Be Excellent To Each Other

A mile or so ouside Excellent End is the Excellently Scary themepark. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the park is currently doing a roaring trade, due to a number of new rides funded by donors unknown. The pride of the town pack the park today, enjoying thrills, spills, and too much candy floss.

On the haunted house ride, most folks aren't so impressed. There's little that's scary going on, just creepy noises and bad models on wires. Suddenly a realisting looking corpse dangles down in front of the ride - too realistic, and all too easily recognised as the Mayor of Excellent End, having met an end that's not really all that excellent.

Once they get over the shock, the ride passengers jump out and investigate the body. His tongue is cut out and replaced with a shiny silver coin - not so much a screamer as a squealer, then. Things start to become clear - the mystery doners to the park must have been the Mafia, and they've got some house-clearing to do.

[playerlist]
The Rev Owen
Mr Chris
Gazchap
Joans
Bluecup
Zaphod79
Curiosity
Myoptika
Mr Russ
Plissken
Goddess Jasmine
Runcle
ComicalGnomes
RichardGaywood
Dudley
Mr Dave
Lacesensor
Spinglo sponglo!
[/playerlist]

With 18 players alive, 10 are required for a lynch. Day one deadline is Tuesday 10pm.


GO!

Gulp!

Where's Scooby Doo when you need him?

A little bit eager to start there Rev Owen. And joking at this dire time. A little bit excited are we?

Well this doesn't look good, it's look as though Doomsday is approaching, people.

[vote:ComicalGnomes]

You're a twat.

doomsday wassat?

Malc

Hello, fellow citizens.



Bloody hell! I knew there was something wrong with those kebabs!

:0)

Based on the clear logic that a guilty man wouldn't defend himself in fear of looking even more guilty I'm going to ........

[vote:The Rev Owen]

Your fake gulp won't get past me.

Jeepers! I'm a townie, guys!

Also, your logic breaks my brain.

Anyone want to play Dodgems?

Fairgrounds have always upset me, ever since Simply Red wrote that stupid song. Now I like them even less.

Exactly what a non-townie would say!

Well, yes, but they'd be lying.

HaHa!

Exactly what a non-townie would say!

What is your reason for going after The Rev so damn quickly, Bluecup?

Fun

Looks like we're in some deeep ....stuff :-)

Okay , some comments

As the blackmailer is something new i'm going to guess that we do have one (it makes for a more interesting game) so :

At the star of the game 'vote' whoever type posts are going to be fine , but as it gets to a smaller number of people around we need to be careful that we dont give the mafia a chance to jump on and lynch someone just because of one wrong guess , and actually the blackmailer might make that more of a problem if the mafia guesses the right person to go for.

Speaking of the blackmailer , I wonder about subtle ways of showing that your being blackmailed , I also wonder if you are being blackmailed and you can see that your target is going to be lynched if its better to change your vote , own up , and die because your going to save a townie (if you are actually a townie and not the SK).

Also looking at bluff / double bluff , it would be quite possible for the mafia to blackmail someone into voting for a mafia person which would help to make that person seem less suspicious (at least to the blackmail-e)

Initial days are going to be a bit random but we have between 3 and 6 mafia and 1 SK so going for someone at random today has either a 4 in 18 (1 in 4.5) or a 6 in 18 (1 in 3) chance of hitting someone who we want to get rid of.

Whereas for the town power roles we have :
Photographer (useful but not essential ?)
Doctor (useful)
Possibly a Hooker (roleblocker)
Possibly a census taker (information gatherer)
Possibly a policeman (information gatherer)

So chance of hitting someone more useful to the town is either 2 in 18 (1 in 9) or 5 in 18 (1 in 3.6) chance.

So after all of that i'll vote randomly for :

[vote:ComicalGnomes]

If anyone wants me i'll be in the arcade (sobbing about the fact that there are no real classics in there , the controls dont work on the games which are present and that half the lights dont work on the puggies.

You can tell we haven't played in a while, everyone's getting overexcited with votes already.

That's a long, trying to be useful post there zaphod79. What was your motivation for such effort?

snore

My first post in a scum game.

I should also add the people to be suspicious of are those who are not actually trying to help out ...... or who are *very* quiet

So although I've voted for someone who has been talking if we get closer to the end of the day and we've not had any real posts from other people i'll be switching my vote to them and encouraging everyone else to.

Finally one other thing which i've not really seen in the previous games is much questioning on why people are voting for a specific person , at the start its pretty random but (in case i'm offed tonight) further into the game I think it would be a good action to ask people why they are voting for person X , just saying 'spidey sence is tingling' is good but its better if they can say what comments or why they think that.

Not necessary. The real dangerous people are those that are sort of there, making the odd comment, trying to be helpful.

I would say most of the time the *very* quite ones are the are good power roles trying keep out of the way.

Therefore

[vote:zaphod79]

I think if you look back at previous games the dangerous people try to avoid posting *anything* , and try to slip under the radar.

A question for the town as a whole.

The Mafia doesnt have any roleblockers.
We have a doctor who can 'save' one person each night

If we have a policeman and they roleclaimed the doctor could protect them ,and the only way they could be 'stopped' would be the mafia or the SK getting lucky and killing the doctor.

Not sure if its worth it on day 1 but something to consider.

One other point , if you have a role which gives you information and your about to go to the gallows , by all means role claim , but do so with all the information you have (otherwise you might end up being offed before getting the chance to share that information) , e.g. if we have a census taker and they are getting close to being lynched they should speak out about what we have in the town (again it might be a possible role claim later as the mafia already know who is town and who is not they will be hunting for the SK)

All this instant accusation is making me really suspicious of you Bluecup.

BTW I do realise that requests of roleclaims is normally a scummy action , but with this set of rules it may be an option (even if not for today).

Plissken - Instant accusation is about all there is on day 1 so i'm not that worried about it , it can be useful to shake people up.

The other thing to consider right now is the *only* people with information beyond their own role is the mafia.

At this point the mafia know :

There is a Doctor
There is a Photographer
There is a Serial killer

But they also know how many mafia are around and how many townies they need to off to win , they know where the finishing line is , as a townie we do not.

Oh and we also have "the lovers" which is going to be akward because the chances are that at least one of them will have a power role for either side and as such will not want to off the other (regardless of their "alignment") , again not something to worry about right now but something to consider as the game winds up , if there are only a few players left and the lovers are still around then it may influence things against the town.

/me waves at the onlookers in the dead thread

I wouldn't advise that really. It's not that hard for the mafia to hit the doctor - unless the doctor plays significantly different from previous medics. If the policeman dies, then his past posts should be good enough to give any information he has already gained.

Lets have a think, who is the most useful player for the Doctor to protect?

To my mind there are only two town roles worth protecting: The Policeman and the Census Taker. With no mafia or anti-town roleblocker at least one of these roles should reveal themselves, preferably the policeman who can exhonourate people every day, and be protected indefinitely unless the Doctor goes in a random hit or killing.

So, Mr Policeman, who are you?

I'm not sure it'll work.

Policeman: I'm the policeman!

Mafia Goon: I'm the policeman!

Doctor has 50% chance of protecting the real policeman, 50% chance of protecting a mafia goon.

The mafia have then learned who the policeman is, have a 50% chance of having the doctor on their side and, if they feel in a position to sacrifice a goon to a lynch, can take out the policeman.

I think.

If lets say there are the maximum 6 mafia out there.

They know who all six are and that leaves 12 'everyone elses' so they have a 1 in 12 chance of hitting the doc
If the doc is protecting someone who has already outed themselves then they have a 1 in 11 chance.

The SK has a 1 in 17 chance (or 1 in 16 if there is an outed player)

We do also run the risk of killing the doc ourselves (and given previous town performances its quite possible) , and right now we also run the risk of killing any of our 'power' roles just because we dont know who they are.

And by having the cop "outed" he can also tell you who is *not* scum , whereas if he's offed the only information you can have is who he suspects (but you dont know if he actually investigated them) , and who he didnt vote for (but again that doesnt mean he's actually checked them out).

Other possiblities are :

There is no cop

A mafia person roleclaims cop (however if he actually says anyone is evil when they are not thats the end of that and it would get very suspicious that everyone he checks out is a 'townie')

2 people claim cop : well one would be lying but it would be interesting to work out which and would at least give us one baddie down.

Here's how it works zaph.

Policeman: I'm a policeman

Goon: I'm a policeman.

We lynch the one we trust the least and see who was telling fibs.

Then if the Mafia roleclaim twice along with the policeman?

Then we know 2 scummy people , odds wise that might actually be worth giving up the policeman for :-)

Theres also some other sneeky stuff which you could look at in that if we had a roleclaimed policeman he doesnt *have* to be protected by the doc every time because the mafia / sk would assume he is and wouldnt "waste" a potential kill on them.

A risky way to go about things but still valid :-)

Then it becomes terribly interesting, but I don't think it'll happen. In fact, it almost guantees a mafia loss.

Policeman: I'm policeman
Mafia 1: I'm policeman
Mafia 2: I'm policeman.


If we lynch policeman by accident, we know who two mafia are and they're instantly dead. If we lynch one of the mob, then a pat on the back to us, and we flip the coin again the next day. Either way a fake roleclaim would be quickly exposed and even if we end up losing the policeman to a stupid lynch, being able to take out at least one mobber is a plus.

Yip thats a valid argument , for 1 night.
At the end of night 1 we ask the policemen for their investigation information ....... then things get a little fuzzy :-)

We either have :

2 innocents claimed - we could lynch one to see or keep going but remember who was claimed as what.
1 scum claimed (we lynch but could be helping the mafia out - if we do lynch and they are not scum then the doc knows who to protect)
2 scum claimed (we lynch one and have a 50/50 chance of helping the mafia or ourselves)

Well I certainly hope the cop has the balls to claim, as in all previous games the cop has been USELESS by either getting killed instantly, or surviving for a few days but not sharing any of the fucking information learned.

Oh and final thing to be thrown into the mix and probably worst for the town :

Two people claim policemen however are both scum.

We off one , and start to believe the other , however the first time they proclaim someone as scum we would know but that could take a number of days.

I'm trying to work out what would happen if the policeman gets blackmailed.

If we know they are a policeman and they instantly vote then we instantly know he is being blackmailed. Would the policeman then kill himself? Because the mafia would share those naughty pictures wouldn't they whatever.

Thats an interesting one , although I get the impression the blackmailer can be instructed to do slightly more than just be a sheep.

For example a suggestion (which i've been informed would not be suitable) would have been for everyone to vote for some random player first then immediatly change their vote to someone else.

As the blackmail-e had to simply vote straight away and cannot change it , if you did this it would prove your not being blackmailed ......

The other complication is that the blackmailer cannot really do much to give the game away that were actually being blackmailed , although that does give a problem if we do have a cop and he's killed later in the game - if he was being blackmailed we cannot rely 100% on what his previous votes were

Well it's pretty easy. Lets say the cop discovers play X is a mafia goon. The next day he can reveal it.

If he's been blackmailed, he'll then bafflingly vote for player Y. We'll know he's been blackmailed, but he won't die because he hasn't admitted it. He can only die if he defies the blackmail or reveals he's being blackmailed.

He can be instructed to avoid actions that would be a blatant giveaway, however :0)

That's bollocks, since when? The rules state he just has to vote for X at his earliest opportunity, doesn't say anything about otherwise impeding his role.

Bollocks I say, bollocks.

That's what I'm not sure about. Isn't the act of randomly voting for someone revealing the fact that the policeman is being blackmailed? A random vote from a random player wouldn't mean much, but a vote from the policeman either means they are being blackmailed or found a goon. Either way, we couldn't be sure and asking for details could risk his life.

Or am I looking too much into this?

If you come up with an obvious tactic that shows when someone has been blackmailed, then if the blackmailee conforms to that tactic, he's effectively 'revealing' that he's been blackmailed.

If you are being blackmailed, then the whole point is that you want it kept quiet.

It would have been interesting if the person being blackmailed could go to the policeman in confidence.

Whee! I came for a fun day out at Alton Towers, but it was closed, so instead I came to this lovely theme park, just off the A46.

Scarily, everyone else in my town has had the same idea, and the mayor has been deaded! Which one of you 'orrible lot did that, and what's the quickest way to the nearest candy floss stall?

Ooh - I like that. I should have put in a 'Confessor' role.

Given the way the policeman would play the game, if he's being blackmailed then no matter what he does it's going to be pretty obvious to everyone he's being blackmailed. The correlation of no kill by the Mafia combined with the policeman having to immediately vote for someone whether or not they investigated them would make it clear that he's doing it for nefarious reasons.

I'd avoid roleclaiming cop until we can get confirmation on this.