TL Mafia XXXVIII

Don't worry too much, this shouldn't be as active as insane, because, well, Insane was Insane.

Hopefully people won't spam that much in this game, and I'd even like to put in a request that people try to limit their posting unless they have something relevant/meaningful to add to the conversation.

People who just quote others, and say "I agree", or repeat the same things as others have already brought up, are perfect examples of "contributing without contributing", and that's a scum-tell.

You know this is a great way to "contribute without contributing" you state a commonly known scum tell and say no spam please... well, duh. Still I can put this off as directing new players

A new player asked about activity, and I reassured him that insane was a total spam-fest and while on the topic asked that people try not to post excessively unless they have something new or relevant to add. I'm trying to follow my own advice this game as well.

Well this isn't technically night because no one takes actions. That said, there isn't much to talk about because we can't start mayoral campaigns. This means we're limited to mostly talking about general strategy and trying to establish a town policy, like no spam/try to contribute and add to the conversation, and other guidelines we'd like to put into place.

Rehash of basic ideas, check!

People were fighting over whether we should talk Night 0. Night zero isn't really a night phase because of the reasons I stated, so it was silly to be fighting over whether we should talk during it or not, when we could basically use it as a 24-hour extension to Day 1 to get some of the basic and boring discussion out of the way.

Well if you're posting your own thoughts, then that's meaningful AND relevant, haha. But 9000 posts of cats in top hats and monocles wouldn't be. And saying "I agree" after every post isn't really contributing. If you want to agree with someone, at least add your own thought process as to why, and give some kind of explanation. That way you can look for mafia trying to make stuff up too.

Spam is bad! No duh, but then again people were posting this kind of nonsense all night 0 so its not indicative

Someone took offense when I asked to not post a ton unless you want to add to the conversation because newer players wouldn't post their ideas and opinions. I told him that as long as they're posting their own thoughts, I would consider that both meaningful and relevant. Even already, we're seeing people who aren't adding their own thoughts and are just hiding behind other people. If you feel the need to post without adding anything, well then don't be surprised when people peg you as scum.

My thoughts on inactives:

Don't lynch inactives, lynch lurkers.

I guess it depends on your definition of inactive, but inactive for me, is someone who's not even playing the game, and has little to no posts. For me, the better choice is to pressure lurkers, who come in and post a couple times, then disappear. I think these are the people we should really be afraid of. They're a lot more dangerous, because by maintaining only a slight activity threshold to appease the town, they're easily able to hide amongst the masses. So personally, I'd rather lynch the guy who comes in twice a cycle to post a couple sentences, than Johnny-No-Posts who's not even playing the game.

Lurkers want to hide behind a minimum of activity, inactives aren't even playing. (<--- My Take)

I'm going to watch for people acting like that.

well this *looks* like a contribution, but its a repost of an argument that town agrees on since time immemorial, its like posting "you should build drones" in response to "how do I macro better?"

People get all hot over lynching inactives. I think lynching inactives is a dumb idea. Inactives are just as likely to be bored town not playing than scum. A much better idea is to look for people who post a lot, and then disappear. They're not going to get modkilled, but they're still hiding. It's also funny, because you call my opinion here contributing without contributing, but later when you yourself are debating if you won the mayorship if you should lynch inactives or not, I tell you the exact same thing but with more explanation, and you give me "townie points" for it.

Also, I think mafia would be more prone to trying to manipulate the town, whereas assassins would probably leave town be while focusing on finding the other assassins. So if you have two players kind've the same, but one is trying to manipulate the lynches and the other isn't, then you can differentiate them.

an actual point! Yay! ok, nothing more to see here

Posting when I can add something relevant

As others have said, I think voting a black in is lose-lose. There's no guarantee he'll do anything to really help us, and then we lose our mayor/pardoner.

something I agree with, fair enough

Also, as far as medicing him goes, I think we can just drop the discussion on that until Day 2. Assassins can't do anything night one, so unless mafia wants to hit him, there's no need to waste a medic on him. If he still wants to negotiate for kills later, then we can do that when he's actually in a position to kill. However, just to add to that quickly, he's actually useless to town if he's not mayor/pardoner, because if he says he's hitting a town chosen target, mafia can just RB him, because he's outed himself publicly. So, we don't want him in office, and he can't help us out of office.

again a really valid point, I have exactly one objection to it, the fact that after concluding that he is useless out of office he still talks about negotiating with the assassin, its an interesting contradiction

It wasn't my idea to negotiate for medic protection with him, and I mention this before I conclude he's useless to town out of office. Most of my posts are somewhat stream of consciousness, if I think of something while writing, I just add it. I don't go back and delete what I've written, because this gives my post more transparency and shows my entire thought process. At the time, others thought we should negotiate medic protection in exchange for kills/check, and I said we could do that later if we needed to, on Day 2. I then concluded though, that when we reach that point, he's not going to be much use to us anyways, because he'll just get RBed. I don't see the contradiction here, unless you're reading my post backwards.


So, overall, I don't think he can help town much, besides giving all the other assassins a non-town target for night 2.

Right now, I'm most comfortable picking either GMarshal or Dr.H for mayor. I've gotten the strongest town reads from them, and they've both shown they're not afraid of trying to look for scum and lead town in the right direction.

Yay!
^ My thoughts.

Don't hit the most inactive, that's stupid. The most inactive is likely not even playing the game, or they're just going to get Modkilled. If we want to do a policy lynch on activity, do it on a lurker. You call a lurker someone contributing without contributing, but with the amount of newer players in the game, that might not be the best deciding factor for day 1. I'd say lynch someone who was really active earlier in the game, like pregame, or night 0, and who has completely disappeared with only a minimum of posts by the end of day 1.

This is a decent point, +1 townie point for it kind sir

This is the same thing I said earlier which you said was contributing without contributing. You contradicted yourself here.

How am I lurking? I'm just not rehashing the exact same points as everyone else over and over again. I was going to bring up some of the reasons I thought a black mayor wouldn't be optimal, but they were already raised by others, so instead of just repeating what's already been said three times I mentioned that protac isn't going to be useful to us at all if he doesn't get elected, so we shouldn't waste medics on him, just leave him for the other assassins to use hits on, keeping them off of town

Alright this is a fair defense of my "lurking" accusation, however in his previous posts he made exactly one good point, that being about the assassin

I've thought of good points concurrently with others, so if someone posts it before me, it behooves me to not just repeat the exact same argument for pride's sake. This is me following my "don't excessively post unless I have something meaningful, new, or relevant to add" guideline.

And now that I think of it, there's other assassin, who may or may not be using their KP on the same night, on different or similar targets. So, there's no way to tell if mafia used all four hits or not. Meaning, it's easy for red to use one of their KPs as the "assassin" KP.

I do believe this was already mentioned, neutral read on this post

As far as I know, no one had mentioned that we're not going to be able to tell who's hitting who exactly starting Night 2. Assassin's may or may not hit. Throw in veterans, medics, and roleblocks, and it's going to be very murky if someone was hit by an assassin or by the mafia. Meaning, that if he were red, we wouldn't probably be able to tell by the kills.

The assassins are going to turn into the Item Game of Insane 2....

I was scum that game, so what I did, was try to keep everyone focused on the item game and away from actual analysis. I see the same thing starting to happen now, where town is going to latch onto the assassin game and get too distracted from everything else when it should be a non-issue...

this is a very, very good point and one I agree with, +1 townie point for him


Again, I think we should ignore the assassin game after Day 1, and only deal with it if it becomes necessary to do so. If we do elect protac, then I don't see this happening very easily.
Anyways, Why giving out both the names of the bodyguards is not a very good idea:

At their core, the bodyguard and pardoner are supposed to be very powerful roles that we would like to get a hold of and use for the benefit of the town. When used correctly, these roles seem like they'd be more than capable of wreaking havoc on the mafia and bringing town victory.

yeah, we know this, this is kind of filler

It's meant to give a basis and introduction to the rest of my post, stressing the importance of a strong player using mayor for the benefit of town.

If no mafia are elected into office, and they are not confident that they can sway the mayor easily, the best course of action for the reds is to kill the mayor/pardoner. In order to do so, they must first kill the two bodyguards. These bodyguards are unrevealed to the town and mafia, so first mafia need to find them as well.

again, I think this is obvious

Continuing from my logical premise that the mayor is a powerful role.

Now, you, Pandain, want to reveal the bodyguards to everyone. Why? To ostensibly put trackers on them in order to catch any assassins/mafia who want to take a shot at the mayor. However, doing this is cringe-worthy to say the least. So why wouldn't it work out? Mafia have four KP, and there are supposedly two other assassins. This means, that if there are no medics, that mafia can kill the two bodyguards as well as the mayor and pardoner in one fell swoop. So, what we'd achieve, is the entire public office dead, traded at the cost of one mafia revealed. The only way to counteract that, would be if we now, IN ADDITION to our trackers, put medic protection on the bodyguards as well. So, you're asking us to focus all of our blue power on two people. But then we just get into a WIFOM spiral where we need to decide to protect either the bodyguards to the detriment of all other pro-town players or other players to the detriment of our bodyguards and mayor/pardoner.

This is an actual good point +1 town point

And this is the conclusion I draw from my premises. If I just typed this, it would be somewhat baseless. This is 1+1=2. 2 might seem all exciting, but you need the other side of the equation to give a starting point for my conclusions. This is just how I reason, take my post as a whole.

In my opinion, this becomes too convoluted to even work with, when compared to keeping the bodyguards known only to the mayor/pardoner. In other words, a bad idea.

Forgot assassin. I'd be willing to let him in as pardoner, but not mayor.

Dr.H/protac

interesting, Wiggles said "I thought a black mayor wouldn't be optimal" but now he is ok with a black pardoner... it is noteworthy, and if kav's theory that Pro is actualy red holds true then very, very revealing

Black mayor is bad in my eyes. However, after seeing the arguments in the thread, and protac's own defense of his candidacy, I think that it wouldn't be the worst thing to have him as the pardoner. That said, I listed my choices in order of preference. I only control one vote, so these are just my opinions, I can't pick two people, so if the rest of town wants the assassin, I'd rather he's the pardoner than the mayor.

No, but it looks highly suspicious that you don't post any thoughts/opinions (or anything at all really) since the game has started, and then come in and vote.

What are your thoughts on the current situation?

Why do you like GMarshal the best for mayor?

Why don't you like the other candidates?

same questions I ask, after I asked them... slightly scummy, but it could be down to simultaneous posts

Exactly that, you ninja! :p I'm not sure how it's scummy though, the same thing has happened many times in this thread already.