Quickhammers based on Incorrect VCs

[Alisae]

This situation is one of my biggest fears as a moderator. If possible I want to rewind back and correct the bad vote count and disallow any votes made since that point. That's the solution where your error is going to have the smallest impact on the game overall. Unfortunately the rewind will cause some amount of information to have been created that otherwise wouldn't exist. As a moderator, you have to try and determine if that information compromises any of the players' role/alignment. If it does, then the rewind is probably a more disruptive fix than following through with the lynch as it happened.

Using Alisae's game as an example, I don't think there was any compromising information so I would have rewound the vote count. If for example a player claimed a town PM and another player immediately swept in for what they thought was a hammer vote, I'd think that the player dropping the hammer had their alignment compromised as scum sacrificing themselves to secure the lynch of a town PR. For something like that the rewind would be more disruptive than letting the lynch stand (regardless of the hammer's actual alignment).

These situations are tough. I'd recommend consulting with a listmod for any amount of uncertainty in how to proceed, especially when things come down to determining if compromising information has been released or not. That determination is generally easier to make for someone who does not know players' alignments or the context of the situation, which is a disadvantage you'll have as the game mod.

amazing list mod response, thanks Micc.

[Dunnstral]

In most situations, scenario B has the potential to impact the game in a greater way than scenario A

And no, it's not the players job to keep track of votes, or go over it themself.

[Jingle]

This situation is one of my biggest fears as a moderator. If possible I want to rewind back and correct the bad vote count and disallow any votes made since that point. That's the solution where your error is going to have the smallest impact on the game overall. Unfortunately the rewind will cause some amount of information to have been created that otherwise wouldn't exist. As a moderator, you have to try and determine if that information compromises any of the players' role/alignment. If it does, then the rewind is probably a more disruptive fix than following through with the lynch as it happened.

FWIW, this could be my bias as an ex MTG judge showing through, but I am wholly against mods making subjective calls like this midgame. Just because you don't think it's going to have an impact doesn't mean it won't.

I wouldn't be upset by a mod doing this, but the mod doing this would then be an additional, unintended, talking point for the game. "Micc didn't rewind the clock here and they were town, but he did rewind the clock here so maybe they're scum?" for example. Regardless of the intentions, I think making the call subjective based on gamestate is the wrong call, and I'm against mods influencing a game after the dice are rolled unless that's a feature of the game.


Yes, I'm aware of the hypocrisy in saying this while I'm a fairly actively shitposty mod.

[RadiantCowbells]

i think the game is more tied to the actual votes than to the votecounts.

ie, i'd let the lynch go through and hate myself as a mod.

[Alisae]

I wouldn't be upset by a mod doing this, but the mod doing this would then be an additional, unintended, talking point for the game. "Micc didn't rewind the clock here and they were town, but he did rewind the clock here so maybe they're scum?" for example. Regardless of the intentions, I think making the call subjective based on gamestate is the wrong call, and I'm against mods influencing a game after the dice are rolled unless that's a feature of the game.

Mod Wine is the best kind of wine because if you drink it you get punished for being an idiot when ur wrong

[Jingle]

i think the game is more tied to the actual votes than to the votecounts.

ie, i'd let the lynch go through and hate myself as a mod.

Much better than hating yourself as a seal.

[Jingle]

BTW, Ali, your new avatar is freaking me out. I keep thinking you're TSO and being like "Holy shit, TSO posted that? And is back? And posted that?"

[Something_Smart]

I'm toying with some form of "if the mod miscounts a player's vote in a VC, that player is officially moved to not voting until the mod or any player publicly corrects it."

This solves the problem in the OP, it solves the problem of someone being marked by the mod as voting someone they never did, and it solves the problem of what if someone sees that the VC is wrong and wants to hammer.

It also is technically mod influence on the game, but only accidental mod influence, which IMO is no worse than the mod taking a long time to lock the thread after a hammer because they're busy-- it affects the game, yes, but it's a necessary evil. If codified in the rules, there's no judgement call required and no way for the players to read into it.

[Alisae]

BTW, Ali, your new avatar is freaking me out. I keep thinking you're TSO and being like "Holy shit, TSO posted that? And is back? And posted that?"

oh ok i fixed it

[Dunnstral]

Alternate talking point, what happens if somebody is incorrectly shown as not voting, but correcting the vote would result in a lynch?

[Wooper]

re 34: i still think flip that

[Alisae]

Dunn with the real questions

[Alisae]

I'll run it back and give you what I would do when I'm not high

[Micc]

This situation is one of my biggest fears as a moderator. If possible I want to rewind back and correct the bad vote count and disallow any votes made since that point. That's the solution where your error is going to have the smallest impact on the game overall. Unfortunately the rewind will cause some amount of information to have been created that otherwise wouldn't exist. As a moderator, you have to try and determine if that information compromises any of the players' role/alignment. If it does, then the rewind is probably a more disruptive fix than following through with the lynch as it happened.

FWIW, this could be my bias as an ex MTG judge showing through, but I am wholly against mods making subjective calls like this midgame. Just because you don't think it's going to have an impact doesn't mean it won't.

I wouldn't be upset by a mod doing this, but the mod doing this would then be an additional, unintended, talking point for the game. "Micc didn't rewind the clock here and they were town, but he did rewind the clock here so maybe they're scum?" for example. Regardless of the intentions, I think making the call subjective based on gamestate is the wrong call, and I'm against mods influencing a game after the dice are rolled unless that's a feature of the game.


Yes, I'm aware of the hypocrisy in saying this while I'm a fairly actively shitposty mod.

I agree that having the moderator make a subjective call based on the gamestate is a bad place to be, but I'm not sure what the alternative is. The MTG equivalent is something along the lines of a player privately asking a judge for a ruling, taking a game action based on that ruling, the opponent eventually appealing the ruling and winning the appeal. Both situations can be described as a player making a game action based on incorrect information given to them by a game official. I don't know how MTG tournament procedure handles this kind of situation, but I imagine its along the lines of rewind to the gamestate where the bad ruling was given as long as not too much has happened since.

That 'as long as not too much has happened since' is a subjective decision that has to be made regularly in MTG with respect to triggers/rule violations/ect that went unnoticed until multiple game actions had been made. It's a very similar subjective call as the mafia moderator has to make in order to repair their game state. It's a bad place to be as a moderator, but in these cases I think making a subjective decision is generally going to lead to a more satisfying fix for the players than a blanket rule.

I should add that these are my personal opinions and not me speaking on behalf of the listmod team.

[Jingle]

In mtg (at least when I was active):

https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg1-4/

tl;dr

It's a head judge discretionary thing and is only really done if no information is gained. (indestructible creature is put into a graveyard after being dealt damage and it's noticed before turn cycle passes.) To convert that into mafia terms, it would be "Have the listmod decide." And honestly, having the listmod decide without any alignment knowledge would probably be a fair choice. In mafia, though, the decision to vote IS a gain of information, necessarily.

My reservation, however, comes from the following simplified 2x2:

Town accidentally hammers town: proscum.
Town accidentally hammers scum: protown.
Scum accidentally hammers town: proscum.
Scum accidentally hammers scum: protown.

In which situations do you rewind? In which situations do you let it be? If scum is hammering 'accidentally' does that change anything? If town is hammering 'accidentally' does that change anything?

And yeah, faking an accidental hammer is a real thing. Do you punish the scum player who made the choice to hammer a townie but says it was an accident by rewinding because of your mistake? If you rewind in the case of fake accidents but not real ones or with some alignment combinations but not others, how do you resolve the issue that that can spew alignments? If you rewind for some alignment pairings but not others, how do you resolve the issue that it spews alignments?

I'm not saying that making the choice to rewind is objectively wrong nor that I would be angry if a mod made that decision and it harmed my wincon. It's a reaction to a situation which sucks. I, personally, believe that letting the cards fall where they are and apologizing is the best course of action, though.

[popsofctown]

MTG doesn't have everything super figured out and easy and wrapped up with a bow all the time either because close calls are close calls and things can be hard.

At my last serious-business tournament I overheard a chat an L-2 judge was having with a player about a controversy over how to answer questions like, "my opponent used Fulminator Mage (destroy target land) on my Tropical Island. Can I Spellskite that? (Spellskite: choose target spell or ability. Change that thing's target to become Spellskite, who is an artifact) (these were fuzzied so maybe the nonmagic people can follow).

A few years back it was more commonly, consistently, and uncontroversially the case that a judge is supposed to say "yes, you may Spellskite that if you wish. Yes, you can Spellskite that."
Because that means it is

allowed

to try to use Spellskite's ability on the Fulminator mage because Fulminator mage meets the requirement of it being an "ability". The requirements necessary for Spellskite to do the cool thing that it does, though, have not been met, if the ability only aims at lands Spellskite

tries

to change the target but cannot when the game asks "is Spellskite a land card for this to be ok?"

What I overheard from the chat is a growing number of judges believe that this should change because the judge

knows

what the player is

really asking

. The L2 at the event described himself is being among the new-school judges that would prefer to describe the old way as "entrapment". He said he thinks the correct response is, "what are you trying to do?"

Some of the fun parallel metaphor is lost here because "can I Spellskite that" has some inherent ambiguity to it, of whether someone is asking, "am I going to break the rules by doing this" versus "am I going to get the effect I want."

But I think there is some legitimate parallel too. "Sure you can Spellskite that" is a little more like Ali's A. Like, let players do what they do, damn the consequences, damn whether everyone involved knows what's really intended.
Not punishing the player parallels B.
In particular the line of inquiry "what are you trying to do?" which might strike some as too far from impartial parallels the viewpoint S_S expressed in his post#32 in giving credence to a public acknowledgement of an incorrect VC, looking for evidence of what players are intending to mechanically happen.
I think B has a lot of merit.

[popsofctown]

Jingle you ninja'ed me but I'm at a drunkness level for writing but not reading


I will add
Maybe I should be coding automated votecount stuffs
instead of debating what to do in the case of votecount errors
that I really would really hope don't happen

[Jingle]

FWIW, pops, I'm firmly in the oldschool camp there.

Also, #bringbackmanaburn.

[popsofctown]

FWIW, pops, I'm firmly in the oldschool camp there.

Also, #bringbackmanaburn.

I'm o.k. with that as long as you were a better judge than the one who said, "Yah, he can Swerve pops' Cruel Ultimatum, pops please sacrifice a creature, discard 3 cards, lose five life, then return a creature card from your graveyard to your hand, draw 3 cards, and gain 5 life."

[Ramcius]

People shouldn't be punished for mod error and mod shouldn't make decision based on gamestate.

Mafia should be fun, not tedious, therefore I believe that non hammer votes should carry less responsibility, i. e. - if mod error occurs and someone thinks they place vote and aren't hammering, but is actually hammering due to error, it should be reset and people can reach majority again, if they want to as it would work "are you sure want this lynch to go through". Hammer votes should carry more responsibility and if someone comes in, sees L-1, then just places hammer, but it was mod error and majority wasn't reached, yet person outed themselves as a scum for example, votes should be reset too, you can't go through with lynch, when majority wasn't reached, it would be just a mod kill to preserve life of a person that wasn't paying attention to the game and punishing people that were playing game. In short - you want players to be able place their non hammer votes freely without worry that they might accidentally hammer and hammer votes shouldn't be taken lightly

[Ankamius]

And no, it's not the players job to keep track of votes, or go over it themself.

Its not their job, no.

But if you're in a situation where you are in a position to potentially want to quickhammer, it's best practice to keep track to completely avoid any situation where you vote and it turns out to not be the hammer vote. It also allows you to potentially see those opportunities as they happen.

So if you rely on a mod VC to quick hammer and it was from an incorrect VC, then I really don't think scum should get a mulligan from that since the votes, despite the VC, were not in a position to be quick hammered and you were in a position to be able to determine that yourself.

None of this applies in a normal game state like a standard D1 where there isn't any inherent value in being aware where every vote is at all times.

[popsofctown]

This came up in a game I just finished running.

I went and got a co-mod, without alignment spoiling the co-mod immediately, to ask for an impartial decision on whether to honor the quickhammer because it seemed really non-obvious to me.

[Amrun]

B.

If you're in a position where you are looking to quick hammer when given an opportunity, it's very foolhardy NOT to keep track of the votes yourself. If you're going to be fooled by an incorrect VC, then it's a good lesson for you.

This!

If scum does this and didn’t ENSURE their own selves that it was a hammer, they deserve to be caught. This doesn’t bother me at all.

[Something_Smart]

Counting votes is literally one of the mod's main responsibilities, if the mod screws it up they shouldn't just be able to go "ah it doesn't matter that I didn't do my job, the players should have been doing my job for me!"

[Ankamius]

That's not the point, SS.

If scum are in a position where they would compromise themselves to quickhammer, its smart to count the votes themselves. That doesn't make it their job to, it's a way to stop themselves from throwing the game embarrassingly.

Every other time, they shouldn't have to, no.