Harriet Slutter and the Philosopher's Balls: Chapter 6

[Nightshroud99]

Yes, I remember it well. You certainly spiced up the game, just didn't do it well for me. I was confused and angry at the town for not lynching the SK, and blindly following Belinda, and at Belinda for selling my role, but you did have probably the best ploy of all time. We've already discussed my issues with it and your attitude, but overall, great game, def.

I didn't sell your role, I slowly started to believe you were scum and didn't tell anyone who you were until the day of your lynch. Then you outed me in thread; and with your paltry defense I was even more sure you were indeed scum.

Your choice of targets wasn't bad at all. You could have played a pivotal role in the town block and, as fhomess suggested, you probably should have taken another night to sort out Pala's and Zepher's claims and perhaps should have realised they weren't conflicting at all given the town was up against the scum and a quite powerful SK. We thought you should have pushed for def's lynch on day 4, because there had to be a reason he was still alive. We found the Mentor (and Mentee) role on Mafiascum and we thought Dave was def's mentee and that def, the mentor, could recruit a new mentee after losing Dave (although it didn't explain why he tried so hard to save Dave). We considered posting about this, essentially suggesting def could recruit a new fellow SK and could continue killing, but we decided we'd be better off leaving def alive and letting the vig (known to us through our earlier role-cop result on Walter) take care of def. If we had lynched def, we'd be up against a watcher, vig, and two protectors that night, which would have significantly reduced our chances of successfully killing Walter that night. So, Zepher's bandwagon actually had almost all scum on it to make sure he got lynched and we were a bit worried town would notice when Zepher turned up town on day 5.

Zepher wanted me to lead a lynch on Drubulum, and Drubulum didn't seem concerned that there was another bodyguard claim. Neither of them, nor did I, think there could be two protectors. I should have trusted one of them more to help me think it through, but I was paranoid. I didn't know what to do really, or how to go an verify one or the other when I was only communicating with the both of them at that point. Having them both target Helena was pretty dumb, I'm not sure where my thought process was at. I also had varying levels of trust with Bark and Drub so I didn't tell them everything, and did lie a few times.

Belinda/nightshroud, I made a mistake by writing in a PM to you that "our" (meaning town) win condition was to "outnumber the scum and the neutrals". Did you notice that? Once I realised what I had done, I was sure my head would be on the chopping board.

I didn't see anything wrong with that, I'm not looking at the pm now but I imagine you just wanted to tell me that it was the towns job to get rid of those aforementioned teams. You did a very good job as scum.

I really liked this game, even with my blundering. At least I have some experience dealing with people behind the scenes. I loved the anonymity of the game, I hope more games do this in the future even if it is more work. Though, I don't think it's fair the scum knew who each other were, player-wise. (I think I read that somewhere here)

It's cool to find out that the scum already knew who the vigilante was, all that talking to Helena (who I had no idea was def) and the fruits of that labor disappeared so quickly. People were a bit harsh this game, it's because everyone was anonymous; but still there's no reason for that.

[Hinckley]

The Scum knew each other's real identities, not everyone else's. don't misunderstand that.

And why did we have so many lying townies? That only works in def's EB Mafia concept. Why lie with everyone spouting "Lynch All Liars"?

[TrumpetKing]

I don't know..... It was all of the lying that brought us down, unfortunately.

[Cecilie]

It's so hard to follow this thread now, because I can't remember who was who

[Hinckley]

Maybe everyone can keep their game avatars for a little while while we debrief.

[Rick]

But, and I say this in all seriousness, there would have been consequences for lynching me

We were wondering what you were up to for the first 24 hours, but it all made sense when you announced your hostage plans. It was a valid tactic to use. The town should have seen there was more to your plan than simply surviving. You would have been removed from the game if you couldn't win it anymore.

Ironically, you would have helped the town by outing the power roles and we voted for Zepher so we could relatively safely kill the vig that night and be down one protector. As Pandora already said, we wanted to keep the identity of the vig a secret because it would incriminate people in the town block if Walter got killed that night.

I want to say thank you again to Rick and Pandora. :wub: Hinckley referred to us in the dead board as "Scum School". It was very much like that for me and there were several times that I thought to myself that I shouldn't be asking for so much advice from them, as they certainly wouldn't have signed up to be anyone's teachers!

Once again, you did great and asking questions is the only way to learn. You're lucky to have played as both town and scum in your first two games.

[Walter Kovacs]

First, thank you Hinckley for hosting this wonderful game.

Congrats, Scummos. Several of you I had listed as scum, but I never had enough that I could lead a lynch with. Well done.

I don't remember saying anything that could hint at me being the Vig, but my memory is terrible, so I could have very well done that. At least this time I never claimed to a scum via PM, like I've done every other game I've played. That's progress, of a sort.

Def, I do feel bad that I backstabbed you by changing my vote, but I really didn't trust you. And after the Protector was outed, and Belinda was outed, I didn't see any reason to fear myself being outed as well. Turns out the scum already knew what I was, anyway. It was Mafia, and I felt it was the right thing to do. Too bad the town didn't follow me.

And someone has to say it.

We suck, Penises.

[def]

Def, I do feel bad that I backstabbed you by changing my vote, but I really didn't trust you. And after the Protector was outed, and Belinda was outed, I didn't see any reason to fear myself being outed as well. Turns out the scum already knew what I was, anyway. It was Mafia, and I felt it was the right thing to do. Too bad the town didn't follow me.

No worries. In the course of many games, I've played a number of roles. I always try to play from a point of rationality, but I can forget that other people play the same way too, which disappoints me, but given a few days time, the logic of it all washes over me.

If I was in your position, I probably would have done the same thing. As much as 'deals' are important, it was more important to take me out. I really wanted to help town to extend my game, but I couldn't be guaranteed to carry though. And I was already looking forward to backstabbing town on day six, to be honest.

I have had two games where I made town mistakes at the expense of other players (Gotham and Yakuza), and I know it is a frustrating position to be in.

But have no worry, the frustration I had with my backstabbing was gone within 48 hours. You're all good with me

[Rick]

Def, I do feel bad that I backstabbed you by changing my vote, but I really didn't trust you. And after the Protector was outed, and Belinda was outed, I didn't see any reason to fear myself being outed as well. Turns out the scum already knew what I was, anyway. It was Mafia, and I felt it was the right thing to do. Too bad the town didn't follow me.

We decided to role-cop you because you were relatively quiet, but still came across as a rather experienced/clever player. You also said you trusted some people, something Barty called you out for in thread. And you certainly caught our attention by leaving the vig's spell in one of your posts on day 4 (but that was after we had investigated you).

[mostlytechnic]

As a watcher, this was an enjoyable show :) As a noob Mafia player, I think i'd really like the anonymous playing since I don't have the history and knowledge to metagame much.

And I LOVED the hostage taking by Helena! I thought it was a brilliant move and was disappointed that not much town seemed to think she must have more happening or she wouldn't be fighting so hard.

Good job scum - I didn't have most of you picked out :)

[Hinckley]

I don't remember saying anything that could hint at me being the Vig, but my memory is terrible, so I could have very well done that.

Are you referring to my notes? I believe you did. I'll take a look. Nobody picked up on it. It probably blended in with everyone else's speculation about the killer. It was probably only obvious to me since I knew. Again, a lot of the notes I take are in the moment and don't have the benefit of the rest of the day/game to analyze one move by.

It was this post:

Why would the Vig take out Flabflom because he made a mistake and edited a post? The Vig should be focusing on taking out scum and/or neutrals, not punishing stupid Townies. I'd like to give our Vig more credit than that.

...blared vig to me...

[fhomess]

Ok, as promised, here's my more detailed commentary. Hinck, comments about game balance are intended as observations rather than criticism and I'm well aware that games can be rather swingy depending on how people end up playing. This was my first Hinck game, too.

Game Setup

I think the scum team had a very powerful array of tools at their disposal. Scum role cops are every bit as powerful to a scum team as a town cop. Bus drivers are more powerful than scum protectors since they redirect all actions instead of just defending against kills. Add traditional godfather and blocker roles and this was a strong team. I would argue that their 7th role was Scum Analyst. A non-playing contributor who can advise, and that was the duality of Rick/Pandora. Looking at the team, though, this was a strong group top to bottom, so it's not surprising they did well. Their night action choices early on were ruthlessly effective.

As for scum knowing the real identities, I don't think it made a big difference, although I do think it was against the spirit of the game's anonymous player identities. I'm sure it affected how they communicated somewhat with each other on the scum writeboard. Knowing identities does change the way you interact with people just like knowing the label on a bottle changes the way you feel about a product.

The SK setup was pretty cool, and certainly something I didn't expect. The fact that it was, in effect, a weakened SK, led me to believe that dual town protectors would be LESS likely, not more.

I've been trying to figure out how useful the Lover Recruiter or 1-shot Coroner is to town. The lover recruiter is, I guess, slightly more powerful than traditional lovers as they can choose not to engage in the role or hope to target a non-townie and take someone else down with them. Darth Potato didn't get much chance to think about it, though.

As for the coroner, finding out a player's role after their dead is interesting but I don't see how helpful it was in this game. It wasn't used, but it seems most useful in figuring out which scum role was lost when a scum player dies, and if you can pass on scum roles, that doesn't help in the future. I guess the best time to use it would have been on Barky the night after his lynch. That might've saved Drub? I don't know.

I liked the Gladiator role, and would love to see it used again in a future game where it can make it to a later day.

The rest of the town PR's were mostly standard fare. The Investigator being of the flavor that he was meant that it wasn't really safe to approach townies he investigated. Cornelius/Boris got a result of "Not Odor Eater" on me the first night, and I never heard about it till the end of the game. Obviously, getting role copped night 1 and killed night 2 helps prevent that.

I really liked the anonymous style, although I don't necessarily prefer it to using our standard accounts. I would think that occasionally using aliases to play with is fun given that a lot of us know each other's play style, but I wouldn't want to see every game go this route. Maybe 1 in 4 or 5. There's an element of fun in playing the metagamey way, too.

I tried not to think too much about who was who, although there were times when someone would post something and I'd briefly wonder if they were a certain player. One name that popped into my head was Waterbrick Down, which shows how much attention I really paid to signups as he wasn't in this one!

As for the bodyguard/protector combo - no I didn't go back to look at previous Hinck games to see. I hadn't played in a Hinck game until now, and I wouldn't have trusted a host to be consistent in this regard anyway. Metagaming players and metagaming hosts doesn't always lead to the right answers. I was correct that Hinck didn't give us two identical roles on the same team, though.

Character/Gameplay Observations

Tammo/Orion - I really had you pegged as scum by the end of the game, and while I was wrong on it, I'm also glad about it in another sense. It has struck me that ever since Jedi Temple I've noticed that I find your scummy in just about every game. It's actually been a bit frustrating to me because I don't want to think that I'm still letting that experience color my view of your playing. This game, not knowing that you were Orion, makes me feel much better. You simply play scummy in my mind, and it's not strictly because I know it's you.

Def/Helena - I didn't have any problem with your choice of holding the town hostage. I was a bit surprised that you didn't try to let Pink get lynched and then try to survive the rest of the game without her, but seeing that you had "twin sister" in your role description, it's easy to understand why you thought you'd die with her. Why did you bother with waiting the 24 hours? Was that just for dramatic effect? It certainly didn't convince me to want to let you live.

Dave/Purplonia - When I reread one of the days, I think it was Day 3, and saw that you had called someone out for using "They" to refer to the Vig rather than "He/She", I thought that was pretty funny with the hindsight of you being paired with Def.

Zepher wanted me to lead a lynch on Drubulum, and Drubulum didn't seem concerned that there was another bodyguard claim.

I still don't understand this. Did Zepher/Barky actually claim bodyguard, or did you just interpret them as being the same? You had some rather specific detail to what you told me in PM such as him being a bodyguard with 50% chance of surviving. Did you just get the PM's from Barky and Panck mixed up in your head?

Def, I do feel bad that I backstabbed you by changing my vote, but I really didn't trust you. And after the Protector was outed, and Belinda was outed, I didn't see any reason to fear myself being outed as well. Turns out the scum already knew what I was, anyway. It was Mafia, and I felt it was the right thing to do. Too bad the town didn't follow me.

You did the right thing!

Zepher claimed he was a regular doctor towards the end of day 4 and we were amazed that no one brought it up anymore on day 5 and happily voted off Pala. We even asked Peanuts to vote for Nightshroud to try and set him up as the alternative lynch, so we wouldn't stand out too much.

I really felt like changing my day 5 vote to Lulu for this, but in the end figured we had to deal with the Panck vs. Firuz issue at some point, and I didn't see how we were going to get more information to resolve it in future days.

By the end of Day 4, I was pretty sure that all of the scum were on the Barky bandwagon, with possibly Gertrude or Timly as a scum. A bit into day 4, I decided Gertrude was town and that Timly was the only possible scum there. That didn't ultimately help in the end, but at least I didn't have anyone firmly in my Town camp that was scum except Firuz, who was only there because I had misunderstood Barky to have an identical claim as Panck.

It never really dawned on me that the scum might've discovered Looney was the Vig by role cop. I was convinced that Helena was going to work with the scum because we needed to kill her and they didn't. On Day 5, I made a point of not letting people know that I knew Looney was the Vig because I thought it might swing people to try to lynch me. Scuba/Ariattny made a strong point of saying to me on Day 5 that he found Firuz to be more likely to be scum than Panck, so props to him on that.

It was pointless to suggest on Day 5, but I did wonder what else I might have done to try to convince townies to take their vote off Barky and put them back on Helena. One thing that came to mind was to have Barky and Panck protect Belinda and Looney. I figured the scum already knew Looney's identity at that point (I was right, but for the wrong reason), so I figured if both protectors had protected the two remaining town roles we knew of, then it would have been likely that one of them would've been the scum target and they'd either all survive the night or one of them would be killed and we'd know who failed. Of course, a blocker/killer combo would've easily solved that issue, but we'd have lost townies a bit slower that way. I still don't understand why townies chose an uncertain lynch over a certain one.

In the end, I think Days 1 and 2 were doomed to the flailing of panicky townies and scum taking advantage of that. Day 3 was where we started to make some progress but were tricked by Def. To that point, the scum night actions had all done REALLY well for them, and I think it would've taken quite a bit for us to have recovered. By the end of Day 4, we were essentially done for. I think we could've recovered, and convinced myself to believe it was possible, but given we had so little to work with and the scum were so far ahead, the chances of us getting beyond a successful scum lynch or two were pretty slim.

Votes for Scum:

Day 1: Helena, Barky for Lulu (both unvoted)

Day 1: Dillpickle for Bart Bearbutt (unvoted)

Day 2: Barky for Rutherford

Day 2: Twatty for Firuz (unvoted)

Day 2: Helena for Timly (unvoted)

Day 3: Dillpickle, Orion for Langston (both unvoted)

Day 4: Twatty for Bart Bearbutt (unvoted)

Day 5: Panck for Firuz

177 votes were cast during this game and we had a total of 10 votes go towards Odor Eaters! That's less than 6%. Of course, only 1% of those made it through to the end of the day in which they were cast, and one of those was Panck's on the last day. Bah!

[Rick]

I really felt like changing my day 5 vote to Lulu for this, but in the end figured we had to deal with the Panck vs. Firuz issue at some point, and I didn't see how we were going to get more information to resolve it in future days.

We were hoping it'd make Pala look more scummy with Peanuts "defending" him like that.

[Hinckley]

Awesome analysis! Thanks for putting in the time to do that. I will respond to a lot of that when I get the time to do the individual player analysis.

[Walter Kovacs]

It was this post:

[snip]

...blared vig to me...

Ah, I do remember writing that. I felt at the time that it blended into all the other "The Vig should have killed .../ The Vig shouldn't have killed..." talk that was going on.

[def]

Fhomess, I was waiting partially for effect, but first and foremost, I needed to send PMs to those three PRs and figure out my place. But my plan was pretty much set.

I agree with much of your analysis, particularly with the scum role cop. Personally, I think it's too powerful a role for scum, giving them a leg up well beyond having a leg up already. I think this scum team would have won anyway, but that role made them that much more effective with their roles.

Town, sorry I voted for scum way more than you did

[Kadabra]

Grrrr. I'm a bitch.

The first thing I want to do is apologize to def and Esurient for being mean to them, I got carried away by the anonymity and turned "focusing on a target" into "douchery".mI also think that I was a little closed-minded throughout the whole thing, and if I hadn't dismissed Langston or Firuz as just noobs or inactive townies and actually analyzed their posting and voting, I would have played a lot better. I am definitely proud of myself for picking up on Purplonia, though. First not-Town I've ever gotten in a Mafia game, woot! (Still no scum, though. ) thanks to Hinckley for hosting this, it was great! I loved the anonymous accounts, although I feel that they did contribute to our general bad attitude, the prevention of meta gaming was cool and we really had to scum hunt and analyze. Just too bad none of us were any good at it. One day I will be on a winning team. One day.

[def]

I had no idea what Dave was doing in thread. Normally he is a clear townie in thread, so I kept telling him, "Do that!" He was quite the accusation magnet.

And no worries, Kadabra. At this point, any apologies should be aimed at Hinckley, not me. I'm sure it was more distressing to him as a host than it was to me as a player.

[Esurient]

@kadabra no worries. None taken personally.

I did suspect peanuts at one point after a few exchanges over pm. I hinted to def (I thought he was Town then)but I guess given my in thread 'activity', I wouldn't expect anyone to follow up on that.

Edited May 14, 2013 by Esurient

[Palathadric]

I have so much to say about this game, but I've been so busy lately and my mind is really scattered. It was a great game, Hinckley. Really it was. I think the idea of nobody knowing who anyone else done made it a whole lot more fun, although to a certain extent more difficult for town.

Wow! I'm so embarrassed, I never realized that I had been redirected from Gertrude to Helena. I don't know what I was thinking.

Hinckley, you said on Night Three that you were expecting me to change my target. Why were you expecting that? ...Just wondering.

I think there were a couple things that made me really suspicious of Barkonius. One was that just the day before a couple of people by PM mentioned that he was scummy and stuff. I would've understood a second doctor claim, but a second bodyguard didn't seem to make so much sense to me. I still wanted to lean towards caution and I think I even mentioned to Nightshroud (or was it someone else?) that it would probably be safer to lynch the one-shot useless protector than the bodyguard. Then I heard that Barkonius was claiming a bodyguard role that had 50% chance of surviving when protected an attacked person. This claim seemed a bit too convenient for me. Still I thought it wise to poke around, in the thread somewhat cautiously. I thought Barkonius' response was pretty scummy so it seemed he was the right choice.

In hindsight, it probably would have been better to lynch Helena, but I think at the stage of the game lynching neutral was simply not good enough in my mind because we first had to stop scum from winning. Furthermore, I kind of didn't think that Helena would target me, Belinda, or the vig, so I thought in that case there was good chances she would get scum if she did have a killing action, which I didn't think she had.

I thought this post: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=82235entry1588130

should have helped to clarify matters enough. I guess I could've linked to Barkonius' post.

I had compiled lists similar to the one I made against Ariattny, but I lost them all except for that one as I was working on them. I tried to get my mind together and remember what my conclusions were for that post I made at the end, but these past two weeks have been really hectic for me.

I think one of town's problems was that there was too much mistrust among us. Obviously Belinda had issues trust me and Barkonius. I was unsure about her myself, because she seemed like a real townie to me, but then some of what she said seemed kind of off, so I was unsure.

I would once again like to apologize for breaking the rules on Day 2, but I wonder how that would have confirmed me or the others as being town. The scum could have done the same thing against a townie, no?

I still have the hardest time understanding what Wong was trying to tell me and the rest of us by PM on Day 2. I was so certain that lynch would be right.

Was anybody shocked that I was Twatty? Did anybody have me pinned as someone else?

I don't think so, Twatty was obviously you. I had you pinned as Twatty before the game even started, and I wasn't even trying to find out who was who.

It wasn't a bluff! I really knew what I said I did, and was holding you hostage! The only reason I pulled it back (in private) was that I would have felt bad shafting Belinda and Looney. The rest of the town were being total dicks, but those two were being very rational with me, so I told Belinda I'd only reveal Drub

Was I being a dick? If so, I didn't mean to be. Day 4 kind of ruined the game for me with all the shouting and arguing. I found it very difficult to focus on anything, which is not good, because those are the times when one can actually catch the scum the most easily.

[TrumpetKing]

Palathadric, was it something I said, or just the way I posted, or what? Could you help me out? I certainly didn't expect you to be Drubulum, though.

[Hinckley]

Hinckley, you said on Night Three that you were expecting me to change my target. Why were you expecting that? ...Just wondering.

Because I'm a sick individual and I was so excited that Scum thought Dave was the vig and they were risking killing that I was terrified that you would hook up with Dave and def and end up protecting him. Not that I wanted Dave dead, I just wanted to see the interesting game that would follow once he was exposed as a 3rd Party. So I, a grown man, obsessively hit refresh on my browser, while at work, to see if you were online. And I stalked you and Dave and found your alter egos both in Private Messenger at the same time, like three times! I am a mentally unhealthy person. But, I really thought that def and Dave had positioned themselves so well that a Town block could be forming around them and that they would find the two protectors and keep themselves from getting killed. And as a host, I couldn't wait to see the whole thing unfold if Dave was the kill target. So... I probably should've edited that note out.

I thought this post: http://www.eurobrick...5

should have helped to clarify matters enough. I guess I could've linked to Barkonius' post.

I'll give full player analysis soon, I swear it, but I have to respond to this. Yes, that post should have cleared it up, but didn't you see all the votes for you citing two identical bodyguard claims? When four or five people said they were voting for you because there wouldn't be two identical bodyguards, it was your job to re-iterate the claims.

And, Town, since you lynched Barkonius/Zepher under the policy of "Lynch All Liars" for pretending to be a bodyguard at first, didn't his Town corpse prove he wasn't lying. The lie was that he was a bodyguard. So, the truth was that he was a protector. So, Drubulum, the real bodyguard, wasn't making an identical claim. His claim watched Barkonius's lie.

I can't wait to have the time to finish this player analysis...

[Palathadric]

Palathadric, was it something I said, or just the way I posted, or what? Could you help me out? I certainly didn't expect you to be Drubulum, though.

The way you posted, I think. I don't know, but I would have been very surprised if anyone didn't think you were Twatty.

Odd thing, I realized that I wasn't in communication with any of the scum by PM, don't know how that happened.

[DarthPotato]

Trumpet, I sort of had a feeling it could be you just by reading the confirmation thread. I guess it was your crazy disease names that gave you away. Although as the game began I sort of shook the thought off and didn't really consider you to be Twatty again. But when the conclusion came up I wasn't too surprised.

I still have the hardest time understanding what Wong was trying to tell me and the rest of us by PM on Day 2. I was so certain that lynch would be right.

Yeah, I was disappointed that we were wrong too. I was sort of sketchy about the Wong lynch at first but after what happened behind the scenes I was sure of it. If I wasn't killed that following night I'd probably have a lot of explaining to do the next day.

[TrumpetKing]

Oh, that make sense. May I also ask how they gave me away? I do tend to be pretty extravagant in the confirmation threads...