Agree with Scar. If you have a restriction it's usually better to just out it immediately if you can. Avoids potential sticky situations later down the road.

Note: optional. One of three. Others normal. Keep options open.

Scarlet's posting seems reminiscent of someone holding up a sign to communicate.

Can we kill the new guy.

Fruit or something.

So random lynching is bad but it's OK to kill the new player? That's rough.

Welcome to mafia.

Welcome to Mafia, Fruit. Is this your first game?

Oh hey the day started. Cool.

@ Zinger - your ability has suddenly become much less interesting and that saddens me. What a shame.
@ People in General - Hey random lynching is a thing? It's like the day one standard now had an actual mechanic associated with it. Fun times. That said no real reason why you'd be doing it now. Should at least try and get someone to drop the ball (because someone always does) beforehand.

Also Scarlet is scaring me. That's a damned weird prerequisite for activating an ability.

Agreed. Liked the option though. Was different from usual me.

It's certainly made you more talkative then you usually are on day 1 if nothing else.

For me, I believe a random lynch is useful in day one. At least we have a higher chance of hitting a mafia player that way than trying a random lynch that can be swung to Mafia's purpose.

But we have a lot of days to decide...

I had at least one vig among my three roles and silly claimed to have a vig option as well.

I'll give some common mafia wisdom here.

If you're town, don't vig on day 1.

Vigs become more powerful as the ratio between town and mafia becomes closer, which it usually does in a game. A vig firing tonight assuming a town lynch has a 3/10 chance of hittting scum. Assuming a town lynch tomorrow as well, the chance of hitting scum on night two rises to 3/8. Mechanical information like cop results and other things will also raise the effectiveness of vig hits later in the game. Hitting on night 1 will have a less than one third chance of succeeding. Hitting on night 2 may have as high as a fifty percent chance of succeeding depending on how the game goes, and it only rises from there.

Now, the other thing.

The risk of vigging increases in games with multiple killing roles. Currently, day 3 is LyLo. If the game gets one additional kill, LyLo remains at day 3. Two additional kills however, pushes it back to day 2. That means if there are at least two vigs in the game (i suspect there to be more), and they both decide to fire on night 1 and miss, then we could be in an immediate LyLo situation.

tl;dr: don't vig N1. The later in the game you vig the more it will help town and the less it will help mafia.

on the topic of random lynching:

Random lynching has a much higher chance of hitting scum than a town-driven lynch does. (25% versus close to 0% depending on the meta). The typical arguments against a random lynch have been that there are no reliable ways to generate random numbers (irrelevant here), and that it make it more difficult to scumhunt on future days because of a weaker voting record.

I'm of the opinion that random lynching is the correct avenue of play. I hold the stance that making strong plays in terms of probability is more helpful to town than analyzing players psychologically. Modern mafia games are won through cop results more often than personality analysis, and random lynching is an extension of that. If I were town I would pursue it and if i were scum i would try to dissuade the town from pursuing it.

Vote: Random Lynch

Votes:

Random Lynch: Niklor, Zinger2099, Ragnarokio (3)
Niklor: KoD (1)
No vote: 15377, NeoSilk, GobO_Scarlet, True_Believer, Silly, squinty_eyes, Garren_Windspear, Fruit (8)

The vig role that I didn't pick is actually a double vig. In that it has two different abilities that can both lead to people dying horribly.

Also rag's argument is stupid. Especially if you're relying on the existence of cops/information roles. I haven't played mafia in a long time but relying on the cop being busted is a hugely bad idea because people sort of actually know game balance. Also there is concealment or stealth or hiding or whatever its called in this game as a core mechanic, so even if there is a cop he could just randomly fail investigations for no reason.

I'm not advocating relying completley on cop results. I'm saying that I believe that hard information and garunteed results tend to be stronger aids than player reads and actions taken based on them. Voting records, psychological analysis, and the like can still be used to strengthen decisions.

When faced with a cop result, I'd treat it as stronger information than my personal reads, even if it weren't guarenteed. If I were lacking cop results I'd still use my personal reads to help make decisions. Facing this random lynch now, I am treating it as a stronger option than lynching based on reads.

I love the logic'ing here. "Guys, it's completely impossible for town to lynch scum, so our chances will be better if we let a random generator pick our lynch target." Given your original premise is beyond flawed, I can see why you think a random lynch is good logic, it's because you have no concept of a logical premise. But let's actually break down the logic here just for funsies.

The original premise is that a town decisive wagon is not likely to lynch scum Day 1. Since no supporting evidence has been given as to why, we can only assume that the standard "There's not enough information to go on" argument will apply. This is supplemented by Rag's assertion that the original intent of the game, psychological analysis, is less helpful in playing the game. So let's take it as a granted that the amount of information present during day 1 will make psycho-analyzing unlikely. Rag would have you believe that a random generator has a greater probability of selecting a scum player than selecting a player for no reason at all. This is not factually true. In a vacuum pocket (as in your single vote), the probability is better for town to select a scum player by voting for anybody else in the game simply because you've removed yourself as an option. Expanding on that you have two outcomes, the mafia end up controlling the day's lynch (True's theory) or the town controls the lynch (Rag's theory). A town controlled lynch isn't being intentionally driven away from scum so you can't really argue that you're losing probability there. While you can argue that a scum driven wagon will intentionally be swerving the lynch, you cannot argue that is a factor that will change any lynch of the game. In either event, the actual process of going through the voting motions generates information for further psychoanalysis. So in this situation the only thing that creates a dip in the probability of catching scum is scum controlling the lynch, which isn't the case in Rag's "town driven lynch". Even so, to do that they have to make themselves vulnerable, putting themselves out there. This is not a bad thing for town. This will give the cops and vigs out there a direction when choosing their future targets as well as increasing the probability of lynching scum in future lynches.

Conversely you have the option to randomly lynch a player. This provides a 3/12 chance of lynching scum and a 9/12 chance of hitting town, making it much more likely that town will be lynched if it's used. Further you gain no information from the day as nobody will be making cases or taking stances. This will essentially shoot us into a night start situation in terms of selecting targets in the coming night, with the negative of probably losing a town role. The only "benefit" you will have from ending day in this manor is the knowledge of the alignment of whomever dies and possibly their role.

So when you consider all the actual information, the probability of lynching scum via decided lynching is the same or better than random lynching in most cases. The major thing effected here is the probability of town being lynched and how much you want to undermine the town in the coming days. Now call me crazy but given scum are less likely to be picked up in a random lynch and won't have accountability for a townie dying in such a lynch, seems to me they'd have no qualms with pushing for a random lynch. The risk vs reward is very acceptable. To convince me otherwise - or, hell, to even show that you've thought the situation through - I only ask that you 1) Justify why you believe a random lynch is more likely to hit scum and 2) Thoroughly detail how you think a random lynch will positively affect future days for the town.

3) This one is strictly for Rag mostly, you keep saying you see a random lynch as a stronger option than reads and continually compare it to a cop investigation but you've yet to put any detail behind your blanket statements. If you don't mind, flesh out your argument.

First, on the idea that a random lynch has a higher chance of hitting a mafiate.

From TB (TrueBeliever)


It's useful only in the sense that if you don't want to be held responsible for pushing a lynch, a random lynch will accomplish that. Other than that, it is not useful to the town and is, in fact, counter productive to giving us connections to work with.

As for a random lynch having a higher chance to nail mafia --

3/12 = .25 and 9/12 = .75

Random lynching has a higher chance of hitting a town than it does scum. On a very general level, it is no different from us choosing who to lynch. In reality, us choosing who to lynch is greater than random lynching because we have to take responsibility for our lynches. That entails forming connections/taking stances. Which is stuff the town can use to help evaluate how players interact with one another.

You can't get that with a random lynch.

[Rag]


Already covered the %. However, what you say here does not make sense to me. As I said to TB, random lynching is not better for us. Not only does it NOT give us a better chance at hitting mafia, it doesn't even give us anything to draw on (refer back to when I talked about players forming connections to one another by taking responsibility/taking a stance when it comes to lynching someone).

To maintain, as you do, that random lynching is better is erroneous.



Except that it's not just purely the psychology of a player/s you look at. You look at how they interact with others. And those interactions build. Using the mechanic to randomly lynch prevents some interactions from happening. That is, mafia can rely on the random lynch of a townie and never have to do anything beyond supporting a random lynch.



Random lynching is an extension of... Of what? Cop results or personality analysis? Because if it is the latter, I will agree with you. Otherwise, tell me in what universe how random lynching is an extension of cop results? Or just explain how.



A WIFOM way of thinking. As I had just said, mafia can fully support a random lynch. Why would they? Because, to use words you used earlier, "making strong plays in terms of probability is more helpful" to mafia than other avenues of play that will out them easily (where they have to work to fit in). That is, mafia get to hide in the 25% while the rest are stuck in the 75%. And, as far as probability goes, 75% is much more likely to happen than 25%.



You do realize that your last sentence contradicts your point of view, yes? In the absence of "hard information" (ie. cop results, tracking results, any other kind of result), all you have is "reads" (voting records, analysis of player actions, the like) to use when it comes to making a decision such as who to lynch or use an ability on.

Everyone knows, on an unspoken level, that a cop result is better than a cobbled together analysis case using reads on a player. Strengthening decisions, directed by hard information, need not involve reads at all. If it ever becomes necessary, you test the "hard information" to make sure you don't have a situation where, for example, the claimed cop is lying. Or something similar.




TL;DR: Random lynching is not akin to cop results or other forms of "hard information". Random lynching is akin to voting someone because of X reason where X is entirely an opinion based on a read or some such thing.

Ha!

*Highfives JD.*