near as I can tell, the only things that happened today were:

I nommed three different people.
Bandwagon on dylan
VD claiming scum/liberal
and BM challenging Van Damien

I listed it for lack of anything else to do. I'm not about to try to make other people's judgment on whether my noms are honest, but I'll certainly list them among "what happened today" just like I (when I don't screw up) count my own noms when I'm doing an unofficial (as all of them are) nomination count.

If I was giving aggregate results that required judgement, I'd leave myself out or (as I did above) mark the results as a COI that required others judgement.

[mneme]

what you're saying doesnt make complete sense. at least, not in terms of yesterday, during which discussion, and information only picked up DURING the debate. It seems like the same has happened here, so i dont see what you are complaining about...

Uh, no. We got most of our info yesterday (including that which gave us our last liberal today, as VD realized that with the interest he'd picked up yesterday he wasn't going to survive to the endgame) way, way before the debate (certainly, on my list, he was the #2 suspect of being a liberal, behind only Dean).

We also picked up Sparks then, as well as his ammunition on Dylan.

This isn't even getting into the connection and lack-of-connection info that can't really be judged until we have a few more deaths and can make better scum/!scum judgements.

Did you even -read- yesterday?

[mneme]

Just a bit of ad homeniem, BM? Try responding to my comments rather than just attacking me.

Or, you know, back up anything you've said. Or are you afraid of giving away your scumbuddies by saying too much?

[mneme]

You accused him of not reading. He said you were patronising. I can't see how the former is any more Adhom than the latter.

Of course I was patronizing him. He made an indefensible statement. (actually, several, but I had in mind specifically, (like "all the interesting stuff happened in this game after the challenge" -- which was more or less what BM said in 299, ie "not in terms of yesterday, during which discussion, and information only picked up DURING the debate.")).

Actually, arguably, I wasn't patronizing him; I was making the most charitable explanation ("you didn't read it" rather than "you're stupid" or "you're lying scum and not paying much attention") for the apparent facts.

The correct response to "did you -read- the thing you're commenting on" isn't to insult the person saying it; it's to, you know, prove it, backing up what you said by quoting the bits of what you're commenting on to support your position. We are still playing mafia (or close enough), right?

[mneme]

You accused him of not reading. He said you were patronising. I can't see how the former is any more Adhom than the latter.

Er...

It's important to remember that ad hominem isn't identical to "throwing insults around."

It's a logical fallacy where rather than responding to someone's arguments, you attack them, personally -- a good (as it were) adhom on BM would be "you're using the same arguments you used in XXX" (where you were scum) or "you're just being BM, this makes no sense", or, for that matter, a spelling or whatnot complaint that attacked him (and his posting style) but didn't actually address his points.

My point -- that his statement was contrary to the facts of what actually -happened- on day 1 -- was self evident (do you disagree? Does anyone?). That I also questioned whether he'd read reading day 1 was a side insult (if, I think, a deserved one) but not my main point. By contrast, his response was a -classic- ad hominem, amounting to "your points are wrong because you're patronizing me." It doesn't matter whether I patronize you; it matters whether your arguments are sound, and whether mine are. My arguments are not made less sound because they're written in a patronizing tone, or in crayon, or spelled like I'm on a three-day bender (or just typing like Sparks .

But your arguments -are- less sound (and by "your" I mean "BM's" in this case) if they're not only not backed up by textual evidence, but also clearly contrary to the facts.

I.O.W., my attack on BM was perfunctory because what he was saying was obviously untrue. I didn't attack him to attack his arguments, I just threw out a statement of frustration and let them disprove themselves; they weren't worthy of serious rebuttal. His response consisted of an ad hominem attack, which aside from the logical fallacy, also didn't even attempt to validate his statements.

(oh, and not as an adhom, but just to make Firefox's spellchecker happy -- it's patronizing, with a z, not an s. Good for scrabble, I guess

[mneme]

BM: are you just throwing out insults, or are you simply surprised that by and large, people are doing what they said they would?

I mean, when you come into a game where the majority of us have said "I'll vote against anyone who challenges unilaterally" and challenge unilaterally, what do you expect? People to behave scumilly, dishonestly, and against their previous stated intentions? Why devolve to "they must be scum" as an excuse when the publicly and previously stated reasons suffice?

If you're town, you're doing the best impression of scum I've ever seen.

I don't, btw, think it makes much sense to request that VD suicide. Given that there are no nights, there are no advantages to that over simply voting him on the appropriate day -- and IMO, it's something of an abuse of the rules to do so.

[mneme]

Yes and no. Whilst insults are not the only thing covered by AdHom, they are nonetheless adhom.

I don't agree that insults are necessarily adhom, and do not use the term that way.

This is a definitional question and probably best left there, but suffice it to say that I use a narrow definition of ad hominem that doesn't include insults which aren't a replacement for argument. (I think of AH as the inverse fallacy to argument-by-authority -- and both of them as substantially identical).

[mneme]

Albert: is this one of these "Battlemage forced a selflynch and it worked -so well- for him, so I'm going to do the same thing" things?

It's not time until we've actually spent some time bandwagoning and otherwise playing the game before you go harring off on your own, whether you challenge me or anyone else.

And then you let the will of the town have an effect on the game -- because otherwise, you're just helping the scum.

That's how it works.

[mneme]

And yes, what Stewie said. There's no way to "confuse the town" at this point, because the mechanical result is already pre-deterimined.

Albert, the only reason to delay saying your peace at this point is so you can change it to fit the facts, which doesn't really help your case.

[mneme]

Does anyone think I need to respond to Albert? His case appears to be "too townie" mixed in with some craplogic (and some false claims, like the idea that I never attack people who aren't the weakest of the day).

I've got LA over the weekend, but can still post (like now).

I'm a bit nervous about our two "I'm not going to be here for a week" people.

Among other things, both were fiddly, ie "I could be here, I could be not here" business. So we might want to not target them (because they're not here and will die anyway?) but they might post and survive.

The worst thing, though, is that if VD is on the level and dylan is a townie (annoyingly possible, though with his scummy play I wouldn't count on it), a wrong lynch today could result in an immediate town loss.

Basically, if we're going to lose someone anyway, we gain no advantage to waiting lynching someone else -- on the contrary, we're better off lynching them so we get the info on their lynch before we have to make a decision.

That said, I'm a bit nervious of how few supporters dylan has. If he's scum, is it likely his buddies are throwing him under the bus?

Still...

nom: dylan

[mneme]

Most of this was written on Saturday:

=================
Albert: You've failed to distinguish between "easy" and "scummy". Especially given how often I've dropped first noms on people. It's true that this game has been very "block" -ey -- but mostly, that's because a number of people distinguished themselves as looking scummy on Day 1 (some of whom have been looking less scummy recently).

Dean: Until dylan has a majority of noms or we're close to the soft deadline, I do -- while I do think dylan needs to be lynched today, bypassing the process we've set up would reduce the info to be gained today -- as that which we gain during the challenge period is much broader than that which we gain during the votes. Which reminds me:

Nomination Count

dylan: (stewie, stoofer, mneme)
mneme: 1 (Albert)

Hmm. If we Van Damien (who's said he would challenge dylan and isn't here) and you (who've said you would challenge dylan), that's 5, an easy majority. So I guess it's ok, except for one thing:

IIRC, if VD's proxy goes off, he'll challenge dylan and survive the day (because his proxy will avoid him getting modkilled for not voting). While we're getting to the point where we have to decide whether (if we don't find a con in Dylan) we have to decide whether VD is honest scum (as it were) or our best bet to find a con, I think it's far more advantagous to have this be handled via the normal structure rather than modkill -- so there's something to letting VD challenge and avoiding the modkill.

Thoughts?

================

Not that many posts since then, but yes, Dean, I'd like to know why you think silence == dylan as scum.

Which doesn't mean he isn't, of course, and I've already outlined the additional reasons (aside from his scum/newbishness) why he should be the challengee of the day.

[mneme]

If VD's proxy "I volunteer to challenge dylan" is valid (

MOD?

) at deadline (it seems like it might be by the rules, which talk about people volunteering to challenge), I think that's the best bet -- anything else will result in VD's modkill, which puts us at L^L unless whoever we lynch is scum (and while I hope it is, we don't want to have to count on it).

I do think that scum are more likely to go off-piste than town -- scum gain no reward for staying to the program except (if the town is working this way) not being lynched. The fact is, mafia skill is a much better indicator of whether someone's likely to stick to the program (players can often not understand what it gets us unless they're already used to doing the kind of analysis it fosters) than alignment, however, as is whether players tend to play in a more "scientific" manner or more from their gut (or some other part of their anatomy).

There are something like three types of "ending the day" in this game. Challenging ends the "free for all" portion of the day -- dramatically cutting off the amount of hard info we can get afterwards. Placing the majority vote means the remaining votes are meaningless except for avoiding modkills -- and so votes placed before that bar are more significant than ones after -- there's no pressure on voting for who you honestly want to win after we reach that point. Finally, placing the final vote in a day soon (once the result is revealed) makes it impossible for people to say things that don't take into account that day's results -- which can be significant; things people say or do earlier in the game are generally more significant than things said later (give or take) as there's more risk to earlier statements. (there are many more chances to make mistakes or otherwise lose something in the game from an earlier statement than a later one. This is why, in a game with roles, early role claims are more trustworthy than later ones -- the longer the game goes on, the more info you have to make an unfalsifiable false claim, and thus the risk to the mafia for making one decreases)

That said, I'm very interested in the discussion between Yos and Stoofer -- it's self-evident, but if the newbish players aren't all or most of the conservative mafia (seems likely that they aren't all, at least), some have to be hiding among the "core".

[mneme]

Guardian: if they're modkilled, do we start a new day (ie, autolynch) or is the next person then forced to challenge ths same way?

[mneme]

The difference is that if Dylan is forced to challenge and then is modkilled, VD isn't modkilled (I think. This is what our ever-loving mods are checking on; thanks, Guardian!), so we've got more info on whether we want to keep him around or not for another cycle.

If someone else challenges Dylan, -regardless- of the outcome of the challenge, unless VD can get online to post, he'll be modkilled at the end of the cycle -- which puts us into L^L the next day with no extra info.

If that turns out to be the right answer after dylan is eliminated, we can do that ourselves -- but at least that way we can make informed decisions.

[mneme]

VD, of course. Same logic applies.

Both are very scummy (VD because he's self-proclaimed scum plus previous scummy behavior, dylan because of scummy behavior, incl admitted lying). And lynches one at a time are superior in this setup to more than one at a time (except and unless when we're at L^L -- where oddly enough, getting two lynches for the price of one would reduce our chances of losing, all things being equal), due to the lack of night kills.

[mneme]

Stewie: It's pretty clear what G meant to mean, ie:
7/6/25 and 7/6/27.

Or some such. Given the actual rules, Dylan gets MKed if he hasn't challenged by a bit before 2AM Wednesday morning.

[mneme]

It is, of course, possible that all the scum managed to block, with only townies left on the outskirts.

But...it isn't the way to bet, and while dylan has a point with his "I'm so hated, I must be town" speech, I'm going to have to vote against his lying, inconsistent ways. (and hey, he -has- been so scummy that the "bus" option seems awfully likely)

vote: Stewie

[mneme]

I still think it might be possible Dylan is scum with mneme tough...maybe.

*giggle*. That would require a really big bus. Maybe a fleet.

I've been anti-dylan all three days, nom'd him all three days, and voted to kill him on two of them (I didn't have an opportunity on day 2). I could (looking as a third party observer, which I'm not) see any of the experienced player sitting in the center of this game as possible scum, incluidng yours truly -- but this one's pretty hard to credit.

[mneme]

Yos: fair enough, though I somewhat bucked the trend by voting to kill dylan before sparks (on LAL grounds).

[mneme]

Huh. Yeah, that's more or less the question.

Well, not really. I think he's very likely to be liberal, and not as much to be conservative, simply because of the text evidence of day 1 I pointed out earlier.

So I'm inclined to keep him alive today, and am much more interested in theories for who the three cons could be.

Any sort of linkage between players is useful here.

[mneme]

Yosarian: Sure, I think. I'd have to look at the text. But some of the same textev that makes Van Damien likely to be scum also makes him likely to be liberal, not cons.

Other people also have liberal links, but Damien's links point more to liberal than cons.

Also: if he is cons, we don't autolose just because we lynch someone else; we still have to nail two townies (or a townie and a liberal) to lose.

[mneme]

Dean: huh?

Albert: who do you suspect as scum aside from me? What's your ideal 3-person/1 person pairing?

Actually, that's a fairly good question for everyone. I'll see if I can come up with an answer myself.

[mneme]

Hmm. Players left who have an unknown alignment to me: DeanWinchester, Mr Stoofer, Albert B. Rampage (r. SpinWizard), Stewie, The Fonz,Yosarian2

I'm pretty sure VD is Liberal, as he says he is -- for the reasons I've stated earlier.

Let's leave out Dean for the moment -- Stoofer's got a point about "too clueless to be scum" though that doesn't clear him.

That leaves us with three scum among Stoofer, Albert, Stewie, Fonz, and Yosarian.

We've had the following distancing:

Stoofer: Yosarian (both ways),
Albert: none (me, but I'm not on the above list). Also, recieving (as spinwizard), Stewie (also as Albert), Fonz (only once, though, and as a secondary)
Stewie: Albert, Dean, (many, many times for both, oddly)
Fonz: Albert, Dean
Yosarian: Stoofer. Both ways.


This is very interesting. First, it seems to indicate that Albert's probably not scum. (would have to be scum with stoofer and yosarian, assuming !bus, and that one's too unlikely to credit for now).

Second, since yosarian and stoofer are probably not -both- scum, that means that stewie and fonz are scum.

That said, Stewie's play has been very good.

Therefore,

Nom: Fonz

[mneme]

"Brining the nomination discussions to an early close?" That's just dishonest; he challanged on the 19'th, the day that the challange had to happen as the deadline was 20'th-21'st.

Er. He challenged at 5AM on the 19th.

That basically cut us off of 19 hours of useful discussion.

[mneme]

As I said in V/LA, I'm going to Origins for the next five days.

In case I have issues accessing the site, I've left a full list of proxies for voting and challenging with the moderators.

[mneme]

Very good game, and props to the Cons!

Getting lynched in absentia sucked, though.

Though...when two people attack each other and you think they're both town -- -always- lynch the attacker. Always. The act of attacking someone who is (probably) town drops your likelyhood of being town -- there's a reason I'd have challenged Fonz, but Albert challenged me.

Also, a bit of post mortem on my analysis in 522: If you only count primary attacks (which I didn't; I kept in, but degraded, the fonz->albert secondary attack), it was entirely accurate. Discounting that attack as a blind (because it was made as a FOS-style attack while voting someone else), the pairings you get are: albert, fonz, (stoofer or yosarian), and stewie, fonz, (stoofer or yosarian).

-despite- Yosarianscum's doubt of this analysis, and Stoofer ending up lynching me because of it (huh?), it was very valid with this game. The scum never did a first-order bus of other scum.

I'd love to try this setup out again -- be interesting to see whether we had the day 1 + 2 wrangles with a game worth of history to look back on.

[mneme]

Fonz: You did -- but a key technique in network vote analysis is to put very low weight on late plays and very, very early plays -- because the potential risk/cost is much lower for those plays. (ie, discount random votes and most attacks past the second or third day except when especially significant). At the time I posted the analysis, you had never attacked Albert except as "express suspision of albert while voting someone else". (which I didn't ignore, but did note, especially given that my first conclusions (ie, stewie as mafia) was less than fully believable).

If stoof and VD had lynched albert, we'd have had a very different game -- lynching you next would have been an obvious step, which would give us a bit of clearance to figure out which of Yos/Stoof to lynch.

[mneme]

Yosarian2: In the specific case (and as I'd have pointed out had I logged in any time between Wednesday and Sunday), this isn't the case.

It's true that the scum never want to get into a challenge -- but in this case, Albert had been -forced- onto a bandwagon--and chose to have it be between himself and someone most players thought (correctly) was town.

Moreover, pre-deadline challenges are often anti-town, even when they are most often perpetuatied by townies -- I still think the policy lynches on days 1 and 2 were correct play, though regrettable (well, except in Sparks' case).

In that kind of situation, you vote the person creating the situation -- because forcing the situation is itself an anti-town act. If you think two players are equally town and one does a deadline challenge on the other, you save the defender.

A non-deadline challenge is stickier, as above -- challenging is pro town in theory (more risk == scum don't want to do it), but often anti-town in practice.

[mneme]

Um. Both deadlines and the challenge system hurt the town. What hurt the mafia was not having a kill, but they've got all the advantages aside from this (better relative numbers, deadlines, challenge system).

Pablito, I hope you appreciated our attempts to "break" your game (by moldingit somewhat closer to a traditional game).

[mneme]

BM: You were one of the reasons we lost. Really -- you forced us to lynch you by playing the "maverick" card, making us choose between a low-priority scum and a potential high-prioirty scum.

The fallacy of "scum will never challenge" was pretty well proven by the gameplay -- half the challenges were made by scum (admitedly, nearly all the challenges were deadline challenges).

The question of how to vote between challenger and challengee is much more complicated than presented -- precisely because the "natural" state of the game is to rapidly devolve into an orgy of chaos from which some random group (likely a scumgroup) emerges victorious.

That state isn't good for the town, which is -why- we spent so much time discussing strategy.

[mneme]

Fonz: There were two players forced to challenge -- Albert and Sparks -- both scum. If the town had taken a "if you're forced to challenge, we'll lynch you", we'd have done better.

Having multiple scum groups still makes the town less likely to win -- we'd have had better odds with a single four person scum group. (and worse with a 6 person scum group, but hey. ) It also makes any given scumgroup less likely to win, but not as much as it hurts the town.

The normal course of mafia is that you've got several good bandwagons over the course of a day -- giving you a lot of info on who's allied or likely unalied with who. It's not accurate info (necessarily) but it's still pretty useful. With the challenge system, this tends to go away -- as as soon as things heat up -once-, it's all down to the wire between two separate players, and you only get info on how players feel about them, not anyone else.

Yosarian: was it? How would the game have been different had BM surivved the challenge isntead of VD? Would you have found him harder to manipulate? Would he have helped save me instead of kill me in absentia?

[mneme]

Also, re BM -- game honor is very important. If you don't do what you say you're going to do, you look scummy -- and punishing people who act disengeniously is one of the ways the town catches scum.

So if Stoofer and I hadn't pushed the BM lynch, it would have (and certainly -should- have) been worse than had we not done so.

Now, whether the "pact" as it was was optimal is another question -- it may have given reckless players and scum too much power in controlling lynches (frex, one wonders what would have happened had I challenged Fonz on the day I died, as I'd have likely done after my analsys if it hadn't been a contradition of my principles). But something like it was necessary.

[mneme]

There IS NO HONOUR when your actions cost the town the game.
Do you really think your contribution to this game was one that you are proud of?

Yes.
I pretty much singlehandedly smoked out the liberal mafia, and gave the town the best chance we had of winning.

That the town believed scum lies and lynched me in the midgame? The game's a team effort -- but Stoofer and I should have been cleared by that point.

But I WASNT EVEN HERE when this agreement was made

Irrelevant. The agreement was unilateral--that people should be forced to challenge according to the nominations and popular ideas or have the votes against them.

You called our bluff -- it wasn't one.

this game is a shining example that we should stick to Mafia concepts, even in games where there are rule changes.

Heh.

We seem to have different ideas on what "mafia concepts" are.

[mneme]

When you play in a way which benefits the conservative scum, it implies that you are conservative scum playing in a way that benefits you.

QFT

[mneme]

Re "honor" -- BM, do you understand and obey Lynch All Liers? Why or why not?