Mini 456: Ultimatum Mafia - Game Over!

[Yosarian2]

Stoofer: What you said about active lurkers is very true. Based on what happened in MAD mafia, we have to keep a very close eye on people who try to lurk in plain site. We don't want this to become a "active townies go after each other while semi-lurking scum coast their way to victory".

I don't necessaraly agree with the "no one should challange" plan, though. I think we're going to get some information based on who challanges who, and that information could be very useful to figuring out who could be scum with who.

[Yosarian2]

BTW, that was in response to Stoofer's first post. Stoofer Plan 2.0 is better, although in the past such things haven't worked out so well; in these kinds of games (like Bad Idea mafia and such) usually someone just ends up ignoring the votes and going off on their own anyway. Noneteless, I do support the idea of "nominating" the challanger (or perhaps both the challanger and the challangee) and keeping track of votes and all that, so as to gain information. All we've got to go on this game is day information anyway, so we might as well generate as much as we possibly can.

[Yosarian2]

I'm pretty suspicious of the whole nominate plan, and this is why. If we're nominating the challenger, especially this early, we're effectively giving either scum team a pass to challenge. If we're nominating the challengee, there's no reason for scum to jump on the challenge for safety, but they happily can with the majority already having stated who they prefer to be voted out through the nomination process.

Huh?

I think the idea is that we take someone who looks suspicious and make him be the challanger, on the theory that that will give us information about someone we find suspicious, and give us a chance to lynch that person if we so choose after a debate. I don't understand at all how "that gives either scum team a pass to challange". In fact, the scum might be more hesitant to offer challanges, as that puts them at risk, although there's obveous WIFOM potential there.

[Yosarian2]

Anyway, on the theroy that active lurking and keeping your head down is a probable scum stratag for this game, might as well start out with this one:

i also agree

vote:dylan

for challanger until he makes more of a contrabution

[Yosarian2]

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 same coould be said for the townies, especially with two scum groups that could be cross-challenging.

The difference is that a townie may be willing to risk his life if it means getting rid of someone he thinks to be a scumbag, wheras scum would much rather just sit back and let townies challange other townies if possible. Again, like I said, there's lots of WIFOM involved, a scum might be very active and agressive just to look pro-town, but that's all right; it's much easier to figure out the alignment of someone who's being very active and agressive then to figure out the alignment of a semi-lurker. If we ignore lurkers, that could very easily cost us the game, just like it cost the town the game in MAD.

[Yosarian2]

Dean: How does keeping track of votes help the scum? (And yes, they are scum; a group of 3 people who know each others identy and want to lynch everyone else are scum, by defination; scum groups don't have to kill. The "uninformed majority" is town, even though they're not quite a majority.) The alternate is basically "some townie decides on his own to go after someone he thinks is scummy" and in the past, in games with daykills, that hasn't worked out to well for the town.

Even the biggest group has a 50/50 ratio. So Town/scum terms don't really apply.
This nomiantion system does not help the group of six. It gives the groups of three an advantage because they can help control the group of six without making challenges themselves.

So, you're suggesting the nomination system helps the scum manipulate the town? In a sense, that's probably true, but by that very process of seeing who votes for who and who wants to put pressure on who, we get information about everyone in the game. The way mafia works is that scum try to manipulate the town and town try to catch them doing it. If you don't have people expressing opinions about who should challange who, then I don't really see how the town has a chance to figure out who's scum.

If the group of six can figure out who is in the group, it's game over. We can use our superior numbers and the, over looked, rule that you can only challenge once untill everyone has gone atleast once.

Well, yes. If the town figures out who the scum is, they win.

Anouther issue with this nom theroy is that won't the person nominated to be the challenger most likely lose anyway?

Probably. The idea is that we want the two most scummy looking people to challange each other, in the hopes that at least one (and perhaps both) of them are scum, perhaps scum in different groups.

This whole nom system is a way for the groups of three to take control of the game and make it like a normal game of mafia.

Town wins normal games of mafia far more often then "lone cowboy" type games of mafia. So making this game more like a normal game of mafia probably improves the town's chances.

For the group of six to win we need to figure out who is (or most likely) in this group and abuse our numbers.

Well, right. DO you have a better idea about how to figure out who is town then through some kind of voting system?

This nom theroy puts the group of six in a situation where we have to nom each other as opose to going after the smaller groups. The smaller groups can not afford to chalenge each other or they will lose to our numbers.

Huh? How does voting mean that "the six will nominate each other"?

For the group of six this day is lylo for us, kinda. We need to get a challenge between us and any group of three and win the deadlock. If we can acomplish that we win because every vote will then be between us and one of the smaller groups or small group vs small group, which we are fine with because we will have the numbers to make the debate go our way every round

Um, that would only be true if we knew who all of the members of the town were. In any case, you're trying to make it sound like each vote will have 6 townies on one side vs. 6 scum on the other side; the point you're missing is that the groups of 3 want to lynch each other just as badly (or perhaps even more badly) then they want to lynch townies, as the informed groups are probably actually bigger threats to each other then anything else. So we're not at lynch or lose, because even if we lose a townie or two the scum will tend help us lynch the people in the opposite scum group.

@ The rest of the group of six: If we lose one of us today it going to be hard to win. If we can get one of the smaller groups today it will be incredibly hard to lose.

Neither of those statemets is at all true.

Note: If the challenge ends up with one of the six and one of the three's we will almost know imediately who is among the six because neither of the small groups can afford to give us numbers. Thus they can't afford to vote for one of the six to win.

...

Because scum never vote for each other in order to look innocent, amiright? And townies never accidently vote for other townies?

You're not making much sense here.

[Yosarian2]

Um, care to explain any of that, Sparks?

[Yosarian2]

mod: please modkill mneme, he just admitted that he's been conferring with his scumbuddies outside the thread during day

What?

Mneme was speculating that the scum might be allowed to talk during the day because there are no nights. How can you go from that to assuming that scum can't talk and assuming that mneme is scum and assuming that mneme is scum who broke the rules?

[Yosarian2]

Carrotcake: Read the post Sparky made right before Fonz made that post. "What is this nonesense" is a pretty fair response to that, I think.

[Yosarian2]

go read lo2 i have no time for this nonsense we are on a strict deadline

So...we're on a strict deadline, and that means you have to say things that make absolutly no sense and then refuse to explain them? Does that somehow make the game go faster?

we should challenge before we have two so we can get some more juicy debates between two people

i shouldnt challenge because im 99% going to be challeneed

That dosn't make much sense either, Sparks...if you're 99% sure you would get challanged, then why wouldn't you rather challange a person of your choice first?

If you did have to challange, who would you challange, and why?

[Yosarian2]

Rather then specifically saying "first to 7", Stewie, I'd say we just select a specific point at which the person with the most nominations has to challange someone, and reccomend (although we can't, and probably don't want to, make it manditory) that he challange the person with the #2 number of nominations.

[Yosarian2]

After all, I don't think we have enough time to get a full 7 votes here. We want to get someone to make the challange on the 11'th, just 2 days from now, because I think a random challange would be quite bad from an information gathering point of view, and the only way to make sure that dosn't happen is to have the challange happen quite early on the 11'th at the latest.

Actually the safest thing to do would probably be to have the challange go out on the 10'th, before midnight, just to make sure it dosn't go random, as the deadline hits "in some random monent between the 11'th and the 12th".

[Yosarian2]

While Sparks has been acting quite illogically, I think I'm going to keep my nomination on Dyllan until he says more then he has. We can not let people get away with active lurking in this game, under any circumstances.

[Yosarian2]

im not goin to respond tostewis' pile of shit until he puts mor thuhgt into it

...

His response makes a lot more sense then anything you've posted so far this game, Sparks. I'd suggest you respond to some of the things people have said to you if you want to convince anyone you're not scum.

[Yosarian2]

Yosarian, is that not active lurking? I asked many meaningful questions, and once again he's passing them off as useless in an attempt to not answer them.

Stewie: Partly, I'm just trying to get Dyllen to particiapte more; he's cleary around, as he posted yesteday and the day before, but he's also clearly not saying much. Honestly, he looks like scum trying to fly under the radar to me, with just saying "i agree" and a reasonless bandwagon vote, wheras I honestly don't know WHAT to think about Sparks at the moment, I can't see town OR scum wanting to act the way he's acted so far.

The "he seems to have inside knowlege about if the scum can talk during the day" argument is a strike against Sparks, though, and he'd probably be my second chocie right now.

[Yosarian2]

No problem, Dan.

If you get a chance, it'd help if you could just read the game and say who you find most suspicious; I know we don't have much to go by yet, but we don't have any time to waste here and I'd like to hear from everyone before the challange phase starts.

[Yosarian2]

Ok, this is probably futile, but I'm just going to try one more time here.

WE DO NOT NEED SOME HOMOSEXUAL NOMINATION SYSTME. HOW DO NORMLA MEANS OF FINDING SCUM NOT FUCKING APPLY HERE? THIS IS A GAME OF MAFIA LIKE ANY OTHER. WE CAN STILL USE VOTES, ITS JUST NOT HOW ALYNCH WILLL BE DETERMINED. ITS BASICALLY LIKE KINGMAKER BUT FASTER AND A DIFFERENT VARIENT.

THAT WAS STOOFER'S PLAN. YES, HE WAS CALLING THEM "NOMINATIONS" INSTEAD OF "VOTES", BUT OTHERWISE THAT WAS IT.

And FYI, every time you call players who are showing every sign of being much stronger mafia players then you "stupid", or when you throw around words like "gay" or "homosexual" it just makes you look that much worse.

You know, I don't care.

nominate:Sparks

. He's pretty clearly decided to be :not helpful:

[Yosarian2]

Sparks, that hasn't been stoofer's plan since way back on page one, he's been supporting the nominations and stuff. And that's what you were clearly talkign about, since you were talking about nominations being a bad move.

And while I obveously agree with going after inactives, at the moment I actually think that your posting is much more harmful to the town then they're lack of posting. And it has very little to do with your spelling. It has more to do with the way that your lack of logic, your insults, your total lack of logic, your unwillingness you explain yourself, and your lack of manners is making it very hard for anyone else to accomplish anything else here.

This kind of random and innane insult, for example, just hurts your case:

if yos seriously thinks ive been less helpfil than danmonkey, spinwizard, and dylan combined, he is a huge idiot ecuase thats as plain aslike a two year old.

And the only reason we're still discussing the plan at this point is because you flipped out about it and kept going on about how it was hurting the town, without ever giving a good logical reason why. You keep changing your story, and now you're trying to say that it's "just a matter of semantics". IF so, then why did you flip out and insult and attack everyone in favor of some kind of plan and voting system?

At this point, I want to lynch you just because I don't see us accomplishing anything else or making any progess in finding scum so long as you continue to rant and scream and insult people in long incomprehensible posts that ramble on about nothing. Your lurkerhunting was a reasonable move, but it was buried by the garbage you keep spewing here. I just can't really see the way you're acting as helping the town in any way, and the way you reacted to mneme's comments does make me think you might be scum with insider information.

By the way, everyone, we're going to want someone to challange before the end of the day today, I believe, just to be on the safe side.

[Yosarian2]

So, now we all vote for which one of the two we want to live, correct?

[Yosarian2]

I would also like to hear some real content from Dylan on other subjects; such as, who else he thinks is scummy, who seems pro-town to him at the moment, and anything else he'd like to comment on.

[Yosarian2]

Agreed. We only have 6 days, and everyone needs to vote before then to avoid modkills, so we don't have much time to waste here.

[Yosarian2]

However, I pledge to contribute more often with more substantial opinions if I survive this challenge.

That's nice to hear, but I don't know if you will survive this challange unless you contribute with some substantial opinions first. So, again, if you could try and give us some thoughts about other people in the game, who you think is scummy and who looks more pro-town to you, it would probably help.

[Yosarian2]

You voted for the person that Mr Stoofer and The Fonz had just voted for, piling the third vote onto that bandwagon, and now you're saying it was just a random vote? Seriously?

[Yosarian2]

FWIW, I think they're both scum.

Agreed.

[Yosarian2]

Yeah. I'm really happy with this challange so far, as I think they're probably both scum.

I'm stongly considering voting to keep Sparks around, if Dyllan dosn't start explaining some of his actions and his thoughts better. They've both made huge scumtells, in any case.

Again, Dyllan, you made a list of people who looked pro-town to you. Can you explain any of that?

[Yosarian2]

Wrong, Dean. If sparks survives, he can't challange tommorow, but he can challange the next day. Sparks just can't challange a THIRD time until everyon'e challanged once.

[Yosarian2]

My initial nomination and mistakes (regardless of if you think I'm lying or not) are irrelevant at this point because I am the person challenged by Sparks.

What? If we're trying to figure out who was the most suspicious, then how are you're "mistakes" irrelevent"

But ask yourself this: Was it really fair for Sparks to challenge me this early? What have I done to him? Why was he so eager to challenge me? Isn't that action more suspicious that my behavior?

Are you paying attention to this game?

If someone didn't challange someone else on the 10'th, then we could have had a random challange on the 11'th, which would have been bad. And several people made clear that they wanted Sparks to challange someone or they were going to challange him themselves, so instead, he challanged a suspicious looking person.

I'd expect him to act that way no matter what his allignment was, personally.

My theory is that Sparks is scum and anyone voting to save him is

possibly

Spark's secret scum buddy.

My theory is that your theory is totally meaningless. Sparks may be scum, you may be scum, or both of you may be scum in different groups. If you want to survive, you're going to have to do better then that.

Fonz, I really don't know how else to convince you but to say that later in the game you won't regret keeping me here. I can promise you that.

If you want to live, don't promise to contribute more later, contribute more NOW. Like, an explinaiton of why Spark's actions would be more likely to be committed by a scum then by a town, or a discription with reasons of who else you think is suspicious, or a better explination for your own actions.

Plus, I'm a vulnerable target for future rounds.

Why would that be a reason to keep you alive?

[Yosarian2]

Sparks: We read those posts of yours. THe point is, while you may have been "joking" about mneme, it still looks like you already knew scum couldn't talk during the day. Randomally accusing Stoofer of "not reading your posts" dosn't actually answer that question at all.

[Yosarian2]

Hmm. I'm really having trouble deciding here. I guess I'm going to

vote:dylan

just because I could possibly see most of the things he does as newbie mistakes, wheras I have a harder time seeing Sparks as town at this point. Still think they're both probably scum, but at this point getting rid of Sparks seems like the best bet.

[Yosarian2]

We probably want to get rid of one of the conservative mafia people today; if we go hunting for last liberal mafia member, it just makes the 3 member conservative mafia stronger and they're the biggest danger to the town right now.

At the moment, I'm thinking Dylan is most likely to be a member of the conservative mafia; he looks quite scummy, and clearly wasn't scum with Sparks, so at the moment he's my best suspect for a conservative mafia member.

vote:dylan

I also agree with The Fonz that we need to hear more from SpinWizard and DanMonkey.

[Yosarian2]

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; basically, the person with the most nominations should decide who he wants to challange to a debate, and if he fails to do that someone else should challange him. That's basically what we did yesterday and I think it worked out well.

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).

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? I'm not sure I agree; the longer we go without getting rid of a conservative mafia member, the more dangerous they will be as a voting block, and also even if we get the last member of the liberal mafia it won't really give us any information that can help us find who's town and who's conservative mafia. I mean, we do need to get rid of the last liberal eventually, but I don't think that should be a priority now.

[Yosarian2]

Hmmm. I've got to say, I don't really trust VanDamien here. I'm not sure why the last member of the liberal mafia would claim, as he'd then have basically a 0% chance of winning, while it might make sense for a conservative mafia member to claim liberal so we don't lynch him for a few days.

[Yosarian2]

Hmm. That was NOT a good move, at all. That being said, I'm not going to vote to keep Van Damienalive unless I'm convicned Battle Mage is scum; killing people just to "enforce game disipline" is usually a losing battle.

Dylan, just last page you said you thought Battle mage was a conservative scum. Why did you think so then? And why did his challange change your mind?

[Yosarian2]

mneme - I don't understand your post 290.

We believe VD is a liberal.
We think it may be best for the town to keep him around for awhile.
Why would a conservative go up against VD knowing that we'll probably vote to save VD?

That dosn't really make sense, Dylan. No one, scum or townie, would make a challange in the situation BM did unless he thought he would won. So either BM is a townie who thinks he's going to win this challange, or BM is a conservative mafia member who thinks he's going to win this challange. At the moment, either seems possible to me.

[Yosarian2]

Well, he can't "do it again tommorow" mneme. You can't challange two days in a row. But I know what you mean.

[Yosarian2]

While BM's move was anti-town, I'm not really sure you can consider it a scum-tell, as it would be a bad move for town or for scum I think.

If someone can actually make a reasonable case for why BM is scum, I might consider voting to save VanDamien. Just saying "we should execute BM as a policy lynch" or "BM is scum because he challanaged me" isn't going to do it.

[Yosarian2]

lol gotta love that. lynching a townie is bound to help the town more than lynching a scumbag.
what the hell was i thinking...

Right, because if you call yourself a townie, we'll all believe you.

[Yosarian2]

Also, I am suspicious of Yosarian2 for not supporting Battle Mage's death. I would have thought that he would be as keen as anyone to deter unilateral action.

I never said I wasn't in favor of Battle Mage's death. I said I would be in favor of Battle Mage's death if someone could make a good case showing he's scum. I really don't like the way you've been arguing, Mr Stoofer; you never lynch someone because of "policy", you lynch them if you think they're scum. Period. Anything else is usually an excuse.

And I also don't like the way you're suddenly trying to say that I'M suspicious for not wanting to do "policy lynches". Saying someone is "suspicious" just because you disagree with their stratagy is bad mojo.

[Yosarian2]

Stoofer: It's not so much that I don't agree with the nomination plan, as I just don't think an attempt to enforce it strictly even if it causes us to make bad lynches will be profitable or useful. Like I said early in the game:

BTW, that was in response to Stoofer's first post. Stoofer Plan 2.0 is better, although in the past such things haven't worked out so well; in these kinds of games (like Bad Idea mafia and such) usually someone just ends up ignoring the votes and going off on their own anyway. Noneteless, I do support the idea of "nominating" the challanger (or perhaps both the challanger and the challangee) and keeping track of votes and all that, so as to gain information. All we've got to go on this game is day information anyway, so we might as well generate as much as we possibly can.

I like the nominations idea, I think it's helpfull, and the fact BM ignored it is a small black mark against him, but I never really expected it to work perfectly without some people "going off the reservation" when they thought it was a good idea. I've just never seen something like that work in this kind of game; no matter if it's a bad idea mafia or a kingmaker game, someone always just ignores the vote-count and does what they want anyway. And what's more, it's quite often a pro-town person doing it (note in Mad Mafia, for example, everyone who launched an ICBM, real or fake, was pro-town).

Besides, we are now in the situation of "BM vs. VanDamien", and I think the best way to get the most information out of this current debate is to have everyone vote to save whoever they think is least likely to be

conservative

scum. That's how we get the most information. For example, if it later turns out VanDamien is conservative scum pulling a gambit and BattleMage is not conservative scum, I don't want to give the other members of the conservative scum group the easy excuse of "Oh, we just voted to keep VanDaminen alive because we wanted to do a policy lynch". Policy lynches just give the town less information, and it's often an excuse for scum to do what they want without getting in trouble for it.

Now, if you think BM is more likely to be conservative scum then VanDamien, then you should vote to keep VanDamnien alive because of that, not because of "policy".

[Yosarian2]

I'm not sure why we'd rather get him modkilled rather then have someone challange him, Fonz; seems like we'd always get more info from a challange, and it's not like we have to worry about nightkills or anything.

[Yosarian2]

I don't think that's true, Fonz; you can't CHALLANGE more then twice, but I don't think there's any limit on how many times a person can be challanged. Basically, we have as many lynches as we have people; if someone gets modkilled, it's just shortining the game by a day.

But, whatever. Dosn't really matter, as VD's already claimed scum.

[Yosarian2]

However, there have been a number of positive points raised as to why Battle Mage might be scum. What do you think of those points? (This is the third time I have attempted to ask you that.)

Well, I do agree that the comment where BM seemed to "know" you were town is a small scum-tell. What other arguments were there against BM?

[Yosarian2]

Well, that's 4 on Van Damien, so he's going to be saved no matter what now. My vote dosn't really count anymore, so I'll probably vote soon just so I don't screw up and get modkilled.

That being said, I'd still like Stoofer to explain why he thinks Battle Mage is conservative scum; he's kept asking me "what do you think about the case on Battle Mage", but when I ask him what the arguments against Battle Mage are he ignores the question.

[Yosarian2]

(shrug)

vote:Battle Mage

, I guess, although it dosn't matter anymore.

I'd still like to hear Stoofer explain why he thinks battle mage is scum.

[Yosarian2]

I have a feeling all 3 are scum. Mneme is an experienced player, and i cant imagine being town. Van Damien is certain scum, id say quite possible Conservative at this point. Ive got a gut feeling that Yosarian could also be Tory scum. Notice the way he held back his vote until the decision was certain, then voted to save me, in an attempt to look good tomorrow.

Held back until decision was certain? You mean, you suspect me for NOT scummily jumping the gun and ending the day early the way Stoofer and Dylan did?

[Yosarian2]

But you did end the day, several real life days before we had to. You basically went ahead and dropped the hammer before we had finished discussing it, and I don't like that.

[Yosarian2]

And Stoofer, some of your reasons for suspecting BM seem to contradict your other posts. Earlier, you seemed to suggest that you thought BM was scum trying to mess up the nomination system, while later you said that the fact BM did the nomination dosn't say anything about his alignment. The reason I wasnted you to specifically lay out your reasons now, before we find out BM's alignment, is because they didn't quite make sense to me...

[Yosarian2]

To clarify, are there any points against dylan other than:

• He has consistently lurked.
  
• He piled a third vote onto DeanWinchester (as a bandwagon was groing on him) then later claimed that this was merely random.

Well, I really don't like the way he slamed the 4th vote down yesterday to hammer Battle Mage when we still had pleanty of time left to make up the decision. It really feels to me like he cut discussion short by doing that.

[Yosarian2]

The Fonz: Well, if we don't lynch a conservative today, then we really want to do so tommorow, so we should only lynch Van Damien tommorow if we think he's more likely to be a conservative then any other suspect. (shrug) Which is possible; he might very well be a gambiting conservative, and the risk is lower as it's certanly better to kill him then a pro-town person in any case. But still, our goal has to be to kill a conservitve today and probably tommorow as well, we don't want to get distracted from that.

[Yosarian2]

Alright; we need someone to make the challange before midnight tonight, as the deadline is some random time between the 25th and 26th.

I wouldn't mind seeing VanDamien challange Dylan before then. Otherwise, I'd probably like to see Stoofer challange Dylan, because as I mentioned Stoofer's behavior yesterday seemed iffy to me.

[Yosarian2]

Otherwise, I'd probably like to see Stoofer challange Dylan, because as I mentioned Stoofer's behavior yesterday seemed iffy to me.

I explained what you perceived to be a contradiction. It wasn't. What was wrong with my explanation?

Well, basically, you were accusing Battle Mage of being scum mostly because he didn't follow the plan and challanged someone. Then, later that day, you admitted that townies are probably as likely or more likely to not follow the plan as scum are, and then when I asked you why you thought Battle Mage was scum, you just pointed back to the posts where you said that scum would be more likely to not follow the plan.

[Yosarian2]

Anyway, the deadline could come at any moment. Who do you want to see make the challange, Stoofer? (remembering that Dylan's probably not around)

[Yosarian2]

Actually, when I was talking about that, I wasn't talking about your line where you said "Battle Mage is such a player that the mere fact that he went off piste tells us nothing about his alignment", I was talking more about when you said

. I agree that it is Townies that are more likely to go off piste than Scum

And the rest of your points seem to mostly center on the fact that BM wanted to kill off VanDamien, the "confirmed scum", specificially. Which, again, I don't see; yes, most of us agreed we probably should wait on VanDamien, but again, that's just the kind of sitatuion where I'd expect one townie to disgree strongly enough with the rest of the town to take matters into his own hands, especally if he thought that VanDamien was more likely a conservative scum then a liberal scum.

Basically, what I was hoping would happen would be that you would specifically lay out your spcific arguments for why BM was scum in one seperate post, as a series of coherent arguments, and then we could discuss your reasons; I had some doubts about your reasons for thinking BM was scum, but I wanted you to lay out all your arguments in detail first before I questioned them, because I wasn't clear on exactally what your argumetns were and I didn't want to strawman you, and there was pleanty of time left. instead, you basically declined to answer me and just voted for him prematurly, helping to end the day yesterday before we even had a chance to discuss it. That kind if dicussion is the only way we're going to find out who's scum and who's not, and I don't like the way you and Dylan cut it off short.

[Yosarian2]

Stoofer, once you and Dylan had voted and there were 4 votes, the day was effectivly over for all intents and purposes, the only question left was "is anyone going to get modkilled today or not".

[Yosarian2]

Hmm. So if VD told the truth about leaving a challange of Dylan, his challange is valid, but only if he's the least recent person to post. Let me check if he is...

[Yosarian2]

No, he's not; at the very leasy, Dylan has definatly posted less recently then VD did. Let me see if he's the one...

[Yosarian2]

Yeah, Dylan hasn't posted since the 22'nd, and that means that if we hit deadline, he'll be forced to challange, and if he's not around to make the challange in the next 36 hours, then he'll be modkilled.

While Dylan being modkilled isn't the worst thing that could happen, it seems like we might get more info by making someone else we're suspicious of challange him before the deadline hits.

[Yosarian2]

Actually, that is a good point, mneme. I forgot that VD is also in danger of getting modkilled. Hmmm...let me check...ok, VD said he'll be back on Thursday.

That said, and here's the strange part, I'm going to be out of town from Sunday through Thursday.

According to Pablito's mod post at the start of cycle 3, the deadline is

Deadline to Lynch: 23:59 EDT 29th of June[/qote]

Which is 11:59 Friday night. So, if someone else challanges Dylan, and VD gets back when he said he would, he

should

have enough time to vote before the deadline hits.

[Yosarian2]

Crap, simulpost ruined my whole point.

[Yosarian2]

Well, on the off chance Dylan shows up, any one want to give suggestions about who he should challange?

[Yosarian2]

I think the way it works is that a person can have instructions set up before hand in case of contingincy, so like if VD did send in those instructions, and he had been the one who had to make the challange, it would have happened. I guess it's a shame Dylan didn't notice that in the rules.

[Yosarian2]

This is easy-peasy. In fact, it's annoyingly easy because we are not going to get any sort of useful debate from this. Because we have an odd number of voters, the timing of votes is not critical, so I'll hold off voting so as to avoid The Wrath of Yosarian. But I don't see any basis that I would have for voting dylan.

Heh....fair enough.

Yeah, the outcome here seem prety obveous here. In fact, because I expect to be away for a day or two this week, I'll probably vote today myself just to be safe.

Does anyone have any actual arguments against Stewie here? (I can't say I'm taking seriously the "Stewie and Stoofer have been working together" argument, or the "Stewie has been quiet" argument.) Dylan, I would suggest that if you actually have any real arguments to make about that, it'd be best to back them up with in-game evidence of some kind, because right now, I don't really see any evidence for either one of those things.

[Yosarian2]

*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.

I think it's pretty clear that if Dylan is scum his scumbuddies are bussing him here, and have been all game, as EVERYONE's been attacking him all game. Which isn't too surprising; I think any reasonably experenced scum who was buddies with Dylan would have realised pretty early during day 1 that Dylan was going to be lynched eventually and would have distanced themselves from him ASAP.

[Yosarian2]

Alright. The forum keeps going grey-screen-of-death on me, and I don't know how much I'll be able to get on in the next few days, so

vote:stewie

[Yosarian2]

I don't really think that's the question. The question is, is VanDamien telling the truth, or is he lying?

If he's a liberal scum, we don't really want to lynch him today, although it'd certanly be better then losing a townie. If we think there's a good chance he's a conservative pulling a gambit to try and get us to keep him alive, he might be a good lynch.

Here's a question for you when you get back, Van Damien: Would you be acting differently if you were a conservative scum? If so, how?

[Yosarian2]

Well, could be, although there are other people who could easily be the last liberal based on day 1 evidence; for example, early on day 2 you thought Dean was the last liberal, if I remember correctly.

[Yosarian2]

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.

Well, sure. But lynching a townie is much worse then lynching a liberal; if we lynch a townie today, then even if we lynch a conservative tommorow, we could easily be heading towards an ugly 3 faction prisoner's dilemma endgame.

This is hard. I can think of 4 people who have been acting very pro-town all game: participating well, making pro-town points etc etc etc.

They are mneme, Yosarian2, Stewie and The Fonz. At least one of them must be conservative scum (from my POV). Probably more than one. I think that there is a lot to be said for trying to get a "hard" lynch today. So far we have made "easy" lynches, with a hit rate of only 1 in 3.

Well, I see what you're saying, but saying "at least one of these 5 players (mneme, Yos2, Stewie, The Fonz, and Stoofer) mathmatically must be scum" isn't all that helpfull. Yes, we need to keep an eye on everyone, but I think part of that is that it's hard to tell the difference between good pro-town play and good pro-conservative play until we nail at least one conservative. If, say, Dean turns out to be conservative, it'd give me information about lots of other players, including some of those "hard to lynch" players you're talking about.

At the moment, out of that list of hard to lynch players, the one who looks most suspicious to me is you, Stoofer, for reasons I pointed out during and after that Battle Mage lynch.

[Yosarian2]

Could you try to explain why you think that, Albert?

[Yosarian2]

Actually, there is another reason why I have been suspicious of Yosarian2: his behaviour on the Battle Mage wagon. Yosarian2 was very pro "the System", and yet he seemed to regard Battle Mage's subversion of it with equanimity. And, when Battle Mage started acting scummy (quite apart from subverting the System), he defended him, going after me instead.

Lynching townies just because they're going against "the system" is anti-town, Stoofer. It's unfortuante, but townies WILL sometimes ignore the town and go off and do what they think is best. Attempts to deter them from doing that by saying "kill anyone who ignores it", like you were doing, is only of limited effectivness as townies will often be willing to put themselves at risk in order to do what they think is good for the town.

Find me ONE example of a game where the town was able to "enforce disipline" of the type you're suggesting, and I'll consider it. As far as I know, that's never actually worked, and it's been tried many times.

Not only that, when I disagreed with you, you actually attacked ME for disagreeing with you, trying to suggest that me just saying "don't vote to lynch BM unless you actually think he's scum" was somehow scummy. I don't trust people who call me scummy because I disagree with their stratagy.

Besides that, if we just let it be acceptable for everyone to say "well, BM broke the rules, let's lynch him", then that discussion creates much less information then the discussion I wanted to see, a "who's more likely to be conservative scum, Battle Mage or Van Damien".

And by the way, how, exactally, was Battle Mage "starting to act scummy quite apart from subverting the system"?

Yosarian2 is in favour of lynching pro-town people who are harming the Town: as this post demonstrates:

That being said, while I won't vote someone just because they're not playing well, there are times I vote for someone because of anti-town play; if a person is acting in such a way that it directly harms the town, which could be lurking, or hammering people without giving them a chance to claim, or some other anti-town behaviors, then the town needs to make them stop doing that, either by pressuring them with votes or if they won't stop by lynching them, even if you're not sure of their alignment.

So why didn't he adopt this policy with Battle Mage, who clearly fell into this category?

We won't actually know if Battle Mage's actions WERE pro-town or not until we find out if Van Damien is conservative scum. If he is, then Battle Mage was actually correct in going off "the plan" and challanging him.

Now, if someone was challanging people right at the start of the day before any discussion had happened, that would be anti-town. But that's not what happened. On the other hand, I do consider the the early votes that cut off discussion on Battle Mage prematurly to be an anti-town action, just like a quick hammer in a normal game would be.

I have a suspicion that the reason Yosarian2 was defending Battle Mage was that he knew he was a Townie, but knew equally well that Battle Mage was going to get lynched. He did it to look pro-Town. If you look back at his play yesterday, it seems to me that he is making it clear that he does not support a Battle Mage lynch, but he doesn't make any real effort to push to Town in any other direction. [/qutoe]

Actually, I did not actually defend Battle Mage before the lynch happened, unless you consider my "let's vote for whoever's scummier" argument a "defense'. I was still waiting for you to put together a single coherent argument for why Battle Mage was scum (Note: NOT "why we should lynch him" but "why he is scum"); when you had done that, I would have considered it, responded, disagreed with any points I didn't like, and then said what I thought. I've played and am currently playing a lot of games with Battle Mage, and he didn't really feel scummy to me in this game, but I was keeping an open mind. And then the day ended prematurly before I got a chance to DO any of that, which was incredibly frustrating, and I would also argue anti-town.

Any experienced player knows that defending a doomed Townie is a win-win situation for Scum -- as long as they don't defend them too hard, of course. After everyone started screaming for Battle Mage's blood yesterday, I think I might well have done exactly what he did if I were Scum.

Ok...as soon as you start trying to take WIFOM that far, and trying to make it sound like your attack on a townie was pro-town and my "defense" of a townie was anti-town, it just makes me more suspicious of you.

[Yosarian2]

Hmm. Interesting argument, mneme. You seem to be making a lot of assumptions, though; you're assuming you're not scum, for some reason you're assuming Dean's not scum, you're assuming Van is liberal scum, and you're assuming that scum would never attack each other (which I don't see, especally in a game like this where it's probably safer to do distancing then it would be in a normal game, considering the way debates work and such.)

So, while I can see where you're coming from, I'm not really convinced just on that. But let me go back and re-read The Fonz's posts; offhand, I can't remember any major things he's done, which could be a sign he's been flying under the radar.

[Yosarian2]

Lynching townies just because they're going against "the system" is anti-town, Stoofer.

Not at all! You yourself said, in the Mafia Discussion post I just quoted, that sometimes the right thing to do is a kill the person who is hurting the Town, even if you don't know whether they are scum. I assume that you were being honest in the Mafia Discussion thread, which makes me suspicious of your inconsistent view in this thread.

Yes, there are times when it's approperate to pressure someone to stop acting in an anti-town way or, if all else fails, even to lynch them for it. However, IN THIS CASE, the best thing for the town to do WOULD HAVE BEEN to ACTUALLY have a debate about the alignment of the people involved, because that's the only way we were going to get any information from day 2.

In this case, the REAL anti-town action was hammering BM before we had finished the discussion.

The fact that enforcing discipline has never worked before is not a good reason not to attempt it here.

The fact that it's never worked isn't enough reason to focus more on lynching scum then on enforcing disipline? I would think that the fact it's never worked is a GREAT reason to not prioritise it higher then "trying to lynch scum".

In Bad Idea Mafia II, at least one person was killed for bringing the day to a premature end. Something which you would no doubt applaud, given your recent post in Mafia Discussion.

I was in Bad Idea Mafia II, breifly, and what happened in day 1 of that game is exactally one of the reasons I think that focusing on trying to enforce game dicipline is futile.

Not only that, when I disagreed with you, you actually attacked ME for disagreeing with you, trying to suggest that me just saying "don't vote to lynch BM unless you actually think he's scum" was somehow scummy. I don't trust people who call me scummy because I disagree with their stratagy.

Not really a fair reflection. It's not that just you disagreed with "my" strategy (I wasn't the first to say that BM should be lynched on principal). Unless you are scum, I don't understand why you thought BM should be allowed to get away with it. Your apparent reason ("enforcing discipline has never worked before") just doesn't stack up.

Oh? That's not really a fair reflection?

Also, I am suspicious of Yosarian2 for not supporting Battle Mage's death. I would have thought that he would be as keen as anyone to deter unilateral action.

You were so opposed to actually discussing the matter that you actually attacked me for "not supporting Battle Mage's death".

For F**k's sake! I set out the reasons why BM was scummy apart from (perhaps "in addition to" would be a better description) subverting the system. When you asked for them again, I directed you to the posts in question. But still you never addressed them.

Yes, you directed me to the posts in question, AFTER Battle Mage was already dead. So of course I didn't bother to adress them THEN. And not only that, some of those reasons you pointed to were either very weak, or illogical. So, again, if you're going to keep attacking me for "ignoring the reason BM was scummy", could you please say what those reasons are?

The fact you've been so hesitent to do this, both during the lynch and later, other then by pointing to some old posts, is NOT a point in your favor here.

Yes, it is a little bit WIFOM. But to me there were so many good reasons to lynch Battle Mage and only one reason to try to save him: namely if you

knew

he was a Townie.

Um, no, that's stupid. Suspecting that someone is probably a townie would certanly be enough reason to not want to lynch them. And again, I didn't "try to save" Battle Mage, although I might have if you hadn't cut off discussion so quickly, I just disagreed with your bad "we should lynch him to enforce disipline" argument.

And despite what you say with one exception you never addressed the good reasons to lynch Battle Mage.

...and they would be?

The only reason that you addressed was: "We should lynch Battle Mage as a matter of policy". And even in relation to that reason, your response ("enforcing discipline has never worked before") was rubbish.

Yes, that's absolutly true, which is why your entire attack on me based on my so-called "defense" of Battle Mage is absolute rubbish to start out with. First you're attacking me for "defending" Battle Mage, and now you're attacking me because I didn't defend Battle Mage? Real consistant there.

And I already pointed out that your main reason for claiming to think BM was scum, which claimed that a scum would be more likely to challange in that situation then a town, is basically completly untrue and actually contradicts other things you've said.

[Yosarian2]

We won't actually know if Battle Mage's actions WERE pro-town or not until we find out if Van Damien is conservative scum. If he is, then Battle Mage was actually correct in going off "the plan" and challanging him.

Now, if someone was challanging people right at the start of the day before any discussion had happened, that would be anti-town. But that's not what happened. On the other hand, I do consider the the early votes that cut off discussion on Battle Mage prematurly to be an anti-town action, just like a quick hammer in a normal game would be.

Actually, this is the worst bit of your post. You say that the people who voted Battle Mage early were being anti-Town (and you ignore the fact that the timing of votes was potentially critical); but you say that Battle Mage's actions in subverting the system and bringing the nomination discussions to an early close was not necessarily anti-town? How can you possibly say that voting for Battle Mage early was worse than what Battle Mage did?

"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. I guess you could say he brought the discussion to an early close on the grouds that he could have waited a few hours first, but that was the day the nomination had to happen.

And, sure, the timing of votes could have been important. So what? Did you not think your argument was strong enough to convince a 5 vote majority of the town to lynch BM on their own? Was that important enough to lose the information by shortening discussion?

And what I said was, was that he disagreed with the town and went off and challanged someone else. The town wanted Dylan to challange or be challanged, but he thought it was better to challange Van Damien. And again, I'm not sure how you can catagoraclly declare that anti-town without knowing what Van Damien's alignment was. You later claimed that it was scummy because he "thought he would win" by challanging an admitted scum, but that's silly, as there was no reason to think Battle Mage would have been challanged at all that day if he hadn't challanged.
No one was suspicious of him at all before that point; I can't believe you really thought a scum would risk himself like that for no real gain, and that you didn't even consider the more probable "he was a townie who just thought the claimed scum needed to die" explination.

[Yosarian2]

"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.

Ok, fair enough, he should have waited until later that day.

I'm not sure I understand this point. We didn't know (and still don't know) VanDamien's alignment, but neither did BattleMage. The fact that VanDamien could be conservative scum does not change the fact that we did not have that information at the moment, and not having that information the best thing to do was to let him live for the moment.

Well, BM went against the opinion of the town because, he said, he though Van Damien was likely to be a conservative scum. I was just saying that I'm not sure you can call his challange an "anti-town" action when we still don't know if BM was right or not; without knowing that, I'm not sure you can catagorally say that his challanging Van Damien rather then, say, Dylan, is an "anti-town" action. After all, even in bad idea mafia, if you ignore what everyone else says and suceed in hitting a scum, you can't really call that an anti-town action, right?

[Yosarian2]

Secondly, I am liberal - as I stated earlier. At the time I came out, such a gambit would have been completely idiotic, and would have gained nothing.

Would have gained nothing? It's kept you alive this long, and because of your liberal claim, you're not likely to get lynched today either. So, it certanly did "gain you something", no matter what your alignment is.

I really am beginning to think we saved the wrong person during the last challenge.

Oh? Why is that?

[Yosarian2]

Stewie and mneme have responded to most of Yosarian's nonsense, so I won't bother.

This makes me cry though:

So, again, if you're going to keep attacking me for "ignoring the reason BM was scummy", could you please say what those reasons are?

I think I am going to put the following in my sig so that it appears in every post in this thread:

I'd still like to hear Stoofer explain why he thinks battle mage is scum.

I've done this in my posts today: see 315 (under "Secondly"), 325, 329, 330 (pointing out an untruth). I'd quote them all again if he wasn't already dead. Can't you just go back and read them?

For like the twenty seventh time, I've over and over again wanted you to sum up why you think/thought BM was scummy because the reasons for thinking he was scumyou gave in those posts don't make a lot of sense; the only decent point was in 329, where you were agreeing with a minor possible scum tell The Fonz pointed out. I was kind of hoping you would actually explain WHY you thought BM was scum, because reading those posts most of your reasons for thinking he's scum sound like either great streches of the imagination on your part or just bad logic, and all in all it really just sounds to me like you were going after BM because he was an easy lynch after he made the mistake of challanging against the town's will. I was trying to give you a chance to re-state your arguments, both that day and later every time you've tried to say "Oh, there were good reasons to think BM was scum!" because your arguments as written were just not very logical, and most could have as easily been explained by a town BM as by a scum BM.

For example, most of your post 315 argument for BM being scum does not really stand up:

Battle Mage's play screws up the nomination system which has so far been spectacularly successful at catching Scum. And if we don't lynch him for it, it threatens to do long term damage to the system as other players, Scum and Townie, see that they can get away with unilateral action.

That's not an argument for him being scum, that's just you continuing to argue that we should lynch him for policy reasons.

I don't think we should or can ignore that fact that Battle Mage challenged claim Scum. I have no doubt that he thought he would have no difficulty winning the vote in the circumstances. I could easily imagine that Battle Mage's tiny brain might think that he could make himself look pro-Town by killing a Scum bag.

That dosn't really make any sense either; did you really think BM was trying to make himself look pro-town by challanging against the town's wishes? Also, the fact that VD is a claimed scum is actually why I wouln't be surprised if a townie decided to challange him.

All the reasons why the Town wants to keep VanDamien alive for now are reasons why the Conservative Scum want him dead (assuming he is Liberal).

And that's just silly. Obv, conservative scum want anyone who's not one of them dead. The best way to ensure that that early in the game would probably be for them to sit back and let townies challange each other.

Post 325 was just you saying "Oh, look, Battle Mage says we should kill the 100% claimed scum, that obveously proves he's scum going for the easy kill". Um, or else it means he's a townie who honestly thinks the town should kill the claimed scum?

329, like I said, agrees with a possible minor scum tell noted by The Fonz, with BM acting like you were pro-town. And 330 was just silly; BM said he thought you were pro-town because agreed with a lot of things you said, and you called him a liar, saying he couldn't possibly have agreed with anything you said because he didn't follow the plan.

Again; I've read your posts, multiple times. I wanted you to actually state why you thought BM was scum, in a coherent argument, because those posts all put together do not MAKE a coherent argument for why BM was scum, at all. I was kind of hoping you would actually state your reasons again, because your argument as written was incredibly weak. The fact that you've over and over again refused to do so makes me think you've known all along that your argument for BM being scum was incredibly weak and so didn't want to have to re-state it. .

[Yosarian2]

Isn't it easy to argue that someone is a Townie when the Mod has already revealed their alignment?

Um, dude, like THREE POSTS AGO you were attacking me for "never adressing your points for why BM was scum". And now you're attacking me for adressing your points? Granted, I would have MUCH RATHER had this discussion BEFORE you lynched a townie, but your and Dylan's early votes made that impossible.

Anyway, do you realize how scummy you're sounding here, Stoofer? I attacked you because you overly hastily lynched a townie with for what I considered and still consider to be not very good reasons, and for refusing to explain exactally why you thought he was scummy even after he was hammered.

After I do that, you suddenly start attacking me, for really bad reasons; most of them boil down to you either still being mad at me for disgreeing with your policy lynch, or you being mad at me for daring to suspect you based on the way you acted during that day.

And by the way, it's frankly absurd that you claim you were "so angry at BM all day" and you're "never going to play with BM again" because he challanged someone the majority of the town didn't want him to challange? Really? BM's behavior was not anywhere near as distructive or anti-town as that of any number most pro-town players in MAD mafia or either bad idea mafia game. Do you never want to play with any of them either?

[Yosarian2]

That dosn't really make sense, Albert.

If you think Dean is likely scum, challange Dean. If you think Mneme is likey scum, challange mneme. I can understand that you might not want to challange someone you think you'd lose to, no one wants to die, but if you are pro-town you should challange someone you think is likely scum, and be able to explain why. How else are we supposed to figure out what your alignment might be, and how else are we supposed to have a chance to catch scum?

[Yosarian2]

(nods) I am very interested to see what mneme has to say here. I haven't really seen any major scum tells from either one, honestly.

I'm also wondering of mneme is going to change his earlier opinion, back when he said:

First, it seems to indicate that Albert's probably not scum.

[Yosarian2]

Bah. I'd hoped to hear from mneme before voting, but no time.

vote:Albert

[Yosarian2]

[quote="Stewie"]I'm wondering why yos decided to vote to lynch mneme. I know mneme didn't get back in time to respond to Albert's posts, but were they really that compelling?[/qutoe]

I didn't have much time to decide, I had to go in to work at 2:00 pm. That, and somehow I misread the mod post and temporarally wasn't sure if it was noon or midnight the vote had to be cast by in order to avoid a modkill.

In any case, both sides were looking fairly pro-town to me at the time. Albert did raise some decent points about mneme, and in that "holy crap I have to vote right now" moment, Albert just seemed like a better vote.

[Yosarian2]

Regarding the Stoofer issue...I think he's innocent, and the scum are probably Dean, Yosarian and yourself, Fonz. I understand I've become a very likely target, and I will take care to build thicker cases in the future.

:eyebrow:

Could you explain WHY you think I'm scum, Albert?

[Yosarian2]

Eh? You thought Stoofer "had the upper hand" with his OMGUS attacks on me?

[Yosarian2]

hmmm...no posts in 12 hours? That's unusual for this game.

Albert, can you explain why you agreed with Stoofer during his debate with me?

[Yosarian2]

I'm not sure what you mean by "force me to take a position", as I certanly think I have taken a position on Stoofer. But ok. Fonz, could you explain why you think Stoofer is scum?

[Yosarian2]

vote:The Fonz

It'd suck to get modkilled now

[Yosarian2]

Yeah...I could have figured out a better reason to vote for mneme if he had just been around to post and respond to stuff, lol.

[Yosarian2]

I liked the game. Quite a well-designed game of speed mafia. The "vote or die" thing was perhaps a little overly harsh, but it worked. All in all, a great game, thanks mods.

[Yosarian2]

Heh...it's funny, BM, but I would say my actions on the day you were lynched were just about exactally what they would have been in I was town. There were some points of the game where I did act scummy, but I don't think that was one of them.

[Yosarian2]

Heh...it's funny, BM, but I would say my actions on the day you were lynched were just about exactally what they would have been in I was town. There were some points of the game where I did act scummy, but I don't think that was one of them.

thats sorta what i mean. You played like the PERFECT townie i.e. defending those who were town and attacking those who were scum. However when it was certain that i was going to get lynched, and you appeared to defend me, it seemed pretty likely that you had inside knowledge that i was town. Dont get me wrong, it was good play, but had i survived, you would have been my top suspect on the next day (not that that would have got me anywhere most probably)

Well, perhaps, but I do that when town too. I'm often pretty good at smelling a bad bandwagon and defending against it.

It's pretty funny that Stoofer had left orders to challange me. For the last couple of game days, my plan had always been to challange Stoofer during the last lynch-or-lose day.

[Yosarian2]

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.

Huh? Always lynch the attacker? I completly disagree. I would actually consider challanging someone to be a pro-town action; that is, scum would rather not challange anyone and hope that two townies challange each other or that a townie challanges someone in the other scum group. I mean, scum don't really even want to WIN a challange against a townie, as that would make them look bad. (And, in fact, it did make albert look bad; no one distrusted albert at all before your lynch, but afterwards, everyone distrusted Albert). So I'd say when in doubt, vote to SAVE the attacker, most of the time. In theory, anyway.

[Yosarian2]

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.

Well, that is true, he was forced into a challange, but again I don't see how that makes him any less likely to be town. I mean, everyone already knew he was attacking you, and they still thought he was town; not sure why him choosing to challange you would autmatically change that. I mean, look at MAD mafia; everyone who launced either a nuke or a fake-nuke was town, and everyone who was a target was town, bizzarly enough.

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.

That really dosn't make any sense to me; I often think that X is a townie but disagree with his suspicions in a mafia game. Again, if we didn't think his suspicions on you were suspicious before, it dosn't make any logical sense to punish him for acting in a way consistant with them.

[Yosarian2]

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.

Eh. On the one hand, when the town makes a plan in any game like this, it's usually best if some townie dosn't go agaisnt it, even if their reasons seem good to them at the time it rarely seems to go well in any of these games. On the other hand, lynching BM that day was a mistake on the part of the town, no two ways about it. Like in most bad lynches, both sides share some fault.

[Yosarian2]

Hehehe...yeah, now that the conservatives have taken over, they'll probably cut NGR's budget.

[Yosarian2]

Well, that's true. As it turned out, it might not have made a huge difference. I mean, BM might have gone off and challanged Albert or me later, but that dosn't mean he would have won.

Still, I'm not really sure what the big advantage is to keeping a claimed scum around in a nightless game. There's no nightkills, so lynching him dosn't really hurt the town in any case; I mean, sure he might save the town in a lynch or lose situation, but he could just as easily doom the town in a 3 player 1 town 1 conservative 1 liberal endgame.

[Yosarian2]

BM, to be fair, while I don't think lynching you was the right move, it was also partly your fault due to play errors on your part as well. Specifically, if you really thought that the consensess was wrong and thought Van needed to be challanged, you probably should have floated the idea first. Said "Look, I really think Van could be conservative, and he's definatly a scum, and I think he needs to go now. I'll listen to what you have to say, but unless someone convinces me otherwise in the next day or so, I'll challange him myself." If you had done that, then even if people didn't agree with you, you would have had a better shot of surviving that challange, and if people disagred TOO violently you would have had a chance to back down instead. As it was, you were basically counting on the good will and trust of the town at the same time you had just done a move that seemed irrational and confusing to most of the town, and didn't really explain why you did it. If you had thought about it first, you probably could have predicted your move wasn't going to be very popular if you did it that way, and that it was likely to get you lynched. Whenver a townie gets lynched, it's usually both the fault of that townie and of the town in different degrees, and usually both sides can learn and improve their play from it.

[Yosarian2]

Indeed, it was so obvious that pro-towners would vote to kill BM that I (correctly) figured out that Yosarian2 was scum because he voted to save BM.

Heh...I guarentee you that if I was pro-town I would have voted to save BM. In fact, I probably would have done it sooner and defended him harder if I was pro-town. That's kind of irrelevent though.