Newbie 1515: Old-Timey Mafia [GAME OVER]

[Maestro]

Votecount 3.FINAL - Wednesday, July 23rd @ 11:48 AM EST

Boonskiies -

3

^[L-0]

Thesp, Brian Skies, Honey bee
Thesp -

1

^[L-2]

Boonskiies

With

[5]

alive it took

[3]

to Lynch.

ACTIVITY CHECK:

Game's over.

Not Voting:

Bins

Boonskiies was Lynched Day 3. He was a

Town Cop

.
Congratulations to

Thesp

and

Honey bee

,

Mafia Roleblocker

and

Goon

,
for winning Newbie 1515: Old-Timey Mafia!

Now

GET OFF MY LAWN!

/game - commence post-game chat

[Maestro]

DEAD TOPIC: http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=58458

(Warning: I raged a lot.)

SCUM TOPIC: http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=58423

[Thesp]

Yay, Honey Bee! Marvelously done. I

do

wish you'd claimed something on D3 (maybe you claiming the cop instead of me?), as we couldn't risk me (as roleblocker) dying, but we made it nonetheless. I am happy to have had you as a partner.

If I were town, I would have voted for Boonskiies right out of the gates after the massclaim. I do think the reluctance to immediately lynch Boonskiies isn't a testament to "incorrect" play, but speaks more to how much Bins (and to a lesser degree Brian Skies?) actually thought Boonskiies was dreadfully awful enough to do what he did as town.

Thanks for the game. This was a very bizarre game - it was dreadful in some ways, but had several bright spots in it. A few notes at first.

Boonskiies:
You said this during the game:

Trolling is a legitimate play style.

You could not possibly be more wrong. It's

possible

that "trolling" is an effective play style. (I think you have a very, very high hurdle to clear to argue this one.) However, it's not "legitimate" insofar as no one else wants to play with trolls. There may be a few players who do (in which case, you should get together and all have fun together), but the vast, vast majority of people will not want to play with you. Mafia is a game, and a social activity. Most people play for fun, not necessarily to be right. (See my sig for an example of a quote on this.) In this game, the only thing that

might

have gotten you a win after your terrible play was the fact that Honey Bee and I never killed the doc, and we claimed somewhat poorly. There's probably several people in this game who never want to play with you again. If you continue playing like you did this game (with no regard for others), it's likely you'll reach a point where very few (if any) people will want to play with you. I hope you seriously reconsider how you engage with other people.

Jake from State Farm:
It's just a game. I still don't understand the hostility at the outset of the game. You were right about me, but for absolutely the wrong reasons, and the bizarre vitrol from you at the outset allowed me to play almost all of D1 exactly like I would have were I town. (I think.) I appreciate the reconsideration you gave as the game went on, but I hope you understand that most people play Mafia as a fun social activity, and that your play doesn't mesh well with that, and may ultimately hinder your future performance.

It's not enough to be right in Mafia. You've also got to convince others that you're right. And when people don't want to play with you, they're going to be more likely to lynch you, whether it's unconscious policy lynching or outright distaste. Making other players want you around is invaluable for town and scum players alike.

That said, I thought your D2 play was very solid, and likely exactly what I would have done in the same spot (for whatever that's worth).

BoroPhil:
If you're not going to play the game, don't sign up. Or if you hate D1s, seriously consider just replacing into games instead. Sure, D1 is hard, and there's a lower chance of successful lynches than on other days. But the work you put into D1 bears great fruit in future days. And the self-vote was pretty inexcusable.

---

The early game was marred by the weird back-and-forth between Jake from State Farm and I, coupled with some players flaking which drug the game out to start. So I am immensely grateful to Brian Skies and Bins for replacing in and picking up the game marvelously well, and for Cheery Dog and TheGottemer for being around and doing your best. You all really deserved a shot at a win here, and I'm sorry it was taken from you in this game. I am also grateful for Honey Bee as a partner, who did extra-fantastic in D1 & D2, and walked with me through the wreckage of D3. I would be honored to play with any of you again in the future.

Thanks again.

[Cheery Dog]

Maestro closed the dead thread on me, so I guess I'll just have to post what i wrote here (obviously you should read to the end of the dead thread to know what I'm talking about)

We should start a thread about getting pointless self-hammers banned. Or stopping the selfvote from existing in the site culture.
I once selfvoted 2 years ago, everytime I see selfvotes now I regret that decision. (although i believe it was clearly a joke, the fact that day ended with me selfvoting makes it worse.)

I hope Boon has learned not to do stupid stuff like fake-claim again, I guess we'll see, but I'm unlikely to fancy playing with him again. But then I'd also decided that when I went searching through one of his previous games and how he played there. Utility/Policy lynch written all over him in that game and this one.

[Maestro]

In general, to sum up this game in my opinion:

Dear Boonskiies,

I'm going to stick a cactus in your mouth. You did not benefit town.

Signed, your Townmates

Bins and I say it best.

Thesp makes good points, but none of them come from the perspective of somebody with a stake in the horrible play that happened this game - Thesp's statements stem from the perspective of somebody who (like an insurance salesman) is reveling in the misfortune the whole time it's happening.

Thesp: this was mentioned in the Dead Topic, but if neither of you had claimed either PR, I believe it's likely you would've had a much

EASIER

D3, not harder. By positioning yourself so that from Boon's PoV you were confScum, and WIFOMing Bins (the only VT around enough to be truly invested in the game) you drew out the Day when you could've just waited for Boon to burn himself out and get voted, and then quicklynch him. Regardless (and this was also mentioned) Honey bee played well enough and Town was lobotomizing itself well enough that I'm confident he could've pulled out the win even if you'd gotten lynched... but your claim was extra information for Town that would've made that a

LOT

harder.

BoroPhil might get referred for a game ban. Apologies to the Newbies for having to deal with that in a game.

And Boonskiies..... my last post in the Dead Topic and on this page says it all. I highly doubt you've had a Mafia experience that was positively influenced by your

EXTREMELY

selfish, trolling behavior when you're Town, so I'd let it stop here if I were you. This game was single-handedly lost by you, in my opinion. Thesp vs. Jake on D1 would've pointed a heavy finger towards one or the other once one of them got lynched normally (on a side note, this also meant that your investigation of one of them wasn't the ideal play, even if you did end up being right); your destructive and WIFOMy arguments right before and during LyLo did nothing but muddy the waters and disinterest people in hoping the game could turn out well at all.

PEDIT: Cheery Dog makes another good point Boon: if this is how you consistently act in-game, you'll see a lot of people become wary of playing with you at all (or allowing you to play in their games), and you can and will be Policy Lynched a lot more often than you'll get to play. It's up to you to change a shit playstyle if you want to contribute positively to games that aren't "Vengeful" or "Bad Idea" Mafia or "We Need a Fifth".

[Maestro]

For reference, people, those three setups I mentioned all rely heavily on the random, stupid-fun DayVig role, and while they're fun to play now and then they're not in any way considered to be high-brow Mafia setups where a lot of theory-crafting can get done. It's just a bunch of Scummers blowing off steam in a game and shooting eachother.

[Cheery Dog]

If I were town, I would have voted for Boonskiies right out of the gates after the massclaim. I do think the reluctance to immediately lynch Boonskiies isn't a testament to "incorrect" play, but speaks more to how much Bins (and to a lesser degree Brian Skies?) actually thought Boonskiies was dreadfully awful enough to do what he did as town.

I'm still not sure why you bothered with the massclaim. Boonskiies was still the obviously lynch and noone except Boonskiies himself would have complained if you were to have quickly put him to L-1.

The only one of those setups that a trolly playstyle should be used for is Bad-Idea. (because then you can get killed quickly - it has more town right?)

While I believe We need a 5th is a stupid setup, I agree with buttonman with how he dealt with TiP self-confirming with the mechanic in the one of those I read.
Vengeful doesn't deserve it either due to how quickly that can cost you the game.

[Cheery Dog]

Thanks for bothering to kill me night 1, it saved me having to bother dealing with that rubbish in thread.

[Thesp]

Thesp: this was mentioned in the Dead Topic, but if neither of you had claimed either PR, I believe it's likely you would've had a much

EASIER

D3, not harder. By positioning yourself so that from Boon's PoV you were confScum, and WIFOMing Bins (the only VT around enough to be truly invested in the game) you drew out the Day when you could've just waited for Boon to burn himself out and get voted, and then quicklynch him. Regardless (and this was also mentioned) Honey bee played well enough and Town was lobotomizing itself well enough that I'm confident he could've pulled out the win even if you'd gotten lynched... but your claim was extra information for Town that would've made that a

LOT

harder.

I'm not convinced this is the case, once claims started. (The

best

thing for us would have been for no massclaim, but I'm not sure I could have simply avoided the topic at all on D3, and my mere suggestion of pondering it apparently inspired people to do so.) If Honey Bee and I both claim Vanilla Townie (and Honey Bee already had claimed Vanilla Townie), Boonskiies is confirmed as a power role, since Brian Skies is the Doctor. I figured if

anyone

counterclaimed Boonskiies, that would be sufficient to get him lynched, which ultimately proved to be the case. But the worse scenario (as I saw it) is if Boonskiies is un-counterclaimed, if there's a Doctor in the game (which would be confirmed by Brian Skies un-countered claim), Boonskiies becomes

unlynchable

. Now, there's an argument that we could have swung the lynch around on Bins, but which seems easier at the opening of D3?

[Thesp]

If I were town, I would have voted for Boonskiies right out of the gates after the massclaim. I do think the reluctance to immediately lynch Boonskiies isn't a testament to "incorrect" play, but speaks more to how much Bins (and to a lesser degree Brian Skies?) actually thought Boonskiies was dreadfully awful enough to do what he did as town.

I'm still not sure why you bothered with the massclaim. Boonskiies was still the obviously lynch and noone except Boonskiies himself would have complained if you were to have quickly put him to L-1.

I think the best town play on D3 here would actually be to force a massclaim, and force the scum to claim/make pairings at that moment before moving into N3. It's up for reasonable debate as to whether it was better play for me to have never mentioned it at all, but I feared if I didn't say anything and the day went on for any length of time, it would be used against me, and as the roleblocker with a living doc I was the one person who absolutely couldn't be lynched on my team.

[Maestro]

On paper that sounds most logical, I agree. But the paper doesn't contain any of the other facts of his abysmal play or the fakeclaim/fakeguilty. I guess it was best to just seal the envelope, but really it came down to convincing

BOTH

Townies you were the Cop instead of convincing

ONE

Townie to vote the liar (so you could then quicklynch).

PEDIT: Yeah they could've pulled this off if you'd gotten lynched, but they probably wouldn't've.

[Thesp]

On paper that sounds most logical, I agree. But the paper doesn't contain any of the other facts of his abysmal play or the fakeclaim/fakeguilty. I guess it was best to just seal the envelope, but really it came down to convincing

BOTH

Townies you were the Cop instead of convincing

ONE

Townie to vote the liar (so you could then quicklynch).

PEDIT: Yeah they could've pulled this off if you'd gotten lynched, but they probably wouldn't've.

By way of instruction for the newbies, I want to tease this out for a moment.

Honey Bee and I were better off without a massclaim at that moment.

However, given the massclaim, if Honey Bee and I both claim Vanilla Townie, here's how it looks:

Honey Bee: Townie
Thesp: Townie
Bins: Townie
Brian Skies: Doc
Boonskiies: Cop (?!)

Now, we know there has to be at least 1 power role in this setup. That means at least one of [Brian Skies/Boonskiies] is telling the truth. Moreover,

if Brian Skies is telling the truth, it necessarily entails that there is a Cop or a Tracker in the game, ergo in

either

situation, Boonskiies is necessarily telling the truth.

Boonskiies was an idiot, but Bins and Brian Skies weren't. I'm very confident that if the claims came out like that, they would have hated Boonskiies for it, but believed his claim. So, if Honey Bee and I both claim VT, Boonskiies is confirmed town. If Honey Bee or I claim an investigative role, it puts his claim into doubt, and he'd already strung out enough rope for his own noose that the counterclaim is all that was really needed to push his lynch over the edge.

Certainly, it can be argued that I should have tried to avoid the mass claim, or that I could have claimed Cop (or Tracker) differently, but it's fairly incontrovertible that one of Honey Bee or I should have claimed an invesitgative role once the claiming started (and likely something matching up with the Doctor, i.e. Cop/Tracker).

[Bins]

Scum had three members, no fair.

I'm not going to lie, I thought Boon sounded genuine. His explanation made sense. On the other hand, I was almost certain that Honey was scum after she said it was Boon/Brian. She didn't seem to be reacting how a VT would.

I know Brian felt the same way.
Thesp sounded way scummier than Brian, but there was no way I was going to side with Boon. It wasn't worth it.

WP tho.

[Maestro]

Scum had three members, no fair.

[Boonskiies]

We technically did have a mass claim.

Bins - VT
Honey Bee - VT - (This is why Honey was scum)
Me - Cop
Thesp - Cop
Brian - Doctor

And yes, I made a horrible play, but if we had gotten the win because of it, I would have felt awesome!! haha, so no regrets.

It all came down to if Brian decided to vote Thesp. Had he, we would have won the game, so I had a fun time with this game up until the very end. Just makes me want to try something like this again, but be more smooth about it.

[Thesp]

And yes, I made a horrible play, but if we had gotten the win because of it, I would have felt awesome!! haha, so no regrets.

It all came down to if Brian decided to vote Thesp. Had he, we would have won the game, so I had a fun time with this game up until the very end. Just makes me want to try something like this again, but be more smooth about it.

Go away.

[Maestro]

Just makes me want to try something like this again, but be more smooth about it.

No.

[Bins]

[Thesp]

GOLD.

[Boonskiies]

Can I make it my avatar? And I quite enjoyed reading that scum thread. Hmm, I thought it would have been obvious to scum I was cop after day 2.

[The Dream Weaver]

Here are my thoughts:

Honeybee and Thesp, I thought you two played fairly well. I believe Thesp made the correct play, because if he hadn't CC'ed Boons and let Boons get cleared, I would probably have pushed a lynch on him. There were several reasons why I would have (including his results). Him CC'ing Boons practically condemned Boons to die. Still, well played, and I wish this could have played out differently.

Jake, I'm sorry I didn't fight your lynch. But you said it yourself, it was proper play to lynch the unCC'ed guilty result (which you were advocating). I had a strong townread on you this game and I was rolefishing Gottemer as it was before Thesp ended the day. I'm sorry that happened, but I don't think it's fair to blame me when you were the one advocating your own lynch and shooting down requests for a CC. If I had it my way, I would have checked for the CC (we already had half the CC checks, we might as well have gone through with it). I thought you played really well this game before you got screwed.

No words for Borophil. That play was just unacceptable for a Newbie game.

Boons, I'm not going to come down as hard on you as the others because you're a new player and you still have a chance to improve and learn from your mistakes. This is called a Newbie Game for a reason, so I hope you really take this game as a wake-up call and learning opportunity. You can't fakeclaim guilties on players because if you're wrong, you're going to put the town in a hole and piss the majority of them off. You especially can't claim a different investigative role in a closed setup like this. You trashed your own credibility so you could burn one of our mislynches for personal glory, and that's not something that can easily be fixed. There is a time and a place for gambits, this wasn't it. I think there's potential for you as a player, just clean up your playstyle and realize that trolling isn't an acceptable playstyle for the majority of the community. It's something people deal with, not something people embrace.

Maestro, yeah, I'm a little clinical in my play. I took a slightly different approach than usual this game because I was a doctor and this was a Newbie Game. But I feel like I was playing pretty well until the fake guilty came in. My protections were pretty bad, but I think I can learn from them.

[Brian Skies]

Here are my thoughts:

Honeybee and Thesp, I thought you two played fairly well. I believe Thesp made the correct play, because if he hadn't CC'ed Boons and let Boons get cleared, I would probably have pushed a lynch on him. There were several reasons why I would have (including his results). Him CC'ing Boons practically condemned Boons to die. Still, well played, and I wish this could have played out differently.

Jake, I'm sorry I didn't fight your lynch. But you said it yourself, it was proper play to lynch the unCC'ed guilty result (which you were advocating). I had a strong townread on you this game and I was rolefishing Gottemer as it was before Thesp ended the day. I'm sorry that happened, but I don't think it's fair to blame me when you were the one advocating your own lynch and shooting down requests for a CC. If I had it my way, I would have checked for the CC (we already had half the CC checks, we might as well have gone through with it). I thought you played really well this game before you got screwed.

No words for Borophil. That play was just unacceptable for a Newbie game.

Boons, I'm not going to come down as hard on you as the others because you're a new player and you still have a chance to improve and learn from your mistakes. This is called a Newbie Game for a reason, so I hope you really take this game as a wake-up call and learning opportunity. You can't fakeclaim guilties on players because if you're wrong, you're going to put the town in a hole and piss the majority of them off. You especially can't claim a different investigative role in a closed setup like this. You trashed your own credibility so you could burn one of our mislynches for personal glory, and that's not something that can easily be fixed. There is a time and a place for gambits, this wasn't it. I think there's potential for you as a player, just clean up your playstyle and realize that trolling isn't an acceptable playstyle for the majority of the community. It's something people deal with, not something people embrace.

Maestro, yeah, I'm a little clinical in my play. I took a slightly different approach than usual this game because I was a doctor and this was a Newbie Game. But I feel like I was playing pretty well until the fake guilty came in. My protections were pretty bad, but I think I can learn from them.

Shameless post game alt slip.

[Bins]

I feel bad because I threw you off your suspicion of Thesp. You were 100% correct!

and boon omg go ahead i guess.

[Brian Skies]

Don't feel bad, Bins. I thought you were playing pretty well even if your reads were initially wrong. You were developing better reads (and correct reads) than I was as the game went on. So, really, I should be the one who feels bad. I took yours and Cheery's word for Thesp because I thought you both looked pretty town.

I don't know how I would have gotten Honeybee other than through some sort of PoE. Her alignment became more apparent Day 2 and Day 3, but I thought her early play was fine.

Anyhow, I look forward to playing with you guys in the future. If any of you have any questions regarding this particular game as far as theory goes, you should use this opportunity to ask.

[Brian Skies]

Also, I was going to ask for a massclaim today regardless.