Pick Your Poison Mafia (Day 2)

[Makhaira]

To booms question, I dont see any reason to give town a doctor over a weak doctor as weak doctor seems to only be a strictly worse version of doctor, so that would be pick one. If masonizer dies when targeting non-town roles Id probably pick that too but thats kind of like a higher risk but higher reward cop, so it would be one of those two depending on how confident I was that I could draw a mason target or dodge a cop investigation respectively.

Allowing two docs in gane creates a possibly unwinnable situation for scum if they both claim and protect each other so thats super no bueno imo from a scum perspective and would not want that. So probably would go with Cop as 3rd pick. Vigilante on the wrong player slot is a huge existential risk to a 2 man scum team and can really throw off endgame calculations


So yeah my final picks would prob be masonizer, cop, weak doc, and then hope my team atleast gets a godfather or roleblocker atleast for some counterplay

[EGW]

Votecount 0.3

2-shot Roleblocker: Fred
Day Rolecop: Moody
Vengeful Mafiate
1-shot Janitor
Godfather: Moody, Fred

Not voting:
Boomfrog, Wam, Swiss, Mak, Heury, Seven, JC, Fonti, Bessie, Sabrar

Important Links:
Game links and Vote Counts

Notes:
Setup has been posted here for convenience.

With 12 players, it takes 7 votes to lock in a Mafia Perk. Two perks can be chosen.
The deadline for Day 0 is December 2nd, at 9:00AM EST, or when all mafia roles are locked in.

[Wam]

My answer depends on who the scum team are.

If its a steong scum team and can generally appear town as scum I would go for the vig/mason/weak doc combination and hope the weak doc and Mason target scum and take themselves out and the vig hammwrs town.

If the team is weaker and generally appears more suspicious I would go down the vig/doc/masoniser route.

[boomfrog]

I like cookies.

Do mafia have day chat?

[boomfrog]

My answer depends on who the scum team are.

If its a steong scum team and can generally appear town as scum I would go for the vig/mason/weak doc combination and hope the weak doc and Mason target scum and take themselves out and the vig hammwrs town.

If the team is weaker and generally appears more suspicious I would go down the vig/doc/masoniser route.

Your weak team picks are the same as your strong picks? Or you really mean normal doc for a weak scum team?

[boomfrog]

Also, sabrar, Seven, swiss, fonti no comments about people's answers yet either.

(In going to start referring to you as the S- team. Sorry Fonti, your name is Sonti now. )

[EGW]

Do mafia have day chat?

Affirmative.

[Wam]

My answer depends on who the scum team are.

If its a steong scum team and can generally appear town as scum I would go for the vig/mason/weak doc combination and hope the weak doc and Mason target scum and take themselves out and the vig hammwrs town.

If the team is weaker and generally appears more suspicious I would go down the vig/doc/masoniser route.

Your weak team picks are the same as your strong picks? Or you really mean normal doc for a weak scum team?

Normal doc so the doc doesn't get clears.

[fontisian]

Also, sabrar, Seven, swiss, fonti no comments about people's answers yet either.

(In going to start referring to you as the S- team. Sorry Fonti, your name is Sonti now. )

Hey now, I have self control.

[AdumbroDeus]

Madge replaces heuristically_alone

[boomfrog]

S team can talk about other stuff. I didn't intend to murder the thread.

[boomfrog]

Madge replaces heuristically_alone

I'm so sorry for your loss madge, but at least this starts with power analysis.

[moody7277]

Roleblocker is bad because of our information powers possibly being shut down, and two chances at it is worse
Rolecop is not as bad because scum already know what powers town has, so it's only a matter of seeing who got what for them
I don't have enough info on vengful mafiate to give a good opinion, based on the name it would be that scum has a kill upon being elimed?
Janitor is the devil
Godfather I feel comfortable we can work around with interaction analysis

Madge replaces heuristically_alone

As much as Madge hates D1, I can't wait to hear her feelings about D0.

W. Doc/Vig/Mason sounds like scum's best choice due to excluding the most powerful choices.

[bessie]

Woof! I’m here! Sorry for not posting yesterday. I got home from work and was going to play Kingdom Eighties for a half an hour and then dedicate the remainder of my evening to mafia, but I had to unexpectedly go out and I was tired and forgot when I got home.

Daily bark!

On a more serious note I'm very much against giving scum Janitor, the rest we can talk about.

Ok, I’ve read through the first couple pages and I don’t get what’s so great about the janitor. It appears there are no indies in the game, and no town or mafia roles that don’t flip as part of an ability. If a player flips without an alignment reveal, can’t we just assume they are town?

11. bessie
I quote "Swiss, If fonti was our leader, you were our mastermind. You played an excellent game, all your reads were correct. I am sorry that I didn't deliver for you in the end, perhaps next time. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit."
Seems I haven't lost my touch. Though I truly have no memory of returning in 2021.
Breakdown every player in depth for me, please. I know I can count on detail from you.

This won’t be in depth because I want to bark through all 4 pages of content tonight. Here’s my off-the-cuff gut feelings about each. Will expand on anyone upon request, or as time permits.


bessie – The puppiest puppy in puppyland. Notoriously townie meta. On the old xkcd site she was impossible to vote off because of her towniness. Decent player. Does not play during working hours or from phone, with special exception that she will try to be on near deadline. Does not do behavior-type reads.

BoomFrog – bessie’s unrequitted love from afar <3. Intelligent, cunning, aggressive, crafty, everything you want in a mafia player. Plays similarly as town or scum, which is to play as scummy as possible without being scum read.

fonti – One of the strongest players with whom I have played mafia. Excellent as any alignment. My sentiments here:

Going through the barklog, starting at Page 9.

@Anyone: who is Fonti and what's his scum game like? Is he considered a strong scum player?

I don’t have a lot of experience playing anywhere but xkcd (and Smashboards, after we lost our original forum and Ranmaru invited us to play there), but fontisian is one of the best players I know. Her wolf game is unbelievably sharp, see Things I Like Mafia on Smashboards (I’m Synchronicity hydra with Seven). And she’s fun I remember telling Seven: I’m sad because I don’t think I’m BoomFrog’s favorite person to play with anymore.

Fred – New to mafia. I have high hopes for him, because his early games indicate that he is good at analysis. I also think that his alignment will be easy to deduce as the game progresses.

Heury – One of the most pleasant people to play with. He is good natured with no fits, name calling, or raging at others. He is townie as scum and scummy as town.

Pre post edit:
Madge – My arch-nemesis. We are so completely opposite in our playstyles that I scum read and tunnel her every game. Madge can be extremely analytical and post good analysis if she has time. If she doesn’t have time, she is unapologetic about not reading every post and will sheep someone she trusts or vote how she feels. This irritates me to no end. I love her dearly.

JC – I have only played one game with him, but I find him a good player with good instincts, and am happy he joined our community.

Makharia – Mak is FrozenFlame. He’s an excellent player as any alignment but is often behind because he is busy IRL. I very much like his style.

moody – His style is very low key consistent as any alignment, and his dry wit is like mine. He has a scummy meta and tends to get eliminated early because of it. But his meta is deceptive because he is an excellent player and if he is town and makes it to end game he will provide valuable analysis. He also tends to use night actions well.

Sabrar – My best mafia bud ever. He was considered one of, if not the best player on the old xkcd site. Analytical, intelligent, computer-for-brain, we usually depend on him to crunch the numbers. I have argued longer and harder with him than with any other player, including plytho. And I cherish every argument because he is my favorite person with whom to play.

Seven – Seven is Xivii/Zen. An amalgamation of everyone with whom I have ever played since he likes to adopt different styles for different games. Everything I have said about everyone else applies to him too. He is most like BoomFrog. I would fear him if I wasn’t me.

Swiss – A fellow Labrador Retriever. Enough said.

Wam – Wam was the IC player in my first game ever (Matrix6 Newbie), if I remember correctly. He is outstanding and very clever as scum and not afraid to take risks. I was scum with him once and he had no problems fake claiming and bussing if necessary. I think we won that game. Good town player but will often fall behind because he is busy IRL.

I know I remember your name, but not much about you. Can I trust your reads today?

Noting this for reasons.

@bessie: If you have Unmafia archived, that would be the stuff of nightmares re Janitor.

I don’t need the archive it’s on the Wayback Machine!
https://web.archive.org/web/20170802171 ... f6920311a0
One of my first games, I was in a 3-way gunfight at the end and chose wrong. A habit I have yet to break.

And I don’t agree about the janitor, but I am waiting for Sabrar to explain to me where I am wrong.

Best scum buddy is Fonti.

Yes, I know (see fonti quote above). Sigh.

sad bessie.PNG (86.85 KiB) Viewed 744451 times

viewtopic.php?p=56789#p56789
Will respond to this post by Seven later. I’m trying to bark up before dinner.

Loving Seven's analysis despite the MBTI stuff thrown in.

Exactly the reaction I would expect from an ISTJ.

You have a thread where you post spoilered thoughts on the game.

Isn't that a huge cheating risk? Even accidentally, if it pops up with a search.

I'm going to set a reminder for a few weeks from now to find a better way to do that, if that's OK with you all.

.

It is insanity and I am staying away from it.
They should make a discord room and not invite active players.

I understand your concern and caution. I would like to discuss this post-game, after you both have had an opportunity to experience the magic of the Gojoe thread. Reading it on the old form was what persuaded many of us to start playing.

It was heavily used on the old xkcd forum and I do not remember any cheating allegations because of it (there may have been before my time). Few accidents did happen when a player had to sub out due to reading a spoiler but the entertainment it provided was far more beneficial.

There was only one during my time, which sucked because the setup was very clever. And it was by a new player, and I think new to the forum.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170609154 ... &start=360

Were those MBTI types guesses? Because I consistently get ENTP on those quizzes with I/E and P/J being very borderline and could go the other way (like 55/45), so that was an impressive guess if it was in fact a guess as Im not sure if I ever discussed MBTI type stuff on smashboards, here, or in the discord

You are so totally an NT.


Well that was two hours. I gotta feed my dog. More later.

[Seven]

That is a very accurate set of data and I think @seven has all the ones I know right.

Am I only at 0.3/day? Would have guessed at it being much higher and each post being much shorter....

Do we need anymore discussion or shall we start getting perk votes locked in?

You're right, my assessment is outdated. For the record, the post averages aren't actual data, just my personal impression of how frequently people posts. I realize now that my impression of yours stems from the first couple of games we played together. You were afk for days and then had a burst of catchup posts. My impression of length also stemmed from the physical post length rather than the word count. In your catchup posts, I believe you had running read lists that extended the length.

Here's your actual post averages from one of your more recent games, Songs of Our Time (Nov. 2021).

Day 1: 2.7 posts/day
Day 2: 3.0 posts/day
Day 3: 9.6 posts/day
Day 4: 4.5 posts/day

(days as in irl days)

The bolded are what stick out. The hedging does not align with my model of Sabrar. I think he most certainly is capable of a stronger analysis than this.

We are not operating in a vacuum. The best choice heavily depends on what scum selected, I thought I made that clear.

This is what I'm getting at. It's possible, and I think straightforward for someone with your know-how, to determine the optimal choices given that town doesn't know what scum chose.

...

You have a thread where you post spoilered thoughts on the game.

Isn't that a huge cheating risk? Even accidentally, if it pops up with a search.

I'm going to set a reminder for a few weeks from now to find a better way to do that, if that's OK with you all.

This is how all of us who joined the forum reacted, but it's grown on me. There are of course more secure ways to have personal journals, but it's not as charming. For a small forum in the middle of nowhere where new players only trickle in here and there, cheating isn't a great concern. Misclicking spoilers is a risk, however, and as Boom mentioned it's happened a few times over xkcd mafia's long history (in which case, you would PM the mod that you have to replace..oh heury). I recommend giving it a shot this game, it's actually really fun and finally getting to read them when you're out of the game makes for a nice little reward.

It would be advantegous if everybody could express at least some sort of opinion about each choice and not limiting themselves to one or two.

Y'all aren't thinking about combos enough. Some roles synergize with each other, some don't.

Roleblocker and role cop work together because they offer scum combined utility in identifying and neutering prs.

Roleblocker and vengeful are bad in a weak doc/vig Mylo d2 world, because roleblocker can be used on the doc or vig and vengeful would tighten the already tight numbers.

Godfather and jailer are bad together because they both undermine information that would otherwise be confirmed.

Godfather is bad in general because were guaranteed to have some sort of info role (a well played weak doc is a powerful info role, cop and masonizer are info roles, we'll have 1 to 3 of them in the game).

I think vengeful and jailor are the best play in most worlds, because of the way scum behavior has to shift around a vengeful mafia.

To me, the roleblock-rolecop combo isn't as impactful as [GF + anything] or [Janitor + anything]. We have 3 PRs, while they'd only have 2 RBs for the entire game. You make an interesting point about vengeful though. I could be swayed to vote that over RB or RC. I think I like RB + Veng.

No way. Tab + Spacebar POSTS? I'm sorry for the spam. What a crazy keybind. Who the fuck needs that.

You're tabbing into the post button haha.

Swiss I am frozenflame as seven covered in impressive detail

Were those MBTI types guesses? Because I consistently get ENTP on those quizzes with I/E and P/J being very borderline and could go the other way (like 55/45), so that was an impressive guess if it was in fact a guess as Im not sure if I ever discussed MBTI type stuff on smashboards, here, or in the discord

Bessie and I discuss it extensively and have a running spreadsheet of our conclusions on people in our community. I think you did one of the tests for me before though.

My first impression was that two shot roleblocker and godfather are the best roles to give scum because roleblocked is shooting in the dark unless we claim and godfather is entirely passive and just need to be taken into account when we parse investigation results. Given scum roleblocker with role cope is a huge mistake though as those roles synergize perfectly. So my current inclination is to vote godfather/2 shot RB but Im open to other ideas. Im not sure I entitely understand vengeful mafia though if someone is willing to explain that in greater detail

Reading over Godfather, it's even stronger than I thought. It affects the actions of 4 of the 5 PRs.

Regarding your last question: If vengeful mafia is yeeted, scum get an extra night kill in the coming night.

My answer depends on who the scum team are.

If its a steong scum team and can generally appear town as scum I would go for the vig/mason/weak doc combination and hope the weak doc and Mason target scum and take themselves out and the vig hammwrs town.

If the team is weaker and generally appears more suspicious I would go down the vig/doc/masoniser route.

[redacted per Boom's instructions]

Madge replaces heuristically_alone

Welcome!

Roleblocker is bad because of our information powers possibly being shut down, and two chances at it is worse
Rolecop is not as bad because scum already know what powers town has, so it's only a matter of seeing who got what for them
I don't have enough info on vengful mafiate to give a good opinion, based on the name it would be that scum has a kill upon being elimed?
Janitor is the devil
Godfather I feel comfortable we can work around with interaction analysis

Madge replaces heuristically_alone

As much as Madge hates D1, I can't wait to hear her feelings about D0.

W. Doc/Vig/Mason sounds like scum's best choice due to excluding the most powerful choices.

See the above @Mak regarding vengeful. Are you guys aware that you can click the role spoilers to read their descriptions?

[boomfrog]

W. Doc/Vig/Mason sounds like scum's best choice due to excluding the most powerful choices.

Why do you think the setup options contain both doc and weak doc? Why is Vig not powerful?

[boomfrog]

My answer depends on who the scum team are.

If its a steong scum team and can generally appear town as scum I would go for the vig/mason/weak doc combination and hope the weak doc and Mason target scum and take themselves out and the vig hammwrs town.

If the team is weaker and generally appears more suspicious I would go down the vig/doc/masoniser route.

Your weak team picks are the same as your strong picks? Or you really mean normal doc for a weak scum team?

Normal doc so the doc doesn't get clears.

Why switch to normal doc vs weak scum team? Why still give town vig vs a weak team?

[Freddino18]

One of my first games, I was in a 3-way gunfight at the end and chose wrong. A habit I have yet to break.

Isn't the saying that you can always teach an old dog new tricks? If you're town and town wins I'll give you a Scooby Snack.

[draft failed to save this first bit, had to rewrite, went away to change pfp]

Reading over Godfather, it's even stronger than I thought. It affects the actions of 4 of the 5 PRs.

Seeing as Godfather is indeed more powerful than I thought, I will probably be voting for something less egregious. Still gotta figure out what I would prefer more.

Unvote Godfather

[Freddino18]

It seems to me that not everyone is on the same page about what the janitor does, some people think it replaces the role with a non-power role of opposite alignment, and some think it makes it so that no role or alignment is shown upon the death of a Janitor target.

Two questions for the mods:

1) Which of the two modes above is listed

2) Will a Masonizer's partner still have the -ason tag if they are mopped up?

[Sabrar]

I don’t get what’s so great about the janitor. It appears there are no indies in the game, and no town or mafia roles that don’t flip as part of an ability. If a player flips without an alignment reveal, can’t we just assume they are town?

In this game Janitor can only clean someone who we yeet, it is very different from a night-Janitor. We want to know whether we were right because we need a known scum-flip to identify connections (or in case of a town-flip we want to see who pushed it for nefarious reasons).

This is what I'm getting at. It's possible, and I think straightforward for someone with your know-how, to determine the optimal choices given that town doesn't know what scum chose.

In the old days I would have mapped out the 100 different scenarios, made some simplifications to reduce the number, assigned some rankings and then run some statistics and I would have been able to give you the answer you are looking for. However since then my obsession with Mafia has been somewhat diminished, mostly because I am spending more time on other things. Also, we want everyone to publish their unbiased thoughts first, before going into details (similar to why BF asked us to refrain commenting on his question).
Given that the playerbase is stacked AND assuming that no misinterpretations occur (which we already know might not be the case) AND assuming that the analysis is made from a Vanilla Town pov, we can have a reasonable guess on the town role-distribution and with that in mind it is possible to make an optimal play. We can discuss this later during the day.

[Wam]

Your weak team picks are the same as your strong picks? Or you really mean normal doc for a weak scum team?

Normal doc so the doc doesn't get clears.

Why switch to normal doc vs weak scum team? Why still give town vig vs a weak team?

The logic was that as a weak team you want to minimise the number of cleared townies and you are less likely to get the weak doc dying overnight as the targets are more likely to be town.

The vig was the last one to fill.up the 3 for the weak team.

[Sabrar]

Reading over Godfather, it's even stronger than I thought. It affects the actions of 4 of the 5 PRs.

GF being protected from Vig is a factor but less so, as generally Doc won't target the same player as Vig so a failed kill basically becomes a Cop-check (unless scum has exactly GF + Roleblock).

[AdumbroDeus]

It seems to me that not everyone is on the same page about what the janitor does, some people think it replaces the role with a non-power role of opposite alignment, and some think it makes it so that no role or alignment is shown upon the death of a Janitor target.

Two questions for the mods:

1) Which of the two modes above is listed

2) Will a Masonizer's partner still have the -ason tag if they are mopped up?

We cannot guarantee we'll notice any question not in bold.

Anyway our interpretation is that it affects alignment and any flip information that would indicate alignment, so it would hide all role information as well. That includes Mason information.

Keep in mind that we're running somebody else's setup rather than our own so we're making reasonable inferences about how roles would function where there's ambiguity.

[Swiss]

Swiss I am frozenflame as seven covered in impressive detail

Were those MBTI types guesses? Because I consistently get ENTP on those quizzes with I/E and P/J being very borderline and could go the other way (like 55/45), so that was an impressive guess if it was in fact a guess as Im not sure if I ever discussed MBTI type stuff on smashboards, here, or in the discord

Jealous of heury already finishing their full 3 star clear of MK8, need to get on that, the new tracks are super fun

My first impression was that two shot roleblocker and godfather are the best roles to give scum because roleblocked is shooting in the dark unless we claim and godfather is entirely passive and just need to be taken into account when we parse investigation results. Given scum roleblocker with role cope is a huge mistake though as those roles synergize perfectly. So my current inclination is to vote godfather/2 shot RB but Im open to other ideas. Im not sure I entitely understand vengeful mafia though if someone is willing to explain that in greater detail

Everyone exclusively just banging on about mechanics and not playing mafia. At what point did these things become mutually exclusive. Stacked game my ass. Let's just lock in some perks and start lynching.

Finally read the setup. Y'all skipped an excellent discussion point.

If you were mafia what town roles would you have given to town? Swiss, sabrar, fomti and Seven save your answers until after the others.

I wait with bated breath

Am I reading wrong or is my understanding correct that town roles have yet to be assigned and that scum pick town roles after we all lock in the scum roles by vote?

scumlean

Not sure what you have been reading to get that idea?

towlean

To booms question, I dont see any reason to give town a doctor over a weak doctor as weak doctor seems to only be a strictly worse version of doctor, so that would be pick one. If masonizer dies when targeting non-town roles Id probably pick that too but thats kind of like a higher risk but higher reward cop, so it would be one of those two depending on how confident I was that I could draw a mason target or dodge a cop investigation respectively.

Allowing two docs in gane creates a possibly unwinnable situation for scum if they both claim and protect each other so thats super no bueno imo from a scum perspective and would not want that. So probably would go with Cop as 3rd pick. Vigilante on the wrong player slot is a huge existential risk to a 2 man scum team and can really throw off endgame calculations


So yeah my final picks would prob be masonizer, cop, weak doc, and then hope my team atleast gets a godfather or roleblocker atleast for some counterplay

i like but overall scumlean

My answer depends on who the scum team are.

If its a steong scum team and can generally appear town as scum I would go for the vig/mason/weak doc combination and hope the weak doc and Mason target scum and take themselves out and the vig hammwrs town.

If the team is weaker and generally appears more suspicious I would go down the vig/doc/masoniser route.

null but remember, dislike caveat

My answer depends on who the scum team are.

If its a steong scum team and can generally appear town as scum I would go for the vig/mason/weak doc combination and hope the weak doc and Mason target scum and take themselves out and the vig hammwrs town.

If the team is weaker and generally appears more suspicious I would go down the vig/doc/masoniser route.

Your weak team picks are the same as your strong picks? Or you really mean normal doc for a weak scum team?

townlean

Madge replaces heuristically_alone

@mod why did Huery replace

scumlean

Madge replaces heuristically_alone

I'm so sorry for your loss madge, but at least this starts with power analysis.

???

Bessie mega post null
I was hoping to be wow'd

n.b. I will try the gojoe thread, but it just feels so wrong.

Seven mega post ergh

One of my first games, I was in a 3-way gunfight at the end and chose wrong. A habit I have yet to break.

Isn't the saying that you can always teach an old dog new tricks? If you're town and town wins I'll give you a Scooby Snack.

[draft failed to save this first bit, had to rewrite, went away to change pfp]

Reading over Godfather, it's even stronger than I thought. It affects the actions of 4 of the 5 PRs.

Seeing as Godfather is indeed more powerful than I thought, I will probably be voting for something less egregious. Still gotta figure out what I would prefer more.

Unvote Godfather

Odd

[EGW]

I messed up a bump.