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United Kingdom36161 Posts
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).
Ok Acro, you try breadcrumbing "I am lying about my mason claim, I'm not actually a mason" and then get back to me
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Fine:
I am a mason. After chatting with my partner we decided to counterclaim, because we think Muso must be lying. Muso must be mafia and he's fakeclaiming to gain town credit. Looks like he was gambling that there wasn't an actual mason pair.
Yeah Marv, it's harder to do this, but there's no reason to stick to syntax. I could have breadcrumbed "I am a liar" here if I got stuck on the letter y. No need to limit yourself to a specific sentence, as long as the meaning is communicated. Go try it!
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
Alright, and anyone can catch that, so that's a bad crumb, and wouldn't serve your purpose.
So you'll have to be cleverer with it, and spend more time on it. And then if it's *too* vague people might disbelieve you.
etc.
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That whole mason thing was terrible. It caused a mislynch. It allowed scum to be on a safe wagon. Little information was shared.
Like imagine if there as a competent scum team after that start.
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I am a mason. Basically, my partner decided I should claim, because we think Muso is lying. I am not sure what purpose it serves, but maybe it's a gambit for scum to gain town credit? Perhaps scum gambled that there wasn't an actual mason pair, so claiming would give him town cred? Possibly there are two mason pairs? I cannot claim to know what's happening, but statistically the chance of two mason pairs is negligible.
Obviously, I created this rather rambling text to fit the breadcrumb, but it was not too hard to hide the letters on prime numbers. Using random letters to hide the breadcrumb, rather than actual, sensible text would have made this task far easier, though. In this game I had no need to hide the fact that there WAS a message, just the CONTENT of the message. I could therefore have used steganography like this:
iamunxortptaacvumdatyesgbcqeown
iwacstlaekyfiqwingg
How would that have been distinguishable from encrypted text? No need to use primes either. I could have used any sequence. Even a regular one (and it would've made counting off random letters in the middle a lot easier too).
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On November 20 2012 23:09 DarthPunk wrote:
That whole mason thing was terrible. It caused a mislynch. It allowed scum to be on a safe wagon. Little information was shared.
Like imagine if there as a competent scum team after that start.
Well, that seems more the problem of Muso's claim, and town's unfamiliarity with his gambit in general than my counterclaim. Would you have killed muso at night if his claim had gone uncontested? Do you think we would have gotten a scumlynch D1, or a more informative wagon, if I had not counterclaimed? There was some suspicion on Drazak, but I feel scum could easily have pushed the D1 lynch to Release or Kush (although of course nobody knows what D1 would've looked like if I hadn't counterclaimed).
In other words: if nobody had contested the mason claim, would his gambit have had the desired effect? From your qt it is clear you didn't shoot Mattchew because you thought he was blue, but rather because you were afraid of a veteran player like him.
Which reminds me: risk, why did you shoot Zealos. It seems a strange choice for an SK to off. Were you worried about protection on the more vocal players? Or were you trying not to weaken town too much?
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
On November 20 2012 23:21 Acrofales wrote:
I am a mason. Basically, my partner decided I should claim, because we think Muso is lying. I am not sure what purpose it serves, but maybe it's a gambit for scum to gain town credit? Perhaps scum gambled that there wasn't an actual mason pair, so claiming would give him town cred? Possibly there are two mason pairs? I cannot claim to know what's happening, but statistically the chance of two mason pairs is negligible.
Obviously, I created this rather rambling text to fit the breadcrumb, but it was not too hard to hide the letters on prime numbers. Using random letters to hide the breadcrumb, rather than actual, sensible text would have made this task far easier, though. In this game I had no need to hide the fact that there WAS a message, just the CONTENT of the message. I could therefore have used steganography like this:
iamunxortptaacvumdatyesgbcqeown
iwacstlaekyfiqwingg
How would that have been distinguishable from encrypted text? No need to use primes either. I could have used any sequence. Even a regular one (and it would've made counting off random letters in the middle a lot easier too).
goes back to my earlier answer, verifiable without having to use outside-of-thread sources. that's the nub for me anyway.
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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.
No the fact that it is so obvious is a huge downside. If encryption was used, what would happen is that everyone would be required to post an encrypted message at the beginning of day 1 with role and at the end of night 1 with an action. vts would just post gibberish for their actions. With this type of system mafia is very restricted in what they can fake-claim.
In regards to private communication: it simply boils down to phrasing questions or thoughts that give away what the key is, but not stuff that everyone would know.
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But what is an outside-of-thread source? Where in that whole thing was I using an outside-of-thread source? Nowhere, unless you count knowing your primes as outside-of-thread knowledge, but then where does it end? As I said, I could do that last little bit exactly the same hiding letters at 1 modulo X (for instance, modulo 3):
nryoexodtubftvvsghifldruefrkisnaloucwnbltyeedjkgzdehfsguir
I think the essence of your argument still boils down to the amount of effort it takes to code: hiding a message in plain text is far harder than hiding a message in random gibberish (and it has nothing to do with outside sources, which are hard to define in any case). In plain text steganography, skill is rewarded. Hiding a good breadcrumb gives a sense of satisfaction, and hunting them can be fun. Encrypting text does not reward skill (or at least, the skill level is far lower) and most of the time attempting to decrypt them is an exercise in futility.
I also think there is a second objection which is felt, but nobody has voiced: it is not fun to know there is a message hidden that you cannot read. Being told post-hoc that there was a message hidden there all the time while you just didn't know it, is very different to knowing there's a message, but only being given the key to reading it post-hoc. The former is kinda fun to find out, the latter is just "meh". Both serve similar purposes: a time capsule to be opened at a later date, however it is simply more FUN to have that time capsule be so well hidden that it is a surprise when it is opened.
The two are quite related (and yes, trust a starcraft forum to link high skill level with fun  ): allowing encryption lowers the skill level required to play at the highest level and thus "cheapens" the game, or "goes against the spirit" of the game. Would that be at the core of why you don't like encryption?
Do you like automatically rallied SCVs in HotS? Or do you feel it is just yet another step to dumbing the game down too much?
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On November 20 2012 23:42 HiroPro wrote:Show nested quote +
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.
No the fact that it is so obvious is a huge downside. If encryption was used, what would happen is that everyone would be required to post an encrypted message at the beginning of day 1 with role and at the end of night 1 with an action. vts would just post gibberish for their actions. With this type of system mafia is very restricted in what they can fake-claim. In regards to private communication: it simply boils down to phrasing questions or thoughts that give away what the key is, but not stuff that everyone would know.
But as I said, that seems more a problem of mass claiming than of encryption per se. Plenty of (particularly themed) games can, and have, been broken with mass claims. Mass action claims are not much different. This is just an added variant on the theme.
As for hiding the key in some way, that only really works with players who know each other VERY well and share inside jokes that cannot be picked up from a filter. I can only really think of doing that with 2 or 3 players on the forum. Anyway, this would really go against the "spirit" of the no PM rule and is thus already forbidden. I could also speak in Dutch to Clarity, or Portuguese to Sandroba and with enough silly spelling variations google translate would be screwed. Yet, that goes so much against the spirit of the no-PM rule that we would almost certainly get modkilled, with good reason.
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On November 20 2012 23:29 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2012 23:09 DarthPunk wrote:
That whole mason thing was terrible. It caused a mislynch. It allowed scum to be on a safe wagon. Little information was shared.
Like imagine if there as a competent scum team after that start. Well, that seems more the problem of Muso's claim, and town's unfamiliarity with his gambit in general than my counterclaim. Would you have killed muso at night if his claim had gone uncontested? Do you think we would have gotten a scumlynch D1, or a more informative wagon, if I had not counterclaimed? There was some suspicion on Drazak, but I feel scum could easily have pushed the D1 lynch to Release or Kush (although of course nobody knows what D1 would've looked like if I hadn't counterclaimed). In other words: if nobody had contested the mason claim, would his gambit have had the desired effect? From your qt it is clear you didn't shoot Mattchew because you thought he was blue, but rather because you were afraid of a veteran player like him. Which reminds me: risk, why did you shoot Zealos. It seems a strange choice for an SK to off. Were you worried about protection on the more vocal players? Or were you trying not to weaken town too much?
There were no benefits for you or Muso to fakeclaim mason. It was a dumb thing to do.
I shot Zealos because I was afraid of cops and I thought he was blue.
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I'm going to be reading/posting analysis today since I'm finally done with school till Monday (yay).
Also on the encryption stuff, I considered making it a "common-sense" rule that encryption is not allowed. It's a somewhat hazy thing but if you have a town that meticulously encrypts their roles, it highly punishes mafia, who are forced to fake something very early into the game. Now one could argue that it takes a skilled town to do this and all be on the same page but I'd disagree; it just takes one loud person and a bunch of sheep to potentially break the game through a method that severely punishes mafia for pretty much no consequence.
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On November 22 2012 05:52 wherebugsgo wrote:
I'm going to be reading/posting analysis today since I'm finally done with school till Monday (yay).
Also on the encryption stuff, I considered making it a "common-sense" rule that encryption is not allowed. It's a somewhat hazy thing but if you have a town that meticulously encrypts their roles, it highly punishes mafia, who are forced to fake something very early into the game. Now one could argue that it takes a skilled town to do this and all be on the same page but I'd disagree; it just takes one loud person and a bunch of sheep to potentially break the game through a method that severely punishes mafia for pretty much no consequence.
Looking forward to it.
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Short Summary of Stuff I Noticed
So of what I was witnessing during the game, town had it fairly well together early game, and then fell apart somewhere in the middle. This is a bit odd but still explainable; I suppose it was because most of the more experienced townies were killed off early and then the newer townies just had no idea what to do with the roleclaims and the endgame scenarios.
One idea that people have been throwing around is that setup analysis would have definitely given town the win. I both agree and disagree on this notion, because no knowledge of C9++ would have been needed to figure out that there was something fishy going on late in the game. A claimed jailkeeper was alive for at least one night after he claimed. This should raise suspicions regardless of setup. Secondly, there was only one roleblock floating around at that point. That should also raise suspicion about the origin of the roleblock. Lastly, no knowledge of C9++ is needed to know that in a game where several town power roles and a serial killer have flipped, a mafia roleblocker is necessary just so that they have a chance of winning the game.
All players must constantly be aware of how play works from a different alignment perspective.
This type of awareness is necessary for townies to filter the other townies from scum, it is necessary for mafia to blend in properly as a townie, and it is necessary for the SK to assess the current level of threat that given players pose to him/her. If the townies in the endgame understood this, then seeing a goon and a godfather flip should tell them that the last mafia is almost certainly a roleblocker. If they were on the mafia team, would they find the game to be balanced if they did not have a roleblocker?
Once a townie has realized the necessity of a mafia roleblocker at this point, he or she must ask the question: what would a mafia roleblocker do in this situation? Two claims pop out immediately: town roleblocker, and town jailkeeper. These make perfect sense for a mafia roleblocker to claim because the role can be masked with the roleblocker's actual night actions. In addition, it is clear that a mafia roleblocker would want to push around different targets in the hopes that some accusation would stick. They may or may not choose to lead the town at that point, depending on the style of the mafia player and the remaining town players, but indeed it would be another sign that there was something weird going on if the town "leader" didn't die in lategame.
So the question arises: why did town not kill the claimed jailkeeper after he survived when he shouldn't have? Why didn't the town kill the claimed jailkeeper when his claimed actions didn't make much sense?
Now, the only other things that bothered me quite a bit are fairly obvious. Firstly, town fake claims. The mason claims and the porky pig claims were just reasonless and quite stupid. Perhaps you try to draw a shot, but imagine you have a second set of real masons. What happens then? You have FOUR claimed masons and then some people go, but wait, I'm a blue! You suddenly have caused a bunch of people to out themselves because you thought it was a good idea to fake claim mason. I have no idea what this actually accomplishes in terms of finding mafia, since a townie fake claiming mason just introduces an element of chaos and disorder. These are both things that town hates on day 1, because it detracts from scumhunting.
The prime question is, again: what does a town fake claim do to help town find scum? The answer is almost always, clearly, nothing. I have never once seen a fake claim on TL Mafia actually help town where playing normally or even just doing nothing would have accomplished the same thing. The situations in which fake claiming anything as town are so rare that I find it mind boggling that players continue to fake claim as town in so many games.
Secondly, very basic things and ideas were being overlooked. This game did have more posts than average, so that might explain some things, but I'll touch on a couple things:
1. Disagreement from the majority means one of three things, almost always:
a. The player is a new townie who disagrees with something that is not intuitive to him/her.
b. The player is an experienced townie who is trying to set the sheep correct.
c. The player is experienced mafia who is trying to establish town dominance by doing something mafia don't "generally" do.
Note that if the player is new, disagreement almost always means he or she is town. Look at the day 1 miller claim stuff. Almost everyone agreed with miller claims except for this guy:
On November 01 2012 08:25 thrawn2112 wrote:
If a miller claims D1 I don't even know what my thought process would be for deciding if I believe them or not, so I'm hesitatingly saying that I disagree with the idea
(note that I don't count the post by Drazak above this, since he agrees but disagrees at the same time-really wishy washy and on its own a whole separate deal)
Also, these caveats about experience shouldn't really need saying, since it's almost always obvious who is experienced and who is not. I have only a handful of times seen a new mafia play in a way that was counterintuitive mafia play (which ends up setting them apart and makes them hard to catch) and two of the most notable players who did that, Acrofales and marvellosity, are probably not considered new anymore. (thus, it isn't a good idea to apply generalities like these to them anyway)
2. If the host allows you to speculate about something, chances are it doesn't mean much/anything at all, and thus is a waste of time.
This goes specifically to everyone trying to break the game using flavor text: the mafia and SK had fakeclaims. Imagine town has tried to massclaim, but without roles-just flavor, to see if there's some sort of alignment-confirming pattern they could find. You know what would've happened? The mafia and SK were given fake role names and they could quite easily deduce the pattern I used, so if townies claimed ONLY flavor, they would've shot all your blues.
In fact, I almost wanted this to happen, just to teach you all a lesson. Townies could have come across this realization themselves-most of the important characters were given blue roles, but that didn't matter, since mafia were given important names to fakeclaim too. The random object names were vanilla townies, but again, that didn't matter, since mafia and SK were given random object names too. There were some anomalies/ambiguities (i.e. Marvin Acme) and things that would have made certain players question the idea. In the end, flavor didn't help town at all, it was just a massive waste of time and a huge distraction.
On November 19 2012 22:01 marvellosity wrote:Show nested quote +On November 19 2012 16:53 Keirathi wrote: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.
I agree mostly with this. There was a certain element of setup-based analysis that would have been very useful for town, but that had nothing to do with how I roll my setups, as I mentioned earlier.
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
Great write-up as always. Special emphasis on town fakeclaiming for me.
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Thanks for the writeup, Bugs 
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Edit: oops I had a kush momemt i was grabbing a quote from here and kushed out.... sry for the bump
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EPT
