Policy Lynching

[Nero]

TheFonz, you sir, are deluded.

[Nero]

And I am stating this unironically.

[pirate mollie]

No, you're conflating two things.

Mastin isn't pushing these people to 'get an emotional reaction.' He's pushing them to stop them playing like idiots.

I was not talking to you, I was talking to mastin.

You're talking in a thread. You didn't even start it. You can't try to claim it's a private conversation, that's super-assholish.

I am not trying to claim it is a private convo, you were just not the one I was responding to. I did not mean to offend you, I can be pretty blunt sometimes. I am pretty clear that you think policy lynching is a great idea, I am just surprised that mastin does.

also everyone has my permission to lynch me after d3 unless I am on a roll - no seriously you will be doing me a favour, I detest lylos with a passion that knows no bounds. unless of course I am scum.

let me share an anecdote: there is a player on my homesite who would often be policy lynched cos players could not read him. this went on for years it is a wonder he still signed up for games. he posts little and trolls and that is about as much as you will get out of him. however what I started to notice and when I did some research into old games is that his vote almost always landed on scum. almost always. that interested me.

well in a greater fora politics thread he impressed the hell out of me (turns out he is an economics professor) and so I started paying attention to him and studying him. as it is, he is super easy for me to read, you can tell his alignment by his first post and how many words he uses and where his vote lands. so I started steering lynches away from him. I thought I was the only one who did this until I spoke with one of my mentors and turns out she does the same thing, even has the same tell on him but she is far more advanced than I am and can tell the difference between his special game and his vt one, can even tell you what kind of special he is. off of one post. I actually got fosed once as scum cos I did not give him a town read after one post when he was a cop, lol. will never make that mistake again.

long story short this is a player that other players found to be useless, but there is a gem in there if you can see it. too often I have seen "policy lynch! ack ack ack!" on this site by some players and it feels like they are mimicking what they see the more established players doing but they lack the sophistication to properly apply it. there are some players I would not want around for endgame <------ I put myself in that category btw and I don't think that is exactly a policy lynch if you think that they are slightly scummy.

anyways I apologise fonz. I wasn't trying to be rude but I know it comes across that way sometimes.

[Timeater]

TheFonz, you sir, are deluded.

Ten of you arent worth one Fonz

[mastin2]

I was not talking to you, I was talking to mastin.

But Fonz made a pretty accurate translation of my post.

I pretty much broke the post up into different possible aspects of suggesting a policy lynch, and the potential benefits within having done so.

But that same post also made it crystal clear that I don't myself support policy lynches; I prefer Wisdom of the Crowds for the reasons I specified. (Basically--WotC allows for a healthier game atmosphere and to have funner, cleaner, and I dare say smoother game. Exactly the thing mods want to have.)

[Nero]

TheFonz, you sir, are deluded.

Ten of you arent worth one Fonz

Thanks for your irrelevant off-topic input.

[ArcAngel9]

TheFonz, you sir, are deluded.

Ten of you arent worth one Fonz

I don't know what is Fonz worth of nor Nero but you sure don't seem to have self value.
Please stop Judging, and don't direct this discuss to a wrong track!! Fonz appear to be capable enough to handle his own discussions, i don't see he require any defense. and try to contribute your opinion about this Topic instead of passing comments.

[Nero]

Thank you, O honourable one.

[Timeater]

fukken lol

[The Fonz]

@Fonz - Give me the I like Cheese Guy profile link... or are they any particular game that you want me to lookinto?

It's a thought experiment I posted earlier in the thread. It's not a specific player, otherwise I'd have used said player's name.

Broadly speaking, the whole point of advocating policy lynching is like nuclear deterrence. You sincerely hope you don't have to use it. But the credible threat of it is an important tool to force people to pull their weight. The important word being 'credible.' You have to do it occasionally for the threat to carry any weight.

I mean, if all the people opposing policy lynching had substantially higher hit rates than those supporting it, there might be something to this whining, but they don't.

There was a fairly detailed discussion of the axes along which mafia players' overall philosophy differs, let me see if I can find.

Ed: My contribution is here:

Spoiler: Fonz on how people see the game

I can think of about a billion different ways to frame this.

In general, Fonz / Yos-types are more theoretical, and the other school is more empiricist.

tbh Yos isn't strictly in the "yos school" since he's more like a good mix. Vollkan started out very in that school and got a lot more open minded before he buggered off someplace.

I don't remember Vollkan ever being of that mindset- he's always, in my mind, been the poster child for the opposite tendency.

I wouldn't say it's a theoretical/empiricist thing. The reason I lynch liars is because, empirically, liars are almost always scum, but I have this horrible tendency to second guess myself. See, say, Korlash's fakeclaim in BM's Dr. Who mafia. Every time I seem to find myself doubting the effectiveness of the kind of analysis I use, a hugely scummy newbie (on whose behalf I was mentally playing the newbie card) comes up scum.

Suggestions might be:

Conservative vs Optimistic: Jdodge believes anyone can be read. This is an optimistic position. I believe the whole problem with lurking is it vastly reduces other players' ability to read that player.

Consequentialist vs Psychological: Shea et al base their scumhunting on pyschological profiling almost entirely. I believe that competent scum can fake self-destructing townie, tunnelling townie, confused townie, etc, to the point when it's basically indistinguishable (and incompetent scum will often be incredibly similar to incompetent town), and therefore it is often necessary to fall back on game theory, and think about which side that player's actions will benefit.

Rationalist vs Realist: I believe that the vast majority of players will pursue their win condition rationally, and that irrationality is irrelevant to alignment, and therefore where it exists it should balance out. Therefore, wifom be damned, someone who does something which objectively helps the town is more likely town. You could also call my line of thought 'Hardass' and JD's 'friendly' I suppose- I will never assume that someone is too stupid to realise the consequences of their actions.

JD's school of thought basically believes that good scumhunters should pretty much always be able to figure what a player was attempting to make happen, and that comparatively, what it actually does cause to happen is unimportant- see the above on psychology.

'Atmospheric' vs 'Lynch-centric:' Broadly, I believe towns lose more games where rampant lurking goes on, where you can't make a firm judgement based on night actions because townies are lying, and where Village Idiocy is rife, than it does by mislynching occasionally to prevent these things taking hold.

In other words, that it is right and proper to use the power of the lynch to try to create an atmosphere in which scumhunting can thrive. I think it's probably easier to win from 4-3 lylo with everyone participating, than say 5-2 (one from Lylo) with half the game lurking.

Shea basically doesn't believe that deterrence is effective, that playstyles that are harmful to town are a result of the player's personality, and not subject to change, and therefore lynching lurkers, etc is just a waste of a precious lynch.

General vs Specific: JD's school of thought is 'play such that you do what your instincts will tell you will win you this game.' Mine is more 'play such that the way you play gives you the highest win percentage across your games.'

The only person I really know of there is Fonz. But I suppose the continuum exists since MD is pretty sparely populated.

Xylthixlm. JEEP, when he played- the father of Lynch All Liars. Adele was a significant influence.

Gut vs logic is the issue that really seems to go against the grain here, because JD, myself, and Xyl all believe that unexplained votes /voting on gut reads is a perfectly acceptable thing for town to do, whereas say Vollkan would always want to see a logical justification for everything.

Also note that no-one here is a robot: I've seen Shea lynch liars before, and in TFTD mafia, I had Igor Schulz (can't remember who was playing him) who had committed numerous things that ticked scumtell boxes down as obvtown on a psychological read. (In fact, whenever I've played with TSQ, I've found myself agreeing with him most of the time).

Actual thread is Here.

[callforjudgement]

FWIW, I've been seriously considering the possiblilty of, in 2:11 mountainous, starting with a policy lynch as the first lynch. The idea is that the scum get rid of good/pro-town players, so you may as well get rid of bad/anti-town players in order to help balance it out, given the massively low chance of actually hitting scum. It also gives the scum little information on who's widely considered town, and thus makes it harder for them to aim the nightkill.

(The fact that I'm even considering this should be taken as evidence that 2:11 is broken, more than anything else.)

[Faraday]

Scum will just kill the strongest player anyway? Doesn't seem like it'd help, at all. It just reduces it to 2:9, which I guess might not be a bad thing.

[callforjudgement]

Scum will just kill the strongest player anyway? Doesn't seem like it'd help, at all. It just reduces it to 2:9, which I guess might not be a bad thing.

Yeah, they will. Or perhaps the second-strongest player, in order to introduce the chance of WIFOM that the strongest player is scum.

I'm mostly going on the basis that you're no more likely (in fact, arguably less likely) than random to lynch scum on day 1 of a 2:11. And by policy lynching, you're effectively making a random lynch (because roles were randomized), but one that helps town even if it's on town.

[Nero]

I disagree. If you're a good scumhunter you can even lynch the scum on d1 of a 1 scum and 24 townie game. Random lynching/policy lynching is not and never will be an excuse for shitty play.

[Leafsnail]

The problem with 2:11 is just boredom. Particularly if a mafia member gets lynched day one.

[callforjudgement]

I disagree. If you're a good scumhunter you can even lynch the scum on d1 of a 1 scum and 24 townie game. Random lynching/policy lynching is not and never will be an excuse for shitty play.

What's the chance of

seven

good scumhunters in a 13p game? Merely being correct isn't enough.

[Telo]

I've been policy lynched several times now. It doesn't bother me at all.

I don't have to be alive to win and it makes the people who policy lynched me have to work harder to win. If they win, I win.

If they lose we both learn the same lesson. It's harder to win like that.

[mykonian]

only if you are town.

And I'm quite surprised, are you sure you aren't exaggerating? Last person I know that got policy lynched structurally is zwet. And that was a long time ago.

[mykonian]

I disagree. If you're a good scumhunter you can even lynch the scum on d1 of a 1 scum and 24 townie game. Random lynching/policy lynching is not and never will be an excuse for shitty play.

I think the point is that some people accept they aren't good enough to pull this off. Others are just

delusional

hopeful and positive.

[Telo]

only if you are town.

And I'm quite surprised, are you sure you aren't exaggerating? Last person I know that got policy lynched structurally is zwet. And that was a long time ago.

Nope, not exaggerating. Can't link from device but there are direct quotes that say 'this is a policy lynch to teach her a lesson' ok maybe not direct quotes but close enough.
-yes, I was town
-yes, my faction lost.
-each time

[Ineffective]

Depends on what your policy is lol.

Oftentimes lynching the right towny will help reveal possible teams, or diffuse unneeded conflict and help players focus on scumhunting. Identifying what is an acceptable utility lynch is a good tool to have in your belt, but OP makes a point in that many players over-use it as a crutch

[UberNinja]

Policy lynching is dumb for the most part, but can be useful in extreme circumstances.

People who push for it on D1 in

every game

need to be policy lynched themselves.

[Ineffective]

I push for utility lyn hes mostly to force people to participate/start towntelling. When the brakes kick in ghe game is often better for it... If the lynch is actually hammered then they would have been lynched at a more inconvenient time anyways so i give no shits

[Hoopla]

utility lynches are where it's at.

[kanyeknowsbest]

i would policy lynch the op.