New Beginnings [TOWN WIN]

Yes of course! Let me answer those in order.

I thought it would be me over Sammiya and Megrid because of all the veterans, I'm the only one so far who has played a game and survived to the end. Kiyoko too, but she's hosting, so. Sammiya and Megrid haven't really played yet so their playstyle is still unknown.

I think we should lynch today, because if we don't, we don't really find out anything about anyone's alignments, and then someone else dies at night and we're kind of back to square one. I think the best way to get information is to try to force a tie to see which players other players side with! If that makes sense.

I'm going to use a random generatorto pick someone tonight. vote: Megrid

Accidentally put in my name to, and it got picked the first two time.

I agree, it does make a lot of sense that of the playing veterans, you, Alca, would stand out since you're the only one insofar to make it to the end of a game. But, I am curious! Twice now you've made mention of playstyle as it pertains to the selection of kill targets. As a veteran, how much do you weigh and value playstyle over mere experience? I suppose a better question or manner of phrasing is: How do you play the game, and what kind of playstyles do you think would cause you trouble? And what kind of playstyles would find trouble from your own style?

Hmm. As for finding out alignments, here's my main worry. While I do think it's as low-risk/high-reward as we can ever get without a Night Zero save, wouldn't a misfired lynching dramatically speed up the pace of the game in the mafia's favor? Rather, with so few people that means avoiding a lynch is a way for us to stall out while we try to see if we can get a save or build a stronger case as the game progresses. I suppose one advantage is that it would give us something to work with, and, additionally, it would be better to mislynch now and try and recuperate, rather than stall it out until it's lynch-or-lose.

The main difficulty in forcing a tie is that we have an odd number of players, unless someone ultimately sides with no lynch. Hmm... Does "no vote" count as null or no lynch for tally purposes? I shall research this.

Game of Thrones is due to start shortly (and as a result I have rushed this a tiny bit), so I will think on this and if there are any targets I feel comfortable lynching before rollover. I hope before then we can get some more input from the other players. Lastly, let's say I follow either of your votes, Alca and Rasei, and Sammiya or Megrid end up lynched without much basis or case against them. If they're town or doctor, how do we proceed from there if they were supposedly random selections? In other words, do you have any real convictions towards them?

This is a really active game, which makes me excited! I'm happy to be playing. 

I'm not alcasync, and perhaps she can comment on this better than I can, but the ratio is 5:2, I believe; while a mislynch could whittle this down towards the mafia's favor, a no lynch situation where we all voted no lynch would lead to us basically having this discussion once again on day 2. Without votes to direct us and to serve as evidence/give us information, we're stuck in this limbo situation where we don't really have a lot of information, with the ratio being 4:2. If we mislynch then, we're basically stuck in a 3:2 position going into the night and would rely on a doctor protection for the town to be saved. 

Finally, I'm in a bit of a quandry. I would prefer for this day to end in a lynch, but I'm highly suspect of voting for someone that was RNG'd for, and I would rather not vote Sammiya at the moment if only because she hasn't come back to make a post (and I don't believe she acknowledged alcasync's vote?). I also don't want to vote Luxaria at the moment because of the rather weak reasoning for Mr. Alice's vote. 

... I suppose, if anything, I'm a bit uneasy of claiming to lynch a player due to RNG. I feel like it would be easy to say that you simply RNG'd a vote target to mask a directed vote at another player, so I would like an answer to Luxaria's question from Rasei! I do have a few ... I guess gut feelings about players that are slowly forming, but I'd like to see a bit more before casting a vote.

No vote counts as null! It's completely disregarded in the counts. :>

Hmm! Those are really good questions!

I haven't played mafia in a while so my playstyle is probably different now. I used to be a more cautious/quieter player, but now that I'm one of the veterans (which is still very weird to think about!) I kind of feel more umm, obligated, I suppose, to try to get discussion started. I've voted early in every phase so far, so maybe that's going to become a thing for me.

Umm what playstyles would cause me trouble... I'm not sure! As town, I find it hard to play against players who are really good at staying calm and who always make long, convincing posts! Like Cthuluhoop and Kiyoko, for example. I haven't been mafia yet on this forum so we'll see what my mafia playstyle is like. I used to try to lay low, but I think now that I'm trying to be more talkative, my old mafia strategy won't work anymore. I suppose if I were a talkative mafia then really analytical players would catch me in a lie eventually, I think. I'm not very good at keeping that kind of stuff straight.

I-I don't know if that really answered your question, sorry.

Regarding why we should lynch! We're in an interesting situation right now where the votes are really spread out. I'm kind of going from past games when I say this but my experience is that when all the voters agree on one thing (like everyone voting NL or everyone voting for the same person), it's easy for mafia to hide on the bandwagon. If people are forced to choose between options, then we get some information. Umm so like, for example!

Let's say say there's a tie between Player A and Player B, and then Player C votes for Player A and Player A gets lynched. If Player A is mafia, that makes Player C look very town, since Player C was the deciding vote to get them lynched. Also, everyone who voted for Player B now looks kind of suspicious, because they voted for the player who didn't turn out to be mafia (unless Player B is also mafia, but town doesn't know that yet!).

If Player A is town, then Player C looks suspicious because they might be mafia trying to get a townie lynched. That's not always the case of course, but it might be that Player B is mafia and Player C voted for Player A to save their mafia teammate.

But let's say that there's a no lynch. Now we don't know anyone's alignments, and it's harder to figure out who voted for which alignment.

I-I hope that's not too confusing. I wonder if I should have used actual names instead of ABC...!

But I understand where you're coming from! Lynching town isn't a good thing at all. The idea of lynching like this is that maybe even if we make a mistake today, the sacrifice will gain us enough information to know who to be suspicious of for later phases.

Oh no, it took me too long to write this post. So many ninjas... I'm going to post and then read nautilus's post!

Edit: Ohh to answer your question, Luxaria, I don't really have any convictions against Sammiya but I don't think anyone really has anything at this point. I don't think anyone has said anything suspicious so far? Umm but I'm not really comfortable changing my vote off Sammie because she also hasn't said anything to make me think she's town, if that makes sense! I think you and nautilus are asking questions and making arguments that sound kind of town-ish so I think maybe I don't want you guys to get lynched.

I guess I might change my vote to Megrid because I don't want Luxaria lynched yet but...! That's just a maybe.

I'm agreeing with Nautilus too on hesitating to vote. I was kinda hoping to hear the reasoning on why I'm being voted, but there's not really much reasoning to "the RNG picked it"...

Besides myself, I'm hesitant to add my vote to Sammiya until we hear something further from her. Likewise, as pretty as Luxaria's avatar is (and it is pretty~<3), I definitely wouldn't vote for her just because of that. Nautilus and Alcasync made very good points of discussion, as did Luxaria, and I'd rather not vote for Rasei simply because she voted for me by RNG.

That just leaves Mr. Alice, and I'm interested to learn if there was a bit more reasoning for voting Luxaria than just her avatar, but I'm still uncertain where to put my vote on otherwise.

Also heads up. I got shanghai'd for a thing at around 9pm. I'll still have access to my phone and I'm planning to pre-write all the rollover flavor text and stuff so it'll just be a matter of typing in who gets lynched and posting it. Phone's a little hard to type bbcode into though, so in case rollover is late, vote cutoff is still at 9 and nothing after that will count.

Edit: Nevermind, apparently even though the thing is at 9pm we are apparently leaving two hours early to get there so I don't have time to prewrite rollover.

I'll just post it in plain formatting and add the pretty stuff later this evening.

Ah, I didn't question alca's vote since I figured it was just because I was another veteran so I didn't think too much of it.

I am suspicious of how Rasei decided to RNG whom to lynch, however. Since she's now locked into it, and knew she would be so when she RNG'd it and all. I'm waiting to change from NL since I'm wary of mislynching a town still, but I will change it before roll-over if possible.

I'll be around until rollover so if a breakthrough happens between now and rollover, I can definitely change my vote and tie-break as necessary. 

I'm hesitant to vote alcasync because I feel like they've been generating good discussion; of course, conspiracy theories aside I also feel like the tone of their posts doesn't seem to come off as pre-written or meticulously edited in a way to make them seem extra town (or hiding their mafianess). I could be terribly wrong about this, of course. I usually am. 

I'm a bit uneasy to follow Mr. Alice's vote and vote Luxaria because I feel like they've been exploring avenues and playing a bit of devil's advocate to generate discussion. Not as strong as a town-ness feeling as alcasync, but town-ness all the same. Megrid would fall in here as well, perhaps below Luxaria. 

Mr. Alice and Sammiya haven't posted anything substantial as of yet since their votes, so I'm hesitant to vote for them. With respect to Mr. Alice, I'm uneasy for their flimsy reasoning to vote, but at the same time given their behavior in the previous game I'm thinking it's more newbieness than anything since they seemed to act similarly previously. With respect to Sammiya, I don't think she's properly countered alcasync's vote or commented on the situation at large (though she did say drandahl's kill was interesting) and I don't know if her no lynch vote was an attempt to counter alcasync's vote, either. 

Um, if either Mr. Alice or Sammiya see this post, I'd like to ask both of you which of the theories you think is the most likely of all of them (or generally comment on them), since most of the other posters have said their viewpoints on these posts. 

I'm slightly suspicious of Rasei for RNG'ing a vote, but other than that I don't have anything really concrete.

I guess my issue with finding someone to vote is that I have a lot of gut feelings but I keep telling myself... "Are they really mafia? Or are they just newbies?" There's a lot of behavior I'm noticing but I'm not sure if it's because everyone is kind of new or if it's... something important. 

I need a tin foil hat.

Whoops, someone posted before I finished this. Vote changes are actually unlimited so I feel suspicion of her choosing to RNG despite being locked into it is probably moot since she can change it, though I am somewhat suspicious of the method, I guess. However, Sammiya, I do have a question for you! What was interesting about drandahl's death? Why do you think he died?

Just posting to say that I'm back from the Game of Thrones episode and I plan to respond shortly. And, also, to second Nautilus' mention of there being unlimited votes, as is outlined in Kiyoko's rules. Actually, I originally refreshed the page to post that before I started on a meatier post, but Nautilus beat me to it!

I am wondering why drandahl was chosen on the NK, but it might be because of how he did in the previous game. Alca would make sense for the doctor to focusing on protecting given how well she did in the previous game, and most of the people here have never played with me before so they might not know what to think of me.

Ah, I think I got mixed up about the votes somehow, sorry! It's less suspicious with unlimited votes, yeah, but still weird for her to RNG it, and makes me a bit cautious.

I'm still in the process of going over Nautilus' last post a second time, though I've caught up on everything, but given that we're down to a single hour I'll post a bit prematurely to see how a few more pieces fall onto the board.

Namely, I want to highlight something that sticks out to me. I hope it's not overly foolish to focus too much on the posts of the veterans (creating an "us and them" scenario, particularly when some or all of them might be allies), but I think it's safer to believe that a more experienced player has more motive and calculation to their words. Newer players, or moderately experienced ones, might say things that are incriminating without realizing it. I've probably done that myself already.

But, one thing does have me curious. I would like to know the discrepancy between Alcasync's intention to try and force a tied lynch (which has great logic behind it!) for the sake of learning alignments, versus the statements of Megrid and Sammiya. Megrid is hesitant to vote for at least Sammiya, specifically, but also anyone else. Sammiya is wary of changing from No Lynch, though that might be due to thinking the votes were limited. In particular, Sammiya stated, "I'm wary of mislynching a town still."

So, my questions to the three of you are:
1. Do you agree with being wary of mislynching? Or do you like the idea of lynching tonight no matter what for the sake of alignment?
2. If you had to lock in a vote for a player right now, who would it be and why?

(Newer players can reply to that, too! I have given equal and careful consideration to things said by everyone, so I hope no one thinks I'm excluding them.)

I'd also like to point out that you could argue that information is gained even without a lynch. For instance, if town is killed by mafia, we can structure our conversation based around that player's contributions on Day One. Additionally, the doctor gains information from the pattern and who is being targetted, and that's not information that's obvious to us non-doctors. And lastly, if a town is saved... well, that's a confirmed town! And we can analyze from there.

This is not to say there is no merit in lynching for the sake of alignment information, which is something I am calculating the benefits of, but! There is still information to be gained. Granted, I could be mistaken in the amount of information gained through a no lynch night. I honestly have no way of knowing what works and what does not until it crashes and burns in my face.

Also, I hope Mr. Alice and Rasei get a few more words in before the night closes, especially on the two questions posted above, or just elaborating on their votes if they're sticking to them.

*got distracted with a show* I'm changing my vote: undecided.
The main reason I did the rng to see everyone's reactions if deciding in such a matter.

Luxaria wrote:

So, my questions to the three of you are:
1. Do you agree with being wary of mislynching? Or do you like the idea of lynching tonight no matter what for the sake of alignment?
2. If you had to lock in a vote for a player right now, who would it be and why?

1. I'm a bit wary of mislynching. I feel like I don't have enough data on figuring out who I should say is mafia and who isn't.
2. I'm not sure. Maybe Mr.Alice since he hasn't talked alot?