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On November 19 2012 16:45 sandroba wrote:
The way things added up, your claim made it 8 letters long. It had to be 6 letters long with one T so the only one that could be lying was you, because if it were the other dudes it would only subtract one letter. And even assuming wbg modified it heavily (he modified it slightly I think, changing docs to jks and innocent children to millers iirc), scum just NEEDED a role blocker for balance with this many town blues and DP's claim was the only verifiable extremelly convinient thing he could ever claim as one.
No it didn't. The way things added up, there were 7 letters with the JK claim.
1-shot Cop - C
Two JKs and a 1-shot JK - DDDD
Roleblocker + 1-shot RB - BB
aka CDDDDBB
Of course, that doesn't allow for an SK, but it is quite possible that bugs added an SK or a fourth mafia in a 0 T setup.
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That's true I thought there were 2 full RBs. Even so mafia needed a roleblocker and no one seemed to noticed it was missing.
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On November 19 2012 17:44 sandroba wrote:
That's true I thought there were 2 full RBs. Even so mafia needed a roleblocker and no one seemed to noticed it was missing.
Yes they did. But there were numerous plausible explanations for them missing. Not likely, but plausible.
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On November 19 2012 12:04 Promethelax wrote:
Oh, I was wondering during game and wanted to ask at the end.
Risk: do you really believe that someone of prp's caliber would replace out because he was scum under pressure? That seemed really dumb but made sense form a getting me lynched standpoint.
Fresh from the rumour mill:
I do remeber that somewhere in August there was talk that prplhz rolled scum 4 games in a row, which annoyed him greatly, and IIRC, he was scum in another game or two afterwards.I think he said somewhere that he does not enjoy playing scum that often (or at all, not sure), and that he got really lazy as scum. However, I doubt he would want to be replaced solely for this.
When people wrote they wanted to lynch you because prplhz replaced out and might therefore be scum, I therefore thought for a second that this might actually be the case. However, thinking a bit longer about it, I did not think that prplhz would replace out of a game solely because of the role he got.
Pre-edit: I just made a search, it was in GSL Open Mini Mafia where he was scum for the fourth time, see here, in post number 7. And from here on there is talk about him having a scum burnout of sorts. Not sure how serious all of those posts are, but it still gives you an impression on how much he "likes" to play as scum nowadays.
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
On November 19 2012 16:53 Keirathi wrote:Show nested quote +On November 19 2012 16:45 sandroba wrote:
The way things added up, your claim made it 8 letters long. It had to be 6 letters long with one T so the only one that could be lying was you, because if it were the other dudes it would only subtract one letter. And even assuming wbg modified it heavily (he modified it slightly I think, changing docs to jks and innocent children to millers iirc), scum just NEEDED a role blocker for balance with this many town blues and DP's claim was the only verifiable extremelly convinient thing he could ever claim as one. No it didn't. The way things added up, there were 7 letters with the JK claim. 1-shot Cop - C Two JKs and a 1-shot JK - DDDD Roleblocker + 1-shot RB - BB aka CDDDDBB Of course, that doesn't allow for an SK, but it is quite possible that bugs added an SK or a fourth mafia in a 0 T setup.
that's not how bugs rolls his setups (unless he's using a different way than I know for his JK rolls but i doubt it)
that's why people shouldn't speculate on setup unless they're sure what the host is using.
even people (who should know better!) in post-game are doing it!
Edit: prplhz would never replace out because he rolled scum, he's not like that.
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
On November 19 2012 08:28 kushm4sta wrote:
I have never experienced fake claims before and I didn't think it was likely.
I thought the flavor was like a clue that was meant to be exploited by town.
it was explicitly stated by host that game was not meant to be played/solved like this.
....... also
On October 26 2012 02:30 wherebugsgo wrote:
Clues:
There are no clues.
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all this setup speculation works in hindsight.
BUt during the game, we doubted whether the setup used different numbers of roles so none of it is actually important.
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
hasn't even worked in hindsight, that's the thing.
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What was your guys opinion of the mason roleclaim? Was it a good idea at the time? In hindsight?
First, I want to commend Muso for his play, even though it was a judgement error. I had never thought of the "town reason for fakeclaiming mason" into account, but Muso was right: if TL games didn't tend to run on a LAL policy, it makes good sense: town is not relying on the mason's night actions, yet scum wants masons dead, so a VT not too sure of his analytical skills can take one for the team in this manner.
I was kinda excited about counterclaiming for two reasons:
The first was obviously that I just took one look at the claim and thought "that is a bullshit claim and if I were a mason I would not claim like that. Less so if I were completely new to the game". Which led me to wonder who and why would try to fake claim and I figured the fastest way to defuse that claim was to counterclaim. Seeing as nobody else had counterclaimed yet, I was fairly certain that either Muso was actually a mason derping it up completely, or there were no masons.
The second was to gauge reactions around the way it played out and get some actual useful content, which was absolutely lacking in what was looking to be a regular D1 snorebore. The most interesting D1 (actually N0, but lets not nitpick) I have played was when Hiro made up the bullshit "House Chezinu" claim in Bastard Mafia 2: while not quite on the same scale, I thought the way the story would unfold would give us some rather interesting discussion. This only partially worked out. It did generate a lot of discussion, but the people whose reaction I connected with scum mindset were all town. The scum simply rolled with the punches and lurked through the whole ordeal. Nevertheless, I feel the discussion generated was generally useful, but am not sure it was enough to justify the gambit.
@Bugs: I was not sure the encryption was in the spirit of the game. Doing that with steganography would have been possible, but a lot harder. Are you okay with that? Zealos clearly wasn't and I have seen encryption used to pretty much break some non-normal games. However, I didn't see much harm in doing this here.
@Prom: sorry for pushing you so hard in the early game. However, the pushing served its purpose and made me lean town on you before it was lynchtime on D2. You played well, until you decided to lynch thrawn for no sane reason I can think of (and yes, I read your postgame justification).
@Sandro: you are just as wrong as I was during the game to put too much stock into the setup:
A full JK and a 1-shot: JJ (or DD if you prefer)
A full roleblocker and a 1-shot: RR
A 1-shot cop: C
Makes: JJRRCTT, which according to the regular C9++ rules is a game without an SK. Therefore all speculation about the existence of a scum RBer based on setup is circumstantial, because Bugs clearly changed the setup in more ways than just replacing millers and medics.
More ranting at Kush, Fuba and Release (and a bit at Prom) at endgame:
However, by LYLO the C9++ setup speculation was irrelevant: there was a claimed jailer. Scum does not leave claimed jailers alive. Especially not 2 nights in a row. The no-kill was a good idea from DP, but town should 100% have lynched Release and then DP, or vice versa. I presume Prom has read my ranting in the obs qt about the whole "lets make cases" dealio... and DP has already chipped in for the scum viewpoint on how much fun shitting up the thread was.
No need for cases, the game is played out. You reached endgame. You have 2 lynches to kill the last scum. Scum doesn't voluntarily let blues live. Therefore if Release isn't scum, DP is. Everything else, including how scummy thrawn, mkfuba and kush look is irrelevant.
There is only very strange WIFOM that lets thrawn be scum in the endgame that DP orchestrated. For the wifom to be in any way believable, DP would have had to forego killing the last night as well (if you lynch Release as you damned well should), which means town gets a free mislynch, lynches Thrawn and then lynches DP at lylo instead of mylo).
There were SO many things wrong with town at the endgame: nobody asked why the fuck a town RBer would not block Release again? He did so once and it apparently prevented a NK. Acro, flipped roleblocker, ALSO RB'd Release on a night without a kill. Therefore RB'ing anybody other than Release is fucking retarded from a town point of view. Yet, DP roleblocked FUBA. Why? Well, he needed to fucking kill somebody AND lynch Release. If he killed somebody with Release RB'd, then he would be in deep shit. Add everything together and it was 1000% obvious that DP was scum (even with a town read at the time of my death).
But town switched their brains off at endgame, which will continue to make me bang my head into a wall every time I watch a looney tunes cartoon. Thanks for ruining fun cartoons, town.
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I don't personally see the advantage that your fakeclaiming mason had over actually explaining the reasons for why muso's claim was likely fake in terms of determining Muso's alignment. If your interest was in simply moving on from the claim,eliciting reactions from others, and considering him later, then the better play in my opinion would have been to simply push a case on someone else.
My views may be slightly biased from the fact that I consider the way you used encryption there against the spirit of the game. It almost completely removes the risks associated with your fakeclaim for pretty much no work.
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On November 20 2012 04:52 Acrofales wrote:
What was your guys opinion of the mason roleclaim? Was it a good idea at the time? In hindsight?
First, I want to commend Muso for his play, even though it was a judgement error. I had never thought of the "town reason for fakeclaiming mason" into account, but Muso was right: if TL games didn't tend to run on a LAL policy, it makes good sense: town is not relying on the mason's night actions, yet scum wants masons dead, so a VT not too sure of his analytical skills can take one for the team in this manner.
I could understand the fake claim a bit more if it didn't rely on him lying about his experience and pretending to be a complete idiot. Before the game he claimed to be experienced, after the claim he very transparently lied about his previous mafia experience (really, watched a youtube?). Also there is no bright line lynch all liars policy, at least if I'm in the game, the details matter.
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@Acro yeah it was prob confirmation bias. But I was pretty sure he was scum due to RB being needed, the timing of the claim and that became even more obvious after no one in town thinking he were scum and he never getting shot as a jail keeper. Anyway setup speculation is pretty useful even when it's not a 100% thing. It's better to read the flips correctly though =P
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
On November 20 2012 05:12 HiroPro wrote:
I don't personally see the advantage that your fakeclaiming mason had over actually explaining the reasons for why muso's claim was likely fake in terms of determining Muso's alignment. If your interest was in simply moving on from the claim,eliciting reactions from others, and considering him later, then the better play in my opinion would have been to simply push a case on someone else.
My views may be slightly biased from the fact that I consider the way you used encryption there against the spirit of the game. It almost completely removes the risks associated with your fakeclaim for pretty much no work.
i agree totally with everything in this post
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Okay. This might not belong in the endgame here, but rather in a separate thread, as it is about more than just this game. I seem to recall Tali making a discussion at some point. However, the question here boils down to: why are breadcrumbs okay, yet encryption is bad?
The first time I used encryption in a mafia game it was actually a mix of encryption and steganography: I hid the encrypted message as if I was hitting random keys in anger. Is that okay? It took more effort than just throwing out an encrypted post. Why is the level of effort involved a relevant measure? In the end, well-hidden breadcrumbs (steganography) serve a similar purpose, but (generally) do require more effort.
The purpose of both is a sort of time capsule: you want to prove that you had a thought at a previous point in the game.
There is one important difference between steganography and cryptography that feels relevant to Mafia games: the advantage of steganography is that you keep it hidden that there even IS a secret message. Other times, like this game, the fact that there was a secret message was somewhat irrelevant: I just didn't want the content read yet. However, that is not the aspect that you don't like.
The defense for steganography over cryptograpy that the message is hiding in plain sight is really a moot point. In this game alone, Release planted a breadcrumb that was intentionally meant to be found, yet nobody found it. I stumbled over the sentence, but never expected it to be hiding a breadcrumb. I think it was Prom who said he stumbled over the sentence and looked for a breadcrumb, but didn't find it. And that was one that was meant to be found.
It takes a gigantic amount of effort to find a well-hidden breadcrumb... and the more text someone writes, the more effort is required. The possible messages that might be hidden are gigantic and the possible ways to hide them are equally gigantic. So now that we have established that a well-hidden crumb will not be found without it being pointed out post-hoc, why are these "in the spirit of the game", yet encryption isn't?
TLDR: why is "effort" a good measure of whether a method for planting a time-capsule in a mafia game, is within the spirit of the game or not?
Note: I have personally not yet taken a stance. I have seen encryption being used to completely break a themed game, and if a game can be broken in such a manner then encryption (and probably steganography, and any other way of timestamping a message so it can serve as a time capsule) should be disallowed. However, I want to understand why this is "against the spirit of the game" in the more general case.
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On November 20 2012 04:52 Acrofales wrote:
What was your guys opinion of the mason roleclaim? Was it a good idea at the time? In hindsight?
First, I want to commend Muso for his play, even though it was a judgement error. I had never thought of the "town reason for fakeclaiming mason" into account, but Muso was right: if TL games didn't tend to run on a LAL policy, it makes good sense: town is not relying on the mason's night actions, yet scum wants masons dead, so a VT not too sure of his analytical skills can take one for the team in this manner.
I was kinda excited about counterclaiming for two reasons:
The first was obviously that I just took one look at the claim and thought "that is a bullshit claim and if I were a mason I would not claim like that. Less so if I were completely new to the game". Which led me to wonder who and why would try to fake claim and I figured the fastest way to defuse that claim was to counterclaim. Seeing as nobody else had counterclaimed yet, I was fairly certain that either Muso was actually a mason derping it up completely, or there were no masons.
The second was to gauge reactions around the way it played out and get some actual useful content, which was absolutely lacking in what was looking to be a regular D1 snorebore. The most interesting D1 (actually N0, but lets not nitpick) I have played was when Hiro made up the bullshit "House Chezinu" claim in Bastard Mafia 2: while not quite on the same scale, I thought the way the story would unfold would give us some rather interesting discussion. This only partially worked out. It did generate a lot of discussion, but the people whose reaction I connected with scum mindset were all town. The scum simply rolled with the punches and lurked through the whole ordeal. Nevertheless, I feel the discussion generated was generally useful, but am not sure it was enough to justify the gambit.
@Bugs: I was not sure the encryption was in the spirit of the game. Doing that with steganography would have been possible, but a lot harder. Are you okay with that? Zealos clearly wasn't and I have seen encryption used to pretty much break some non-normal games. However, I didn't see much harm in doing this here.
@Prom: sorry for pushing you so hard in the early game. However, the pushing served its purpose and made me lean town on you before it was lynchtime on D2. You played well, until you decided to lynch thrawn for no sane reason I can think of (and yes, I read your postgame justification).
@Sandro: you are just as wrong as I was during the game to put too much stock into the setup:
A full JK and a 1-shot: JJ (or DD if you prefer)
A full roleblocker and a 1-shot: RR
A 1-shot cop: C
Makes: JJRRCTT, which according to the regular C9++ rules is a game without an SK. Therefore all speculation about the existence of a scum RBer based on setup is circumstantial, because Bugs clearly changed the setup in more ways than just replacing millers and medics.
More ranting at Kush, Fuba and Release (and a bit at Prom) at endgame:
However, by LYLO the C9++ setup speculation was irrelevant: there was a claimed jailer. Scum does not leave claimed jailers alive. Especially not 2 nights in a row. The no-kill was a good idea from DP, but town should 100% have lynched Release and then DP, or vice versa. I presume Prom has read my ranting in the obs qt about the whole "lets make cases" dealio... and DP has already chipped in for the scum viewpoint on how much fun shitting up the thread was.
No need for cases, the game is played out. You reached endgame. You have 2 lynches to kill the last scum. Scum doesn't voluntarily let blues live. Therefore if Release isn't scum, DP is. Everything else, including how scummy thrawn, mkfuba and kush look is irrelevant.
There is only very strange WIFOM that lets thrawn be scum in the endgame that DP orchestrated. For the wifom to be in any way believable, DP would have had to forego killing the last night as well (if you lynch Release as you damned well should), which means town gets a free mislynch, lynches Thrawn and then lynches DP at lylo instead of mylo).
There were SO many things wrong with town at the endgame: nobody asked why the fuck a town RBer would not block Release again? He did so once and it apparently prevented a NK. Acro, flipped roleblocker, ALSO RB'd Release on a night without a kill. Therefore RB'ing anybody other than Release is fucking retarded from a town point of view. Yet, DP roleblocked FUBA. Why? Well, he needed to fucking kill somebody AND lynch Release. If he killed somebody with Release RB'd, then he would be in deep shit. Add everything together and it was 1000% obvious that DP was scum (even with a town read at the time of my death).
But town switched their brains off at endgame, which will continue to make me bang my head into a wall every time I watch a looney tunes cartoon. Thanks for ruining fun cartoons, town.
it would be nice to know why kush and fuba lynched me.
Some personal confirmation would be nice but i believe:
Kush wanted scum to win
Fuba wanted to vote me because i called his IRL excuses and bullshit
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
On November 20 2012 09:48 Acrofales wrote:
Okay. This might not belong in the endgame here, but rather in a separate thread, as it is about more than just this game. I seem to recall Tali making a discussion at some point. However, the question here boils down to: why are breadcrumbs okay, yet encryption is bad?
The first time I used encryption in a mafia game it was actually a mix of encryption and steganography: I hid the encrypted message as if I was hitting random keys in anger. Is that okay? It took more effort than just throwing out an encrypted post. Why is the level of effort involved a relevant measure? In the end, well-hidden breadcrumbs (steganography) serve a similar purpose, but (generally) do require more effort.
The purpose of both is a sort of time capsule: you want to prove that you had a thought at a previous point in the game.
There is one important difference between steganography and cryptography that feels relevant to Mafia games: the advantage of steganography is that you keep it hidden that there even IS a secret message. Other times, like this game, the fact that there was a secret message was somewhat irrelevant: I just didn't want the content read yet. However, that is not the aspect that you don't like.
The defense for steganography over cryptograpy that the message is hiding in plain sight is really a moot point. In this game alone, Release planted a breadcrumb that was intentionally meant to be found, yet nobody found it. I stumbled over the sentence, but never expected it to be hiding a breadcrumb. I think it was Prom who said he stumbled over the sentence and looked for a breadcrumb, but didn't find it. And that was one that was meant to be found.
It takes a gigantic amount of effort to find a well-hidden breadcrumb... and the more text someone writes, the more effort is required. The possible messages that might be hidden are gigantic and the possible ways to hide them are equally gigantic. So now that we have established that a well-hidden crumb will not be found without it being pointed out post-hoc, why are these "in the spirit of the game", yet encryption isn't?
TLDR: why is "effort" a good measure of whether a method for planting a time-capsule in a mafia game, is within the spirit of the game or not?
Note: I have personally not yet taken a stance. I have seen encryption being used to completely break a themed game, and if a game can be broken in such a manner then encryption (and probably steganography, and any other way of timestamping a message so it can serve as a time capsule) should be disallowed. However, I want to understand why this is "against the spirit of the game" in the more general case.
it's quite easy. one only requires in-game stuff, the other doesn't.
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BlazingHand thinks that everything from out of game is cheating. Unless it is an ms paint picture. I don't like encryption just because it removes the skill form the game. If I sat down and hid a BC you could find it. You probably wouldn't but you could. Blue snipes are a beautiful thing from scum and encryption just removes the challenge from the game.
Acro: I think you said "don't bother trying to decrypt that, I have experience with encryption and it is impossible" or something along those lines. I think that in itself is the answer, there is no chance to do anything except accept that whatever is there is there. I also wouldn't be too confidant, it is possible to translate those messages based on word length, never be too careful.
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On November 20 2012 12:32 marvellosity wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2012 09:48 Acrofales wrote:
Okay. This might not belong in the endgame here, but rather in a separate thread, as it is about more than just this game. I seem to recall Tali making a discussion at some point. However, the question here boils down to: why are breadcrumbs okay, yet encryption is bad?
The first time I used encryption in a mafia game it was actually a mix of encryption and steganography: I hid the encrypted message as if I was hitting random keys in anger. Is that okay? It took more effort than just throwing out an encrypted post. Why is the level of effort involved a relevant measure? In the end, well-hidden breadcrumbs (steganography) serve a similar purpose, but (generally) do require more effort.
The purpose of both is a sort of time capsule: you want to prove that you had a thought at a previous point in the game.
There is one important difference between steganography and cryptography that feels relevant to Mafia games: the advantage of steganography is that you keep it hidden that there even IS a secret message. Other times, like this game, the fact that there was a secret message was somewhat irrelevant: I just didn't want the content read yet. However, that is not the aspect that you don't like.
The defense for steganography over cryptograpy that the message is hiding in plain sight is really a moot point. In this game alone, Release planted a breadcrumb that was intentionally meant to be found, yet nobody found it. I stumbled over the sentence, but never expected it to be hiding a breadcrumb. I think it was Prom who said he stumbled over the sentence and looked for a breadcrumb, but didn't find it. And that was one that was meant to be found.
It takes a gigantic amount of effort to find a well-hidden breadcrumb... and the more text someone writes, the more effort is required. The possible messages that might be hidden are gigantic and the possible ways to hide them are equally gigantic. So now that we have established that a well-hidden crumb will not be found without it being pointed out post-hoc, why are these "in the spirit of the game", yet encryption isn't?
TLDR: why is "effort" a good measure of whether a method for planting a time-capsule in a mafia game, is within the spirit of the game or not?
Note: I have personally not yet taken a stance. I have seen encryption being used to completely break a themed game, and if a game can be broken in such a manner then encryption (and probably steganography, and any other way of timestamping a message so it can serve as a time capsule) should be disallowed. However, I want to understand why this is "against the spirit of the game" in the more general case. it's quite easy. one only requires in-game stuff, the other doesn't.
marv sums it up lol. Even if you don't agree with that you should still consider the directly game-related aspects: how difficult it is for mafia to deal with encryption (not being able to figure out, very obvious when placed, allows town to store very complex messages, much more so than breadcrumbs) and the very fine line that encryption approaches with regards to private communication (keys that would be known to some people/not known to others).
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On November 20 2012 12:39 Promethelax wrote:
BlazingHand thinks that everything from out of game is cheating. Unless it is an ms paint picture. I don't like encryption just because it removes the skill form the game. If I sat down and hid a BC you could find it. You probably wouldn't but you could. Blue snipes are a beautiful thing from scum and encryption just removes the challenge from the game.
Acro: I think you said "don't bother trying to decrypt that, I have experience with encryption and it is impossible" or something along those lines. I think that in itself is the answer, there is no chance to do anything except accept that whatever is there is there. I also wouldn't be too confidant, it is possible to translate those messages based on word length, never be too careful.
What, other than a pen and paper (or a text editor), do you need from outside the game to decrypt a one-time pad message?
If you mean that you need knowledge about the encryption method, I could say the same for steganography. What if I hid the letters of the message at every prime position? You'd need to know what primes are to even think of looking for a message there (and if you think primes are easy, how about fibonacci numbers or any of a myriad of less known sequences?)
I disagree that breadcrumbs can be found. While theoretically possible, there are so many options for hiding them that it is impossible in practice. Theoretically, decryption is also breakable, but same story: there are so any possible keys that in practice it's impossible. See my answer to Prom below for a short explanation. Badly hidden breadcrumbs can be found, just as badly encrypted messages can be deciphered. It all comes down to the effort that you want to spend hunting crumbs or fiddling with decryption. Nothing from outside the game, other than pen and paper, is needed in either case.
I finally dredged up the old discussion: clicky. Qatol brought up a far better point: due to the secretive nature of crumbing, scum *could* hide multiple crumbs for fakeclaiming, while giving multiple encrypted messages would never work. Therefore an organized town using encryption on a large scale to mass roleclaim at the start of the game would prevent fakeclaims from being invented at any point past D1.
While true, it only seems to be a problem for the extremes and for the express purpose of breaking themed games like PTP. I agree that this use of encryption is against the spirit of the game, because the tool is being used to limit scum's abilities with pretty much no harm to town. However, encryption is not the only tool, see, for instance Space Ship Mafia, where the game was broken by PMs and a mass roleclaim. The problem here is the mass roleclaim, which in a normal game is almost always a dumb idea. With encryption it is good for town, though, but I think the main problem here is the mass roleclaim, not encryption.
As for bluesniping: encryption is highly visible. There is really no point for blues to use encryption to hide their claims or night actions (unless VTs are doing it too, but this falls under the point of mass claiming). A blue using encryption would simply get shot. For an example, see GoT mafia, where Zentor got shot, mainly because of his encrypted message.
+ Show Spoiler [@prom] +It was a one-time pad, which can only be broken by a brute force attack. Now because the key was themed it was actually guessable, but still. Technically, I used the same key two or three times, so frequency analysis would have worked due to it not being a one-time pad, but in a message that size there is simply not enough text to use frequency analysis (or any other attack than guessing).
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On November 20 2012 13:00 HiroPro wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2012 12:32 marvellosity wrote:On November 20 2012 09:48 Acrofales wrote:
Okay. This might not belong in the endgame here, but rather in a separate thread, as it is about more than just this game. I seem to recall Tali making a discussion at some point. However, the question here boils down to: why are breadcrumbs okay, yet encryption is bad?
The first time I used encryption in a mafia game it was actually a mix of encryption and steganography: I hid the encrypted message as if I was hitting random keys in anger. Is that okay? It took more effort than just throwing out an encrypted post. Why is the level of effort involved a relevant measure? In the end, well-hidden breadcrumbs (steganography) serve a similar purpose, but (generally) do require more effort.
The purpose of both is a sort of time capsule: you want to prove that you had a thought at a previous point in the game.
There is one important difference between steganography and cryptography that feels relevant to Mafia games: the advantage of steganography is that you keep it hidden that there even IS a secret message. Other times, like this game, the fact that there was a secret message was somewhat irrelevant: I just didn't want the content read yet. However, that is not the aspect that you don't like.
The defense for steganography over cryptograpy that the message is hiding in plain sight is really a moot point. In this game alone, Release planted a breadcrumb that was intentionally meant to be found, yet nobody found it. I stumbled over the sentence, but never expected it to be hiding a breadcrumb. I think it was Prom who said he stumbled over the sentence and looked for a breadcrumb, but didn't find it. And that was one that was meant to be found.
It takes a gigantic amount of effort to find a well-hidden breadcrumb... and the more text someone writes, the more effort is required. The possible messages that might be hidden are gigantic and the possible ways to hide them are equally gigantic. So now that we have established that a well-hidden crumb will not be found without it being pointed out post-hoc, why are these "in the spirit of the game", yet encryption isn't?
TLDR: why is "effort" a good measure of whether a method for planting a time-capsule in a mafia game, is within the spirit of the game or not?
Note: I have personally not yet taken a stance. I have seen encryption being used to completely break a themed game, and if a game can be broken in such a manner then encryption (and probably steganography, and any other way of timestamping a message so it can serve as a time capsule) should be disallowed. However, I want to understand why this is "against the spirit of the game" in the more general case. it's quite easy. one only requires in-game stuff, the other doesn't. marv sums it up lol. Even if you don't agree with that you should still consider the directly game-related aspects: how difficult it is for mafia to deal with encryption (not being able to figure out, very obvious when placed, allows town to store very complex messages, much more so than breadcrumbs) and the very fine line that encryption approaches with regards to private communication (keys that would be known to some people/not known to others).
Only when taken to extremes. In most cases mafia has a really good solution for dealing with encryption. Shoot the bugger, because he's probably blue. The obviousness of the encrypted text is a downside, not an advantage.
As for private comm: I have not yet seen a way of sharing a key with only some people in the thread and not with others in non-PM games. In PM games things clearly change, but then again, most of the game does.
As for storing complex messages: it all boils down to effort again.
Food for thought: If I were to breadcrumb a message, but instead of hiding it in plain text, I surround the message with random jibberish. Technically, this is steganography, not encryption, yet I can see no practical difference between the two. Would you feel breadcrumbing in a wall of random text is in the spirit of the game?
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EPT
