Spoiler Discussion

[Frank]

Have at it!

[Hoopy Frood]

Excellent. Hopefully it'll be just more than you and me and sach.

[amrussell]

Scum were lucky to get away with that, but I think they'd have been better off letting Tom swing. Oredigger's certainly exposed himself, Maha's drawn attention from Jimmy (as well as having a detective vote on him) and Red Skeezix's one post was a defence of Tom and vote on Chronos.

3/7 of the votes on Chronos are scum, so scum now have to keep the remaining 4 townie voters alive as cover. Unfortunately, there's one mason, one Doc and one Vig voting for Chronos - so scum are somewhat zugzwanged there.

Also, was MHaye's "Nefarious Forces" a slip? I think it was, and he tried to cover it by switching to "Infiltrators". He seems to have got away with it, assuming sach doesn't use the phrase in a role flip.

I said in PM to sach, the nameclaim seems to have been mainly of benefit to town - masons can now confirm each other, and if power roles are lying, so are the scum.

Lastly, I think we've got to the stage where WIFOM is anti-town. No-one wants to speculate why story's dead, but the most likely explanation is that he got a bead on a scum, so they killed him. That's why he died in Cecil Pond - while he was attacking sach, he lived; as soon as he focused on one of us, we killed him. It's the obvious scum motivation, lacking any exposed power roles, and for town to throw up their hands and say, "Oh, best not analyse his posts too much, it could have been any reason" is throwing away a pretty big clue.

[sachertorte]

I agree. When storyteller died, I thought for sure Town would think Mahaloth was scum and that storyteller's attack on him was because he got a reading on him. And scum killed him for that. There are so many reasons to look at storyteller's death being motivated by Mahaloth being scum that I'm shocked that Town dismissed them all so quickly.

Town has a terrible habit of equating "Look dead person was suspicious of X so let's kill that person" to "Hey, look at me, I'm scum so I'm going to point to the dead townie as a reason for voting for another townie." So no one dares to do it. Honestly, their only hope is for the Vig to man-up and take out players whose cases are "weak."

Duh, all cases against scum are going to be weak! All the "strong" cases point to Town.

[sachertorte]

I've been thinking about the balance of this game. I think I might be off by a bit, but not by much. I wanted to give Town more firepower to combat the scum team, but I think I've neglected the significant power of 5 scum. They pretty much control the lynch, even at this early juncture. Theoretically they shouldn't, but... on Day One they could have controlled the lynch, but didn't have to as all candidates were Town. Similarly on Day Two, the major candidates were all Town. On Day Three, they controlled the vote with their numbers, which is risky, but at this point they are significantly ahead.

Overall I think two things sunk the town
(1) peekercpa. Part of the blame lies in Town for being silly in their lynch choice. Part of the blame falls on peekercpa for basically giving scum a free mis-lynch. But I think most of the blame falls on letting a lynch go through on 4 votes and spreading the rest of the votes willy-nilly all over the place!

(2) random.org screwed the town by placing storyteller at the #1 spot (Fictional Detective). This anomaly not only rewarded scum for taking out a strong player, but they get the strongest power role too. I'm starting to re-think the idea of totally random role assignment. I think post-random adjustments might be necessary to avoid "swingy" situations like this. I made the Detective Fictional (not protectable by doctor) because I don't like having a claimed detective live for many nights under the protection of a hidden Doc. I don't think it is fair. But numerous people wanted to protect storyteller and couldn't.

Yeah, I said numerous. A non-power role attempted to protect storyteller on the night he died.

[sachertorte]

Night Three Actions:

Vigilante: no action submitted
Doctor: Protect Meeko
Scum: Kill Jimmy Chitwood


I'm surprised by the result. On Night Two Jimmy Chitwood killed Freudian Slit, the #2 vote-getter. But for some reason he declined to do so this past night leaving scum alive. This could be it for Town.

[sachertorte]

I'm starting to question my ability to balance closed games. In the past, I had thought most closed games were wildly skewed towards the Town with so many power roles, but I see now that Town's power roles are much weaker since they don't know what else is milling about. On the other hand, I think it totally within reason for the Masons to have claimed the previous day and asked the Vig to go on a killing spree to take out the unknowns. The problem of course is Town will never do these things. Town is very reluctant to roleclaim for the sake of pooling powers. It's understandable since there is no guarantee that there are powers to pool.

But, in game design, one can't add much more power to the Town than what is already there. Prior to losing the Vig, town was still in a potentially powerful position with 3 masons alive, a Doc, and Vig. They could have mowed down a big chunk of the unknowns with lynch and vig kill each cycle. Certainly faster than scum could take out the knowns.

I think my biggest mistake (and one that we've had for a while now) was making 5 scum. The playstyle for this forum simply doesn't support 5 scum. I see two things about Town's playstyle that seem to be breaking the game.
(1) Allowing a lynch to go through based on 4 votes of 20.
(2) Lack of vote shifting. The vast majority of players are setting a vote and never moving it. It's too easy for scum to control the direction of voting. By mid-day it's clear who is in danger and who isn't. Too easy.

[amrussell]

Actually that's a point - what exactly are the scum powers?

Cookies did well to (somewhat) reveal the masons - once Meeko's horror has passed, it'll help town focus and add some useful data to vote counts. I'm not sure there's any massive advantage in keeping Guiri hidden though - if the point is to shrink the unconfirmed pool, might as well shrink it as much as possible. Although this way there's a better chance at protection, I suppose.

From a power role basis scum are obviously in a strong position, but in analysis terms I still think they've left themselves in the open a bit. We now have Tom bussing Oredigger while Maha in turn busses Tom. Guiri's done well to flush out Skeezix - I think the only scum who hasn't picked up suspicion yet is MHaye. Getting the first scum is a big moment for town, and if Digger or Tom swing toDay then some others should follow.

[normalphase]

texcat and Cookies being masons was the best thing that could have happened for the town at this point. And good on Cookies for picking up the Tom case again.

Guiri is an obvious NK choice right now, masons aside, as he has drawn beads on two of the scum (and has gained no votes himself), so him remaining unclaimed should work out best for the town whether they kill him now or not. If they go for Cookies and texcat first, Guiri gets to keep hammering; and if they kill Guiri, then surely (surely?) somebody will wonder why.

I guess it's Ed's turn to have a bad game this time around.

[normalphase]

Wanted to write more and didn't have time:

Those two being masons is especially fortunate for the town since they were both quite viable suspects previously. Now, not so much. And Cookies' move to revive the Tom bandwagon is smart play (even without PIS that both Oredigger and Tom are scum) because it gives the players an option of two mason-led bandwagons to choose from: they (and texcat) know that the cases are sincere, which should make it slightly easier to evaluate the responses to them.

I like that Skeez has been so active this game compared to when we were teammates in Storyteller's last game.

[sachertorte]

Scum have no powers. They had a Godfather, but with a dead detective it has no impact.
Ed, might be having a bad game. But Rysto is having a very bad game.

I'm surprised no one is looking at MHaye. I'd kill him simply for voting with only 3 minutes left in the day. I find that unacceptable.

[amrussell]

That's a signature style though, isn't it? It might be good meta-game policy to lynch him for it, but for him late voting isn't necessarily a scum-tell.

[sachertorte]

Late voting is one thing. Voting with 3 minutes in the Day is an entirely different level of bad.

[amrussell]

Ooh, fun. Oredigger, in trouble for a PM typo, pulls the orthodox Doc claim gambit. And makes a typo. He is going to *kick* himself.

Who will spot it first? Will scum bus him for it? Will Rysto counter-claim, attack Oredigger's claim, or keep his head down altogether?

[sachertorte]

I'm impressed that they picked Physician as the role. It's accurate in the sense that the real Doc is listed as Physician, but non-traditional as these games go. I wonder how that will shake out:
(1) If Rysto dies, town should piece together the lack of repeat roles. It is highly unlikely that I would put in two Doctors. But will they? I can see a sliver of doubt stemming from the role nam Physician. In other words, how would Oredigger randomly guess that? Of course, if I was going to have two doctors, I would have listed them with different medical professions (e.g., surgeon, physician).
(2) If Oredigger dies and Rysto has to claim, I wonder what he will do. Claim Physician and open that can of worms? Or play it smart and claim Doctor!

I'll also note here, that all of the roles are famous people I know without having to look up. Of the fake claims, Jimmy Chitwood was the only one who picked someone I know (Alexander Graham Bell). All the others I have no clue who they are.