Mafia: The Return of Ashtan

Llok

Hate to say I told you so.

Demarcus

Llok said:

Hate to say I told you so.

Wat?

Llok

It was an obvious bad vote and Omei just gave people a place to hide. I said no vote. It was in the scum's interest to kill someone during that day, not ours.

Omei

You're still wrong, Llok.

A slim chance was better than no chance, and I don't see you offering a better option, or better rationale.

Now we have a bandwagon - and among said bandwagon, we will likely have our remaining scum. I fail to see how this was not productive for us.

Llok

I'm really not but okay.

Macavity

I tend to agree with the rational of Omei on this one.  I would much rather take the chance to kill off an enemy than to not do anything at all.  In this case it worked against us, however we have a LONG time still to go with this ordeal that Ashtan has gotten ourselves in, and therefore no need to beat a dead horse.

Aryanne

I always hate first round lynching, because it is invariably band-wagony and nearly-always kills off a citizen.  However, our first round wasn't a normal first-round, since we had a confirmed Marzpawn and defense about it to work with before the lynch went through, so we weren't flying quite as blind as usual.

That said: Thinking back to day one of our last game, the VAMPS were the ones touting "No Lynch is our downfall" the hardest, while, it was mainly citizens who were touting "NO LYNCH IS BEST!"

While I understand that you can't No Lynch every day, and if no one at all votes in round one, you're basically starting day 2 off with the same info as day 1.

Uhm. I think my point here is: I tend to trust people's citizenry-ship who vote No Lynch in the first round.

Toz

It is a game of numbers. They are not going to miss during the night round. Why give them a free leg up with nolynch votes? That...gives no clues, no indication of intent. No skin off their nose if we don't lynch, and you might get lucky. One loss hurts them way more than it hurts us.

Periluna

Woah - I spend a day at the zoo and all pit breaks loose. 

Gonna have to disagree with you there, @Aryanne. Xenia originally voted NoLynch first round. Honestly, it's really a game of luck in the first round. We might get a mafia and we might get a citizen. 

Demarcus

Statistically speaking, lynches only need to succeed about 50% of the time. You'll note we gathered three full pages of information for you to (or not to) glean over for information, make judgements, and guide future lynches. Unless you're a Marzpawn, in which case we gave you 3 pages to slip up during your posts (a-la Xenia).

You expect to get a citizen with the first lynch, but there is a ton of information to be gained by doing it. No lynch may save a single citizen in the short term, but often times the right strategy is a short term sacrifice for long term results.

Aldric

Mafia members, let's get our votes in soon, we're not trying to have this game stall off. If there's no vote by this time tomorrow you'll have forfeited your chance to off a citizen. 

EDIT: Either that or I'll just off whoever the first mafia to PM me chooses.

Aryanne

@Periluna - Oh, I totally didn't notice that when I was catching up. Huh... Nevermind, then.

Like I said, Demarcus: "While I understand that you can't No Lynch every day, and if no one at all votes in round one, you're basically starting day 2 off with the same info as day 1."

I recognize that if EVERYONE went "NoLynch!" it'd be useless, but my point is more that such a situation didn't happen and likely never will. Also, as I mentioned, this game we were not working off NoInfo on the first day. We had both a confirmed Baddie AND a confirmed goodie to work with and around, so lynches had a much better chance (and yet, notice how, despite this much better chance, we still managed to kill a citizen)

Also: Why am I still debating this? The day is over and the situation passed. Water under the bridge since I didn't even get a chance to vote anyway.

Omei

I am a citizen - the only confirmed citizen in the game - and I hate no lynches. I think there are only a couple of specialized scenarios where they should even be considered. Among these scenarios, the first rounds do not factor in even remotely.

Citizens are going to die. This is not a game where everyone gets to live, or where we get absolute information about every possible aspect. That is, more or less, the entire point of Mafia. We have to make the best decisions we can based on the information in front of us, while using that process to generate more information. The early rounds are for generating a framework - a context. If we get lucky during them, fine, but right now, we're forming patterns. Looking at common bandwagons, common voting orders. In most games, this is sufficient to find our scum. That is, until further notice, the plan we are following. We can afford a long game right now, especially since we still have one of my mind bullets in reserve.

What is not going to be helpful to us is people trying the "I told you so" route. People who are unwilling to take a solid stand and vote for someone are also unhelpful. I recognize that the first round went by very fast, so some of you didn't get to vote - that was partially my fault, and I'll cop to that. You're not the problem, at any rate; the problem is people who waffle around - what we need, in order to win, is more people sharing their thoughts. Their rationales. Asking questions, demanding answers. We need people taking strong stances, strong stands, because weak stands are what the scum prefer. Weak stands make the scum's job easier. The less information generated per round, the easier the game becomes from them.

That is why I do not approve of nolynches. It makes the game easier for scum. In the last game, where I was one of the scum, I was laughing up my sleeve at everyone who held off on lynching. It let me steer the game and lynch townie after townie, and it very nearly let my side win. If I had held out for a couple of rounds longer, or if we had been lucky enough to kill Aldric before he used his two vigilante shots, it could very easily have been a scum win.

Take it from me - scum like an easily steered game, and they like people who listen blindly and follow along. It makes it easier for them to hide, easier for them to pit us against each other. So don't just vote a no lynch, don't just blindly jump on trains, even if they're my trains. This next round, I would encourage you all to thoroughly and critically examine everything. We may still lynch a citizen. On pure random numbers, this is in fact likely - but you know what? At the point where it becomes more likely that we'll lynch scum, they'll have already won the game. Our odds, based on pure random numbers, are always going to be less than 50%.

That's why we need information. That's why we need to be diligent. That's why we need to use every single advantage we have, and our biggest one, right now, is our factional lynch.

tl;dr: Citizens are going to die. Lynching people is still important. We just need to think it through first.

Llok

Your tl;dr was more informative :P

Aldric

The night stretched on as the moon rose over the sea, bathing the port city in an eerie glow. Everything that night seemed to have been uncharacteristically quiet, and the tension in the air was nearly palpable as a result. 

When the other citizens had elected to go to bed; however, Damonicus, being the hard worker that he is, decided he'd get a head start on the next morning's setup so that maybe, just maybe he'd be able to get an extra hour or two of sleep the next morning. He set about moving the boxes on the deck of his ship, though one box seemed oddly out of place- he certainly didn't remember putting it there earlier in the day.

Perhaps he got the box mixed up with another one he had just moved. Seeing as the box appeared to be lacking any labels of any type, he pried it open to take a quick glance inside. He had just a moment to level his eyes upon a pulsating ylemshard that was settled within it that in just a second later exploded into hundreds of glass-like fragments that embedded themselves into the man's face, killing him almost instantaneously.

Damonicus has been killed.

He was a Citizen.

DAY 2 HAS BEGUN

3 Marzpawns remain

The Polemarch is alive

The Sentaari is alive

The Bahkatu is alive

The Ascendril is alive

9 Citizens remain

9 votes to lynch

Omei

Our odds of a successful lynch are exactly 25% - sixteen total players, four of them scum.

We can exclude myself. During the night round, the Bahkatu and Ascendril have contacted me; for obvious reasons, I am not going to reveal their names, but that removes two more players from the count, reducing us to a count of thirteen players and raising our practical odds of finding scum to 30%. Almost 1/3rd of a chance.

In this list of remaining players, we have the following names:

Aryanne - probably town.

Piper - uncertain - finger of suspicion for bandwagoning.

Moirean - uncertain, leaning town.

Toz - uncertain.

Llok - probably town. He is behaving very strangely, but no scum wants to draw that kind of attention to themselves.

Draiman - uncertain - finger of suspicion for bandwagoning.

Ilyon - uncertain - finger of suspicion for bandwagoning.

Demarcus - uncertain, leaning town based on gut instinct.

Minarael - uncertain.

Teani - uncertain - finger of suspicion for bandwagoning.

Aren - uncertain - finger of suspicion for bandwagoning.

Macavity - uncertain.

Meskhenet - uncertain - finger of suspicion for bandwagoning.

Periluna - uncertain.

Etrigan - uncertain - finger of suspicion for bandwagoning.

Moirean

Did the bear tell you his/her night investigation to help give us a clue to work with? If not, can you get that info from them? 

Toz

Here's to hoping the investigator is chatting/ will be chatting with you at some point or other. With Omei confirmed, an investigator role claim to her via pm would be the next logical step, complete with night investigation details. So I shall hold off until that is brought up.

Edit: meant to post this hours ago, phone derped. Gogo redundancy

Omei

Certainly. The bear has informed me that Draiman is an innocent.

Ilyon

Y'know, comments like "I didn't vote because I was away" feel a bit too suspicious for my liking. As such, unless a better candidate is presented, I think I'll

VOTE: Periluna

I'm not sold on Llok being town either, if he really played a lot of mafia, as he claims, he really should know better than argue for nolynch in round 1.

Moirean

Now, the trouble with the investigation is that we can't completely trust the vote. If he's Mafia, there's a chance (1/4) that the Polemarch masked his role. However, I think the odds of finding a mafia with an investigation AND that mafia being the one that the Polemarch masked are pretty low, though. 

IMHO, as weird as this sounds, I think we should be more suspicious of guilty votes - if Mafia is using that to frame people, then this means there is a HIGH chance (and higher as the game goes on and we find more mafia to lynch) that a guiltily investigated person isn't actually mafia. I'm really bad at math, so maybe someone else can translate this into numbers for me, but my logic for this is basically:

- innocent investigation = drawn from all of the town + one mafia... high number of actual innocents, with only one false result in there

- guilty investigation = drawn from just the mafia + one framed townie....low pool of people, bumping the odds of the false result up to a much higher percentage

So that's kinda a general theory about how to interpret investigations.

Using that theory, I think we're fairly safe in assuming Draiman actually is innocent.

Llok

Ilyon. You argued for a vote. I argued for a non vote. You killed an innocent, I didn't.

YOU KILLED YOUR OWN. You're no better than scum to me

Toz

Sacrifices must be made for the greater good. I agree Llok's play style is...distinctly odd. High profile, if he is scum. Though that could be part of the plan in general.

Llok

There is no plan, don't get distracted by me

Ever watched hot fuzz? See where your sacrifices lead you for your 'greater good'

Teani

When there are so many left playing the game it seems reasonable (or at least more likely) to me that a randomly investigated person who turns up innocent actually is a citizen. Otherwise the Polemarch was very lucky with the pick of whom to focus on in the crowd.

As for voting for Periluna simply because she wasn't about, I'm a bit hesitant. It was a very quick first round, especially compared to the other game, so I don't think that's a very good reason. Holding off on vote for now, until there's more information.

Damonicus

From the graves: Good luck to everyone!!

Periluna

I'm sorry! I won't go to the zoo anymore while we are playing mafia!!! 

That said, I am scheduled to work a 9pm-9am shift - so I probably won't be around much this round either unless it lasts MUCH longer than the previous one.

Also, I'm least likely to suspect someone that didn't vote versus someone that just jumped on the bandwagon. Holding my vote for just now until more chatter gets going and I can -really- catch up. Only skimmed through to see what all happened the first time.

Aren

Llok is just acting a bit too odd for me honestly. I think he's playing the loud card so he can use it to say 'Hey! If I were bad would I be this vocal?'  Not sure, but that's where I'm leaning.

Moirean

To be fair, he's Llok.

Omei

Crunched some numbers.

The odds of the Polemarch selecting Draiman as a scum to frame is 1 in 5 - 20%. Recall that the Polemarch can always frame themselves.

The odds of the bear sniffing out Draiman was, last night, one in sixteen; recall that the bear knows themselves to be innocent. That's a 6.25% chance of selecting any one citizen. The chances of intersection, on a first round, are 1.25%.

I'm willing to gamble on that.