Pick Your Power Interesting! - Page 78

On October 23 2011 22:54 sandroba wrote:
@kav you being right about me being mafia does not equal your case being right at that point. Look at how this game worked and you will see that I wasn't pushing mafia objectives there =P

On October 24 2011 06:34 wherebugsgo wrote:
I don't see how public key cryptography would change a thread game into a PM game. If it's public key then everyone can crack the crypt.

On October 24 2011 07:41 HarbingerOfDoom wrote:


Public key crypto would turn a thread game into a PM game, a key being public doesn't mean everyone can crack it. Public key cryptography is basically what makes e-commerce possible, and why your credit card info hasn't been stolen a hundred times over. If you want some more details of how, just look up RSA on wikipedia. Even with far less advanced ciphers it would be easy to communicate privately in a public thread as long as everyone else has limited programming knowledge. Hell, if prplhz knows what he is doing since he mentioned it (and if I don't screw it up), we could demonstrate.

On October 24 2011 06:55 BloodyC0bbler wrote:
this game was full of luls.

What should have been an epic game from all the potential layers of play that could have been used ended up in town steam rolling a complacent mafia, a mafia which opted to play with odd choice of roles.

a host could correct me if i'm wrong, but I thought a hilarious play would have been vote rig the elections, sliding in the AoC into the office, then use showtime + voterigger secondary ability to crank out a free double lynch the following day into offing a ton of people via AoC.

or the extactor + assassin, jack/day vig, etc....

With so many factions trying to avoid roles that allow you to have an edge is weird. Town has insane chances spotting another team over yours, or they could get caught up competing for similar roles. Had 1 mafia team been slightly more active and taken a better theme to roles (vote rigging, mass kp, insane night lives, etc...) they could have done alot better. Instead people opted to choose roles that were really not the best in working with eachother. some individual picks were insanely solid, but no team had a well rounded team.

On October 24 2011 07:12 Qatol wrote:

I absolutely agree that it's a crappy way to play the game. I can add something about using IRC at your own risk to the model OP if you like.

On October 24 2011 07:16 JimboSilvers wrote:
The problem with the irc impersonation is the fact that i could have caught every scum that ever logged into irc with it. I didn't because I realized that it was game breaking, and stopped. It's extremely powerful, especially when people are unaware of it like they were this game.

That being said, i DON'T think it should be banned. Those avenues should be open, and people should be allowed to be creative with their play (like honeypot). Looked down on? Sure, but banned? No. I think that people should be made aware of it, so that they can defend against it, but I really feel like it is in the same grain as bread-crumbing roles, and alignment PMs, which have been traditionally allowed. Mafia is a multi-faceted game, and I want it to remain that way. Creativity should always be rewarded.

On October 24 2011 07:21 wherebugsgo wrote:
Wiggles, itcertainly seems like people are QQing about it when they say that it's against the spirit of the game.

It's a form of infiltration. Politics. That's what this game was about.

Mafia could've impersonated town to try and get information. Mafia could've tried to get into town circles to try and sabotage them from the inside. Instead, you guys were complacent, your play was bland, and you all suffered for it.

I'll put this here:




Tell me, other than sandro, which scum even attempted to scheme or plan to sabotage town goals?

Finally, chaoser was going to get shot well before the IRC debacle. To say that he was caught by the IRC impersonation is a misrepresentation, only cheese was caught that way.

On October 24 2011 07:51 Mr. Wiggles wrote:

That sounds fine, just something to let newer players know that they shouldn't trust everything on IRC necessarily. For example, I wasn't really aware of it, and I'm sure Cyber wasn't aware of it when he confirmed himself and Chaoser as scum. I'm just glad he didn't out more of us.


I still think it should be a host decision, though, and it would just be enforced in the same way as any other rules. Most of the rules on TL Mafia are enforced by the honour system more than anything else. For example, there's not really a way to tell if two players are breaking a no-PM rule unless one of them outs the other. Same thing for breaking into someone's TL account to look at their role PM. Most of this just relies an an inherent amount of trust in the players. So, making it a host decision shouldn't make more work for the hosts, as it would just work the same way as most every other rule in the game. This is the same way role PM bread-crumbing works too, some hosts allow it, others put example PMs in their OP to negate it, and others modkill you if you mention anything from a PM sent from a host.


This isn't about town or mafia, or even this game. I don't really like it, because while it might be creative, it doesn't really require any skill or finesse. There's not much skill involved in pretending to be someone else and getting them to claim to you because they think you're their team mate. Like I've said, you could win the game on day 1 this way, if mafia aren't aware of the strategy.

Also, when I say Chaoser was caught, that's because he was. It doesn't matter if you though he was scummy or not beforehand, I was just using him as an example. If Player A responds as a scumbuddy Player B, that pretty much confirms both Player A and Player B as scum. You just caught two mafia, doing nothing.

Your line of reasoning doesn't hold, either. Saying it's a game of intrigue and politics could be used to justify any action. What if someone impersonated the mods in IRC and had people claim to them? Is that OK because it's scheming, and this is a game of intrigue and politics? There isn't a rule against it explicitly in the OP, so it must be fine, right? This is where the "spirit of the game" comes in, because players should be able to use their own judgement for what's acceptable or not in a game. The OP can't cover everything. That's also why we should discuss things like this, that fall into a somewhat grey area, just like we discussed account-sharing before, when that came up.

So, judging by the discussion, people don't think this is a problem, so I'm going to drop it. The warning in the OP should be good enough to warn people about it, so we don't get unaware mafia handing out all their members to town. (Also funny because of rule number 2) It's important they know, because it's almost required that some of them use a public IRC if it exists, or else they just let town set up a giant circle where mafia can't see what's happening and can't influence it in any way. I still think it should ultimately be a host decision, though.

On October 24 2011 07:31 bumatlarge wrote:
Ah you were the BB radfield, great minds think alike!

On October 24 2011 07:51 Ace wrote:
Awesome. So this is no longer a game of Mafia but a game of seeing who can get closest to breaking the rules or taking advantage of silly players. Pathetic.

On October 24 2011 07:49 wherebugsgo wrote:


Except you have to keep one key private, while the other is public, correct?

I don't see how that furthers the goal of trying to get PMs in a non-PM game.

On October 24 2011 08:12 HarbingerOfDoom wrote:



I give out my public key in a thread, the person I want to talk to does the same with his public key. I encrypt a message to him using his public key and post it in the thread. Since only he has the corresponding private key, only he can read the message. He replies with a message encrypted using my public key, I decrypt it with my private key. Nobody else can read those messages without finding out one of the private keys, which with a 2048 bit key, which would take the most powerful supercomputer in existence today years to crack. If only 1 person can read the message, it sounds a lot like a PM to me.

On October 24 2011 07:59 wherebugsgo wrote:


Of course my logic holds.

Impersonating the mods is already illegal because you're not allowed to impersonate people who are not participating in the game. There was a precedent for that and it might not be in the OP but that's not even what I'm suggesting.

And again, this completely ignores a multitude of different things.

Foolishness early in the game trashed the idea of public IRC. He received PMs from myself and Hiro; I asked him why he would say such a thing as town. Is it not clear now why an experienced player would think public IRC is useless? (and IRC in general is an unreliable form of communication)

Finally, of course it's about mafia and town in this game. Mafia did nothing to stop town from infiltrating their circles. It was carelessness and complacency. If I was scum I would have my own private, passworded IRC channel (if we were to use IRC at all). In fact, Chezinu house had a more secret IRC channel than probably anyone else.

And again, it's not really much about tech savvyness, or whatever. You can figure out how to password lock and make a channel secret in about five seconds on google. You can ask people to do PM verification in a matter of seconds. IMO this kind of thing is a complete non issue because of the number of ways to avoid getting duped.

I think the OP change is completely fair and good for newer players, but there is absolutely no excuse, IMO, for more experienced players.

On October 24 2011 07:59 Radfield wrote:


Indeed, and you probably didn't realize it, but you basically confirmed yourself when you told me you went for BB. It was funny because of how careful you were being as to whether or not you got it, when of course I already had it


I think things like IRC impersonation are outside what I would generally consider the limits of the game. At that point you are playing a different game than what I initially signed up for. After this incident, it's highly likely no one from this game, or anyone watching this game, will get caught again, but I would expect that if this continued en-mass, many new players would get burned.

How do people feel about things like IRC and Skype in general? Personally I feel a PM only game would be far more fun than a PM game with real time chat. Certainly more balanced in favor of scum. Many players here also talk a lot outside of mafia games, which gives them a massive head start towards deducing their buddies alignment. Do people prefer real-time chat in games?



ALSO...... NO MODKILLS!! I can't remember the last game I played with no modkills. Sure sinani was cut a bunch of slack, but still.... no modkills

On October 24 2011 08:05 chaoser wrote:


+1 cause I CAN in this subforum MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA