Pen Pals Mafia [D3: Dear Zachary]

[Snark]

Pen Pals Mafia

Players:

Spoiler:

Players:
1. Sabrar (D3 here I come)
2. emlightened (note to self: push Sabrar lynch if he survives N2)
3. jimbobmacdoodle (uses one shot kill on Sabrar during N2).
4. flicky1991
5. Carlington
6. dimochka (blame the carrier pigeon)
7. Djehutynakht
8. mpolo (happy to be playing for a change!)
9. moody7277
10. Madge (happy to be replacement, so keep me at the bottom if it fills)

Setup info:

Spoiler:

1. Speed: 5-7 day Days. 2-4 day Nights. Weekends run the clock down half as quickly as normal days (ie Saturday+Sunday is considered 1 real life day). Deadline extensions given when needed. Lurkers will be replaced.
2. Bastardry: None.
3. Setup: This will be a normal closed game with the following added twist: Players will be paired into secret 2-player pen pal groups randomly regardless of alignment. Players will have 1) unlimited day+night private chat with their pen pal and 2) a special bonus power (or extra facet of their original power) as long as their pen pal is alive
4. This game has one town faction. The town faction wins when all anti-town factions are eliminated. Their win condition is "You win when all threats to the town have been eliminated."
5. This game has at least one anti-town faction. Anti-town factions win when town and all rival anti-town factions are defeated.
6. This game may or may not have third-party factions. Their win conditions may or may not coincide with town/anti-town win conditions.
7. There are no spoiler-reading or PM-listening type roles.
8. Multiple players may have the same role.
9. No role is guaranteed to be sane.
10. No role may self-target or target dead players unless otherwise specified.
11. Role reveals are made the morning following death.

Standard Rules:

Spoiler:

Voting rules:

1. Votes and questions must be posted in bold and on a new line, like this:
   
   Vote: Snark
   
   You must unvote to change votes, in bold and on a new line, like this:
   
   Unvote
   Vote: Snark
   
2. When someone gains a majority of the votes, they are automatically lynched, and daytime automatically ends whether or not the mod is online to declare day-end. Posting after the hammer vote is not allowed, even if the hammer-vote was accidental.
3. If deadline is reached and no player has a majority of the votes, then the person with the most votes is lynched. If the votals are tied, then random.org will randomly select one of the tied players to be lynched UNLESS all players are voting and exactly 2 players have votes placed on them. In that special case, there will be no lynch. If you don't understand this, please ask for clarification.
4. You can vote to "NL" (no lynch). If "NL" gets the majority of the votes (or wins a tied votal), no one will be lynched.

Posting rules:

1. No posting in this thread unless you are playing in it.
2. No talking about this game except in this thread or in an appropriately titled spoiler in the discussion thread.
3. No editing your posts. For any reason. At any time.
4. Do not lurk!
5. You may post in thread during the day phase but not the twilight phase. If the deadline for a day passes, then it is automatically night, whether or not the mod has had time to make a day-end post.
6. You may not quote directly from your role PM or any other PMs from the mod or other players. Paraphrasing is fine.

Death rules:

1. You’re alive until the mod tells you that you're dead, by PM or in thread.
2. Once you die, you may no longer post in this thread, but you may read spoilers in the discussion thread. That is your consolation prize.

Private Message rules:

1. You can ask the mod questions by PM if you'd rather not ask in thread.
2. No PMing other players concerning this game unless your role specifically allows it and you CC the mod in every communication. PMing your Pen Pal is allowed in this game - make sure you CC the mod.

DO NOT QUOTE PMS FROM THE MOD OR OTHER PLAYERS.

Don't do it in the main thread. And don't do it in private chat with your Pen Pals. Quoting Role PMs or any other PMs is prohibited. Paraphrasing is fine.

[Snark]

If you have both your Role PM and Pen Pal PM, please confirm in thread.

If you don't, please PM me immediately.

[flicky1991]

Both PMs received.

[Sabrar]

Confirm both PM-s.

[dimochka]

Got both PMs

[emlightened]

Also got two PMs.

[moody7277]

I have received both PMs.

[jimbobmacdoodle]

Both PMs have been received.

[Carlington]

Confirming

[Madge]

Got two PMs. Let's do this!

[mpolo]

I have two PMs.

[dimochka]

I think we're missing just DJ?

Please confirm!

[Djehutynakht]

Confirm

[Snark]

Deadline in 6 "days" and since weekends count down half, that actually means exactly 7 days.

10 alive, 6 to lynch.

[dimochka]

Ok, setup discussion time!

I'm thinking 7/3 is leaning way too much towards scum (although depends on what kind of roles exist in game), whereas 8/2 is possibly but probably leans too much towards town. Something along the lines of 6/2/1/1 or 7/2/1 is more likely. The independents are probably some variety of survivor and/or sk.

Now if anyone wants to run scenario analysis of probabilities regarding the chances of town sharing chat with scum or independent, go for it. the only thing I'll say on that end for now is that it is more likely (i think in every case but I could be wrong) that ALL non-town people are aligned with town than having a set of them aligned with each other. So just be careful in your private discussions.

Do you guys think the powers of two people paired have any relation to one another? Or the power you get while your buddy is alive?

[Sabrar]

Hi everyone!
Normally I would agree with dimochka about the distribution of alignments but after the Shakespeare PYP I don't dare to guess the mod's intentions. 2 scum seems likely, but even 3 might be possible in the extreme case that we were all given very powerful abilities. Some probabilities for the heck of it: in case of 7 Town there is a 66.67% chance that all non-Town is paired with Town, while with 6 Town this drops to 38.1%

Players will be paired into secret 2-player pen pal groups randomly regardless of alignment.

I think this implies that everything was determined randomly regardless of other factors and the abilities of paired players have no relation.

[mpolo]

Due to the "strengthening of abilities" factor while the pen pal is alive, we may have scum choosing/striving to keep certain townies alive to protect their own abilities. I'm not sure that that is going to be any easier to detect than scum in general, though.

I would suggest that townies try to use their pen pal ability as much as possible. After all, if a scum player is in two different PM conversations, he or she might well slip up. As townies, we have little to lose, since we have no extra information, at least for now.

A scary idea that just occurred to me when considering the breakdown of roles: A cult that can recruit as long as the leader has a pen pal.

As somebody pointed out above, 8/2 is pretty certainly too weighted toward town. 7/3 is possible by the standards here (about 1/3 scum), but some sort of independent voice is probably there as well, so that 7/2/1 or 6/2/1/1 seems more likely.

Non-towns are more likely to be paired with townies, but the possibility of a mini-scum chat or scum-indie chat cannot be discarded. If we assume 3 non-townies, each townie has about a 2/3 chance of being paired with town and a 1/3 chance of being paired with non-town. We do approach near 100% chance that some townie is paired with a non-town, though. If I've calculated correctly, of course.

[Madge]

What was the alignment distribution on shakespeare? I didn't read that one.

I think scum are clearly going to try to keep their penpals alive, so the longer your penpal stays alive the more likely it is they're scum; so I *think* if your penpal dies you should probably claim it (HOWEVER, drawback: scum's hitlist will narrow, as they can put you out of the "town with bonus powers" camp). Actually, if you have a dead penpal, you're more likely to be scum than if you have a live penpal because scum won't target scum (ignoring multiple factions). Maybe this isn't so cut and dried. Does anyone have any thoughts about if we should claim when our penpals die, or if that's the worst idea I've ever had?

I am going to assume against a cult in such a small game unless someone has a deculting ability or something (which they shouldn't share, obviously)

[Sabrar]

What was the alignment distribution on shakespeare? I didn't read that one.

8 players, 2 scum, 2 town, 2 independent survivors (of which one was a 'sort-of-SK'), 2 lynchers who were after each other and became town after the other was dead.

Regarding keeping your penpal alive: I think Town also might want to do that if the situation warrants it. Meaning if your additional ability is strong and the two leading wagons are your penpal and someone else then it might influence your decision to keep your penpal alive for one more night.

Also I do not trust decisions based on probabilities (bad memories from Wheel of Time), especially when it can be manipulated by scum. At this point I'm against claiming penpals (also because of the drawback mentioned above) but would like to hear other people's input as well.

[Madge]

I think it goes without saying we should not claim who our penpals if they're still alive. Gives scum too much info (e.g. A and B claim penpals; both are town; scum kills A or B to disable one town power and cripple another).

[emlightened]

I don't think that claiming pen-pals actually would help scum, assuming all scum already know each other, because it doesn't change who's likely to be town/indie; scum will already know if they're paired with scum or with non-scum. (That's assuming, of course, that neither of their abilities are known.)

Also, I've managed to derive some setup info from my ability. Should I share it and allude to my role, or should I say nothing?

[Madge]

Oh yeah! Scum knows who is paired with scum and who isn't, so that argument against claiming penpals doesn't work. Anyway, I'm a little worried that scum has some way to screw with people based on penpals. But I have no idea what that could be (roleblock that works on the target and their penpal while your penpal is alive?????)

Regarding claiming your role, that's really a question only you can answer. As I'm sure is obvious, it depends on stuff I can't possibly know; would the setup info you have be more useful to town or scum? Roles like deculters or doctors should obviously be kept quiet, even if at the edge of it you find out some good info (e.g. a doctor ability that says it can protect multiple kills in the same night, or well the very existence of a deculter).

Personally I'd avoid sharing, but that's just me. We're all probably going to have pretty gnarly roles (at least at first) so it's probably not a huge deal.

[emlightened]

I think I'll wait; it'll probably be obvious by the time it's useful.

[Carlington]

I think 7/2/1 is most likely, although 6/2/1/1 could be possible. Could there be 6/2/2? That would be a little chaotic maybe.
I don't think I need to claim anything just now. If I might suggest, though, I think it's quite inadvisable to claim both a power role and a penpal, or to claim a PR if you have been claimed as a penpal or vice versa. Basically, in any given pair of penpals, I don't think there should be more claimed than the link between the penpals or the powers of both penpals.

[Sabrar]

Meant to post an EBWOP but saw the ninjas. Actually realized that scum already knows all the scum-town penpal pairs.

Also, I've managed to derive some setup info from my ability. Should I share it and allude to my role, or should I say nothing?

Depends on the nature of your ability. Good to claim only if information given to Town outweighs drawback (obviously ). Example off the top of my head: Bulletproof who becomes PGO when targeted by SK should not claim, Watcher who becomes Tracker when targeting Cultleader should.

[jimbobmacdoodle]

Morning all! It's a shame Esthr isn't playing this game, as I think she'd have loved being paired with Sabrar...

Regarding claiming, I'm of the opinion that claims should only be made if there is a reasonable amount of information available for town through the claim, versus the downside of having that information public. This of course, is obvious, but I'm not sure I can help much more than that, since I don't know everyone's abilities. Each player is going to have to judge themselves. I think it may occasionally be beneficial to claim that X is your pen pal if they are about to be lynched, if your pen pal ability is powerful, so that you get an extra night to use it.

Is a player's pen pal revealed as such on death?

What I would like to avoid is a scum pair claiming useful pen pal abilities later on from each other, if both their partners are dead. I don't think it's a terrible idea to claim if your pen pal has died, in some situations. I think it may depend on how strong you rate your regular ability, and how likely you think scum are to focus on player's with bonus abilities. That latter part I reckon will depend on how many scum are paired with town, which I suspect is most (both?) of them.

My setup thoughts are 6-2-1-1, with one anti-town-ish indie, and one fairly neutral one (e.g. a lyncher and a survivor).

[Sabrar]

Actually, if you have a dead penpal, you're more likely to be scum than if you have a live penpal because scum won't target scum (ignoring multiple factions).

Was thinking a bit more about this. Scum will probably target Town-Town pairs first to deprive us from powerful abilities, so the penpal partner of the first NK is likely to be Town. Obviously scum could do the opposite in order to establish one of them as 'proven' Town, however that case is also a win for us as they deprive themselves from an upgrade while not messing with the rest of the town.

@jimbob: that would have been hilarious.

[Snark]

Is a player's pen pal revealed as such on death?

No

[moody7277]

As long as there are sufficient power roles, 7/3 might be workable. That setup would guarantee that at least one townie would be corresponding with scum. Basically I concur with the X-files maxim when talking to your pen pal. As far as independent roles go, SK would make for a very fast game, survivor would seem a likelier role, so 7/2/1 or (less likely) 6/3/1.

Given the pen pal mechanic, and the small number of people, I wonder if we don't have any VT. I'll take the "claim pen pal if they die" idea as a "eh, why not" as of now.

[dimochka]

I thought we might have VTs originally, but then it wouldn't make sense with the penpal amplification role. As such, I am going to guess that everyone has a non-vanilla role.

Based on what Sabrar said regarding scum targeting town-town pairs... it's weird to say this but my power is actually less useful / less effective while my penpal is alive. I don't know if anyone else has the same thing, but I think it's just useful to be aware of the fact that scum may kill their town penpal if they somehow suppress their power.

Also, I am not a PGO

[emlightened]

That's interesting. As it happens, when My pen-pal is alive my power isn't more powerful, but it is more useful.

[mpolo]

That's where I stand. I have the same power before and after death of my pal, but it is more flexible before death of the penpal.

[flicky1991]

I started writing a post about whether or not you should claim when your pen pal dies when people first started discussing it, but then noticed a crucial flaw in my logic that made the whole post irrelevant... so I'm finally posting now.

I think it may depend on how strong you rate your regular ability, and how likely you think scum are to focus on player's with bonus abilities.

Yeah, it really does come down to what you think of your own abilities (and what's been discovered/claimed about other abilities). Hard to make a consistent "strategy" of any kind before we have all the information.

As long as we're vaguely indicating the nature of abilities for the purpose of information gathering... the Pen Pal portion of my ability wouldn't be particularly beneficial to me if there was only a town and a scum faction, so I think we can assume there is at least one independent. (It doesn't seem like anyone was doubting that, though.)

[Djehutynakht]

At least one independent seems likely to definite then. I don't know how much further I'd go on speculating the setup. Mafia could be two or three people; I guess two might be more likely with independents, but a two-person scumteam has always personally seemed somewhat of an awkwardly small setup to me. But for a game of 10 I suppose it makes sense.

Regarding Pen-Pals I suppose it's best to keep them secret for now. That seems to be roughly the spirit of the game anyways.

I think that strategy about what to do regarding pen pals will have to evolve over time; I don't know any commonly accepted precedent, and so I guess we'll just find out what works best as the game progresses.

I guess a good goal for all of us would be to confirm, to the best of each's ability, whether or not their pen pal is town or not. Any pair in which each can essentially trust the other as town is a powerful advantage.
___

...Let's see. Some rough work:

We have five pairings: Even if pen pals were randomly assigned, by the common sense of mod discretion we can probably assume that mafia aren't pen pals with each other; that'd just be a waste of game concept. It's possible that a Mafia-Independent pen pal pair exists, but more than one is doubtful.

If we assume 7 town, 3 non-town, then there are either two or three purely town pairs.

If we assume 6 town, 4 non-town, then there are as few as one, and as high as three (but realistically probably only as high as two) purely town pairs.

I guess that doesn't really get us anywhere. I'm not good with coming up with stats. But we can assume that at least one pair is town-town.

It seems most likely that there are two town-town pairs and three town-non town pairs.

So by my rough and totally-not-mathematical estimate, it is currently more likely than not that each town member's pen pal is non-town (wonderful...). This is seems to be the opposite of what Mpolo got earlier.

If anyone wants to correct this to be more accurate and number-y, feel free.
______________

Finally, it's probably useful if we start thinking up actual lynch candidates. We don't want the deadline creeping up on us after the weekend's over and forcing us to vote hastily on the grounds of, well, substantially zilch.

[Sabrar]

Based on what Sabrar said regarding scum targeting town-town pairs... it's weird to say this but my power is actually less useful / less effective while my penpal is alive. I don't know if anyone else has the same thing, but I think it's just useful to be aware of the fact that scum may kill their town penpal if they somehow suppress their power.

The more I think about this the less I like it. Having an ability that is weaker when your pen-pal is alive seems to go against the stated setup and with no bastardry this feels very weird. It appears to me like dimochka is deliberately setting up a potential mislynch on a townie whose pen pal was killed by scum. Also it may include a bit of role-fishing by trying to determine whose ability is stronger in its boosted version.

Now the problem I'm having right now is that the above relies on guessing the mod's intentions correctly, something I have a very poor record of. Furthermore it would take massive guts from scum to come up with a suspiciously sounding false-claim so early. Therefore I'm not at all convinced at my scum-read at this moment.

We have five pairings: Even if pen pals were randomly assigned, by the common sense of mod discretion we can probably assume that mafia aren't pen pals with each other; that'd just be a waste of game concept.

When the mod states that there is no bastardry then I never question any setup information. The quote in this post specifically states 'regardless of alignment' so I find a scum-scum pair entirely possible. I also doubt that it would be a complete 'waste of game concept' as it encourages scum to keep their partners alive (i.e. no bussing) even more.

It seems most likely that there are two town-town pairs and three town-non town pairs.

So by my rough and totally-not-mathematical estimate, it is currently more likely than not that each town member's pen pal is non-town (wonderful...). This is seems to be the opposite of what Mpolo got earlier.

You're counting only the number of pairs and not the number of players. 2 town-town pairs means that there are 4 townies with town as pen pal and only 3 with scum/independent.

[jimbobmacdoodle]

I see where Sabrar is coming from, as the same concern did cross my mind regarding possible role-fishing. It does seem weird that a power becomes better after the pen pal dies, though not impossible. An indie or scum power I could see this being. However, that all comes with a massive caveat that dimochka's claim could be to dispel this exact line of reasoning, i.e. that townie bonus abilities are beneficial. I will say that I think it would be a bad idea to make any further claims in this area for now in case it points scum in the direction of better targets.

[mpolo]

Another thing about a scum-scum pairing is that it would (potentially) allow daychat for scum, where at least many setups have only nightchat [I don't see anything above about whether scum currently has only nightchat or not].

[dimochka]

Based on what Sabrar said regarding scum targeting town-town pairs... it's weird to say this but my power is actually less useful / less effective while my penpal is alive. I don't know if anyone else has the same thing, but I think it's just useful to be aware of the fact that scum may kill their town penpal if they somehow suppress their power.

The more I think about this the less I like it. Having an ability that is weaker when your pen-pal is alive seems to go against the stated setup and with no bastardry this feels very weird. It appears to me like dimochka is deliberately setting up a potential mislynch on a townie whose pen pal was killed by scum. Also it may include a bit of role-fishing by trying to determine whose ability is stronger in its boosted version.

Now the problem I'm having right now is that the above relies on guessing the mod's intentions correctly, something I have a very poor record of. Furthermore it would take massive guts from scum to come up with a suspiciously sounding false-claim so early. Therefore I'm not at all convinced at my scum-read at this moment.

Without getting into specifics, the "change" that the penpal makes to my power is not compulsory, but if I do follow it then it's as if I'm basically more distracted. I am NOT in any way advocating lynching my penpal (without actual scummy activity), because I can just use the original version of my power. It's just that the adjusted version of my power is not, in my opinion, helpful to a townie.

[Sabrar]

Finally, it's probably useful if we start thinking up actual lynch candidates. We don't want the deadline creeping up on us after the weekend's over and forcing us to vote hastily on the grounds of, well, substantially zilch.

While this is absolutely true, I want to mention that if I could be 100% sure that we have no SK then this is the one setting where I'd be comfortable with a No Lynch. In fact if we only have 1 death during N1 then I believe we should at least consider to No Lynch D2. It sacrifices nothing for the endgame, gives mislynch less chance and allows us to use our more powerful abilities for one additional night.

[mpolo]

While no-lynch can help in an even-numbered town situation, I'm not sure that D1 is where we should use that:

1) No information from the alignment of the person lynched on D2, and no voting patterns to analyse, so D2 is almost as empty as D1.
2) If we were at 6/3/1, D2 would be all but LYLO, depending on how the indie is.
3) We don't know if there is a SK. If there is, we need every shot at getting rid of him or her.
4) While a cult is numerically unlikely, I absolutely would not want to allow one to grow.

I will be away for part of Saturday/Sunday, but this coincides with "low traffic time" anyway.