Mafia 2: Cage Match

The sun rose, and no corpses were immediately visible. However, after a head count, it was determined that there was a Cage missing. A quick search found a pile of ashes with a script poking out of it.
The Cages all looked sideways at one another. Each faction had been hit, and everyone knew that their trials were only beginning.

PurpleRam has been killed. She was Johnny Blaze (Ghost Rider), Town One-Shot Vigilante.

It is now Day 3. The deadline is now Friday, August 11, at midnight. You may now resume the funposting.

With 8 players alive, it takes 5 votes to lynch.

Wow, I miss a couple days and a lot has happened O_o

On a side note, I'm going to try and post over the weekend, but I'm going to my brother-in-laws cabin on the lake, I do not know if I'll get reception and unsure if internet is accessible. I'll place my thoughts if I cannot end up getting on over the weekend.



Good job GM on finding out Arc!!! I was suspicious of some of things he did and my suspicion was correct.

Now for Ghostly being an accomplice I could totally see that happening. He has posed some excellent questions to get people thinking which makes me believe he is townie. He also posed the question of which of the three do we believe is scum. Yet, he did not vote for Arc even though he did make a post. The theory of the vigilante seemed kind of odd, though we now know that we did have a one shot vigilante and she is now dead.

I now believe GM is a townie, though I'm surprised he wasn't killed off, maybe it was because he used his one-shot power *shrug*. Right now I am wanting to hear more information from Ghostly.

Hopefully I can get on during the weekend, but at least it is a week long. I now know I should check this every day because lots tend to happen haha.

Also I want to shout out to the new guy that is joining. I'm glad we found a replacement.

Well son of a bitch. We just lost one of our most potent weapons. Now obviously Ghosty and I still have some things to work out, but I want to hear a lot of discussion from everybody, not just the one who has already been the most talkative. In particular I want to hear from the new guy on what he thinks of everybody based on the game so far.

Arc mostly used his final words to spew nonsense, but he was right about one thing: We've been doing a terrible job of sniffing out scum. I got pretty damn lucky to have my one shot of cop hit a scum the first night. I have no idea who we might have lynched otherwise, but we didn't seem to have anything in the way of real information, so we were likely to have a second mislynch. And we can only afford one more mislynch, a third guarantees a win for the mafia now that the vigilante is dead. Yes, I'm assuming we only had one vigilante, but that seems like a reasonable assumption to me.

RedBeard, I actually didn't expect to die. I'm pretty much confirmed town now. I mean in theory a scum could do what I did and bus a fellow mafia member in order to appear to be town, but as I said a second mislynch was more likely than not, so there wouldn't really be a good reason to opt for that tactic just yet. Killing power roles helps, but in the end mislynches are what wins the game for the mafia.

My point is that as the only confirmed town I was an obvious protection target for the doctor. Of course I was also the most obvious kill target for the mafia. Every night the doctor and the mafia have to do a bit a WIFOMing trying to figure out who it is best for them to actually target. Unfortunately the mafia has the advantage in that game; even if both sides just rolled a die to determine their target the mafia would usually get a kill through, but the mafia also has the advantage of knowing who is town and who isn't.

Well that was dramatic. So to those who have played before, what can we do better? How do we sniff out scum and protect the townies?

Well TNS, this is only my second game, but there are lots of theory articles on that very subject on the mafiascum wiki. I read a couple of them, which was enough to know there is no perfect way accomplish sniffing out scum. Which is good for the game; it'd be terribly boring to play Mafia if it was a solved game.

The main strategy I've been trying to pursue is Lynch All Liars. The idea behind that is the town has very little reason to lie about things, while the mafia has many reasons to do so. So if someone is caught in a lie, or if something they said ends up making no sense, they are probably mafia. That's why I want people to talk as much as possible. The more someone says the easier it is to catch them in a lie.

Welcome eyesack! Good first post, lots of stuff to take in there.

Hmmm, Ghosty and Raptor-Senpai as both of the remaining scum.... Seems unlikely. Because Raptor-Senpai put down the hammering vote while Ghosty was encouraging people to talk more. Could be distancing, but I doubt it. I am curious to hear from both of them on that subject though. Ghosty, what do you think of Raptor-Senpai ending the day when you wanted it to continue? Raptor-Senpai, why did you end the day when Ghosty wanted to talk more?

I'm curious what you mean they (arc and ghosty) agreed on the not reading the rules Eyesack. Also absolutely gorgeous icon.

GM what does WIFOMing mean?

And it's very hard to say on the Ghosty matter. He has said things that are in line with Arc on multiple occasions. However he also posed the initial statement that got us thinking that way. Even without GM he did start pushing us that way.

I was actually very surprised and disturbed to see Raptor-Senpai end the day so suddenly. It does feel scummy to me, as I am generally opposed to ending the day sooner than it needs to end- and EXTRA opposed to doing so in a Mafia game that has rules like this one regarding deadlines and lynches.

Green Machine wrote:Just dropping the subject seems scummy, like you wanted to avoid confrontation while maintaining a "leader of the town" appearance.

Getting back to the conversation GM and I were in the middle of before we were interrupted, I dropped the subject because it was unimportant. Like I said before, my reasoning for mentioning that possibility was to help highlight for new players that sometimes things are not what they seem, that there are other possibilities than the obvious. But we have no way of knowing what actually happened that night until the game ends. You and I arguing back and forth about who had the correct answer would never end, because barring some very bizarre game scenario with very strange roles, the true answer can't be confirmed- only guessed at. And, frankly, analyzing the content of posts and voting trends is a much more useful tool to identifying scum that playing Guess Who with the night phase murders.

In short, I dropped the subject because I didn't want to distract the town with it. And to add to my rebuttal of this accusation, if I wished to maintain an unquestioned position as one of the town leaders, then why would I be the first person in the entirety of this game to prompt that the town leaders are not above suspicion?

Green Machine wrote:But I maintain that votes are valuable information for the town, and your post worked to discourage voting. That seems like a scummy thing to do.

Votes are valuable information, absolutely. But you either misinterpret or misrepresent my intentions, GM. I wasn't trying to discourage voting but rather trying to discourage the town making a speedy lynch. Shorter day phases are advantageous to the scum players, since they give the town less information to work with. And as we saw yesterday, L-1 is not the best time to tell the town to wait for a moment and have some more discussion. The deadline for that day phase was almost a week off from when I made that post, and I didn't want it to end prematurely because of a spontaneous bandwagon (even if said bandwagon was on a person I find suspect).

Green Machine wrote:Lastly there is a quote from you that caught my eye: "But too often have I seen games where the scum manages to safely coast their way to an easy victory because they had someone doing an expert job of pretending to be an active, inquisitive player who led the town... Except in truth, they were really misleading the town the whole way." Now that quote by itself isn't scummy, but if you said it as scum then you would have had a huge grin on your face while typing that, imagining yourself pointing that quote out to other players post game and getting a big laugh out of it. Since one of the things you like to do in general is create amusement, I feel like that statement edges you more toward the side of being scum.

Should I refrain from making any statements about the possible state of the game then, for the fact I could be smugly self-satisfied if my predictions are true? This is not a fair argument and if I weren't so dedicated to laying the truth out plainly, I would just dismiss it out of hand. First of all, suggesting that a statement is made scummy because you can imagine that the player who authored it is looking to make a fool of everybody is ridiculous. I can imagine you'd be quite smug if you're scum but win after managing to convince the town that I'm scum. That in no way implies you to be scum. Second of all, going for post-game style points is all well and good but I would never do so at the expense of my chances of winning in Mafia, and inviting scrutiny of myself AND Arc would have been a terrible play if I were scum. Third of all, my post-game smugness is already guaranteed thanks to the fact that some people believe I am town and some people believe I am scum. No matter what I actually am, someone will have been entirely fooled, and I will get either a smug "I told you I was town!" or "I can't believe none of you caught me!" after the game concludes. And incidentally, I will confess that I am at all times grinning madly and smugly while typing posts for this game, on account of the overwhelmingly pompous and grandiose manner of speaking which I am partial to using in these sorts of games.

Like9Orphans, our forum is called Death By WIFOM and you don't know what WIFOM is?! Shame! WIFOM stands for Wine In Front Of Me. There is a scene in The Princess Bride which explains the concept rather adequately. (Evidently it was in another movie before that, but The Princess Bride scene is much better known, so that's the one I point to.)

In my specific example the WIFOM would be something like this: *Doctor's thoughts during the night* "I must protect Player A because he is the most valuable. But the mafia knows I will protect Player A, therefore they will not target him and my protection will be wasted. So I must protect someone else. But the mafia knows that I know they will not target Player A, and because I will not protect him they must target Player A. So I must protect Player A."... Continue until brain-death.

Also, seeing as I am likely to spend much of this day in the hot seat and there is a non-insignificant chance that I could end up lynched, I will at some point when I have time for it be sharing an updated and current list of all my reads. I preemptively request, in case things should progress to the point that my lynching is sudden and inevitable, that I be given time before being lynched to provide this updated list of reads. The information may be useful once I flip town and can be trusted beyond the shadow of a doubt.

eyesack wrote:Ghosty has been well thought out and tried to push the narrative of the vigilante. Ghosty says after explaining the narrative “I wouldn’t be too surprised if that’s what happened during the night”.

Way to cherry pick your quotes Eyesack, good job leaving off the part of that sentence where I say it's hardly the only possibility. And since when is saying something is possible "pushing a narrative"?

A more complete dissection of your reads and my thoughts on them will come later, but I wanted to hit the part of your post that talks about me more immediately.

Also, because I forgot to add this to the recent post wherein I replied to GM, I add here a question I would like GM to answer: exactly when, in your mind, did I change from "possibly scum, but not really sure" to "95% sure he's scum"? Please refer to a specific post, if possible.

Oh god Eyesack there is a problem with your choice of text color.

That's a very good and well-thought-out response Ghosty. My third argument is easily the weakest and probably can be dismissed outright, so seeing you treating it that way is definitely a point in your favor. The second argument is one we don't really disagree on the fundamentals of - we both see votes as valuable information. We mainly seem to disagree on how quickly we can get that information. And admittedly I might just be a little sore about not being able to get that extra bit of info that an Arc-participating wagon would have given.

My first argument is my strongest one, and one on which we still don't see eye-to-eye. If you think that Nihil was most likely a mafia kill, then say that is more likely and you simply wanted to point out every scenario, however unlikely. But that doesn't seem to be your view, even in your most recent answer. And that is something we absolutely have to work out. Because in my mind the argument that Nihil was a vig kill is sheer nonsense, the only reason to make such an argument is to try and confuse our doctor. Our vigilante is now dead, and we have no way to confirm whether or not she used her only shot of her power. But she did say on day two that she didn't think a one-shot vigilante would have used their power yet. I think she is smart enough to know that is a really bad idea, but even if she didn't why would she lie about it in that statement? Since she was the vigilante that would have essentially been an outright lie. That sort of misinformation could only hurt the town.

If you can't at this point acknowledge that Nihil was definitely a mafia kill then I have to question your ability to reason. The main problem I have is that even suggesting the idea in the first place - as anything other than "This is hypothetically possible" - seems to only be beneficial if you are mafia.

Yeah I am new to this so did not realize the changing it to black would cause a problem so I changed it back to white. That caused the issue you see above. Sorry about that first time on this forum. Why it may seem I cherry picked the one line of the quote I included the whole thing for people to read. I merely was pointing out the part of it I think was most interesting.

L9O, When TNS said he didn't know he couldn't change his vote Ghosty jumped on it. But so would anyone here. I should not have stated this as he and Arc agreeing on it as others did too. It was the logical choice to make at the time. So I retract that as evidence as it is not concrete at all.

GM, Raptor-Senpai put in the last vote after Arc went off the deep end with his post. Then he voted quickly to end the day which works in favor of the Mafia as the town cannot discuss anymore and see if we could find those who would defend Arc.

Well Ghosty you're below 95% now as I think you have given very good responses that I would expect from town in this situation. But you went to 95% when Arc voiced support for the Nihil vig kill theory. At that point I knew he was mafia, and if you're not mafia then he gains little by supporting that theory. As I've said, what the mafia is getting out of it is having the doctor "confirm" one of them as town. If the doctor protected you and you're actually town then the mafia has actually lost ground there. It makes more sense to me that the two of you came up with the idea to push that theory during the first night. You gain nothing by supporting it as town, and Arc gains nothing by supporting it if you are town. That's why you are still in my crosshairs, even if I'm a bit less certain than before.

Green Machine wrote:Hmmm, Ghosty and Raptor-Senpai as both of the remaining scum.... Seems unlikely. Because Raptor-Senpai put down the hammering vote while Ghosty was encouraging people to talk more. Could be distancing, but I doubt it. I am curious to hear from both of them on that subject though. Ghosty, what do you think of Raptor-Senpai ending the day when you wanted it to continue? Raptor-Senpai, why did you end the day when Ghosty wanted to talk more?

I ended the day because Arc flat out said he was mafia. There was no real reason for him to lie and say he was mafia, since ya know you're supposed to hide that. On top of that if he turned out to be town then we would still have a prime suspect in you.

Truth be told I don't really buy L9O's defense still. Like even if you are new and haven't read the rules how do you not pick up on being able to change your vote when people in the thread do that in front of you. Also I completely missed Ghosty wanting to prolong day that's "a little" suspicious.

Also Arc's death blew my theory of our Cage being related to our role right out of the water.

eyesack wrote: Raptor-Senpai: HARDLY SAYS A DAMN WORD! Cannot get a good read. Voted the last when it seemed everything was going against Arc. Could be covering his/her ass and trying to not get called out by the rest of the town. Because of this I am going with Scum.



Based on the above my thoughts on the remaining Mafia members are as follow:
Ghosty and Raptor-Senpai[/color]

Yeah no I ended the day cause we had a mafia to lynch. Unless the rest of the mafia was really stupid then we wouldn't get anything. The name of the game for mafia is pretend to be town until you equal them, because of that unless you're pulling off some kind of gambit or your numbers are low if someone outs themselves you distance.

Raptor-Senpai wrote: Truth be told I don't really buy L9O's defense still. Like even if you are new and haven't read the rules how do you not pick up on being able to change your vote when people in the thread do that in front of you. Also I completely missed Ghosty wanting to prolong day that's "a little" suspicious.

I'm going to assume that you mean TNS's defense here, not L9O's. Also prolonging the day isn't the suspicious part of Ghosty's behavior, that is trying to get out more information, which the town needs. You are the one who looks suspicious by ending the day when there was an active inquiry. Depriving the town of information is a scummy thing to do.

Way worse though, Raptor-Senpai, is that you say you acted without reading all of the posts. That is your response to why you ended the day when Ghosty wanted to get more information, you didn't see that he had said that. That sort of behavior is totally reckless. Before I had you as either scum or town with no method to his madness. Now I have you as either scum or town that's so bad he's actively harmful to the town. I'm tempted to think that you're really bad town, since I still find it unlikely you and Ghosty are both scum and I'm more suspicious of him currently. We can't afford to lynch town just because they're terrible, so instead I'll advise you to shape the hell up. Actually read everything that has been said, and make posts/votes accordingly.

Thank you so much for telling me for the 5th goddamn time that I'm shit and shouldn't be playing I wasn't really sure what you meant the first couple of times.Ya know I get enough of that shit from work so fuck this I came here to spend time with friends and have fun not to have everyone and their mother tell me that I'm complete trash.

Yes I missed Ghosty's all for prolonging the day for discussion in his twenty over posts saying that. Maybe if some people would stop bitching about how town is playing like a bunch of newbs and maybe help the new people figure out what to do things would go a bit smoother. But what do I know I'm just the objectively worst player at this game. If I wanted to be told that I'm human garbage and shouldn't be here I'd just go into work.

So fuck all of y'all I'm leaving ban me or some shit I don't care. I ain't going on to a forum just to be told that I'm shit. Fungus out.

Alrighty then. Didn't expect people to be taking the things said about them in the game so personally. My apologies to you, and to anyone else who took anything I said in the context of the game and applied it more broadly than that. I've called two other people worthless and one mad (meaning crazy), so maybe I'm just an asshole. I certainly am in favor of people not playing games if they are getting more frustration than fun out of the experience. My best wishes to you out there in meatspace Raptor-Senpai.

So Hans, what's the call here? Do you think it better to search for yet another replacement, or just do a modkill of the leaving player?

I will go to great lengths to avoid modkilling anyone if I can find a replacement. In this case, I have a couple of potential recruits to press-gang convince, so hopefully we can avoid a modkill.

Okay. The difference in behavior between the outgoing player and the incoming one might be hard to adjust for, as opposed to the previous time where the outgoing player didn't really have much to go on anyway. Plus the situation doesn't change much if this were to be handled via modkill, so I'd be okay with it here. Actually I think I'll use the rest of this post explaining the math behind my reasoning, give the town some more information to think about.

Now when I say the situation wouldn't change much, that is assuming Raptor turned out to be town, which is where I had him ever so slightly leaning. If one of the two remaining scum were to be modkilled here then the town could probably win with a mass roleclaim.

The situation as it stands is there are six town and two scum. Since the (presumably only) vigilante is dead, as soon as the mafia numbers equal the town numbers, the mafia wins the game. A mislynch kills one town, and the mafia kills another at night. One day and night of that puts the count at 4-2. Two days and nights of that and the count is 2-2, mafia victory. So we need two correct lynches before two mislynches.

We can try to buy ourselves some time by opting for a no-lynch. Currently we can only buy one day with that. After one day (and a mafia night kill) the count is 5-2. A mislynch at that point puts us at 3-2, which isn't yet a mafia victory. On the other hand a second day of no-lynch puts us 4-2, meaning that we would then have to get two correct lynches before a single mislynch.

Now the doctor can alter this math. Each person saved by the doctor buys us a day of no-lynch. Similarly a modkill of a town here would act as an anti-doctor, subtracting the one day of no-lynch we can currently buy.

The point to buying time with no-lynches would be so that our investigative roles can get more time to find the scum, along with the benefit of getting more talking in, which typically helps the town. We know there was a tracker, we can assume there is probably a cop, and who knows if we have other investigative roles. With enough time they can claim their results and we can eliminate the scum. The problem at that stage is the scum would fake claim roles and results of their own, and may even do it first in order to seem believable. But the more time we have, the more likely a fake claim can be proven false.

Now all of this doesn't mean a no-lynch is definitely the way to go. The extra info the cop pulls in is worthless if the mafia kills him before he can claim. It'd be better to sniff out and lynch another scum. But we have the option if it seems necessary as we get closer to the deadline.