Mafia CLVI: Charity Mafia: -- Pure of Heart Win!

[sjg11]

I'm really struggling to understand the level of opposition to my plan...

I simply do not understand why people want an uncontrolled vig in a game where a bad vig kill after a mislynch leads to us being put in a MYLO situation on Day Two.

condude

I did expect condude to oppose my plan. His reasons for doing so worry me though.

I expected condude to say that vig kills are normally town positive (something he often argues) and that they should be allowed to go through for this reason.

However he's arguing from a different perspective here and seems completely fine with allowing an effectively randomly determined vig kill through on Night One when we could be in MYLO on Day Two. That's a position which I'm significantly more uneasy about.

Thingy's opposition along similar lines also worries me but I'll keep engaging in that direction for now.

[Telleo]

@Thyrfing: I have a couple of issues here, I'll break it down by line. By and large, I think this may be semantics, but worth picking out.

I am completely against massive role/target reveals or planning. Honestly, I am not even very keen on sjg's plan of vig/doc targeting someone, mainly because there are a number of ways this can be useless (or worse, misleading)

Against reveals, sure, agreed. Against planning too? I think we'll disagree here. You give some reasons that it might be bad:

There is a blocker or busdriver, although they would need to target someone who has targeted the chosen player, it's not that difficult

You say this like it's a simple thing, but I'm not so sure that it is. First, there has to be a busdriver in the game. Possible, sure, but by no means guaranteed. In fact, just by the logistics of such a thing, I'd argue it's not even likely. Second, said busdriver has to be scum. Again, possible but not guaranteed. Third, for a scum busdriver to mess up the plan, they'd what, target the person we've publicly decided will target the 2nd highest vote getter? That would mean the town still knows about the existence of the vigilante, because a kill still happens (presumably), and we now know about the existence of a scum busdriver. Net info gain for the town. Even if there is a scum busdriver, I don't see them interfering so obviously, even if the vig kill ends up hitting scum - that's a lot of town cred to be able to claim.

What do we know with this plan? Either the end-player lives and we know that a) there's both doc and vic b) there's no vig but we don't know about the doc.... I think the combinations can be too much to extract any information of value.

So I agree with you that we shouldn't have both the doc and the vig target the same person. I'd much rather learn about the existence of the vig for sure. That said, do you not see the value to the town to be able to direct the vig kill, if such a thing exists? You list two combinations, but think that's too many to get any valuable information? I'm not sure I'm understanding you properly. What information do you think the plan COULD gain the town? What possible negatives do you think outweigh that information?

The player we choose to target is scum in the first place

And this is a problem because...?

The doctor/vig are scum

Again. Problem because...?

It gives scum more options for cover in the future (eg saying they are a town vig that targeted that player to cover up for a night kill)

No, that's the opposite of true. If we have the vig under town control, the scum cannot claim it as a cover for a night kill. Elaborate on this please.

Also as Telleo says we will know what ability we have used, so we will know if there is a vig (provided a townie gets it). Revealing that only seems like a good place to start getting some information and at least we will know some of the roles that are in play. But definitely I would leave roles to act on their own and not try to control them, at least for now.

Millers should reveal of course. Other town roles that might not be "100% town" I'd say to stay quiet for now.

This just doesn't sit right with me. You say revealing gets us information, but you don't evaluate why that information is good or bad for the town. Give me some analysis - why is it good to let everyone act freely, and offer no control whatsoever?

You've got a handful of thoughts that don't seem flushed out here. Fill them out for me please.

[Telleo]

Megapooooooooooooooost!!

Hi all,
As one of five reserves I did not think I'd be called up so soon, so I haven't put any N0 thought into mechanics, but I'm happy to be here. I'll be traveling a lot over the next few days, so I'll try to be up on the the thread but won't have many big long post opportunities, more phone-type posts.

Scum. You heard it here first.

What's that? Not following you here

Joke. Otherwise there'd be a vote too.

[Telleo]

Besides potentially killing inactives, I think we need to keep any possible vigilantes under control. It's not really their fault they may have been put into this scenario, but I'd like to, in particular, control the vigilante from random night shooting. I mean that in the sense we need to stop him from killing town members at night and I think we can easily solve this problem by doing one of two things:

I agree with this sentiment, uncontrolled vigilantes could be a nightmare when combined with unreliable targeting in this game.

1. utilize, if we have one, a doctor to protect his target at night. The benefit in this is that the doctor probably won't need to reveal. The disadvantage is that we don't have a doctor to protect one of our own randomly though, to be completely fair, it's gonna be a complete shit show so the likelihood of a planned save is decreased while being able to interpret the data easily may not exist within this game (I'll comment more on this later)

Personally I like the slight randomness to Doctor targeting which this particular game scenario provides. In my opinion, protective roles are at their most effective when they keep the Mafia confused about what's going on. I think the Mafia are going to be worried about Doc protection every night and that's a very good thing in my view. For this reason... I'd prefer to try to keep the Docs protecting randomly if I can...

2. Utilize, if we have one, the blocker to stop the vigilante's actions every night. The disadvantage is that it's probably necessary for a blocker to reveal. In most games I've played blocker, when there are roles, is a less common than all the major roles so I can't say I'm particularly confident in our chances on this one. The advantage is still having a doctor save being possible.

The issue with this is that we'd need:
1. The vigilante to reveal
2. We'd need someone to reveal that they are targeting the player with the second highest number of votes just in case we don't have a Blocker so that the vig plan can work anyway.
3. We'd then need someone to reveal that they are targeting the vigilante.
4. The Blocker then gets tied down protecting the vigilante.

That's 4 town roles tied town for the night just to deal with any potential vigilantes.

Also, I think we should have everyone reveal who they are targeting every night. We need someone to keep track of this. This allows people who save others and use their abilities to benefit the town to be more able to actually use their abilities correctly.

I disagree with this. Let me explain why:
Let's say that this occurs:
Happymeal says he's targeting Harb
Sjg, a cop in this scenario, decides to target happymeal because Harb is a slippery little weasel at the best of times
Harb is Mafia and decides to kill sjg just in case he is an investigative role

You see my point? Telling the Mafia who we're targeting could end very, very badly for us.

Public support for all of the above. I'd add that telling everyone whom we'll target adds a way for the mafia to figure our who has what role by working backwards. If on day three, Player A reveals that they've used a cop investigation to find out that Player B is scum, the other scum can trace that to know that Player C holds the cop role, and that Player D, who was targeted by Player C the previous night, must also have an investigation result still under wraps.

[Telleo]

This game starts at 7:2...

Sjg11.

Please point out to me where in the rules the number of scum is given.

Because I can point to the place in signups where I asked ZZ how many there were, and he declined to reveal.

[Telleo]

Wow, I totally misread that. Disregard. I thought you were still talking about the vig, not cop roles. I'm okay with the cop investigating inactives. I mean, it's not ideal, because the mafia probably NK's the inactive, rendering the cop's night wasted, but at least we don't waste a lynch, and the threat could help keep scum active.

If we're directing the Mafia kill towards inactive players I'm not going to be complaining to be honest with you. In reality doing so probably makes our life easier.

Yeah, I tend to agree with you there.

[Telleo]

I'm really struggling to understand the level of opposition to my plan...

I simply do not understand why people want an uncontrolled vig in a game where a bad vig kill after a mislynch leads to us being put in a MYLO situation on Day Two.

condude

I did expect condude to oppose my plan. His reasons for doing so worry me though.

I expected condude to say that vig kills are normally town positive (something he often argues) and that they should be allowed to go through for this reason.

However he's arguing from a different perspective here and seems completely fine with allowing an effectively randomly determined vig kill through on Night One when we could be in MYLO on Day Two. That's a position which I'm significantly more uneasy about.

Thingy's opposition along similar lines also worries me but I'll keep engaging in that direction for now.

I'm unhappy with this vote. I shall list the reasons:

First, while I also don't like Con's methods for disagreeing (re:busdriver), but I don't see it as contradictory to his normal position. He still is arguing in favor of using the vig kill, which is standard for him, just not in favor of controlling it. Where is the contradiction you see? Why is this worth a vote?

Second, I'm also concerned by Thingy's opposition to the plan. It concerns me a lot more than Condudes, because it's full of generalizations and platitudes and doesn't engage with any specifics. These are issues I know you're seen - you responded to them. Why does Condude take priority over Thingy for you?

I'm not saying Thingy's necessarily worth a vote, it's just odd to me that you're looking at these two players and chosing Condude as the one to vote.

[Telleo]

I'm not saying Thingy's necessarily worth a vote, it's just odd to me that you're looking at these two players and chosing Condude as the one to vote.

To add, it's especially odd that you go to the trouble of mentioning them in comparison to each other, without actually comparing them.

[sjg11]

This game starts at 7:2...

Sjg11.

Please point out to me where in the rules the number of scum is given.

Because I can point to the place in signups where I asked ZZ how many there were, and he declined to reveal.

I'm assuming the game is 7:2 simply because it's the logical starting numbers for a 9 player game.

6:3... we get one mislynch and a vig kill and we lose... ridiculously unbalanced in favour of the Mafia.

8:1 is ridiculously unbalanced in favour of the town.

7:2 is simply the logical ratio for a 9 player game. 3 Mafia is a stupidly high number of Mafia and 1 Mafia is a stupidly low number of Mafia.

[sjg11]

First, while I also don't like Con's methods for disagreeing (re:busdriver), but I don't see it as contradictory to his normal position. He still is arguing in favor of using the vig kill, which is standard for him, just not in favor of controlling it. Where is the contradiction you see? Why is this worth a vote?

Supporting vig kills is one thing, what condude is doing here is supporting random, uncontrolled vig kills which is something totally different and which is far, far more dangerous to the town.

Second, I'm also concerned by Thingy's opposition to the plan. It concerns me a lot more than Condudes, because it's full of generalizations and platitudes and doesn't engage with any specifics. These are issues I know you're seen - you responded to them. Why does Condude take priority over Thingy for you?

They're both arguing similar positions and I believe that condude would have a bigger issue with uncontrolled vig kills than he actually has. That takes precedent over Thingy when I'm not as sure on that point as I am with condude.