There is a stark difference between holding a secondary vote that turns Squinty into a pseudo-lynch and merely offering up suggestions on who he should kill. We should not do the former. The latter is not greatly desirable, but the alternative is killing discussing, which is far more harmful.

Fair enough. Anything that gets more words on the old board now is probably advantageous anyway. On that note anyone want to declare anything else and keep the wild speculation ball a-rollin'?

We could all give out our character names - that might be interesting. Pretty certain character is tied to power so having everyones character out there we could start trying to pick apart who got what power. How about it?

Mafia isn't won by random guessing. It's won by deducing who the scum is through discourse. Granting the lynch to a single confirmed townie and leaving powers to their own devices only serve the end of closing off discourse. By opening the field up on two discussion fronts (the lynch and the chained kill) you force players to discourse more than they normally would. This alone is a greater benefit to town than it is to mafia, as for mafia to take control of a majority vote they have to put themselves out on a far branch and continually be in the spotlight.

As for it being a pro town power role. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't though. If it isn't, then leashing it is the best course of action for town to take. If it is a town role, leashing it doesn't hurt the town that much anyways. If it comes to light that the role in question is definitely town, we can always release the leash later.

@Garren
Now that is blatant fishing!!! If we end up doing some name claiming shenanigans, though, we should decide on an order beforehand. That way, if some scum lies about their name for whatever reason, they might get caught out.

@15377
I understand the argument for more discourse. I just dislike the idea of restricting a potential town power role to the same limitations as the lynching mechanism.

If it isn't pro-town, the best action is to lynch, since we can't trust for it to stay on the leash and not act in its own interests instead of town's.

Perhaps you'd like to reason out why letting a complete unknown do whatever they want is better for the town than restricting it until further information is acquired then?

If it's not pro-town we don't need to trust it. It's not a polite request that we are making. It's do as we say or we will kill you. In a situation where a non-town, non-mafia entity is around, taking the action that will allow that player to live the longest is going to be in their best interest. Something might arise that allows them a chance at victory down the road. In some cases if they simply need to survive to end game, being on the leash and doing as told is always going to be in their best interest. Town will not let them live to see LyLo so they likely won't get a chance to double cross them, making staying out of LyLo territory their #1 priority so that town never feels the need to rid themselves of them. Bear in mind that I'm talking about third party alignments that usually have no bearing on town's ability to win if they are alive.

I actually see it as an equivalent to something like "This statement is false." more.

So, if s_e's claim is true, how are we gonna prove it? How are we gonna maximize on this? Personally, I would like to believe s_e's claim but there is always a chance that he really is mafia trying for a bold move.

Remember to bold your votes guys!

Official Vote Count

Storyteller
Niklor

I've understood the arguments in favor of leashing him from the start. I just prefer my own arguments against it.

Plus, there is one large drawback I just remembered. In the event we listen to you and leash Squinty, we tell him to kill someone. Now, maybe we are in luck and we hit scum. But maybe we just hit town. Now, if we are hitting town, the mafia know at the very least that we aren't having Squinty kill one of them, so they can avoid that townie and get an extra kill that night courtesy of the town's leashed killer. Now, if Squinty is free to kill who he thinks best based on his own suspicions, as long as he doesn't announce who he's going to kill, the mafia don't receive the benefit of the additional information.

Also, I'm fairly comfortable with my vote on Storyteller at the moment. The attempt to quietly pass Squinty off as town because of flavor disagrees with me.

Though, I wouldn't be opposed to switching to Zinger or Pariah on the basis of their rather blatant lurking up to now. Zinger just showed up, said not to expect him past Sunday for a couple of days, and said he has an NLP. Didn't even bother to join in the discussion. And Pariah has had a little back and forth with Confused on playstyles, but not really said much at all since the discussion really started rolling.

Lol? And here I thought you were still holding Garren's fishing thing against me.
I did also state pretty clearly that assuming alignments this way was a dangerous road to travel down.

This is actually a really good point.



My thoughts:

"Leashing" Squinty takes away his accountability. We can't ask him why he targeted a person, because the answer is: "The majority voted for it". We lose his accountability and cannot use his stated motives to determine if he is scum or town.

Leashed Scenario 1: Squinty is scum or town. Town target.

He carries out the NK. If he is town then the mafia can sit back and let a single town death go through giving away no extra information about themselves or take out a second town but confirm Town Squinty.

Leashed Scenario 2: Squinty is scum, Scum target.

This time he doesn't carry out the night kill, but can claim he did. He can claim a doc must have saved the target. The only way to confirm this story would be for the doctor to come forward. Doc comes forward. Scum lose Squinty, we lose the doc.

Leashed Scenario 3: Squinty is town, Scum target.

He NK's scum we all rejoice.


I think at this point it is better to have Squinty on his own and leave him to his own motives rather than "leashing" him. It doesn't telegraph a town NK for the mafia like Niklor points out. If Squinty is town then leaving his ability use unknown makes it more difficult for the mafia. It also keeps him accountable for his own action.

You said it was dangerous to assume, then later came back and said it "should" be hard for him to be mallet-aligned. For someone who claims it would be dangerous to assume alignments based on flavor, you certainly are making the effort.

Wouldn't this scenario be bad if s_e is actually mafia? The only way this scenario would confirm s_e as town is if the mafia also nked someone.



If town decided on a common target, why would the doc save the target anyway? Am I missing something?


Personally, my worry with voting for s_e's target is that it gives the mafia freedom to pick out their targets based on s_e's voted nk target.

Not really bad if he is scum. There would be unknowns. The second statement is basically what I said. Reiteration below to hopefully be more clear:

If squinty is scum, then we would not know whether the mafia is holding back or squinty is scum.

If he is town, then the mafia could hold back, letting majority determine the NK and do nothing as long as the target is town. They could also do a second night kill to take out an additional town, but this action would confirm Squinty as town.




The doc is an independent entity in this. Lets say doc thinks player A is scummy voted to NK player A. However he can't convince the others to vote his way and player B is the majority vote. Doc thinks player B is truly town and decides to save them.

Also it wouldn't be town deciding on a common target it is the player base deciding which includes the influence of the mafia.

It would more or less confirm Squinty is an additional killing role not aligned with the mafia. There is always the possibility of an alignment that is neither town or mafia, though, so it doesn't really confirm him as town. Though I am hesitant to speculate on the existence of a third alignment, the possibility of it remains and we should keep an open mind when considering other players as confirmed town.

I only said as much because I hadn't been paying close enough attention to the flavor and had no idea what the Mallet was referring to.
Otherwise, I'm used to playing with a group of less-than-hardcore mafia players whose setups contain characters that are never NOT associated with their flavor alignment.
It's just in me to want to point these things out.

Fair enough, I suppose, though you must agree it appears strange how you went from condemning the action to committing that action. A better question might be "why did you condemn it in the first place?" If you are used to playing in setups where character flavor is associated directly to alignment, what makes you believe this game is different?

As far as I am aware (Given the possibility of different usernames on different sites.), I have no knowledge of what Scarlet's setups tend to be. For all I know, they are incredibly flavor driven and could be easily broken by a mass claim. For all I know they are the most hardcore games imaginable where flavor speculation will almost always lead to a dead end. But given my background, I expect games to be designed with the idea in mind that an early mass claim could break it. And you seem to come from a background expecting the opposite. So again, what makes you believe this game is different?

Because I've also played a bit more serious games at MTGS, and have come to be with the outlook that the mafia games I'm used to are not what to expect outside.
And because ISO actually came and played two games with us on the not-so-serious side, if you know of him. He left quickly.

All your arguments are predicated on town hindering a town role though, which is why I asked you to reason from an unknown perspective.



Hitting town vs scum is no more a drawback to a leashed player than an unleashed player. Both have that possibility. As for scum avoiding a double hit, they are going to do that regardless. SE blew his secrecy when he claimed his kill. They are going to look at who SE is suspecting, expect a kill to fall in that pool, and hit elsewhere. Lack of a double hit on a single player isn't a major drawback, it's an expectation. But lets flip the script here. Let's look at things from the doc perspective. If you let SE freely kill as he pleases, you're placing the extra burden on the doc of trying to outguess two kills while hoping to dodge two kills. Conversely if it were to fall that SE was about to kill the doc and it was made known, the doc would have time to claim, turn the SE kill elsewhere, just as he would in a situation where he's about to be lynched.



This is only true under the basis that you're going to let SE sit back and say nothing on the matter. SE should be making a case first and foremost on who he thinks he should be using his ability on. Then the rest of the group can weigh the pros and cons and make counter suggestions if they have any. If SE is taking the first step each day, he's not losing any accountability for who he wants to pull the trigger on whether that person ends up dead or not. Conversely if it does end up being a player that SE wasn't pushing for, the players that did run that argument are now in the limelight for suggesting him. So essentially you're taking that accountability that would only apply to SE if left to his own devices and stretching it to apply to the entire game, allowing you that further venue of deduction from this additional line of discourse.



If the mafia choose to no kill to hang SE out to dry, they don't really do themselves any service. His alignment is clearly already in question so he's likely to be a lynch candidate sooner or later anyway. A second kill wouldn't confirm SE as town either.



Or the more likely scenario, the doc says nothing, the town assumes SE is lying and lynches him. When he flips scum, the town then assumes his target was scum and lynches him as well. That's a two for zero trade. Not a smart scum play. The smarter play is having SE shoot his scum bro dead for town pants.



And if SE isn't town?

@ Flavor Game Breaks: I feel like this one is a losing battle. It's true that most people flavor in accordance with the normal storyline that they base their game upon. But it's also true that every now and again a game will come along and take complete advantage of that very thought process. I'm reminded of a Harry Potter mafia that ran on the WotC forums long ago where the trio (Harry, Ron, and Hermione) were the scum team and the game was lost because people were of the notion that there was no way the protagonists of that story could be the bad guys in the game. There's also things like mod provided fake claims to stop flavor breaks from happening. It's best to believe that an experienced mod won't let that happen. With this being the 11th(?) Touhou game Scar has run, I think we can safely say that he falls into that category.

Anyone arguing about the relevance of flavor should stop. Even if it matters, it's a route that consistently takes up a large portion of discussion, while having little bearing on actual mafia strategy. The real discussion should for the moment be switched to squinty's claim.

What bothers me the most is how many people assume he should use his ability. If SE is in fact town, it is common mafia tactics for a vig to not fire on the first day or on lylo. It's almost always detrimental to town, and the "information" gained from a random vig death is not nearly worth the risk of losing a town player. This is merely my preference when playing mafia, and for a time it was a respected point of view.

SE is by no means town, and we should in no manner leash him. We should present arguments for whom he should kill, but ultimately it is his decision and should remain so. His decisions tell us much more about his alignment than the results of those he kills. He can't know anyone's alignment, so any decision he make has some sort of justification, and it's the process of determination, rather than the end result that we should really watch out for.

Then it ultimately comes back around to why you brought it up in the first place. I'm sorry, but "It's just how I am" isn't a good justification for contradicting yourself.


As far as I know, I don't know him.


I worry more about us limiting town than letting anti-town do as they please, in this case. Since we know of his claim, he can't act without some consequence. If he appears suspicious at any point, we can lynch him. I can reason based on him being unknown, but I worry more about if he is town.


The probably is that by controlling him, assuming town, it gives the mafia information it wouldn't otherwise have. Which is who he is going to kill. Sure, they may be able to guess who he'll target, but they won't know.


Since he is revealed, he is running the risk of dying N1. And if no additional deaths happen N1, it makes him look suspicious. If he was still hidden, it would probably be to his benefit to wait until he is certain of someone acting suspicious, but as a revealed killing role, he needs to act both to ensure his ability doesn't just go to waste in case he is killed tonight and so we are aware that he is an additional killing role if he survives.


True enough, save we don't know that he can't know anyone's alignment. Unless of course, you do know he can't.


On a different note, anyone find it strange that Squinty has had very little to say on this matter since we started discussing him?