Elements Mafia 59 - by RootRanger

[RootRanger]

I'm posting this right now because I won't be online right at the sign-up deadline, but players technically still have a little bit of time to sign up.

With 22 players, there will be 4 Inner Party members (mafia): Big Brother, O'Brien, Charrington, and a Vanilla Inner Party. These players will be given their own titanpad which they may use to communicate amongst themselves - this is the only form of out-of-thread communication aside from the Secret Notes.

There will be 3 Primary Brotherhood members (civilians): Goldstein, Winston, and Julia.

The remaining players, a total of 15 unless we have another sign-up, will be Vanilla Brotherhood members (civilians).

There will be a total of 12 items - 2 each of Telescreen, Propaganda, Victory Gin, Victory Cigarette, Secret Note, and Diary.

Roles will (hopefully) be distributed within 7 hours. If there is a delay, I will inform you.

[Sera]

To prevent confusion for everyone, note that I changed my name from Puff to Sera.

[RootRanger]

All roles have been handed out. Iff you have an item, it is specified in the PM.

Remember, if someone other than myself contacts you through PM regarding this mafia, please forward it to myself immediately. This is especially applicable if you are dealing with CrockettRocket - you must be ever-vigilant against his shady tricks.

Also, remember that posting (in this thread) during both the night and day phase is allowed.

Without further ado, Night 1 is begun. There is no voting in this phase, but abilities and items may be used by sending a PM to myself.

The time is extended because I certainly do not want to update every round at 3am.

[RootRanger]

Apparently this wasn't made clear -- you're welcome to ask me questions about the rules through PM. I don't see why people think this isn't allowed.

[Demagog]

I'll likely be nightkilled first so I'll post this now before that happens.

Ok, here is a strategy we can use to "abuse" the lynch priority rule in the game. We should decide if we want to use it or not. I think it will let end in a civilian win if we use it, but I may be missing some things and be incorrect. Bad luck on what items the mafia gets could mess this up too, and it isn't foolproof; it's just a good strategy, in my opinion.

How it works is this: there are 22 players, so there will be 4 mafia members. This means the game is unwinnable if no mafia is killed there are only 4 civs left. So we have like 6 or 7 rounds of safety. We randomly choose 5 people at the start of the game, and we will only vote on those people. Since we are choosing a number of people that is higher than the ratio of mafia:civs, chances are good that one of these players is mafia. Not 100%, but it's a decent chance. We then tie the votes between these players each round, until they have all been lynched. As long as average luck occurs, one mafia member would die.

The benefit this strategy has is that it means we are unlikely to lynch special civilian roles early on. With average luck, 0 or 1 of the special civilian roles will be in these 5 people that were randomly chosen. This gives the detective (Winston) role more time to discover identities, and the doctor (Hide) role better odds of saving someone. Since we know that the 5 randomly chosen people will be lynched, using items and abilities on them is pointless unless someone is trying to save them from being lynched. The mafia won't night kill these players, as it speeds up the process of the civilians finding their members.

Once the five players have been lynched, the detective can hopefully clear the names of several people, as long as the detective role wasn't night killed early. The doctor can then protect the detective if he is also alive. With 8 civs and 4 mafia members left (assuming the worst luck), chances are good that the allied civilians will be able to take the game by resuming normal lynching.

Not sure there is much else to it. It's a very different strategy, and I guess it might suck for the 5 randomly chosen people, but I think it's a solid plan that will win the game.

Any and all thoughts are appreciated, and I would advise holding off on voting until we come to a consensus. If it is generally agreed that it will result in a civilian win, those that say we shouldn't use the strategy should be looked at with a critical eye.

[Espithel]

I'll likely be nightkilled first so I'll post this now before that happens.

Okay, I have to ask about this.

Why do you keep bringing attention to your heritage? You're literally saying "Hey, I'm experienced, hurt me!" and that just feels really off.
Like, surely if you were worried about dying in the first night repeatedly for your expertise, you wouldn't bring light to it? It's been like... Well, you weren't here when I started doing mafia around here, about two years ago, so a good chunk of us don't know who you are.
You've been doing it since you returned, so I suppose it's not out of character, but... Ergf. Rubs me in a bad way.

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Onto actual objective discussion, your stratagem seems to float as far as I can see, so I'll support it, but it does seem quite generic.

If it does work, I find it curious why it'd be unorthodox; Why wouldn't people use it more often if it is effective? I doubt that this is the first time someone's come up with the idea before, it seems to have no massive drawback to doing, and I don't see anything special about it that can't be used in other mafia setups.

You could make the argument that it works in more vanilla setups because no role is strictly worse than a role, but the point of picking five people at random is to limit us from killing the good roles, not the roles. They just happen to be one and the same this setup.

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The next thing to discuss is what we're going to do in regards to Winston, more namely the most optimal method for using his ability. Goldstein's just a case of save whoever you think is going to die tonight if they're vaguely important, And Julia isn't useful until either one dies.

Root forcing all discussion to the thread stifles the idea of civvy central - unless winston gets a secret note, or secret noted, which I don't want to bet on. And honestly, that's a good thing; it means you people have to actually do stuff. e.e

What would be the best course of action, if any, for our cop?

[CleanOnion]

I agree with Espithel - Demagog, you're basically saying "I'm better than you" despite having essentially just turned up (from us relative noobs' perspective, at least). Which, in your defence, is a good strategy for getting killed n1.

The main problem I see with the "average luck" idea is the chance that our randomly picked people are Brotherhood Specials eg Winston. Or we pick 5 Brotherhood Vanillas and basically waste all of our lynches. We don't really have a way of coordinating that without the Inner Party knowing it, unless Winston steps up and organises it of his own accord. Anonymously. With none of us believing that he is actually Winston. 

Having said that I'm not totally disinclined to the idea. 

[Sera]

Wouldn't it generate less discussion if our lynches are already set? We'd have to rely on a wilson that's not going to be able to communicate safely.

[Sera]

Wilson, winston, same thing. Also just noting that this is not disagreement but inquiry.

[Espithel]

Wouldn't it generate less discussion if our lynches are already set? We'd have to rely on a wilson that's not going to be able to communicate safely.

That's really dependant on how much discussion we're going to have in the first place, although a good point.

If it's anything typical of previous mafias, we can't generate less discussion than no discussion at all.

[Demagog]

I have very good reasons for claiming that I will likely be lynched first, and it's part of my personal strategy. I do it every game, so don't take it personally.

The whole point of this strategy is to abuse the lynch priority rule which, as far as I know, is a new rule only used in this game of mafia. It will ensure that we don't accidentally lynch a good civ role before at least the 3rd round, and if that does somehow happen, it's either from item usage or we got very lucky and multiple mafia members are in the 5 people.

I will elaborate more and answer questions during my lunch break later today.

[rob77dp]

Re: Demagog's 'plan'/ideas:

Here's is my nomination of 5 randomized players to put into Dema's system (in order of randomization -- why not use that order for lynch order too?):

• CR
• Espi
• Solaris / MMC
• sky
• Cal

Thoughts/reactions/ideas/comments? (Keep in mind one of us civvies is going to be dead in < 24 hrs at the end of this night phase so I think it behooves civilians to have a plan in place before that time comes.)