LOLCAT Mafia Game Thread

[sifaka]

I just don't know, Durro seems so shifty............

And what makes you say that ?

Since realising the error of my suspicions about Virphen yesterday, I've done nothing to accuse anyone, not voted for anyone and if anything, have tried to flesh out what may have happened overnight. I've also spent some time trying to work out how the good guys with investigative powers can safely disseminate their information without being targeted. Now, if you think that makes me suspicious, go ahead and vote for me. Do it. If you're trying to whip up hysteria to lynch me, you're either making the same mistake I did yesterday, or your have ulterior motives.

Anyone that knows me knows that I play a terrible bad guy - it's just not in me and I overplayed the role last Mafia game I was in. However, when I'm innocent, I'm 100% honest and forthright in my writing and that's what I've been doing the whole game here. I genuinely thought I saw a voting bloc emerge yesterday and voiced my misguided suspicions. When I realised my error, I withdrew my vote, suggested that Virphen be substituted in lieu of the missing player if he was innocent and sent him an apologetic e-mail afterwards (we have each other's e-mail address).

Vote for me if you feel you must if you have a genuine concern.

I voted for you.

You posted this in the gallery:

Would a genuine, heartfelt sorry be appropriate at this juncture ?

Probably not, given the game is still going .

Could it be that you were set up ? You innocently suggest a course of action and the bad guy team decides between them to follow your lead to make you look like the ringleader of a group ? Or was it just coincidental that a few players followed your lead - twice ? Maybe I need to dial back my level of suspicion in this game, especially that it's only day one and we have virtually zero to go on. Anyhow, sorry again Virphen. Withdrawing my vote for you wasn't enough to save you and I feel bad that my earlier suspicions planted the seeds of doubt. I'll be looking at who voted for you closely.



When does the game thread open ?

You are still trying to mislead everyone into thinking there is some voting block.. yesterday that it was a block trying to get virphen made mayor and now that it was a block trying to set him up. You withdrew your vote for him when it was blindingly obvious that he was being lynched. You are extremely suspicious. I voted for your lynching yesterday but the vote was not counted in the final tally, for some reason.

Alright, if I were to take a leap in all of this, I might throw my suspicion toward you Twinkie.

The reason for that is because you seem to have made this well thought out post about him - perhaps, trying to take advantage of the fact that he appeared guilty. And for all we know - he very well could be. But, he seems to be helping out the innocents with various questions on how to better our situation. If I go by gut - I'd say he's innocent. (Even though I have made this mistake before).

I'm being very cautious in my voting because I want to hear what all have to say before I make a decision. And I don't want to accuse anyone without reason.

But I'm just throwin' my suspicions out there.....

I agree with you Mantis, I had noticed this post by Durro in the peanut gallery, but chose not to react to it. I was waiting to see what his actual strategy in the game thread was going to be today.
It does look a little bit like Twinkie is trying to take advantage of Durro's apparent guilt.
I shouldn't trust my gut feelings at all, but it seems to me that Durro genuinely screwed up yesterday.

I'm very reluctant to vote today, we've lost a lot of players yesterday, I don't want to take any risk and lynch an innocent.

[Durro]

DURRO JUST MADE AN EDIT.

So ?

Notice that there's no "edited X times" underneath my post ? I didn't go back and edit it well after. I just had an extra thought and added it into the post straight away. If you edit within a minute or so, it doesn't show up as an edit. I gave the courtesy of writing "edit : ......" so that anyone on-line would notice, but if I was being devious, I could have just left that out. Again, I'm being honest in my game play and writing "edit : ....." is part of that. I'm not hiding anything.

Or, as a less tolerant person might phrase it,

I think it's in the rules. No edits. I've seen people godkilled for less than what you did.

And all the people who made edits of posts yesterday ???

I was being honest and honourable in showing that I made an immediate addition to my post. If that gets me killed, that's pretty petty.

I'm having trouble today, as I'm at work, busy and trying to scan the mafia pages quickly between scanning patients. It looks like I misread Twinkle's post in my rush - not only did I mix her up with Redial, but I thought she wrote that I was trying to form a voting bloc for Virphen, not claiming that there was a voting bloc.

My mistake (again) and I sincerely apologise to Twinkle.

It might be a good thing if I get lynched today - this game is doing my head in. I won't fight the vote or place a vote myself. If I'm around tomorrow, I'll try and concentrate on what's going on but for now, I have to run and do 3 more CT scans.

I'm in the loving hands of ceiling cat.

Peace be upon you all.

[Mantisdreamz]

My mistake (again) and I sincerely apologise to Twinkle.

*Twinkie.

[Mantisdreamz]

I agree with you Mantis, I had noticed this post by Durro in the peanut gallery, but chose not to react to it. I was waiting to see what his actual strategy in the game thread was going to be today.
It does look a little bit like Twinkie is trying to take advantage of Durro's apparent guilt.
I shouldn't trust my gut feelings at all, but it seems to me that Durro genuinely screwed up yesterday.

I'm very reluctant to vote today, we've lost a lot of players yesterday, I don't want to take any risk and lynch an innocent.

I still think he may be trying to take advantage.

[Lion IRC]

Hi Durro,
I think there are mafia people trying to get under your skin.
Dont sweat it.
Lion (IRC)

Lion IRC edited this post 18 times in total. Partly because of indecision, partly to fix typos and the rest were just to keep people guessing.

[Redial]

[Lion IRC]

No PM's allowed for us innocents hey? Only the Mafia get to do PM's do they?

Watch THIS! The mob is getting angry.

Why NO PM's for innocents? There MUST be a reason. To force us to think outside the square imposed upon us.

This is a PM to everybody.

Suppose you had 4 players all making claims of innocence and all agreeing to vote as a block. They can’t prove anything conclusively about their innocence at this point, but so far, what each of them is saying seems to “make sense” to the other 3. Statistically, it is very likely that these 4 out of 23 ARE all innocent. This group of 4 might include players who actually COULD prove their innocence by openly announcing that they have an action role.

Eg. “I am a Doctor and can heal the Cop if I found out who they were”. Or I am the Vigilante and can kill a mafia person once I get a clue.

So they do what would otherwise happen via PM and publicly announce their alliance proclaiming that if you are not with “us” then you must be against.

This forces other players to then acknowledge the presence of a formal alliance by either jumping on the vanilla cat (innocent) bandwagon
or remaining skepticats or suspecticats. (Note the difference between people being falsely suspected of a block vote and an ACTUAL open alliance)
It is much harder to be a mafia person trying to fly under the radar saying stuff like..."oh I'm tired and can't concentrate so I am going to remain neutral"

Anyone dissenting from the self-appointed Vanilla Cat leadership group might claim it is fake, unfair or risky and might become collateral damage if they truly (mistakenly) thought it was a mafia ploy. And maybe it is dictatorial and unfair but the people who officially “come out” are taking a big risk on behalf of all the other innocent players. All they have – once they are out in the open - is the hope that there is sufficient protective action they can take while reducing the mafia numbers to simply win by attrition.

There would be a gang of 4 plus 15 other players as of now. Their decisive “battle charge” lead might draw out other “role players” and could make it worthwhile for someone ELSE who knows something to share it in the game thread before they get booted, lynched, assassinated etc. The open-hand strategy might enable other innocent (non-role player) cats to achieve a higher lynching success rate rather than continuing the paranoid "pot shots" (guesses) Even if every mafia person pretended to publicly support and vote with the gang of four it would still be useful. Everyone would see what was being said by whom. No Private Messages to the trusted Gang of Four means their decision making cannot be influenced by lies. And the best way to expose a lie is to ensure nobody whispers something behind your back.

We can’t verbatim post any role-related PM’s from Oblivion but we CAN “paraphrase” what Oblivion said in that PM and what we have come to know as a consequence of that PM. Eg. I can state that based on a PM I got from Oblivion that the Vigilante does/does not get to eliminate one player each round. Or I can prove that Cookiejon was not assassinated by the mafia because I have a PM from Oblivion stating that the assassin eliminates cats with a shot gun/piece of rope/well polished boot out of the window. (Those were hypothetical examples OK!)

One benefit in keeping all the innocent (vanila) town cat posts restricted to the game thread is that it allows Oblivion to modify the story mid-game if desired. (Like substituting Tigger with a resurrected Ghatanothoa) As long as Oblivion has elbow room to vary the development of the game detail he can. (A bit like a game of "I spy" where you are able to change the object beginning with "G" from Grass to Goat to Gate as long as the clues havent locked you in.)

Remember – once people “come out” much of what they say will most likely corroborate other claims and be consistent with events thus far. (A mafia player might try to fake it but they could only do this as long as no other REAL innocent cat claimed the same role.) A mafia liar would need to study all the posts made by the real Doctor/Cop/Vigi and any discrepancy would show up. It really would put the cat among the pigeons.

If the gang of four unanimously calls the lynching shots the mafia make themselves more obvious by stalling for time, abstaining or obfuscating. A Cop/Investigator role player could announce to everyone who they found guilty/innocent. A vigilante role player could announce who they were going to “take out” and the Doctor could heal the Mayor. It is possible that this “crash thru or crash” strategy is dependent upon the ratio of Town (Innocents) to Mafia players. I don’t think the number of Mafia teams/players has been publicly stated but if it is small enough we could win if all the Innocent information were on the table.

Think about it. One of the mafia’s main advantages is their ability to effectively communicate with each other. Their second advantage is the ability to say things in the game thread which can only be exposed if an innocent person were willing to say – “that’s a lie and here’s how I know.” Could the mafia form their own group of fake innocents? Nope. Not with every other innocent person watching.

I share Mantisdreamz’ “gut feeling” that Durro is innocent. His (Durro's) theory about Virphen was better than nothing and without PM’s we don’t have anything else but hypotheses - strong or weak. Virphen was right that the mafia wouldn’t be so stupid as to act as a conspicuous block but Durro was also right to include this on his list of ….”what do we know so far” observations. If Virphen and Durro and Cookiejon were able to PM each other and took the leap of trust to reveal all then the mafia’s first night might have been forced into a plan “B”

I look at all the remaining players’ posts and it is really frustrating to know that some of them have information they are afraid to reveal.

Lion (IRC)
PS – I am obviously innocent. (Feline nick, theist, proponent of mind-game plan to ruffle the mafia’s feathers.)

[Witticism]

Hi Durro,
I think there are mafia people trying to get under your skin.
Dont sweat it.
Lion (IRC)

Lion IRC edited this post 18 times in total. Partly because of indecision, partly to fix typos and the rest were just to keep people guessing.

Lion IRC works in mysterious ways ...

[Witticism]

For those who care, here’s Lily:
http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 31#p442531

Aww you're right she looks like she's been through battle!

What a sweetie... at least that nasty lump is gone.

Thanks Manits

For those who care, here’s Lily:
http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 31#p442531

Witti, make sure to give all my love to Lily (very cool name BTW) she's had a tough time, poor thing, but I'm sure she's be just fine!

Thanks sifaka

They are in my office with me, sleeping now ... they've been getting lots of pats from the guys at work - everyone likes them. One guy, Pete keeps coming into my office every hour or so to give them pats and he came in before and was 'singing' with Max ... very funny.

Unfortunately, very senior management will be here tomorrow, so I can no haz goggies with me at work.

Back to the grind ... I'll be back later to check in.

[Durro]

My mistake (again) and I sincerely apologise to Twinkle.

*Twinkie.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCKKKK.



I vote to Lynch Durro

[Lion IRC]

Who wants to make a bet that the 2 or 3 "guests" viewing the thread are basement cats deliberately logged off to hide their interest.

Lion (IRC)

[Durro]

OK, I'm alright now. It's 5pm, end of the working day and I'm off home after a fairly stressful day. And I'm talking about real life, not this game. I withdra the vote for myself. Maybe the town mayor might have to use his intuition and decide who should stay and who should go.

Unvote Durro

[Animavore]

Nag dabbit. I'm confused. I knew this would happen. I came back this morning expecting to see day 2 ended but now it's pushed back to 10?
Am I right in that?

[Mephistopheles]

Who wants to make a bet that the 2 or 3 "guests" viewing the thread are basement cats deliberately logged off to hide their interest.

Lion (IRC)

Woah. I never thought of that. Should I be paying attention to whoever isn't logged in?

[Mephistopheles]

Nag dabbit. I'm confused. I knew this would happen. I came back this morning expecting to see day 2 ended but now it's pushed back to 10?
Am I right in that?

Yeppers.