Day One

[KatiRoo]

This is fantastic! Now I can start thinking about strategy, and not spend all of my time cussing at the board. Idle Thoughts, you are a hero. (Of course, you can still be scum, but at least you'd be hero scum.)

[storyteller0910]

OK, let's get to business. I know that many of you have difficulty trusting me because of my... slightly checkered past. But a man can change, can he not? I learned from the last game that the worst thing a townie can do is worry excessively about his or her own personal skin, so in this game, I'm just going to throw out as much of what I'm thinking as I can until someone kills me for it.

On the previous board, DiggitCamera posted the following question:

storyteller, what would you do,
strategy-wise, on the first day if you were a pirate? How would it
differ from your actions in Mafia2? What mistakes do you think you made in that game that you wouldn't care to repeat here?

My answer to the first question is not terribly helpful, I fear, but here it is: as scum, it seemed to me, the best thing to do on Day 1 was to act exactly as you would if you were a townie, no matter what the outcome. On Day 1 in the other game, I read and analyzed everyone's posts, and waited for someone - anyone - to say something that I thought was bad strategy. Then I called them on it. Then I let the chips fall however they fell. I made no particular effort at manipulation, or trying to be clever; I just trusted that someone would eventually say something legitimately suspicious, and if I waited on that instead of trying to manufacture something, things would work out well. I would behave in exactly the same way here if I were scum - I wouldn't try too hard, wouldn't try to bum rush anyone, would not lie and would discuss in completely good faith, even if it ended in one of my cronies being lynched. The game is long, and won't turn in either direction on the Day 1 lynch.

I have some more general thoughts, based on previous experiences, which I'll put in a second post for ease of reading.

[NAF1138]

Nice post cowgirl.

If I were scum I would try to blend in with the crowd. I would play like storyteller and post enough to make myself seem useful without acutally ever saying anything. I would not lurk, but I wouldn't post enough to draw attention to myself. I would avoid getting into arguments with other players as that always seems to lead to a "one of them must be scum...they are fighting!" mentality. I would also try to encourage random voting because I could use that as a shield...but I think I have beaten that horse dead. ;D

[NAF1138]

Oh, I meant to say that my previous post is an attempt to move all game related discussion into this thread, for Mal's sanity.

[Parzival]

This is a reply to the WWPD? question that Gadarene opened up to anyone. It's the same question a couple people have answered here - what you do today if you were a pirate? (I'm glad he opened it up since when I saw it it gave me something to think about, but I didn't want to just throw my thoughts out unasked lest I look like a pirate trying to hide).

I think I'd be saying a lot less than I am right now, waiting for night and proper discussion with my mates. I'm pretty new at this game, having only played it 'live' a couple times. Not only that, I'm usually a pretty bad liar (I will admit I'm okay as long as the stakes are low, I just don't have a lot of practice at it). As a pirate, I'd at least know that there's some guidance and knowledge coming if I can keep quiet and avoid mistakes until the night phase. I'd be less nervous, and more willing to wait. (I think it'd really suck if I was Flint, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'd have to lead the group).
As it is now, I feel I'm kind of flailing around, trying to get something from nothing and being a bit over-eager with my newbie ideas. I was worried it's making me look scummy. Writing this post, I'm thinking maybe I'm not so scummy as I look to myself, but I still plan to tone it down and try to learn from those more experienced. Time to re-read some of those old game threads.

[diggitcamara]

naf1138 said:

Oh, I meant to say that my previous post is an attempt to move all game related discussion into this thread, for Mal's sanity.

I think we need a ruling by Malacandra on this. But I definitely agree. However, since Idle Thoughts runs this board, I'd propose to separate Day and Night threads.

[storyteller0910]

More thoughts:

I think that generally, it is wise to move focus away from what people do and toward why people do it. Paying too much attention to voting records per se - stats and spreadsheets and what have you - gives the scum an easy way to hide and to ingratiate. One thing I learned in the last game was that while stating that you are suspicious of someone will always get attention, saying that you trust someone will raise fewer eyebrows. In the last game, I would frequently say that I "trusted" two or three people, all of them people I knew to be townies. Those townies - who knew themselves to be trustworthy - would then assume that I was on their side because hey, I trusted them, and they were town. Meanwhile, the opposite worked to the scum's advantage - if a townie FoSed or voted for another townie, the second townie would automatically assume that it must be a scummy act. I think this is a bad assumption. If a person has a record of only suspecting scum and always trusting townies, that person is either psychic or scum him-/herself. Creating a what-you-actually-did record that looks pro-town is trivially easy given the perfect information the pirates possess.

So what do we look at? Reasons. In the first game, I called out FlamingCowofDoom early on, based on a chain of reasoning that was flimsy (and depended on a bunch of assumptions, such as that Autolycus was town, that I could only make if I was scum). When FCoD was lynched and found to be scum, the fact that I had called him out early was viewed as a check mark in my favor, rather than seen as suspcious - no one ever noticed how odd it was that I had pinned and aggressively pursued scum long for no good reason, because they liked the outcome. So I'd say we need to look for actions that have no or faulty reasoning behind them (or actions that are explained only by the possession of information that honest sailors shouldn't have) - and view such actions as suspcious regardless of their outcome.

[capybara]

Storyteller-- excellent thoughts, and some NEW ones. Almost. . . *too* helpful. . . thought-provoking stuff.

[NAF1138]

storyteller0910 said:

More thoughts:

I think that generally, it is wise to move focus away from what people do and toward why people do it. Paying too much attention to voting records per se - stats and spreadsheets and what have you - gives the scum an easy way to hide and to ingratiate. One thing I learned in the last game was that while stating that you are suspicious of someone will always get attention, saying that you trust someone will raise fewer eyebrows. In the last game, I would frequently say that I "trusted" two or three people, all of them people I knew to be townies. Those townies - who knew themselves to be trustworthy - would then assume that I was on their side because hey, I trusted them, and they were town. Meanwhile, the opposite worked to the scum's advantage - if a townie FoSed or voted for another townie, the second townie would automatically assume that it must be a scummy act. I think this is a bad assumption. If a person has a record of only suspecting scum and always trusting townies, that person is either psychic or scum him-/herself. Creating a what-you-actually-did record that looks pro-town is trivially easy given the perfect information the pirates possess.

So what do we look at? Reasons. In the first game, I called out FlamingCowofDoom early on, based on a chain of reasoning that was flimsy (and depended on a bunch of assumptions, such as that Autolycus was town, that I could only make if I was scum). When FCoD was lynched and found to be scum, the fact that I had called him out early was viewed as a check mark in my favor, rather than seen as suspcious - no one ever noticed how odd it was that I had pinned and aggressively pursued scum long for no good reason, because they liked the outcome. So I'd say we need to look for actions that have no or faulty reasoning behind them (or actions that are explained only by the possession of information that honest sailors shouldn't have) - and view such actions as suspcious regardless of their outcome.

This is really sound advice, and I think that the town not playing this way in M2 at least, is why the town lost in the endgame.

[NAF1138]

A thought just occured to me, now that we are all putting our suspicions of what scum would do out on the table...what do we do with the information?

I agree with Gad when he says that the scum are typically smarter than we will give them credit for being.

Should we be looking for players who seem like they are trying to avoid these types of behaviors, or is that a little too wine in front of me?

Also, are we just giving the scum a handbook on how to avoid looking like scum?

[Malacandra]

diggitcamara said:

naf1138 said:

Oh, I meant to say that my previous post is an attempt to move all game related discussion into this thread, for Mal's sanity.

I think we need a ruling by Malacandra on this. But I definitely agree. However, since Idle Thoughts runs this board, I'd propose to separate Day and Night threads.

I rule thus: The Day n threads are the only ones where votes will count. I will start a new one for each Day announcing who has been night-killed. But you are free to create as many side threads as you like. Just don't vote in them.

I do not think Idle Thoughts will mind too much. After the dust has settled I imagine he will wipe the board clean, as before.

[cowgirl]

naf1138 said:

Should we be looking for players who seem like they are trying to avoid these types of behaviors, or is that a little too wine in front of me?

Also, are we just giving the scum a handbook on how to avoid looking like scum?

So I was trying to think of winning strategies for people of X affiliation and I came to this earth-shattering revelation:

There are as many different (winning strategies) as there are (games X affiliations). In other words, way too many for us to be able to come up with one on Day 1. Inevitably, we will be shooting in the dark, and the chances of lynching an innocent are large.

The winning strategy depends ENTIRELY on the context of the game. It is not possible at this point for us to come up with one. That's what makes this game so great: there's so much wine-in-front-of-me-ing, and double bluffing and disingenuity, and obfuscation and obscurity, and assuming and FOS-ing, and paranoia and sincerity, that all we can really do is (as was said above) wait for people to make mistakes, which they inevitably will. The winning strategy depends entirely on the character of the individual game and the behaviour of the players in it.

This sucks because it depends on information that can only come from crew deaths.

I hope that we do not agree on any strategies right now, because apparent "alliances" that emerge at this point seem to be guaranteed to end in trouble. We should certainly share our own strategies, but I wouldn't be too quick to "agree" on one. Even if we did agree on a strategy, I think it would be much more likely to hurt than to harm us at this point.

I think that 95% of the purpose of Today's discussion is to produce material for later Days. Let us not be hasty, and let us wait for someone to screw up.

Also I have another question (although I think it's what got me targetted last time): can we discuss the power roles a little? I'm not particularly game-minded so I'm having a hard time figuring out what the roles mean, particularly since they are a bit different every time. What would we expect people in the power roles to be doing? Note I am not asking for strategy - what would we be doing to find them. I just want to know what they might be up to. (Please don't night kill me - I'm not asking for tips!)

[Lakai]

storyteller0910 said:

On Day 1 in the other game, I read and analyzed everyone's posts, and waited for someone - anyone - to say something that I thought was bad strategy. Then I called them on it. Then I let the chips fall however they fell. I made no particular effort at manipulation, or trying to be clever; I just trusted that someone would eventually say something legitimately suspicious, and if I waited on that instead of trying to manufacture something, things would work out well.

Heh, that is exactly what I did, except I was town...

Chances are we won't get any sound reasons for voting for someone today. All the evidence will be very flimsy. Day one is stacked heavily in favor of the pirates, as it should be since there are very few of them.

storyteller0910 said:

So what do we look at? Reasons. .

Even if you are a pirate pretending to be really helpful, this is still a good idea. We should look very closely at everyones rational for voting, FOSing and for trusting someone. Ignore the vote history and focus on the rational given. This is why the pirates have a huge advantage on day one, no one will have good reasons for voting for someone. Everyone will have to come up with some fairly flimsy evidence to support their vote.

Ideally, I would hope that every crew member would refrain from random voting as much as it is possible on Day One.

We will kill a few misguided crew mates in the process, but that is to be expected. I think ultimately it will yield us a good amount of pirates.

[Caerie]

It's a good point that looking at reasoning behind actions is going to help us, though I can't say that going off of the stated reasoning is necessarily the only or best way. The scum could just as easily come up with good reasons for saying someone looks suspicious as a townie could. There is absolutely nothing stopping them from having just as much reasoning capability as the townies. They have more information than us, but that isn't going to take away their ability to argue like townies.

I'd say looking at what they'd have to gain by a particular course of action is more useful than jumping on somebody because his/her reasoning was bad. Sometimes townies make mistakes and sometimes scum are going to craft excellent arguments.

[NAF1138]

lakai said:

Ideally, I would hope that every crew member would refrain from random voting as much as it is possible on Day One.

We will kill a few misguided crew mates in the process, but that is to be expected. I think ultimately it will yield us a good amount of pirates.

Thank you Lakai for articulating this argument better than I did.
This is what I have been trying to say!

[NAF1138]

caeried said:

It's a good point that looking at reasoning behind actions is going to help us, though I can't say that going off of the stated reasoning is necessarily the only or best way. The scum could just as easily come up with good reasons for saying someone looks suspicious as a townie could. There is absolutely nothing stopping them from having just as much reasoning capability as the townies. They have more information than us, but that isn't going to take away their ability to argue like townies.

I'd say looking at what they'd have to gain by a particular course of action is more useful than jumping on somebody because his/her reasoning was bad. Sometimes townies make mistakes and sometimes scum are going to craft excellent arguments.

Ok, this is true, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be stating reasons. We have to have a place to start and...arg... I am getting worked up agian.

Ok I am going to step back and breathe and reread the thread starting with the google groups. I am going to try to put together a coherant post that maybe isn't about strategy.

[Lakai]

cowgirl said:

Also I have another question (although I think it's what got me targetted last time): can we discuss the power roles a little? I'm not particularly game-minded so I'm having a hard time figuring out what the roles mean, particularly since they are a bit different every time. What would we expect people in the power roles to be doing? Note I am not asking for strategy - what would we be doing to find them. I just want to know what they might be up to. (Please don't night kill me - I'm not asking for tips!)

I'll take the bait. This has to be discussed eventually. With all these new roles it seems weird that people are avoiding a discussion.

Captain Steele- Hopefully the person who has this role is very smart because it will take some skill to get any useful information. Even if he watches a mafia member at night, it still does not mean that he watches the member chosen to do the killing, so his chances of catching anyone at anything at this point are extremely low. If I had the role I would not watch anyone unless I thought I could locate Deadeye Dick or if I had a good indication of who the mafia would kill. Like if one of the Captains was exposed I would watch him every night to see who would kill him (Steele could do this right? If he watches someone who gets killed, would he see their killer?). If our doctor gets exposed then I would watch him too, in hopes that he will block himself. With the Doctor around Steele should concentrate on exercising his watching ability and use it on people who are potential targets. Looking for pirates would be too much of a long shot.

Captain Smollett, Squire Trelawney and Doctor Livesey - All I can say for these guys is not to defend each other too much when none of you are in any danger. Hopefully the Crew here won't follow in the footsteps of the M2 town and expose everyone with a special role by day 3.

That's it for now. I have to go take a final. More thoughts will come later.

[capybara]

I think all information is good information-- all talk is good talk and can only help the town. The kind of talk that, say, MHaye and MadTheSwine aren't doing much of today. . .

[Kyrie Eleison]

naf1138 said:

Also, are we just giving the scum a handbook on how to avoid looking like scum?

You might have considered this before providing an answer to Gadarene's question. I'm surprised that you seem not to have. Vote: NAF1138

[Lakai]

lakai said:

Deadeye thingy

[Merestil Haye]

capybara said:

I think all information is good information-- all talk is good talk and can only help the town. The kind of talk that, say, MHaye and MadTheSwine aren't doing much of today. . .

I haven't had much to say because not much has happened (except the migration). Unfortunately, as I said above, this means I can not read the boards at all during the working week.

I will read, I will offer observations as they come to me (and limes, if anyone wants one) and I will be voting before the Day closes. Hopefully by then someone will have generated enough suspicion for me to feel comfortable voting them (no-one has yet.).

Oh, and I asked a question in my last post in Google Groups. Is it walking the plank, hanging from the yardarm or keelhauling?

[NAF1138]

kyrie said:

naf1138 said:

Also, are we just giving the scum a handbook on how to avoid looking like scum?

You might have considered this before providing an answer to Gadarene's question. I'm surprised that you seem not to have. Vote: NAF1138

Your right, and I wish I had. But it was early my time still when I answered and the thought didn't occur to me until after I had posted.

Such is the problem with posting before I finish my morning coffee.

[diggitcamara]

I think one point Mafia2 and storyteller have given us is that we can't trust anyone. The pirates will try to sidle up to you and flatter you and give you rum to get on your good side and you'll just end up defending someone whose true role you can't know.

[Caerie]

diggitcamara said:

I think one point Mafia2 and storyteller have given us is that we can't trust anyone. The pirates will try to sidle up to you and flatter you and give you rum to get on your good side and you'll just end up defending someone whose true role you can't know.

That's quite true. If anything, I think someone making repeated references to how trustworthy you are or how similar your tactics are would be a scumtell.

[NAF1138]

Ok, it may be a bit early to start doing stuff like this...but no time like the present.

I went through the game and just jotted down some notes on all the players as I got to them. This is mostly just my impressions of these players, the vibe they are giving off to me as of right now. A lot of people still are giving me nothing.

Here are the notes...hopefully this will be helpful.


ArizonaTeach
Posting style seems the same as in M2, but other than that no read.


AuntBeast and Autolycus
No posts

Blaster Master
Surprisingly unagressive for someone who claims to be an aggressive player. But is posting a lot, and many of the posts have real content.


Capybara
Posts a lot, but the posts don’t say much.

CarieD
Couple of small informational posts.

CometoTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies
I ALWAYS think she is scummy. Don’t know why. Going to ignore her for now.

Cowgirl
Lot’s of useful past experience (double vet of M2) with a good substantive opening post.
Playing the “I don’t know what I am doing” card a lot for my taste in her next big post.

DiggitCamera
Major player in M3, posting style seems consistent with game play there.

Gad
Lots of posts “sharing” his knowledge as a game runner. Seems to contradict himself as the thread goes on, but maybe is just further elaborating on his previous theories which are still forming. Needs to be looked at more closely.

FCOD
No read

Fluiddruid
No Posts? Surprising since she was one of the first people I got a strong read off of in M3

Hocky Monkey
No read yet


Idle Thoughts
No read yet, other than the strange vote for Hockey Monkey

KatiRoo
No read

Kyrie Eleison
Smart player, semi aggressive. Other than that I got nothing.

Lakai
No Read


Mad the Swine
No Read

MHaye
Seems to be a very experienced player, saying similar things that storyteller did.

Panamajack
Seems to be thinking similarly to me, which makes me think town. But I don’t want to trust that instinct because of what Storyteller has been saying.

Pleonast
Posting a lot with a stronger play style than what I remembered from M2.

Storyteller
Giving the town the benefit of his amazing play, also laying out strategy that could help the town and help the mafia. Posting style seems similar, not a lot of posts, but when he does post it is big.


Zuma
No read

[NAF1138]

So as a followup to my previous post...there seem to be only about 3 people that are giving me strong vibes.

Cowgirl has twinged me, Gad has twinged me, and BM has twinged me.

This could all mean nothing. But it is something I am going to be keeping an eye on for later.

[storyteller0910]

caeried said:

It's a good point that looking at reasoning behind actions is going to help us, though I can't say that going off of the stated reasoning is necessarily the only or best way.

Well, I don't think there's any one approach to analysis that could be characterized as the "only" way, nor even the best way, but the reasoning behind actions deserves far more attention than it has received in previous games, where the actions themselves have been the major focus.

The scum could just as easily come up with good reasons for saying someone looks suspicious as a townie could. There is absolutely nothing stopping them from having just as much reasoning capability as the townies. They have more information than us, but that isn't going to take away their ability to argue like townies.

No, most assuredly not. But forcing the scum to produce careful reasoning to justify their actions increases the net amount that they will have to talk. This, in turn, increases the chance that they will say something ill-advised or worthy of suspicion. Early in the game, they can blend in if they reason well, sure. But later in the game, when it becomes more important to them to get townies lynched, it will become harder and harder to fabricate consistent reasons to accomplish this.

I'd say looking at what they'd have to gain by a particular course of action is more useful than jumping on somebody because his/her reasoning was bad.

I could not possibly disagree more with this statement. Trying to guess what the scum have to gain by any action is a complete fool's errand. Look at the mess that was made after the lynch of Pygmy Rugger in Mafia 2 - everyone was trying to guess why the scum didn't effect a huge vote switch to lynch Lakai instead, and the resulting confusion was a major contributor to the scum win in that game. You cannot know, nor even guess with any degree of confidence, what the bad guys are trying to accomplish; far better to look at people's behavior for the subtle signs they fail to suppress than to worry constantly at the nut of "why would they do X?"

[NAF1138]

Also the people with no read may be problamatic down the line. But it is harder for me to know what to do with them. People like ArizonaTeach just don't give off strong vibes.

I don't know a way around that one.

[Gadarene]

NAF:

Seems to contradict himself as the thread goes on, but maybe is just further elaborating on his previous theories which are still forming.

Have I? How? If so, it's unintentional; I've been super-busy at work the last couple of days and have been snatching a minute or two to post as I find it. In fact, I haven't actually had time just yet to "share my knowledge as a game runner" as I'd been intending to do. Wednesday's looking like it'll be a day where I've got some more free time, and I'm planning on doing it then.

Right now I'm following the discussion closely but don't have too much to contribute. Kyrie, if you'd like me to defend the WWPD thread more strenuously, let me know; I think it's a good way to get people talking in a non-random fashion about an interesting substantive topic, and I (perhaps naively) think the likelihood of scum taking cues from our responses is fairly slim. At least, that likelihood just didn't occur to me; maybe it should have. (And I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that the whole WWPD thing wasn't my initial idea anyway, although I maintain it's a good one! )

[Gadarene]

storyteller:

Trying to guess what the scum have to gain by any action is a complete fool's errand. Look at the mess that was made after the lynch of Pygmy Rugger in Mafia 2 - everyone was trying to guess why the scum didn't effect a huge vote switch to lynch Lakai instead, and the resulting confusion was a major contributor to the scum win in that game. You cannot know, nor even guess with any degree of confidence, what the bad guys are trying to accomplish; far better to look at people's behavior for the subtle signs they fail to suppress than to worry constantly at the nut of "why would they do X?"

Yeah, this goes along with what I was saying about not underestimating the scum's intelligence. All the Mafia games so far have seen the scum adopt a mixed strategy of straightforward avoidance of suspicion and sophisticated double bluffs. Sometimes they'll sacrifice their own in the face of a perceived greater good. Sometimes they'll effect a vote switch off someone who's town. And they'll definitely---I forget who said this, maybe capybara---avoid too much vote clustering, especially in the early days. Looking at voting behavior and FOSes right now is going to be much less helpful than just hearing people talk, buidling up an impression, and hopefully hanging them with their words later on.