The Syndicate

Epignosis wrote:

Nachomamma8 wrote:

Epignosis wrote:

Nachomamma8 wrote:I hope that Epi's scum game is half as good as he says it is!!

I don't have a "scum game."

You probably do, just don't know it yet

No. I don't.

*cough*

http://www.hcrealms.com/forum/showpost. ... ostcount=2

Epignosis wrote:

Golden wrote:

Epignosis wrote:

Nachomamma8 wrote:

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:

Nachomamma8 wrote:I'm excited to understand this site's meta more where I can start to understand roles more - I didn't have a single guess to who was what role by the end of Monkey Island and I've found the lack of information makes me feel very very lost, but I'm hoping that changes pretty soon!!

You!

You're the guy who got me lynched on mafiascum but you couldn't explain why I was scummy.

I got lynched, was town, and you were immediately replaced and I never learned why you thought I was mafia. Quite annoyed with you, I was.

In fairness, I was probably shit at vanilla mafia at the time.

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?p=4955712

To be fair, you look pretty town in retrospect but holy shit have I mislynched some people for horrible reasons in my day so at least you have company, right...?

We are two mariners
Our ship's sole survivors
In this belly of a whale
It's ribs are ceiling beams
It's guts are carpeting
I guess we have some time to kill

Nacho and epi confirmed mafia scummates

Golden does get the context of the song. Shame on him.

The narrator in the song is Jack, and the other mariner is Nacho.

Listen to the song. Good stuff.

Something nacho...sweet mamma. There's a pun there somewhere, I just know it.













Find him bind him...

Nachomamma8 wrote:

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:

Nachomamma8 wrote:I'm excited to understand this site's meta more where I can start to understand roles more - I didn't have a single guess to who was what role by the end of Monkey Island and I've found the lack of information makes me feel very very lost, but I'm hoping that changes pretty soon!!

You!

You're the guy who got me lynched on mafiascum but you couldn't explain why I was scummy.

I got lynched, was town, and you were immediately replaced and I never learned why you thought I was mafia. Quite annoyed with you, I was.

In fairness, I was probably shit at vanilla mafia at the time.

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?p=4955712

To be fair, you look pretty town in retrospect but holy shit have I mislynched some people for horrible reasons in my day so at least you have company, right...?

Vindication. Finally.

If I had a daykill, I would not have been able to resist.

Nachomamma8 wrote:I'm excited to understand this site's meta more where I can start to understand roles more - I didn't have a single guess to who was what role by the end of Monkey Island and I've found the lack of information makes me feel very very lost, but I'm hoping that changes pretty soon!!

You!

You're the guy who got me lynched on mafiascum but you couldn't explain why I was scummy.

I got lynched, was town, and you were immediately replaced and I never learned why you thought I was mafia. Quite annoyed with you, I was.

In fairness, I was probably shit at vanilla mafia at the time.

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?p=4955712

Golden wrote:It's a bad idea to style-read Zebra, but what I perceive in her posts are good motives and an effort to cut through bullsuit.

With an axe made of further bullshit.

Only the Sith blah blah.

I hear you guys lynch on Day One round here.

When do people start deciding who they think is bad?

Dragon D. Luffy wrote:Two pages after his first post and I already think Sig looks fishy.

Must... not... lynch... Sig... again.

Fishy how.

Let me throw this out there and see what people think.

Mathematically, the cult is not much of a threat. Using one of Klaus's auto scum catches on Ishmael would most benefit.....the mafia.

So players expressing extreme unwarranted concern about the cult are somewhat suspicious to me at this point.

sig wrote:

Long Con wrote:

Dom wrote:Uhhh

ishmael, given those recent revelations is a huge threat.

Explain... sounds like he could recruit baddies and help finish the game earlier in the Civs favour. I guess it works in reverse if he recruits Civs?

He could recruit baddies yes, which hurts them. However they also need to be the largest team and he only has a 50% shot at recruiting people. So Ishmael would in theory be actively working agaisnt the civs since we're the largest faction and he needs most of us dead to win.

Does not compute.

A dead townie or a dead mafia member both reduce total players by 1.

A recruited townie or a recruited mafia member both reduce non cult players by 1 and increase cult players by 1.

The math is the same. The only reason the cult would have to specifically work against the town is if the town is about to eliminate the last scummer, ending the game early and causing the cult to auto lose.

Long Con wrote:

Dom wrote:Uhhh

ishmael, given those recent revelations is a huge threat.

Explain... sounds like he could recruit baddies and help finish the game earlier in the Civs favour. I guess it works in reverse if he recruits Civs?

Mirrors my thoughts.

Could put us in the awkward situation where the cult and the town are the only groups left plus one scummer so that cult suddenly is motivated to not lynch the last scum.....then the entire cult disappears (I guess?) and the town kills the last scummer.

I mean, basically, this type of cult appears to be a super delayed serial killer that misses 50% of the time or if anyone else kills his targets in the next 1-6 phases. Plus he only has to "kill" half the other players instead of all of them and if he "kills" the last scum player, they die instantly instead of on a delay.

Overall, I'm not understanding the "Ishmael is a huge threat" thought process. He's a pretty freaking weak cult leader.

Metalmarsh89 wrote:

Dom wrote:

Quin wrote:

Epignosis wrote:

Elohcin wrote:

Epignosis wrote:

Elohcin wrote:Zebra, Faraday, Long Con, Snow Dog, and you. I think those are the only ones in that game that were here discussing the subject. I will table my thoughts on Snow Dog and try to give him a fresh start in my book. I do seriously hate I wasted all that time on it though. I wasn't even going to read all those pages. I was just going to skim through as Day 0 is usually just fluff. But then it seemed important and noteworthy, so I read and commented, read and commented. Waste.

Where was Faraday discussing this?

Derp.

Was he discussing it in B T S C???????????????

lol

I don't understand.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/side-eyeing-chloe

The image is basically short for "Could you fucking not?"

Thanks, DF.

Same for me, usually, but I didn't want to assume.

Would the cult vanillaize its recruits? Can mafia members be cultified?

Would Olaf be immune to Klaus's role check? The gravedigger seems fairly weak and the conditional double voter, while strong, could give away herself and a teammate if she actually uses the double vote. I consider the roleblocker the best Klaus's target in this mafia.

The other mafia don has SECRETS, potentially protecting her from this power as well as a goon that is semi immune to targeting, also potentially immune to Klaus's check. The punisher and misdirector are better choices, imo, especially the punisher.

I don't care much about the cult leader. I don't see BTSC for them. Aside from causing problems when they approach their win condition and just want to lynch a non cultist (when they don't even know their teammates?), the cult doesn't really seem like a huge threat. I'm willing to entertain alternative opinions on this faction, though, as saying that I don't care about lynching the cult feels wrong to me.

@LC

On HCRealms, you are allowed to make statements specifically for a lie detector.

There's really no getting around it. There's all sorts of reasons a cop could be wrong but lie detectors are generally bulletproof, putting a scum player in an impossible situation.

I prefer this "no 'I am town plz lie detect'" rule.

Yeah @ the lie detector ruling. That's more fun than usual.

Boo @ the non threatening cult ruling. Cults should be super threatening, imo. More fun that way.

Epignosis wrote:

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:

Epignosis wrote:

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:@Epi

You never said Snow Dog was good, true.

What you said was "I won't be voting for him."

Well, for what it's worth, I won't be voting for you Day 1 either, Jack. It has nothing to do with your alignment (or his).

Oh yeah? Can't figure out how to use the polls either, then?

I'm sure I'm quite capable of using the polls. Have you encountered a technical issue I should be aware of?

Actually....

Is there a way to both "subscribe" to threads so that I can click a list of all my subscribed threads but also not get emails any time anyone says anything in said threads? My mailbox is just blowing up, today.

Epignosis wrote:

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:@Epi

You never said Snow Dog was good, true.

What you said was "I won't be voting for him."

Well, for what it's worth, I won't be voting for you Day 1 either, Jack. It has nothing to do with your alignment (or his).

Oh yeah? Can't figure out how to use the polls either, then?

@Epi

You never said Snow Dog was good, true.

What you said was "I won't be voting for him."

Epignosis wrote:Four pages all about Snow Dog and Long Con's bad directions.

Snow Dog must feel special.

I won't be voting him Day 1.

Oh yeah?

What caused you to determine SD is town or rather, definitely not someone you could see yourself lynching? Do you see a specific better option at this point?

Or did you merely mean you wouldn't lynch him over that one post?

I can take Eloh seriously. Shame you can't.

Quin wrote:

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:I could get behind splitting the difference with alignment only flips. While no janitoring is more comfortable to me, I'm big on trying new things.

Snow Dog wrote:I'm playing without reading my role.

This seems like a terrible idea.

If you're being truthful and you're town, this only hurts your performance.

If you're being truthful and you're scum, maybe you don't accidentally give yourself away with a scumtell.

You could also be scum and lying, using this as a shield. "Anything scummy I say can't actually be scummy cause I don't even know my alignment."

I'm with the marmot. You seem like a great first lynch.

DrWilgy did the exact same thing in Monkey Island, so I'm taking Snow Dog's post as a jokey reference to that. On no planet is there a person who's seriously played a game where they haven't checked their role. If they're bad then it's a massive kick in the teeth to his/her teammates. Same to any alignment, really.

I find this all to be reasonable.

However, your assertion that nobody would ever do this for realzies stands in stark contrast to Zebra claiming that not reading one's role pm can be a useful for cutting off pressure and causing a townie to not choke, an assertion I find to be quite silly.

Putting SD back on mostly neutral terms unless Zebra ends up flipping mafia.

Now, maybe Zebra has been playing mafia in Opposite Land where lying as a townie to the point where several players consider a policy lynch on you is good strategy but lying as scum is simply not done. I'll reserve full judgement of if this is scummy behavior or just really jarring culture clash until later. It's only D0 after all.

Generally, though, when I see what I consider to be an illogical defense of another player, I assume reasons other than pure logic are at work.

Scotty wrote:

Quin wrote:

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:You're watching a guy throw pretzels in the water and a) assuming he's fishing and b) assuming that throwing pretzels in the water will lead to catching fish.

I'm watching the same guy and saying he's not contributing to solving our food shortage.

This guy is gonna give Scotty a run for his money in the metaphor department.

Nah, my job security is airtight. He can do the metaphors. I'll handle the shitty similes. (And the alliterations, aight?) i know that was assonance, you ass

Deal.

@Epi

Hi, there.

a2thezebra wrote:In fact not only is it a baseless assumption but if we look at previous claims of players not reading their rolecard in past games, they are usually lying. Their reasons for doing so vary wildly but not all of them are mafia-motivated and on some level DDL and Jackofhearts must recognize this.

I would have an easier time recognizing it if I had been present for said past games.

I've asked you for these examples.

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: How do you propose we read him, then?

Based on the assumption he doesn't know whether he is civ or bad himself.

As we normally would. We cannot be sure he's being truthful. He could be a lying scummer and we should be reading his posts attempting to look into that possibility.

If he's being truthful about not reading his role pm, he'll not likely contribute to scumhunting and will eventually get himself lynched or vig killed.

I disagree with you that his alignment is worthless, primarily based on A2 defending him. I'd agree with you if he chose to provide no further content and nobody defended him. At that point, there would be nothing to gain from his autopsy so yeah, vig kill him.

I propose that if SD is being truthful, he needs to read his role PM and either play as a townie or pretend to do so. Then we can treat him as a normal player who has done one scummy thing, which may or may not ever be the tipping point in lynching or vigging him. That's better than being a normal player who continues to do a scummy thing over and over, which will certainly become the tipping point eventually, probably sooner than later.

By the way, is Day 0 followed by Day 1 or Night 0?

a2thezebra wrote:I am a mafia deconstructionist.

In mafia, much less is alignment-indicative than what the average mafia player believes is.

Because of this, unorthodox tactics of finding mafia should not be punished but encouraged.

Your claim that reaction-fishing tactics only help identify aggressive players rather than baddies simply isn't true.

The best way to catch baddies is to spot mafia-motivated tactics in real time. The best way to spot it is to fish for it.

You're watching a guy throw pretzels in the water and a) assuming he's fishing and b) assuming that throwing pretzels in the water will lead to catching fish.

I'm watching the same guy and saying he's not contributing to solving our food shortage.

Now, you could be right and I could be wrong but I think my position is more logical.

a2thezebra wrote: It strikes me as odd that you claim to have considered the possibility I brought up (JoH note: that Snow Dog read is role, is a townie and is lying), because given that you considered the three other possibilities and included them in your previous post as well, it doesn't matter that you dismissed this one because the reasons you give for dismissing it are similarly negative to the reasons you gave for dismissing the other three which you included in the post. Why omit this possibility because you dismissed it? Because it doesn't contribute to your narrative I believe.

Um....I omited the one possibility I dismissed.

I did not dismiss the possibility that SD is lying scum, truthful scum or truthful town. That's why I included those three possibilities in my post.

I'm not sure what you mean to my reason for dismissing the one thing I dismissed was similar to my (nonexistent) reasons for dismissing the other three options. Can you clarify?

a2 wrote: I never go out of my way to make anyone look bad. Even when I'm bad myself I try to look for things that I find genuinely suspicious, pretending that I'm good if I have to.

That's a limiting scum strategy, imo. To each their own.

a2 wrote: With that said, I'm not sure where the misunderstanding is. You confirm in this response that you are in fact interested in a Snow Dog lynch, disregarding that future content could change that even while claiming that you are interested in more content. It doesn't seem believable to me for one to be interested in "all of my lynch options" while at the same time only having one lynch option.

I'm interested in all lynch options. I am leaning towards one, based on currently available information.

I'm confident that other information will be available later before I have to make a final D1 decision and will of course consider said information.

I feel that you are misunderstanding that (or pretending to), implying that I have already 100% committed myself to voting Snow Dog.

a2 wrote:When you know you're town you know that you have the responsibility of being town. If you end up in a LyLo (Lynch or Lose) situation the pressure is on you to make the right decision or cost town the game. This pressure can effect your performance; your judgment, your actions, how you choose to come off to other players. This pressure isn't there when you don't know whether or not you are in fact town, but your play still defaults as a town performance because you are used to pretending to be town even if you are bad. All in-thread performances are either genuine town or false town performances, so by emulating a town performance without having the pressure of town responsibility you may actually have better judgment in deciphering who is bad and who isn't.

The game just started. We're not even close to lynch or lose.

I think most players will do a better job of being town should they know they are town.

ONUW does a great job of demonstrating how a player's uncertainty of alignment can cause townies to do anti town things, hedging their bets on the potential of having been role swapped to a scum win condition until they can better determine if they still have their initial role.

So there's the support for my stance. Do you have an example of a time a townie made a mistake and cost the town a win but they would have done a better job in that lynch or lose scenario if they hadn't known their alignment?

a2thezebra wrote:

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:

a2thezebra wrote:

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:

a2thezebra wrote:

Snow Dog wrote:I'm playing without reading my role.

In this game, I will defend Snow Dog to the death.

Why?

I drove him a bit loopy in the last game we played together so I am indebted to him. This transcends alignment, you see. But for what it's worth I do believe he is civ from what little content there is to go off of so far. I don't think he would have drawn a target on himself if he were in fact bad.

You believe Snow Dog is a civvy but Snow Dog doesn't even believe Snow Dog is a civvy so forgive me if I totally write off your read.

This feels like a cop-out to me. You know it's more complicated than that.

It is more complicated but I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt.

a2thezebra wrote:

Dragon D. Luffy wrote:

a2thezebra wrote:

Dragon D. Luffy wrote:I'm okay with policy lynching Snow Dog.

Or rather, policy vigging him. A player who doesn't know their alignment is a waste of a lynch.

I strongly disapprove of this post with all due respect.

Noted.

Since you keep asking why I disapprove of it, I'll tell you.

You seem to be encouraging a policy lynch (I disapprove of all policy lynches with no exceptions) while at the same time distancing yourself from it by saying that it would be a waste. That way if Day 1 ends up being a policy lynch of Snow Dog and he flips town, you can say that you disapproved of his lynching and would have preferred that a vigilante killed him instead. If the same happens and he flips scum, you can reference this same post and take credit for contributing to his policy lynch.

I also disapprove of it for the same reasons I gave to Jackofhearts. Snow Dog could just be fishing for reactions along the lines of opportunistic baddies, and even if he isn't that's no reason to suspect him for not reading his role card. But even this I could excuse if you were only voicing suspicion of him and/or asking him to read his role card. The problem is that you (along with MM and Jackofhearts) seem settled on his being killed like it's a done deal, so so early in the game. I don't like that.

And then what?

"Aha! You all are trying to lynch me because I did something suspicious but actually, I was trying to be suspicious so as to draw out aggressive players, who are scum. We should lynch YOU instead, JoH, MM and Luffy!"

Would such a move convince anyone?

If it did convince anyone, would it be likely to result in actual scum lynches?

I would think "No."

We wouldn't even be able to point to his town autopsy and say "These players voted for a townie so maybe they are bad" because every scum player voting for Snow Dog would have the get out of jail free card of "But Snow Dog was actually acting bad. The only one to blame for Snow Dog's lynch was Snow Dog."

This brilliant townie gambit you're proposing doesn't seem to help the town at all. It will help us find aggressive players, not scum players, and likely get a townie lynched, too.

I'd love to see an example of this actually nailing scum, though, since you think I'm being narrowminded about this type of thing as a scumhunting tactic.

a2thezebra wrote:

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:

a2thezebra wrote:

Snow Dog wrote:I'm playing without reading my role.

In this game, I will defend Snow Dog to the death.

Why?

I drove him a bit loopy in the last game we played together so I am indebted to him. This transcends alignment, you see. But for what it's worth I do believe he is civ from what little content there is to go off of so far. I don't think he would have drawn a target on himself if he were in fact bad.

You believe Snow Dog is a civvy but Snow Dog doesn't even believe Snow Dog is a civvy so forgive me if I totally write off your read.

a2thezebra wrote:

Jackofhearts2005 wrote:I could get behind splitting the difference with alignment only flips. While no janitoring is more comfortable to me, I'm big on trying new things.

Snow Dog wrote:I'm playing without reading my role.

This seems like a terrible idea.

If you're being truthful and you're town, this only hurts your performance.

If you're being truthful and you're scum, maybe you don't accidentally give yourself away with a scumtell.

You could also be scum and lying, using this as a shield. "Anything scummy I say can't actually be scummy cause I don't even know my alignment."

I'm with the marmot. You seem like a great first lynch.

I don't like going after newcomers, but this post feels very disingenuous to me. For starters, you cover three possibilities with line breaks to give the impression that you're considering every scenario regarding Snow Dog's alignment. Truthful town, truthful scum, and lying scum. Yet you leave out lying town! Have you not considered that Snow Dog has in fact read his role and made that statement to see how people would react? Or have you considered that but it didn't contribute to your opportunistic behavior here?

I did consider it and dismissed it. Townies generally shouldn't lie but may do so for the greater good. I see no greater good in this.

Saying complete bullshit that makes yourself look bad just to get a reaction? There are better ways to get reactions that don't involve making yourself look bad.

a2 wrote:Second, you seem awfully eager to bite down on a lynch option. It isn't even Day 1 yet! Aren't you interested in looking at other options or at least seeing what interactions might produce more content you could find suspicious? It appears to me that you are prioritizing finding someone to tunnel over actually finding baddies.

I am always interested in all of my lynch options and I am always interested in producing more content.

Snow Dog is way out in front for basically only saying something that I consider pretty antitown while most everyone else has said nothing at all. That doesn't mean that I will ultimately vote for Snow Dog. One post saying "I like you for a lynch" does not tunneling make.

I'm going to take the above to be a mix of honest misunderstanding what I meant when I said Snow Dog would be a good Day 1 lynch and your desire to defend Snow Dog regardless of alignments and not you trying to make me look bad. That's the impression I'm getting from you.

a2 wrote:Third, it isn't true that if he is town and being truthful that such a move only hurts his performance. If he is a power role this is true, but if not then the mystery as to whose side he is on will instigate a more genuine pro-town performance than if he were knowingly town and the pressure was on.

He is a power role. Did you read the setup?

I'm not sure I follow the "if he's not a power role" bit. You're saying this move will generate a more genuinely pro-town performance from....Snow Dog? From others? How so?

a2 wrote:With all that said, welcome to the Syndicate and I am only attacking your alignment and not your character.

Thank you.

I would expect no less.

a2thezebra wrote:

Snow Dog wrote:I'm playing without reading my role.

In this game, I will defend Snow Dog to the death.

Why?

I could get behind splitting the difference with alignment only flips. While no janitoring is more comfortable to me, I'm big on trying new things.

Snow Dog wrote:I'm playing without reading my role.

This seems like a terrible idea.

If you're being truthful and you're town, this only hurts your performance.

If you're being truthful and you're scum, maybe you don't accidentally give yourself away with a scumtell.

You could also be scum and lying, using this as a shield. "Anything scummy I say can't actually be scummy cause I don't even know my alignment."

I'm with the marmot. You seem like a great first lynch.

What's the likely significance of the direction choice?

Not being able to change my vote is also going to take a bit of getting used to.

Woot!

First Syndicate game.

I'm thinking the auto janitored nightkills are going to be the toughest thing to get used to.

Open setups? Lots of power roles? Inability to roleclaim? Been there (though only in vanilla games for that last one).

Not knowing how many bad guys have been killed off by vig/sker/other mafia? That's a massive change from what I'm used to and I'm not sure how exactly to deal with that.

Inability to claim and infodump significantly changes how one would play a survivor or info gathering role, respectively. Janitoring vig changes how one would play the vig role. This will be good for survivors, who I generally view as way too easy/boring to win with when you can claim. Info gatherers will be harder to play as but I think I'll like this better as they can't be a crutch. I guess I'd be tempted to not use a vig kill much under these rules. On my home board, I'd usually vig kill every night, seeing it as an extra lynch but here, a lynch is far more valuable than a nightkill to the town just because of the autopsy. All other roles should play pretty darn similar to what I'm used to.

Anyway. That's enough musing about the rule changes from what I'm used to.