Mini 546: House Mafia - Game Over

[Near]

FOS: vollkan

FOS: shaft.ed

First, I believe that vollkan is a logical person. This is the premise for my arguments throughout this post.

Yes, there is a balancing act

to an extent

. However, catching scum needs to be the highest priority. Ultimately, town doesn't win by holding back - town wins by catching scum. If an argument is legitimate proof of someone being scum, there is no reason (in all normal circumstances) why I would refrain from raising that argument.

I'm not too sure what your point about "lynch on the first night (sic)" has to do with this.

Yes, winning is the highest priority. Catching a scum is directly related to this priority. Therefore, if I can trade my own "life" with that of scum's, I agree that it's correct play to do so. But when your best suspect is, say, only 60% scum (as opposed to your next best guess at 50%), sometimes it's incorrect put your life in danger, since you know you are 0% scum.

Anyway, we should probably talk about this later @ Mafia Discussion Forum.

Whilst it is true that armlx may have been concerned about lynching townshaft.ed, I am not sure that such a concern really might have prevented him from being so "definitive". Remember that we also had Pooky being even blunter, and the comments by TG and Adel were hardly of phenomenal length either. Given that armlx was first to vote, he might have felt safer given that he wasn't immediately pushing a wagon into danger zone.

First, we don't know whether other people you mentioned (Pooky, TG, Adel) are scums. If they are townies, then they believe who they are voting against are actual scums, so, often they will not concern themselves with "what if who i vote for is not a scum". So I think we can excuse their "definitiveness". It's different for armlx. He knew who the other scums were. If shaft.ed was not a scum, armlx knew that - and he would be concerned about the aftereffect of voting to kill a townie.

The fact that you missed this made me wonder if you were hurried in your defense for shaft.ed.

Certainly, I think the winds were changing towards shaft.ed when armlx voted. It could be armlx wanting to be first on the wagon of his buddy, so he doesn't need to tag on a late vote and look dodgy; or it could just be armlx pushing against a seemingly doomed townie.

IIRC, it wasn't armlx who voted for shaft.ed first. There was at least one (I think two) prior vote and multiple accusations on shaft.ed.

But, IF armlx was the first person to vote for shaft.ed, I think it makes it a lot less likely that shaft.ed is the other scum. A likelihood of a scum making a definitive accusation at his partner who's ALREADY in the corner is high. Likelihood of a scum casting the first vote at his partner that a few suspects, is not.

Since you *thought* that armlx was the first person to vote on shaft.ed, I would have expected you to say something like this and discount my scenario 2). But your not doing so makes me think you are just trying to go along with me.

That said, 2) seems like the most obvious course of action for armlx if shaft.ed is his buddy. Armlx pulls town credit for lynching shaft.ed scum and can then take down TJM.

If shaft.ed is armlx's buddy, then 2) is the only scenario!

Your post makes me very suspicious of you. It also makes me suspicious of shaft.ed that much more. Because, if you are a scum but shaft.ed is not, you would have found a ways to validate my theory with open arms. Instead, you reluctantly accepted that it's possible. Writing this, what came first to my mind is: "Is vollkan too concerned to dismiss my theory completely but also doesn't want to kill his only other partner?"

You thought that armlx was the first person to vote for shaft.ed. You should have dismissed or at least partially discredited my theory.

[vollkan]

Yes, winning is the highest priority. Catching a scum is directly related to this priority. Therefore, if I can trade my own "life" with that of scum's, I agree that it's correct play to do so. But when your best suspect is, say, only 60% scum (as opposed to your next best guess at 50%), sometimes it's incorrect put your life in danger, since you know you are 0% scum.

Anyway, we should probably talk about this later @ Mafia Discussion Forum.

I disagree with your theory.

But I agree that now is not the time.

Whilst it is true that armlx may have been concerned about lynching townshaft.ed, I am not sure that such a concern really might have prevented him from being so "definitive". Remember that we also had Pooky being even blunter, and the comments by TG and Adel were hardly of phenomenal length either. Given that armlx was first to vote, he might have felt safer given that he wasn't immediately pushing a wagon into danger zone.

First, we don't know whether other people you mentioned (Pooky, TG, Adel) are scums. If they are townies, then they believe who they are voting against are actual scums, so, often they will not concern themselves with "what if who i vote for is not a scum". So I think we can excuse their "definitiveness". It's different for armlx. He knew who the other scums were. If shaft.ed was not a scum, armlx knew that - and he would be concerned about the aftereffect of voting to kill a townie.

The fact that you missed this made me wonder if you were hurried in your defense for shaft.ed.

You miss my point.

Pooky etc. had expressed their suspicions of shaft.ed fairly bluntly. Armlx, if he was pushing the lynch of town shaft.ed, did not run the normal risk of casting an "under-explained" vote because the other attacks made against shaft.ed were all similarly blunt. In other words, armlx could have "hid" amongst the collective "definitiveness".

I'm not saying that this is what happened, but I am raising a reasonable objection to the scenario you presented.

Certainly, I think the winds were changing towards shaft.ed when armlx voted. It could be armlx wanting to be first on the wagon of his buddy, so he doesn't need to tag on a late vote and look dodgy; or it could just be armlx pushing against a seemingly doomed townie.

IIRC, it wasn't armlx who voted for shaft.ed first. There was at least one (I think two) prior vote and multiple accusations on shaft.ed.

There were FoSes and accusations, but no prior votes.

But, IF armlx was the first person to vote for shaft.ed, I think it makes it a lot less likely that shaft.ed is the other scum. A likelihood of a scum making a definitive accusation at his partner who's ALREADY in the corner is high. Likelihood of a scum casting the first vote at his partner that a few suspects, is not.

Since you *thought* that armlx was the first person to vote on shaft.ed, I would have expected you to say something like this and discount my scenario 2). But your not doing so makes me think you are just trying to go along with me.

Uh, no - you miss my point again.

If armlx got a sense that shaft.ed was in a state of impending doom, it would be reasonable for armlx to jump onto shaft.ed asap. Shaft.ed was being called "So scum" and was attracting FoSes and accusations. He looked like a was a lame duck.

What would discredit your scenario 2 somewhat (always remember that bussing can go to extreme lengths) is if armlx himself had started the tirade against shaft.ed and had himself been responsible for pulling shaft.ed into that state.

That said, 2) seems like the most obvious course of action for armlx if shaft.ed is his buddy. Armlx pulls town credit for lynching shaft.ed scum and can then take down TJM.

If shaft.ed is armlx's buddy, then 2) is the only scenario!

You aren't understanding me properly.

Obviously, yes, if shaft.ed is scum than we know that armlx was bussing and it seems obvious that he would next drag down TJM.

However, and this is what I was saying, that wasn't the only course of action open to armlx

at that point

. Armlx could have stayed off shaft.ed and slunk off, or pursued TJM, etc. The obvious (in the sense of "obviously most sensible") course of action for armlx in that scenario, however, would have been to do what he did, which is your scenario 2).

[TrustGossip]

Page 8 is very intriguing. I will start what may become a very laborious reanalysis on this page (or I could stop at this page, depends on how much discussion is generated).

Here are my comments on the shaft.ed discussion, both past and present (as in CDK, I am giving a reflection on an aspect of Day One that's not about me and armix, since it seems we've now both completely tired of that subject).

Post 183 is pivotal:

smart enough to know random wagoning from dodgy vote-hopping. I find it very hard to believe that you would mistakenly take issue with Adel's wagoning - and then try and peg it on meta rather than on the fact that it was apparent random wagoning.

I've actually never played in a game with unabashed bandwagon hopping to the extreme that Adel was using. The times I have seen heavy bandwagoning it has been either from scum or from townies that end up outing power roles, so I don't like it. The uses of heavy bandwagoning in my experience are 1) to pressure a player into a poor response thus building a case on them [usually scum], 2) to counterattack players who vote the wagoner [generally from scum] or 3) simply to generate discussion and latch onto "odd" reactions to the wagon

. Since Adel was jumping off wagons before they could get going I knew it wasn't #1. So I wanted to see how she would react to some votes being added to her in order to discern between 2 & 3. She didn't heavily attack me or CKD for our votes and she did point out JiveMachines discrepency, this lead me to believe she was motivated to move the game out of random and generate some useful leads. My post saying as such was obviously lazy and incorrect.

What response are you talking about?

I'm refering to a calm inquisitve reaction to votes and pointing out the suspicious without a vote from JiveMachine. This post:

I couldn't have expected better results: just a little bit of erratic behavior brought out two votes and a wagon push by a lurking player. unvote, vote: The Jive Machine for the scummy behavior of keeping a low profile and only popping in long enough to try to add some fuel to the hottest fire.

I want to know how it is that you failed to spot random wagoning.

As I said I didn't fail to spot it, I wanted to know the motivation behind it.

It's not so much the content however, as how people responded to it.

Adel and vollkan both completely back off of shaft.ed. Thus the initial person shaft.ed targetted and the most damaging possible opponent absolve him. I say this because vollkan commands a lot of authority in this game. His posts are well reasoned or at least give every indication of well-thought out arguments. This exchange caused me to shelve Adel/shaft.ed/vollkan from my radar entirely during Day One.

armix and Pooky both express that they are not impressed with the reasoning. armix is confirmed scum now, and Pooky's main target's yesterday were shaft.ed and vollkan. I'm not entirely sure what to make of this.

armix's most important associations are the following people:

Adel: early game, very strong associations between the two, armix barnacling and adel seizing on openings created by armix to gambit.

shaft.ed / CDK / TheJiveMachine: all targets of votes/suspicions.

TG: opinion sticking. I am ashamed to admit that if not for armix, my railing against CDK would probably have been much shorter-lived.

Erg0: along with TG, was one of the two people placed at 0% suspicion. I'm not sure what to make of the fact that all three of us were the one's to collectively kill BeepBeep.

What I must finally say is that armix wasn't particularly bad scum. If it weren't for CDK's near constant pressure for 2/3 of the game, suspicion would have never escalated to the level where he began to make his fatal errors (claiming adel's playstyle, erroneous reasonings against CDK). I think that at least for some of his posts, he meant for the information he presented to be as misleading as possible upon reflection. By clearly outlining his "suspicion" he managed to look mildly town and also to help build unproductive cases against innocents in the event of his lynch.

I am saying that looking at the obvious is only a start, every possibility must be considered.

[TrustGossip]

armix and Adel voting partnership noted.

it is all an illusion in your mind.

unvote, vote: shaft.ed[/b[

well I assume that was a vote for shafted..which is the third time you and arm have voted together...

think it is too obvious though

..ugh

unvote

so Adel, why the obvious chage in playstyle?

This is also somewhat relevant in connection with my previous post and the current discussion I am having with CDK.

[Adel]

vollkan is town in this game.
so is ckd.
pooky probably is as well.
TrustGossip is getting better at mafia right before our eyes.

shaft.ed isn't dense, but he is acting the part. what does that mean?

[Near]

You miss my point.

Pooky etc. had expressed their suspicions of shaft.ed fairly bluntly. Armlx, if he was pushing the lynch of town shaft.ed, did not run the normal risk of casting an "under-explained" vote because the other attacks made against shaft.ed were all similarly blunt. In other words, armlx could have "hid" amongst the collective "definitiveness".

I'm not saying that this is what happened, but I am raising a reasonable objection to the scenario you presented.

I was embarrassed after reading this. I should have known what you meant. Instead, I thought I saw something, I was wrong.

There were FoSes and accusations, but no prior votes.

I stand corrected.

Uh, no - you miss my point again.

If armlx got a sense that shaft.ed was in a state of impending doom, it would be reasonable for armlx to jump onto shaft.ed asap. Shaft.ed was being called "So scum" and was attracting FoSes and accusations. He looked like a was a lame duck.

We are in agreeement here.

What would discredit your scenario 2 somewhat (always remember that bussing can go to extreme lengths) is if armlx himself had started the tirade against shaft.ed and had himself been responsible for pulling shaft.ed into that state.

True, but in my mind anyway, the fact that armlx was the first person to vote for shaft.ed makes him less likely to be armlx's partner. In retrospect, I think scenario (1) in my original theory is more likely - that, armlx was trying to lynch a townie who he thought had a good chance of getting lynched.

UNFOS shaft.ed

UNFOS vollkan

[/quote]

[Near]

OK, here is something I was thinking about this afternoon and I couldn't derive anything significant from it, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

In the very beginning, when the mod told everyone to pick the teams, scums were allowed to communicate with each other. I'd imagine that scums decided that at least one person join each team. Not knowing what the "twist" is, if I were scum, I'd probably suggest the idea. It has a feeling of "infiltrating" the both teams. This is not very logical, I know, but this is my guess. Coupled with the fact that, after the twist, when each team had to lynch one member from the other team, both teams took quite a bit to decide who to lynch. And in fact, it was the team with armlx that took longer to decide who to lynch. Does it make any sense? (I am hesitant after my previous posts got shut down :p)

Going with this theory, I tried to look for person who stated "awkward" reasons to join the "other team", but the most awkward reason was "Sweet. I've always liked bears" which was stated by Dean Harper, whom I am replacing. I also found vollkan was also somewhat suspicious for being the first person to join the other team, but his reason for not liking "L-unit" was direct enough, so I decided I can't make any inference from this.

And probability wise, it is more likely that armlx's team is the team with 2 scums, than vice versa because the scum died, i.e. if there were two scums on NLU, then it would probably be more likely that they help each other to lynch a townie, rather than armlx, their partner. Unless one or more scum was casting a vote against their partner armlx, it would take unanimous 3 votes from townies to kill armlx. Of course, it is possible that one or more of them were bussing, but then knowing that it would be relatively easy to save armlx, I think they would have opted out of bussing.


Original teams:

L-unit:

Pooky
Dean
Erg0
armlx
TrustGossip

NLU:

Volkan
Karma
Shafted
Adel
Jive

If my "guess" is correct, then there is at least on scum in NLU, and more likely one scum left on each of the two teams.

[Adel]

I think armix hesitated to vote for Jive Machine because he was afraid that his vote placement (hammer) would make his partner look more scummy. Who was the second person to vote for Jive Machine?

[Adel]

Team NLU

Beep! 3 - TG, Erg0, Armix

Volkan 1 - Pooky

Not voting:

Thanatos

Armix was FIRED. He was a

bad doctor.

Beep! Beep! was FIRED. He was a

good doctor.

ok, so Erg0 and Trust Gossip were the two other players on Beep!'s wagon.

I think it is time to think about why TG would ask for replacement, and if it is a scumtell.

FoS

Erg0 for voteplacement.

[TrustGossip]

Team NLU

Beep! 3 - TG, Erg0, Armix

Volkan 1 - Pooky

Not voting:

Thanatos

Armix was FIRED. He was a

bad doctor.

Beep! Beep! was FIRED. He was a

good doctor.

ok, so Erg0 and Trust Gossip were the two other players on Beep!'s wagon.

I think it is time to think about why TG would ask for replacement, and if it is a scumtell.

FoS

Erg0 for voteplacement.

Wait, I asked for replacement?

???

[vollkan]

Team NLU

Beep! 3 - TG, Erg0, Armix

Volkan 1 - Pooky

Not voting:

Thanatos

Armix was FIRED. He was a

bad doctor.

Beep! Beep! was FIRED. He was a

good doctor.

ok, so Erg0 and Trust Gossip were the two other players on Beep!'s wagon.

I think it is time to think about why TG would ask for replacement, and if it is a scumtell.

FoS

Erg0 for voteplacement.

Wait, I asked for replacement?

???

I think Adel is getting games confused again

[Adel]

oh, he didn't ask for replacement in this game. is that a scumtell?

[Erg0]

I think armix hesitated to vote for Jive Machine because he was afraid that his vote placement (hammer) would make his partner look more scummy. Who was the second person to vote for Jive Machine?

What makes you think that he hesitated? His hammer came pretty quickly after I put the second vote on (in terms of the number of posts in between).

[Claus]

Votecount stays the same.

Pooky 2 - TG, Shaft.ed
TrustGossip 2 - Adel, CKD
Shaft.ed - Erg0

Not voting: Near, Vollkan, Pooky

with 8 doctors in the team, it is 5 to get rid of somebody!

[Claus]

And it is now TWIST time!

Time passes, and even with a team leader, you guys cannot decide who to blame for the last case. Well, here is a perk of being the team leader: You get to take a peek in my files on the candidates, to investigate one of them.

CKD, PM me the name of a player, and I'll give you a "bad doctor" or "good doctor" result. I want that PM by the time you make your next post.

You may resume your voting process at will.

[curiouskarmadog]

choice submitted.

[Erg0]

Are you planning on declaring your result? Given that we have no NKs in this game, I don't see any reason not to.

[TrustGossip]

Give him a few minutes to process it, will ya?

[Erg0]

I'm not nagging him, I was just asking what his intentions where, and also canvassing opinions on whether declaring the result immediately was the best plan.

[Erg0]

*where=were

[TrustGossip]

I'm not nagging him, I was just asking what his intentions where, and also canvassing opinions on whether declaring the result immediately was the best plan.

I agree that he should give the result as soon as possible, it's just that the timestamps made me jump a bit.

It's mostly an "easy there" type thing instead of implying any fault on your part.

[curiouskarmadog]

got my result...there is no reason I shouldnt inform you guys since there is no NK.

Since I havent been able to get a read on him and he wasnt on the armix lynch when armix was clearly being scummy, I chose vollkan. He is a good doctor.

[Erg0]

I'm not nagging him, I was just asking what his intentions where, and also canvassing opinions on whether declaring the result immediately was the best plan.

I agree that he should give the result as soon as possible, it's just that the timestamps made me jump a bit.

It's mostly an "easy there" type thing instead of implying any fault on your part.

Group hug!

Also, let's not lynch vollkan.

[Adel]

volkan - good doc
pooky - good doc
ckd - good doc
adel - obvious good doc

TG, Shaft.ed, Erg0, Near each have 50% chance of being an accurate lynch target.

[TrustGossip]

The vollkan result doesn't really help me very much.

I can sympathize with the opinion on Erg0, simply because he's the "other person". Then again I am also one of those people, so who am I to judge.

I can sort of see the case on shaft.ed

I would of really liked a confirmation on someone more ambiguous, like Dean/Thanatos/Near. Or any of the three people Adel picked out.

I respect your decision of course.

I don't see how Pooky is classified as a non-neutral though. Adel please explain.