Everyone who dared to read into avatar changes and label it as scummy deserves to be lynched by the worst way of lynching.


Yeah, let's. Both at once.

He still hasn't posted anything of substance, though, even with 4 posts.
Which could be telling as well in a way. Or could be case of being late for RVS.

I've got to say the reply made me in that post laugh.
You get 0,5 town point.

They really are not and person just going after absent players reek of someone trying to go after defenseless target.


Hmm, so what do you think now in regards to gogtrial and his opinion of Joe?

Ouch.

if you were held at gunpoint which one would you pick? Or someone else?
Le't say everyone has the same amount of votes before 15 seconds before deadline and you are not voting. Who would you pick?

Commenting as I read (page 1)

I like Joe's idea about including RP in our posts, separated by a line (I was using five asterisks). Although I am not sure about using italics, because on mobile it can be a pain in the @$$.

Also, I noticed that someone (do not remember who) mentioned that I had posted but nothing appart from literature. Well, there was something for those whose eyes were peeled. Even if I still had not read all and could not react to all, I did comment on Scene's. I do not make much of it. Yes, it was a comfortable vote since the voted one was not even there, but I take it more as a litle friendly nudge to celebrate last game, where things were pretty intense at times (especially with Pookie's revolver).

This is important. Not reading the rules properly in Joe's open setting led to a few bad moves for Town.

I have this doubt: What happens if there is a tie between two candidates that did not reach a qualified majority? No imprisonment? Most likely, a single vote would undo the tie, right?

I like the idea of imprisonment for designated suspects. A tiny detail, but it makes the game more pleasant for this player.

I hope the irony doesn't escape you.

Despite the fresh liveliness of the scene, the Queen got bored still, and drifted off into a short five minutes nap. It felt like she missed a whole lot of things.

PAGE 4 VOTE COUNT!

JoeSapphire (2) - ZFR, Lifthrasil
supplementscene (1) - trentonlf
Microfish (1) - JoeSapphire
Lifthrasil (1) - SirMrFailRomp
SirMrFailRomp (1) - Vitek
trentonlf (1) - supplementscene

Not voted: FlockeSchnee, GameRager, Vitek, Gogtrial, dedoporno, Carradice, ZFR
Not voting: Flockeschnee, Carradice, GameRager, dedoporno, Microfish, gogtrial

JoeSapphire is close to imprisonment, at L-5.
There are 13 players. It takes 7 votes to imprison.
Court Phase 1 ends on Saturday, 20th June, 7PM London Time + any overtimes. Nearly four days left.
Check to make sure your vote is against the correct person.

I remember ZFR said that he took praise as scum tell. It was surprising, since all the praise in that game was genuine. Nevertheless, if you all think that is a scum tell, maybe avoid it? Then again, praising a fine post is excepted from that, right?


How is your name pronounced? The way I’ve been saying it in my head is FLOCK-SHH-KNEE.

I reckon the name to come from Jana Spiri's Heidi?

Will future mafia games have sound?

They do! Sound, video, songs, jokes, you name it.


As for ZFR and Microfish, they seem to have swapped their avatars for this game. I'm not a fan as if confuses my little brain.

Jokes. I do like them. They are not alignment indicative. They make the game better. That said, some confusion might happen and should be avoided, like Trent says, but in this case, it was just to make the joke, nothing else.


Well yeah, it's tempting to think they decided to do it in mafia or mason chat isn't it?

I do not think so, Joe.

Are you going Babbage because you want to avoid Vitek's vote?

One of these days I would like to hear the story begind the choice of Babbage and the gold bars as avatars. Gold because of its physical/chemical properties? Babbage because he was a visionary. You see, if you like him, The Difference Engine is recommended. Bonus points: Ada Lovelace appears as well. The real protagonist is the world that they made possible (if only Babbage had managed to build his engine...).

ROFL!!!!! Mega Congrats on your reviews, I love em!!!

Seconded Micro here. It shows who has been reading reviews for real :)

KFR and I

Micro, you know that it is not lunch time as I am reading this, do you?

By the way, head to The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (by Neal Stephenson) for an hilarous description of KFC.

Achmed, do you have it in a lovely shade of green?

Ahem, maybe some of the guards are taking metrosexuality a bit too far? (not critizising, mind)

Dunno about joe or anything else atm, for the most part.....though some things have stood out to me

It is easy to concur with GR. Not about the avatar swappers, but about the reactions about them.

You know how sometimes you go "that thing was 5 years ago??? It feels like only yesterday."? I got the exact opposite feeling. That first game I hosted feels ages ago, yet looking at the date it was autumn 2018. Less than 2 years ago - barely a year and a half. Interesting.

Harry Potter's was the second, third, fourth...? I am not going to say anything about how it was managed because, you know, praise, bad. Although, well. No, nothing. Well, it was a game.




____________________________________________________________________________________

"I'd rather watch paint dry." the Queen said quietly under her breath. "It's fucking awesome compared to this."

Apparently she has yet to notice the concoction right under her legs.


*Ahmad shivers almost inperceptibly*


*Achmed strike himself with a reed several times to show penance to his queen before heading back to his room for his mid mid day snack*

One of these days, Ahmad thinks, he ought to tell Achmed a little secret about... No, forget it.


***

[i]Noticing the Queen's building frustration Abd-allah scans the group for someone who seems easy to pick on. Noticing that the poet has said nothing but whisper verses to himself, he swaggers up to Ahmad, puffs out his chest in an attempt at intimidation, and speaks down his nose at him.
"And what do you have to say for yourself, eh? Our Queen is of so little importance to you that you cannot take your head out of the clouds and give her your attention, is that it?"[/i]

After what might be a second but feels noticiably longer, Ahmad turns with a dreamy, relaxed, countenance towards Abd-allah. "She who is the mirror of heaven, the envy of the sunset, slender as the male palm, gracile as a gazelle, is always on my mind, for good or worse. No need to flaunt my loyalty. Some do the talk; others, the walk." Then, in a lower voice, as to himself, he adds: "Or the climbing."

Replied to Vitek/Carradice:
=========================================================

To me they are similar enough in that they can possibly help achieve the same thing for any possible scum players(this is not to say I think Carradice is scum atm).

Also why should anyone be worried about such targeting (real or imagined) when we (at that time) had 5+ IRL days before EOD?

It might not seem nice, but to me it makes sense....see everyone else as possible scum unless I lean them town for some reason.

Preferably one of my current top picks: atm that would be either gogtrial(for tunneling hard on me....could be scum tell), or one of the avatar flippers(weak reason, I know, but I have little to go on atm).
==========================================

As pooka pointed out to me, and as in the rules: If two or more are tied at eod and no majority is reached there is no lynch/imprisonment...and yes one vote on one of the top tied candidates(if no one was at majority) would essentially "hammer" them if done right before EOD and before someone could tie the votes again.

o.0

Damn, the forum software made me lose a rather long post of replies. Oh, well, not redoing it.

To sum it up: ZFR's and Micro's jokes are NAI. Lift suspecting a joker is within the norm for him, as well. Joe wishing to imprison Lift made me smile and of course is within character for him as well.

The most worrisome moths, possible ever, are those in Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville. Hands down.

I hope all is well with Carradice I enjoy playing with them and would be sad to see them miss the game. Hopefully they just had a busy weekend and will post something soon.

Thanks, Trent. Same here! Yes, it was a busy weekend (starting on Friday) plus I was betting on the game starting on Monday. I will do my best to participate as much as possible. If things go sideways, I will still try to connect every other day, at least.


I feel the absence of FlockeSchnee, Caradice and Scene. It burns.

No problemo. We are all here now. Plus, Aloe vera.


OHHHH

Do you need some aloe vera gel, it helps with burns.

Just wrote the lines above, then I find this. Well, "great minds think alike", and all that :-D

I also hope that Flocke might participate often and that they enjoy the game and all it has to offer.

I also noted all factions of 2 or more players have day chat. This points to the possibility
Scene, I also believe that in this game, anything might be possible. This might be a very crazy setting (lovely!)


In the last game we misslynched while Mafia were able to avoid confrontation and essentially lurk

No, I disagree completely with that analysis. Mafia was very present in the game. Actually they took controversial sides. Not giving spoilers here but one tried to stay in their regular line, even if it might draw suspicion (par for the course). Another behaved as usual as well, and took a strong position about anti-town and anti-game play (he might have done the same if they had been Town, those positions were the ones from a player who is fond on both the game and townie effort). The third component of the team played the sly submarine card, with posts bearing little controversy, noncommital to the core, yet full of truth, and it showed, so they stroke most players as townie (it was some awsome work, by the way). There was a fourth component that did what he could in the last game day, with dignity.

What Mafia did NOT do was behaving aggresively or rushing to have people lynched. In the few games I have read, that only works for a short while. Some players notice it as it happens, and eventually there critical social mass for a reaction, in one or two game-days. I reckon mafia players get a bit overeager and rush to eliminate people, in an attempt to control the narrative in the game. Mafia in the last game never tried to do that. They just swayed the direction of the game slightly, in order to get good lynches when possible, and pruning the Town tree in a way that it became as messy as possible. Just that. They played rather well, IMHO, until the day of the mass claim (1)

No lurk. Lurking is something else. It is posting as little as possible, barely enough to avoid a modkill. With posts that nobody notices or cares about.



(1) In the last day of the game, they preferred not to go on for a number of reasons. One of them, the high number of town power roles still in the game (a combination of bad luck in NK and a lack of players for that particular setting; but the setting was a nice one). But that is another story and shall be told another time (or it has been told already, who knows).

I’ve seen several comments about how my vote on Scene for his voting Carradice was late. I’m just posting this once and if anyone brings it up again I’ll just refer them to this post.

It starts here in https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gog_mafia_67_mamlakat_al_shams/post133]post 133. I clearly state that I haven’t seen anything from Scene that elicits my normal response of “he is scum” and that maybe he is being less aggressive as he knows people see him as scummy when he is.

The next post dedo quotes this from me “ Maybe he is trying to be less aggressive early on as a lot of people find him scummy when he is? ” and asks “ So he voted the only person who isn't likely to say anything back?”

When dedo asked the question my internal reaction was “that’s a great point and I don’t like it”, so I then proceed to ask Scene why and to explain his reasoning placing my vote to establish that I was serious in my question.

Scene’s response was to try and twist it so that I was being opportunistic and buddying up to dedo and gogtrial. I just wanted an answer as to why vote someone who had not posted yet and couldn’t defend themselves. Instead of just saying “I already answered that two posts above you” he tries to shift the attention off of him and onto me with his accusations. Deflecting like that is what scum do when they are being pressured.

Trent's post is solid. I agree that the best approach for Town is keeping things simple. Trying to shed light on things. That way, liars get tangled in their own contradictions. People lying or manipulating would be playing in an anti-town way. Now, there are people who resort to those ways. I reckon that is so because of three motives:

One, in order to favour their game for when they are scum, because they relish being scum and do not think much of either being Town (which they will be 75% of times, on average, and they do not care much about their Town team mates, or team play. Even if they do, they play for being scum, all the rest is fluff.

Second, in order to avoid being lynched themselves. Have someone else lynched, no matter who they are. Keep alive those who favour you. This helps staying in the active roster, but it does not help their team (Town) to win the game.

Third, beause they do like resorting to mischief. These players are more likely to enjoy being scum more than Town, but this motive is the love for shenanigans.


So we have to live with Town players who play in somewhat anti-town ways. Of course, there are degrees in this. To a very strict player, jokers might be anti-town. Some of GR's posts might be regarded as anti-town as they seem to ad lots of noise. These might be mild examples. Misrepresenting another player intentionally might be clever sometimes, but it is anti-town, even if they feel that the target is scummy. Town always profits from fair, clear play. Then, there are ways of playing that are not only anti-town, but anti-game. Just, do not be rude or intentionally offensive and everyone will be OK and no one will be burnt too soon.

So, what to do? With people taking different approaches, I think it is simpler to stick with these priorities: First, go for the anti-game posts, if there are any (thankfully that is not to be seen in the current game). Second, go for the most anti-town. Leave the mild anti-town for later. Third, while you are doing all that, watch out for people tangled in contradictions. These should be the priority. But, when there are no clear clues, go for the most anti-town posts. It has the advantage that if anything, it makes the game easier for Town. But again, if there is someone especially scummy, go for them first.

I think this explains my approach and what I will be doing in this game.

Do you consider me as someone who backs away from conflict in these type of games?

I do not know, but a player who was trying to behave in the most scummy way possible accused Scene, then gave you a too-fast town read and you rushed to grab and read they as town. That was too eager and unfortunately for Town led to distraction and the cop wasting shots on Scene. Does that count?

Fortunately, this is another game, water unde the bridge and all that jazz.

I mostly like Flocke's long post. It feels Flockesy. Agreed to some points. Not agreeing about GR, trent, Joe, ZFR & Micro. SPF sounds like par for the course as well (he mentioned also that he was under the weather, so let us give him some time and breathing space). The bit about Carradice was outdated, but I reckon that Flocke was just ninjaed.

(Also I think I wrote it before, Flocke's name I reckon to come from Jana Spiri's stories, which are so nice)


@GR: Thanks for the kind words. Let us have a game full of fun!

___________________________________________________________________________


One of these days, Ahmad thinks, he ought to tell Achmed a little secret about... No, forget it.

o.0

Ahmad walks to the vicinity of Achmed. He does not look to him, but he whispers under his breath, as if he was talking to his notebook and his moving pen. "She is already in a position of power. Sometimes, someone in such a position might be bored from that. This means, that even if loyalty obeyance are required for such a person as beckons to their daily duties, secretly, in the most private circles of their heart, such someone might not be impressed by watching such displays from others."

Sorry about the formatting in my post, I was posting from my phone :-(

Bump (in case).

*Achmed leans in to Ahmad and whispers*

"So you're saying I should do it even harder, then?" ;)

I just realized how bad the "lynch on max votes" rule is for Town on D1.

Normally No-Lynch is worse for Town because there is no wagon to analyse next Day. On the other hand, a Town lynch (which, except in situations where scum show a good amount of inaptitude, almost always happens on D1) means Town have one less player on D2.

The current rule allows scum to have the best of both worlds: They can off a Town player on D1 and leave no wagon to analyse for the next Day.

Normally on D1, scum have to balance between lynching a player while trying to stay of his/her wagon. With this set of rules, scum have to... well do nothing. They can do nothing and know that someone gets lynched anyway. They only have to make sure no 2 players get tied for first place, but that isn't all that difficult.

This thought came to me when I asked myself whether I should vote for scene? My response to myself was "I think scene looks like his normal Town self. Sure, his serious vote on Carradice for 'lurkiness' is bad but that not out of line with his usual self. Guess I'll vote for him to avoid a no-lynch though."
Then I realized there is no need to vote to avoid a no lynch here. Not in the usual meaning of the word. If he's leading, he gets lynched anyway, and if he's Town and his wagon is for example, trent+dedo+gogtrial, then we learned nothing D2, because those three votes don't give us any real info.

Yes, this rule is not good. It supposedly avoids a "bad for Town" no-lynch, but the alternative it gives is a no-wagon-lynch, which is even worse.

I'm going to place the non-voters (as of now: "Not voting: Flockeschnee, Carradice, GameRager, dedoporno, Microfish, gogtrial") under bigger scrutiny.