an old Px2 mafia player

(OOC: Logic)
But at the same time, you're accounting 2 deaths, where one is a lynch.
Take away the first lynch, the numbers are different...
For people who like the numbers game, open this spoiler
For those who don't like looking at the numbers, skip the spoiler 8^p


Plus, having an odd number makes it for a slightly easier to get a lynch. Gives us a higher chance of lynching mafia. And you have slightly more information over randomly killing someone. The one avantage you have with lynching the first day, is that you get one extra lynch; albeit a completely random one. If you lynch mafia, the game is easier, if you don't lynch mafia, the game is harder (and the chances are 1 in 4). There's a very real benefit to waiting one day, but that's up to how you like to play. That also doesn't account for delaying further (which I personally haven't tried before). But if you look at the play out of skipping the first 3 lynches.

Day1 = 12
Day2 = 11
Day3 = 10
Day4 = 9
Day5 = 7
Day6 = 5
Day7 = 3
Day8 = 1 you lose; 2 you win
*You can't lose until at least day6, but failed lynches hurt more.*

This makes the game last longer, but you also have to be very sure when you lynch people, because then every lynch 'really' counts. But at the same time, you know people who are dying aren't mafia, and you get to see who is dying (as is traditional of mafia) whether it's the person with the best plan, least productive, most talking, or most vote happy etc... You have a lower number of lynches, but you have more accurate lynches. Again, this is just a different style of play.




Lack of ton of mafia experience?
If everyone is scared to talk, then nobody does. Plus, it's also a story (though a rather grim one). Acting in character gets everyone thinking and interacting. Which overall leads to a more fun game, at least to me.

(IC:) You'd blindly kill one of your own? I can understand that the time to act is now, but we are simply stumbling in the dark. The monsters want us to start accusing ourselves blindly. Their goal is that we turn on each other to save ourselves. If you do that, then they have already won. We built Thraben because we were strong, Thraben is slowly falling because we have not remained diligent. As of now continuing to remain diligent is the only way to end this mess in Thraben. I stand firm that we should wait for more information one more day.

You are forgetting one very big thing, mafia is a game of information. No-lynching gives us very little information. By lynching someone, even if it is a towny, we get info based on the voting patterns of everyone in the game. The problem with the number crunch is that the lynches get less and less random with the more information we have, a D1 no-lynch provides us with one less day of information based on voting patterns.

AM or PM?

So, if we lynch the wrong person, what will that tell us? I mean, I am all in favor of a lynch since that is essentially the name of the game, but what info will we gain? I'm fine with a death, but I want it to be meaningful.

~SE++

@altemis:
The information is greatest in the early days. No lynch can always be done during an even lylo (lynch or lose-situation) to make it odd at that time. You miss the least amount of information, while you still have all the 'easy' guess at the last day.

Most of the real investigating starts after a few days have passed.
Like I mentioned earlier, the first days are mostly for discussing whatever you want, whether it is mafia theory or flavor connections (don't do that latter one often though, 9 times out of 10 flavor is just flavor). At some point, you'll figure out that someone is acting odd and start voting for them.

In terms of general telltales in the first days:
Amount of posting (someone being too quiet even though his name came up? Dodging questions?)
Quality of posts (Posts a lot, but not contributing to discussions? Perhaps just dodging the GO-activity-line?)

In later days, you'll add 'who did the killed person have connections with' and 'why did person x vote for person y during the previous day'? Or check votecounts to see if there are certain groups of people that keep following each other.

True, but at the same time mafia are looking to be able to jump on a bandwagon. You remove the bandwagon from the equation the mafia has no one ot vote for.
Note, once one person startd talking one person almost immediately voted for me.
Finger of suspicion are okay, because it's more of a question than anything.
But out right accusations are awfully suspicious.

That being said, I still am a no vote.
squinty has my thoughts exactly, there needs to be a purpose behind a death. If we can gather enough information, I wouldn't mind voting. But I find it difficult to gather that kind of information in the beginning of the first day. People will start to form their own opinions from these first interactions though, which is why it's important that they happen just as much as lynching.

In summary, still a no vote. And you're welcome. 8^p

PM. Thank you for catching that.

There are most likely 3 mafiates and 9 townspeople. You need 7 votes to lynch someone. Mafia wouldn't climb on a bandwagon like that. Too risky.

I'm not saying to vote immediately, as long as we will end the day with a lynch for someone.
Even a random one is better than a no lynch because of the odd chance that we randomly kill a monster

Okay, so we need a lynch to see where the votes fall for later evaluation. That makes enough sense to me. A few early votes have been tossed around to see what gets stirred up, so for the sake of argument and to see what happens as we get closer to majority:

Vote: altimis

~SE++

As an example of how things might go down day 1:

Mr. A is the popular vote. He requires 7 votes to be lynched today and is currently sitting at 4. Initially he attacked Mrs. A for something small, but flaked quickly when she proved capable of defending herself, which is why he finds himself in the situation he is now. His defense of the backlash he saw didn't help his case.

Mr B. Is the second most popular vote, priamrily because of his non-commitive stance on the case against Mr. A. He currently has 3 votes.

As the day progresses, Mr. A finds himself with 5 votes and Mr. B with 3. The deadline is progressing and it looks like Mr. A is going to be lynched. Mr. C defends Mr. A rather enthusiastically, and one person unvotes him. By the end of the day, Mr. A is lynched and flips town.

Voting records and the stances of people who supported the lynch of either Mr. A or the competing wagon Mr B. are analyzed and people form different opinions on the motivations of those voting him. Mr. C is in a strong town position but will probably face some scrutiny if Mr. B later flips town, because two competing town lynches is a good opportunity to put yourself in a good light as mafia. From Day 2 onward there is a lot more real evidence to use based on the first lynch and associated wagons.

It also often becomes harder to lynch mafia when you have less people assuming you aren't forcing a random vote somehow, because as the mafia have a higher percentage of the votes, it is easier for them to sway it. With 4 townies and 3 mafiates alive, if one townie votes randomly, there's a 50% chance of hypothetically losing the game instantly, and then a 50% chance again to lose the game in the event that the person does vote right. It's generally the opinion that information (both from voting records and from roleclaims) is needed to counterweigh the advantage that the mafia have.

What I'm finding interesting is how different it plays out compared to werewolf. Especially the whole idea of going back and looking for voting patterns. that's hard to do in our werewolf games, first of all because there's a 40-ish people playing real time and second because I'm usually drunk by about 1/3rd of the way through the game.

Lol, Fire.

The way I see it altimis, not lynching is always bad, unless there's some kind of legitimate reason for doing so, either that I'm not familiar with, or based on some sort of special role.

Your numbers are skewed. There isn't a 25% change mafia gets lynched day one. It is almost definitely town. Because it is really unlikely that the mafia are going to ever have any part in lynching one of their own members day one. Which means that if as in your example there are 9 town and 3 mafia, then seven of the nine town have to vote for the same mafia person by essentially randomly guessing, and with scum trying to play misinformation. The scum might be stupid and give themselves away on the first day, but relying on them to do that seems like a bad idea. And if the vote is for a no lynch, then none of the mafia have to expose themselves by worrying that they voted to lynch a townie.

So day one, we lynch, it is probably town getting lynched, yes. But, we get clues based on what people said and did during the day. If we don't lynch anyone, then we don't get any info out of the day really, mafia kills someone at night, and we are in the exact same boat day two, except it is now 8 town 3 mafia, and unless someone did some investigating at night, we don't really have much more info. And even if there is a cop investigating, he only learns one random person's identity, probably town, and can't really save that person directly unless he exposes himself as a cop. Then he gets killed the next night, unless there's a doctor who also believes he's the cop, and its just a mess.

I can't think of any reason not to lynch day one. I hope that made sense.

Unvote: Lilan

Vote: miss_bun

Trying superhard to get one of us lynched and lay down the pretense she's innocent.

It would be amazing, and also rather inconvenient, but still amazing, if there could be like a running tally of votes. One page one of the thread somewhere, at least on a day by day basis.
If anyone would be interested andor willing andor actually have time to do that, I would be eternally grateful.

Not promising to keep doing this because I'll probably lose count:

Day 1 votes so far:

Zinger2099 votes Freddeh (pre-day 1)
Zinger2099 unvote Freddeh (pre-day 1)
Zinger2099 votes Just_a_cleric (pre-day 1)
Zinger2099 unvoted Just_a_cleric (pre-day 1)
tony3 votes Lilian (pre-day 1)
miss_bun FoS Zinger2099 (pre-day 1)
GobO_Fire votes altimis
squinty_eyes FoS altimis
miss_bun votes altimis
Zinger2099 votes Freddeh
squinty_eyes votes altimis
tony3 unvotes Lilian
tony 3 votes miss_bun

That's the breakdown so far, all currently standing votes are in bold unless I missed them being changed. Hope that helps, and hope that isn't against the rules. I'll take it down if it is, though personally I just see it as saving a lot of time going back through the posts to see what is going on.

~SE++

mods usually do vote counts that show who is currently voting who and in what order they were voted, it looks something like this, and is generally more practical than a list of unvotes and votes, though holds less information overall.

[u]Vote Count[u]:

Altimis (3) - Gobo_Fire, Miss_bun, Squinty_eyes
Freddeh (1) - Zinger2099
Miss_bun (1) - tony3

Yeah, I originally did it that way, but then I figured that people would want to see to progression, so I ended up writing everything out since people were saying that it mattered for the long run. Something about watching patterns and whatnot. I have no idea. But yeah, your way is certainly more simple and clean.

~SE++

Thank you both. That is very helpful.
And again, not saying you guys, but it would be super helpful if maybe 24 hour warning could be like...
This is 24 hour warning here's how it stands so far.

Worse comes to worse, I'll take Squinty's extensive chart and put in on some kind of spreadsheet to keep track, and post it myself with about 24 hours remaining (especially seeing as I'm asking for it 8^p).

Thanks again you two!

I can probably do a daily votecount if the mod wasn't planning on it, it only takes a few minutes provided people continue to colour/bold their votes.