Spoiler Discussion

[sachertorte]

Man, I need to proof my PMs better.

Rysto's claim has a missing T in the wikipedia link... BUT the link works. Wikipedia redirects Albert_Schweizer to Albert_Schweitzer, so I blame Wikipedia for that one. I checked all the links, really!

[amrussell]

Can Rysto self-protect?

[sachertorte]

No.

But the "attempt" wording is because Rysto can't protect Fictional Characters either. He knows this.

[amrussell]

It's a bluff? That's some pretty magnificent play right there. If it pays off, town could have themselves a confirmed block of four vs (assuming they lynch Oredigger) 4 scum swimming in an unconfirmed pool of 9, if I've counted right. That's not a totally terrible position to be in.

[sachertorte]

Except Rysto isn't thinking though how it will look to other Townies. Yes, he can bluff scum into maybe not targeting him, BUT the statement itself is akin to "Hey, I'm not dying at Night because I'm the doctor, not because I'm scum. Nope, no sireee, I'm not scum." These kind of unverifiable situations drive Townies crazy! He has to survive the LYNCH too and right now I can see tons of reasons for Town to turn on Rysto. His only chance is if Oredigger gets lynched first, which is not a guarantee.

[Frank]

Apr 13, 2010 10:49:41 GMT -5 sachertorte said:

Except Rysto isn't thinking though how it will look to other Townies. Yes, he can bluff scum into maybe not targeting him, BUT the statement itself is akin to "Hey, I'm not dying at Night because I'm the doctor, not because I'm scum. Nope, no sireee, I'm not scum." These kind of unverifiable situations drive Townies crazy! He has to survive the LYNCH too and right now I can see tons of reasons for Town to turn on Rysto. His only chance is if Oredigger gets lynched first, which is not a guarantee.

I don't think it's going to play out like that. Oredigger's claim looks opportunistic, thrown together. His logic is flawed. First of all, he claims to have been self-protecting nonstop so far. OK, fine. But he also says:

I’ve been trying to lay low enough to avoid a Night kill.

Which doesn't make sense. If you think they might be on to you, as he claims, if you can self-protect, as he claims, you would be trying like holy hell to draw a Night kill - especially at a time when there are no other viable targets. That was my strategy during the early parts of the Arkham game: talk a lot, make myself a visible target, and then self-protect every Night and hope to get them to waste a Night kill. For Oredigger to simultaneously claim that he was trying to avoid attention AND that he was self-protecting nonstop is not reasonable, not really. He's trying to shoehorn actions into a false claim that don't fit that claim, whereas Rysto's actions are consistent with his claim.

In addition, a supposed Scummy Rysto really doesn't have a strong enough motive to counter-claim here. "Getting the Doctor lynched" is a motive, sure, but at this stage of the game it's a mediocre one. He'd be committing suicide, and why bother? He's under absolutely no suspicion so far. With three mislynches already under their belt, the Scum in this spot would be better off just letting the Doctor live, and trying to force a new mislynch of a player already under suspicion.

Add to that the fact that all of the reasons people voted for Oredigger over Rysto in the first place haven't gone away now that Oredigger has claimed, and I think there's no chance at all that Rysto swings over Oredigger toDay.

---

Which makes this current move a good (not great, see below) bluff by Rysto. Once Oredigger is dead, Rysto will be accepted as the Doctor, period, full stop. Whatever you intended by your comments following the Pond Scum game, sach, they have been interpreted by the group at-large as meaning that you felt a closed game with no Detective or Doctor was imbalanced. The Town will not accept the possibility of a no-Doctor game. So Rysto is de facto confirmed, or will be after toDay's lynch.

Now, will the Scum be clever enough to realize that Rysto can't self-protect (Rysto never should have posted his unaltered PM; he should have changed it to imply that he can self-protect. I don't know why he didn't)? They might, and if they do, they'll kill him toNight. But if they don't, the game is about to swing Townward. Tom Scud could hang any Day now. Picking Mahaloth out of there isn't going to be hard. And after that? Well, we'll see, but let Rysto block just one kill and things will get very, very interesting.

[Frank]

Apr 13, 2010 9:55:11 GMT -5 sachertorte said:

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.

Heh. Can I tell you that I agonized over my fake claim for literally hours? I went with Baldrick because he was a character from a BBC series (like my actual role), and just in case there turned out to be some kind of relevance to that I wanted to stay in the same general area.

Good times.

[Frank]

So quickie game-state analysis

1. Rysto (Albert Schweitzer) Physician [Doctor]
2. Cookies (W.A. Mozart) Freemason [Mason]
3. TexCat (Benedict Arnold) Freemason [Mason]
4. GuiriEnEspana (Gustave Eiffel) Freemason [Mason]
5. special ed (Guy de Maupassant) Town [Vanilla]
6. Drain Bead (Eva Peron) Town [Vanilla]
7. Meeko (Joan Miro) Town [Vanilla]
8. Zeriel (Lysander) Town [Vanilla]
9. Red Skeezix (John Wilkes Booth) Assassin
10. Tom Scud (Lee Harvey Oswald) Assassin
11. MHaye (Tim Horton) Canadian Scum
12. Mahaloth (Josephine March) Fictional Scum

Assuming here that Oredigger goes down toDay. And I really think he will - if nothing else, I really doubt that Mahaloth, Tom, Skeez, and MHaye are going to allow themselves to get exposed in a likely futile effort to save Oredigger at Rysto's expense. Without Scum driving a shift, inertia is going to propel Oredigger to the noose even without the factors I described above.

So OK, going into toNight it's 8-4 in favor of the Town.

Assuming that Rysto fails to block any Night kills at all, it's going to be 7-4 toMorrow Morning (so not LoL). Thus the Scum need to achieve a lynch of any two of the following:

special ed
Drain Bead
Meeko
Zeriel

Looking at it in that light, the Town still seem to me to be at a significant disadvantage. I feel like Meeko is almost certain to get lynched, so at some point the Scum will be able to just throw everything at, like, Zeriel.

If Rysto were to block a kill (let's say toNight), then toMorrow morning it's still 8-4 in favor of Town. A mislynch brings it to 7-4, a Night kill to 6-4, a second mislynch to 5-4, and a Night kill to 4-4.

So this means something startling: if the Scum do this same math, they should definitely target Rysto toNight and call his bluff. From their standpoint, if he's telling the truth about being able to self-protect, then they'll lose their kill toNight, but it won't increase their total mislynch burden (though they'd have to play guessing games going forward). But if he's lying, then they've eliminated the Doctor and just have a straightforward path to the win.

[sachertorte]

It's very true that Rysto should live over Oredigger, but I simply don't trust the Town to make a fully rational decision. Unverifiable circumstances, even when reasonable, tend to make the Town see red to an irrational extent. Oredigger certainly is making things easier for Rysto though his simultaneous self-protect/avoid getting targeted mantra.

And I hadn't thought through the point that scum are going to bus Oredigger now since there is no benefit to voting for Rysto. There is no way for Oredigger to get out of this.

As for the "sachertorte must put in a doctor" I don't feel nearly as strongly about no-doc being a must. In Cecil Pond, my point was that having no doc with no detective is crazy bad because Town won't ever wonder why the Detective keeps living. In other words, the lack of a dead doctor makes the fake detective easier to pull off because a continuing to live detective is reasonable if town thinks there is possibly a doctor around. And with no doctor to turn up dead, town won't wonder 'hey, why is the detective still alive?'

Scum pulling a fake doctor claim doesn't quite have the same effect. Town should be far more willing to lynch a doctor than a detective.

So I guess I should put it on record, that I'm perfectly willing to have a game with no doctor. But this speaks more to the difficultly that comes with balancing a closed game.

[sachertorte]

Apr 13, 2010 12:04:55 GMT -5 Frank said:

Heh. Can I tell you that I agonized over my fake claim for literally hours? I went with Baldrick because he was a character from a BBC series (like my actual role), and just in case there turned out to be some kind of relevance to that I wanted to stay in the same general area.

Good times.

That reminds me. Back when Town decided to mass claim with less than 24 hours into the Day, I sent ShadowFacts a message saying storyteller was going to have kittens when he reads this. The reasoning behind the name claim was so messed up I couldn't believe it! And on top of that, it was a pro-Town move... but for all the wrong reasons.

[amrussell]

I think Meeko has a point re. bussing. It obviously can be a very effective tactic, but I think scum default to it too readily. Town are hip to the idea now, and should be on the lookout for it. In this game we've had Mahaloth bus Tom when it looked like he was in trouble, Tom bus Oredigger early and now of course scum are feeling the need to vote for 'digger as he goes down. All this is going to do is draw attention to the bussers. (As indeed, it already has). Scum need to focus on the basic wincon - they need maximum possible scum and fewer town. Bussing your own is directly contrary to that goal, so the payoff has to be immense in order to justify it. They think the pay off comes in increased town-cred, or at least the avoidance of suspicion for voting consistently town. But I'm not sure that pay-off is there any more. I think it's probably better to still push for a town lynch (except where someone's busted, as Oredigger is right now, obviously) because a) if you get it, you're closer to your wincon, b) you don't have the blood-trail of a known scum in the vote record and c) it's at least as convincing to look like a misguided but earnest townie as it is to be the fourth guy on a scum-lynching wagon.

[Hoopy Frood]

Agreed. The reason it worked so well for people in the beginning is that no one expected scum to take out their own. But bussing for the sake of bussing alone won't get you much. If you bus a powerful scum, that gets you some cred. If you bus a scum who's tied with a townie, that can get you cred. If you lead a well-reasoned charge against a fellow scum who screwed up and town missed it, that can get you cred (though, frequently mistakes are noticed because of scum PIS, make sure that the mistake you catch is something that anyone could truly have noticed).

[amrussell]

Apr 15, 2010 6:43:56 GMT -5 Hoopy Frood said:

If you lead a well-reasoned charge against a fellow scum who screwed up and town missed it, that can get you cred (though, frequently mistakes are noticed because of scum PIS, make sure that the mistake you catch is something that anyone could truly have noticed).

Yes, but is that cred worth so much more than giving up a mislynch? If town have missed it, tough on town. It's not your job to do their scum-catching for them.

If there's already suspicion on you, good Town will be thinking "bus" when you pop up with a brilliant piece of scum-finding. If there isn't, why do you need the cred?

I realise that if you see a teammate make a mistake it's natural to think that they're bound to be caught so you might as well be one of the first on the wagon. But that's panicky - your teammate might be able to talk their way out of it, or town might divert on to someone else, or town might never see the mistake. So scum should be cool, like Fonzy.

[sachertorte]

I'm very close to mod-killing MHaye.

On Day 3 he had 2 posts.
On Day 4 he has 1. In that post he says he will be busy this week, but I'm not liking the 2 weeks in a row with lack of participation. I don't think it is fair to the other players.

If he fails to post something of substance by the end of the Day, I'm gonna off him.

Zeriel has also been with a lack of posts Today. He has 2 one of which doesn't count. I'm tempted to off him too, but he doesn't have the history of lack of participation that MHaye has shown.

Everyone else seems okay as far as I can tell.

[Frank]

So in a way, the modkill of Zeriel actually helps the Town a little bit, though they don't know it. The mislynch numbers don't appear to have changed - Scum need to force two mislynches to win. But the number of mislynchable players has now dropped by one. There are now only three possible mislynches: Meeko, Drain Bead, and special ed. So what it comes down to is this: two of these three must be lynched in order for Scum to win.

Can it happen? I don't know. I think Meeko is a unique case. I think a lot of Townies have kind of started to believe he is Town for meta-game reasons, and getting him lynched might be very difficult for that reason. I think the Scum would be better off mounting an offensive against Drain Bead, and if that works concentrating their efforts on special ed (I think Meeko could easily be induced to vote against ed in a three-handed situation, simply because Meeko takes everything so personally and ed tends to ride Meeko; since Meeko views everything through the filter of "how does this affect Meeko?", he will be happy to have an excuse to vote for ed just to "punish" ed, as it were.

But getting that Drain Bead lynch is going to be damn hard, because she hasn't really done anything suspicious all game. Tom Scud is going to go down toMorrow, and I think Mahaloth will follow, so it will be up to Skeezix to secure those two mislynches.

I think it's a very close thing right now. Fun to watch.

And sach, you shouldn't stress about the balance. This is the definition of a balanced game: one that is won and lost by the quality of the players in it.