You know what's bothering me aside from any progression? Feyrll has been lurking of and on, but hasn't posted at all except to say that we could have used Rika (Obvious statement is obvious.), and Jack has posted at all. I'm not saying post counts should be used to determine suspicion, but do the two of you really have nothing to say?

And Vendetta... maybe what you revealed just isn't relevant to my role, because it really didn't help me in any way in the grand scheme of things. So unless you know more than what you revealed, I've no idea how to constructively use a claim like that. Maybe someone else can, but they're not speaking up.

"what's bothering me aside from not seeing any progression?" I need to stop posting when I'm tired. Ugh.

I figured I'd give it a day more to see if anyone kept remaining silent. I believe the day isn't even 24 hours old yet?

Yeah, I know. I'm not even sure if other people have a similar set up to mine or not, but I thought it'd be better to air it out sooner rather than later. If I kept that to myself and then was forced to claim I was still vanilla with a vague allusion to possible power gain, that'd be pretty ew.

Worse comes to worse, you'll find out I'm exactly what I say I am, and it's better to have a margin for errors on day 1 than late in the game.

Also, re: Vendettas claim:

Personally I can't see town gaining anything from a vanilla claim; all we learn is that there are vanilla roles (which can probably be assumed, since there are several non-magicians in Hogwards; Hagrid and the elves come to mind). The Death Eaters, however, learn that it's no use targetting that person; it cannot gain any information at all or tip the scales in any way related to talents, meaning they have one less person to go through to find the valuable roles.

Then again, I am rather new at this, so I might be missing something.

I think you're focusing too much on the vanilla aspect, and not enough on the ambiguous aspect on the other side. Then again, you might accuse me of exaggerating a notation that doesn't actually mean anything. In which case, durr hurr, I made a stupid. But that wouldn't be the first time I've done that.

It's 25ish hours old, actually! I haven't seen Jack lurking personally, so that doesn't bother me as much (beyond the fact that there's a non-contributing member), but I've noticed Feyrll in the thread quite a few times. Maybe it's just newbiness and not knowing what to say/think, but that's why I'm mentioning it. Hopefully this will spur some new comments.

I see Feyrll now. TALK OR WE KILL YOU.

Looks like I'm up to the plate! In my defense, this is my first mafia game so I thought I'd refrain from just jumping in and throwing accusations left and right when I have little idea of how the process actually works. I thought I'd wait until people whipped a good sound debate of who to logically knock off first, but then instead everybody's just spending their time nitpicking at the specific details of a 'win' condition, and not an actual strategy and my reaction to that is tomayto tomahto, everybody can quibble over whether Harry should live or not when that issue arises, pretty sure it's just "Non death eaters" against "death eaters" this early in the game. Let's hang somebody or play it safe and go to sleep one more night.

And between anybody and me, I thought my rika comment was bloody well spent, since I got to use the word 'blimey'.

Oh and I spent most of my time checking up on Vendetta's reveal. Ernie Macmillan. My thoughts? A funky gamble - either he's telling the truth and won't be hanged because majority are Minister/OP, and won't be killed because DE's want to throw suspicion on him. Quite a frustrating knot. Ernie's a pretty obscure character imho, I've read the books and have a pretty good memory for story plots/characters, and I still couldn't remember him. Of course it would've been too obvious to lie and choose a main character. However, it'd be bad to choose too obscure a character that wouldn't play a role in the plot line as well, which leads me to question those alluded to 'skills' that develop later, because so far as I remember, Ernie never did anything significant or developed any dramatic new ability to assist the cause against HWMNBN. Perhaps Ernie falls enough under 'random obscure' that it smells of "trying too hard to not be obvious about lying."

For now I'd say Vendetta has about 70% in my book of being sincere, which that 10% just tacked on there for being ballsy enough to do it at all. Maybe I'd vote him off just to get rid of a headache later, but for now, blimey, we really could've used Rika.

That's kind of true. When Harry and company were staying at Grimmauld Place, they used Voldy-poo's name a bunch of times and the enchantments around the house never broke. But, when Harry said his name in the camp area/woods, all of their charms broke. So, I have no idea how strong the taboo is or if it has any significance in this game.

And I am the only one that missed the reveal...? I looked through the whole entire thread and I can't find it...

Woops, almost edited my post. Just wanted to clarify on my Ernie ramble, what I'm getting at is that 1) it seems so random/obscure a character that it seems like someone was trying to be too careful about picking a character that won't step on any toes, and 2) he seems to be bland enough of a character that I wonder whether the mod would've given out a character that couldn't significantly impact the play of the game.

NEVERMIND! I found it!
Thoughts on the reveal: Erm, okay. She could either be lying or trying telling the truth and trying to start...something?

This is really annoying me:
I meant "She could either be lying or telling the truth and trying to start...something?"

Personally, Vendettas reveal isn't going to trigger any votes from me. Odd, surely, but not vote-inspiring in my book. At least not yet...

Generally, it's pretty difficult to get the ball rolling, and I think a lot of people on the forums end up employing this Day 1 method - even the experienced ones. Don't be too surprised if the problem persists, and don't forget that the longer day 1 stretches on, the more likely it is for someone to suggest lynching a lurker and building general consensus around that course of action.

And the faster the game gets, the more ridiculous the prodding gets in turn.

Hia there. You're rarely able to form a solid strategy on day 1, just because you have next to zero information. So then it becomes a question of "what hurts us the least". If the day is wearing on, and we're not really getting anywhere, people who don't talk at all become a tempting option because 1) They're silent, which means they're suspicious. A (smart) criminal in the real world keeps his mouth shut. 2) They're silent, thus not contributing to the group, thus their loss is less harsh. Being silent doesn't move games forward. That person may be a townie, yes, but they were a basically inactive townie.

That's just my perspective on mafia games, anyhow.

Well in that case I'd like to say, hey, don't kill me, I have things to contribute, and stuff.

Ssssuuuuuppp. Sorry for not posting yet, I went out last night. (And the night before. Annnd I have the DT's now. Pray forgive any lapses in logic that are more severe than usual.)


See, that's my fear as well. Losing the investigator so early (I'm willing to chalk that up to coincidence, btw, whoever was hypothesising that OH CRAP THE MAFIA KNOW WHO WE ARE WE'RE DOOOOMED) is a big blow, and it basically means that anyone can fudge a roleclaim, assuming they choose a relatively obscure character. (It wouldn't be wise to RC as a character like, say, Lupin, 'cause the odds of the real one going for you are too high, but Ernie Macmillan is perfect.) That's not to say Vendetta's scum, though: I figure it's 50-50 that s/he's either testing the water on how the system works (since if they are vanilla it's not that much of a loss), or trying to deflect suspicion by playing as one of The Little People.


See I don't trust that course of action too much (says the day one lurker, ha-ha), as there's too much danger of targeting a townie who's just trying to play it safe and keeping a low profile. Plus I've been in too many mafia games now where day one drags, a randomer gets lynched and then day two ends up dragging just as bad - you get nothing out of it, you might as well draw numbers out of a hat (which, yeah - some people do). I prefer to let the day drag on as long as possible on the off-chance that somebody acts suspiciously. Play the long game!

I agree the strategy is not optimal, but what I find happens is people say as much as they're going to say, and then stop talking because nothing else is happening. Nothing happening == no talking == no one acts suspiciously or someone finally breaks out of boredom, suggests a lynch (or a no lynch), and people interpret that as suspicious. It's one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't things.