WW35: Not Another TPS Report [Game Thread]

[Jabbz]

Too elaborate on why I think Qg post is too elaborate

It's wolfy because those posts are a good way of appearing to make content without making actual content. They talk about "general rules" and are, thus, generic, not related to any specific situation or player (only marginally). So, when doing this, you avoid things like contradicting yourself when presenting an argument (which happens when playing wolf), or stepping on someone else's toe when making a case (which can quickly turn into a revenge vote, which you don't want when playing wolf), but you also give the appearance of content.

Well yes, but you can still contradict yourself by making a specific case later that interferes with your earlier general argument.

It's happening!!!!

[Day one LYNCH! Day one LYNCH! Day one LYNCH!]

Lynchpocalypse is coming, my friends. It comes for us all in the end, but today? Today it comes for me.


Anyway, yeah I got town/town :/ Not that it matters, for today I get to help the scum in an entirely unique and fascinating way - by becoming the instant topic of the day for them to dump votes on

I'd...rather not share why I rejected roleblocker, specifically. But I will say this: in one of my most recent games (not on this site) I rolled a boosted-jailkeeper (they also got to neighborize the people they jailsd) and honestly it wasn't a role I enjoyed much. Not only was RB a repeat of that - in a game packed with roles - it was a weaker version, and it's one that has significant downsides (I've never been very good with difficult roles, day 1 in that game I jailed our only cop thinking they were scum). So yeah, I chose against it.

Bobchillingworth, you were offered a chance to repeat last game, why wouldn't you take it?

Scummy post.

1. Victim card.
2. "I'll go nicely." (easiest town persona to mimic)
3. Mumbo jumbo about his role. (I expected him to just say that his other role was stronger, but he almost seems to hint at the opposite.)
4. Joke vote to leave no trace.

Later posts may be better, but this one was pretty terrible.

I agree that it's pretty terrible. Where did he hint at his actual role being weaker, though?

I'm a cop, obviously. Also busy atm.

...can't tell if facetious or actual claim.

Actual claim.

My thoughts on the hider is that he would be especially powerful if there is a doctor in the game. I picture the scenario where hider hides behind IC or similarly known/trusted townie, and doc protects the one he is hiding behind. Two are safe for the price of one, and, as the hider is obviously outing his target beforehand, if he pops up dead, it's a confirmed wolf he went behind. Given A: how powerful a doc is, and B: the # of roles in the game, increasing the likelihood of someone having that as an option, it is a reasonable assumption that there is one to pair with in the game.

Sounds like a lot of moving parts, and you still have to actually lynch the outed scum. Maybe it's more powerful than is immediately apparent, but I could easily see TT discarding it.

I have an early flight tomorrow for a work trip so I may be awol until tomorrow night.

Sure, I buy the many moving parts, but the potential is there.I suppose it's possible that he didn't think along those lines, but if nothing else, it's a unique role, which gives it a certain degree of fun factor.

[dtay]

Incidentally, the math on double mafia for later reference. Solving the general case is difficult cause this is sampling-with-replacement, but we can shortcut our particular situation since we have all the revealed roles.

There is an 83.1% chance at least 1 person drew double scum, so we should under no circumstances later in the game think "double scum is inherently unlikely, so cleared". Chances are, it happened at least once.

The prior probability that any one player is scum is 34.2% (prior meaning before taking into account precise role rejected, or personality, reads, etc). This number will go down as we discover scum (less scum to find), and is pretty much entirely unhelpful anyway except for comparison with probabilities after conditioning on stuff.

Example of said comparison, being extremely generous and saying it is logical to reject doctor for one-shot gov, vig, cop, bulletproof, the other doctor, or lover cop, a person who rejected doctor has prior probability 63% of being scum.

That was only for example, do not apply this number to the case of novice in particular, because he has precisely claimed what his role is. One could naively say "well if the rest of the unseen roles are randomly distributed within the constraint of logical rejections, novice only has a 10% chance that his other role would be a cop". That's flawed reasoning, A) since it arbitrarily restricts the player to novice when we really would care about the probability that ANY player would end up being forced to reject doctor, and B) ignores a lot of harder to quantify knowledge (which would still affect the logical probability even if I don't know what number to put there) relating why claiming cop in particular is especially verifiable.

To somewhat demonstrate that point defining an arbitrary set of strong-town roles (let's go with Doctor, Cop, gov, Vig, Cop Lover, IC, Jailkeeper, backup doctor, roleblocker). Getting the probability of at least 1 person drawing double strong town is somewhat annoying to get, but the expected number of double-strong-town-draws in a game is .86 (much easier to figure out), so it certainly isn't anywhere close to an unthinkable occurrence.

tldr: Conclusions from this:
1) Fiddling with the math is mostly unhelpful, particular role strengths or reads are needed even on day 1
2) Rejecting town verses rejecting scum isn't a very helpful indicator
3) Rejecting strong town is the only helpful indicator, they are about twice as likely to be scum as a random selection, but we shouldn't expect every strong town rejection to be a scum.

Since apparently this framework-talk is suspicious, I'll note still waiting on Lewwynn, but if I were to put my final vote in now it would be on Qqqqqq. No new reasoning for that, see earlier posts.

[zakalwe]

"I agree that it's pretty terrible. Where did he hint at his actual role being weaker, though?"

He emphasized how he didn't enjoy playing as a roleblocker, instead of labeling it as a weak role.

TT rejecting the hider role sort of fits with my psychological model of him. I also think he'd be liable to pick a scum role, though, if he had the chance.

[Molach]

(I can't believe the browser ate my post, no ctrl-z to bring the text back).

Hi all, thanks to the host, and thanks to enough mafia/SKs who donned the cloak of evilness and made this game start up at first go.

I've only read first 10 posts or so, decided to post initial thoughts about setup before going through the rest

I think some people are more likely to want to play mafia than others. Personality thing.
People with boring/harmful roles more likely to go mafia.
New people more likely to go village on first game. However prior mafia experience on other sites would make this argument weaker.
A lot of people would probably want to play SK. Act normal by hunting mafia, kill whoever bugs you at night. Some quick Excel work indicated that 60% say there is a SK in any given game of 19 players. No SK discards probably enhances this chance.
A given player had a 7% chance to draw two mafia cards. In a given 19-player game, it seems to be 73% likely that one player got two red cards. Not sure what 4 mafia discards tell us about that, but it is likely that a player was forced to play mafia, personalilty thing be damned.

Some role discards: "Wrong place town" - Bobchillinworth - Perhaps even I would have been temped to play a real mafia instead of this bastard role. + mafia lean.
"Vanilla townie" - Fenn. Safe, no-pressure role for a new guy, to play hunt for scum game instead of jumping into the lying bastard bit. He didn't discard this for mafia? + town lean.
"Innocent child" - Lewwyn. Too boring role for this expert scum. "But I just played mafia last game"-defense forthcoming. But that is really advanced Wifom. Besides last game wasn't a true scum game anyway. So, yeah.
"Tourist" - Zakalwe. See Lewwyn. Potentially harmful role, even, with paranoid people about.

I actually didn't realize that the discard pile would say which player discarded what - I imagined just a list of the cards. This way I think vanilla cop would have been a decent role - Scan any of those who dropped a not harmful town role, and if they turn up vanilla they are 99% mafia goon.
So why did you drop that, Azarius? To play with the bad guys?[/color]

[zakalwe]

For the record, I think that was a helpful post, dtay, and not inherently scummy.

[Jowy]

Town reads on Zak and Dtay.

[dtay]

A lot of people would probably want to play SK. Act normal by hunting mafia, kill whoever bugs you at night. Some quick Excel work indicated that 60% say there is a SK in any given game of 19 players. No SK discards probably enhances this chance.
A given player had a 7% chance to draw two mafia cards. In a given 19-player game, it seems to be 73% likely that one player got two red cards. Not sure what 4 mafia discards tell us about that, but it is likely that a player was forced to play mafia, personalilty thing be damned.

Incidentally probability of serial killer post discards (without assuming anything with regards to whether people want or don't want to keep the role) is ~81% (you have to be careful to take into account the without-replacement nature of this drawing if the simulated example has a lot of draws taking place).

If you think people actively want SK, it's higher than that. The opposite, then lower.

I don't think giving Bob a mafia lean for rejecting awful-village makes sense, since he'd also reject awful-village for normal-village. At worst, knowing that he discarded awful village cancels out any prior judgment that Bob doesn't like playing scum, but even then it would just bring his p(scum) up to the same level as everyone else.

[Ichabod]

I have an early flight tomorrow for a work trip so I may be awol until tomorrow night.

Incoming "too busy so forgot to send scry" claim for day 2.

[Azarius]

(I can't believe the browser ate my post, no ctrl-z to bring the text back).

Hi all, thanks to the host, and thanks to enough mafia/SKs who donned the cloak of evilness and made this game start up at first go.

I've only read first 10 posts or so, decided to post initial thoughts about setup before going through the rest

I think some people are more likely to want to play mafia than others. Personality thing.
People with boring/harmful roles more likely to go mafia.
New people more likely to go village on first game. However prior mafia experience on other sites would make this argument weaker.
A lot of people would probably want to play SK. Act normal by hunting mafia, kill whoever bugs you at night. Some quick Excel work indicated that 60% say there is a SK in any given game of 19 players. No SK discards probably enhances this chance.
A given player had a 7% chance to draw two mafia cards. In a given 19-player game, it seems to be 73% likely that one player got two red cards. Not sure what 4 mafia discards tell us about that, but it is likely that a player was forced to play mafia, personalilty thing be damned.

Some role discards: "Wrong place town" - Bobchillinworth - Perhaps even I would have been temped to play a real mafia instead of this bastard role. + mafia lean.
"Vanilla townie" - Fenn. Safe, no-pressure role for a new guy, to play hunt for scum game instead of jumping into the lying bastard bit. He didn't discard this for mafia? + town lean.
"Innocent child" - Lewwyn. Too boring role for this expert scum. "But I just played mafia last game"-defense forthcoming. But that is really advanced Wifom. Besides last game wasn't a true scum game anyway. So, yeah.
"Tourist" - Zakalwe. See Lewwyn. Potentially harmful role, even, with paranoid people about.

I actually didn't realize that the discard pile would say which player discarded what - I imagined just a list of the cards. This way I think vanilla cop would have been a decent role - Scan any of those who dropped a not harmful town role, and if they turn up vanilla they are 99% mafia goon.
So why did you drop that, Azarius? To play with the bad guys?[/color]

Well for starters, I also thought we would just get a list of discarded roles rather than knowing who rejected what. Even had I realized how it would work, I still think my reasoning was sound. 4 chances for a mafia goon out of 54 total isn't great odds to begin with, compared to how many are likely to be discarding town roles. As it is, two players discarded mafia goon roles , and the others may not have even been drawn. So ya, not seeing it.

I disagree with you about Bob. As you said, it's sort of a bastard role. I think it's a good assumption he'd be likely to take almost anything over it. I don't see how this makes him more likely mafia.

Can you clarify your statement on Fenn? I don't follow your reasoning on how him discarding vanilla town gives him a town lean.

[Fenn]

I believe the reasoning is that I'd gravitate to the easier roles to play, and town is easier to play than scum.

Full disclosure, if my other choice had been Mafia Goon I'd have taken it just for the fun factor.