If someone auto hammers me or something. Defacto lynch them tomorrow please.
no ooops this game.
Better hope Thoth doesn't hold a grudge.
If someone auto hammers me or something. Defacto lynch them tomorrow please.
no ooops this game.
Better hope Thoth doesn't hold a grudge.
just an FYI on this for further thought, but post 76 includes a vote count on Mikal "1/6"... do "popular" vote counts typically increase the number in the tabulation? "1/7" for example, I think I may have seen that before but I might be mistaken... We may already know the answer to this test
I remember them doing this way back in the day on DDO.
VTL Mikal
That should bring it to 5 I think.
Like Mikal has claimed a bulletproof popular caroler? Has the popular been tested? And apparently there was another modslip? A double one? That's what Mikal seems to be saying on the bottom of page eight.
I'm tired as shit and a third of the way through reading the DP. I got up at five AM so I'm going to bed soon. Can this site have one normal DP1? I skipped to the last page and I have no fucking idea what is going on. I will try and sort this shit out tomorrow.
I will be awol like all of tomorrow but will have plenty of time to post on Monday.
It's pro-town when it locks in claims without revealing important game mechanic information imo. Was best used in Mharman's game - really fucked us over as scum and locked us down.
I get being mad that it happened when you invested so much in the game and I agree that it was pretty easily solvable from his perspective and that the vote/unvote thing was retarded but we all make mistakes and not everyone is a star player just like not everyone is a star debater. I get venting but it might be going a bit overboard lol. Star players are a benefit to both scum and town and normie players are a weak point to both so it balances out in the end. I think that the game would be less fun if all the players were at the same level as far as skill goes.
I actually deliberated whether to fake claim but the visit mechanics made it super risky to do so.
Was really surprised you were telling the truth about your role, it sounded so wacky. So wacky I had to think there was no reason to make it up.
Yeah about 40% of my opposition to the mass claim was 'these mfers gonna lynch me when they hear this shit'.
Yeah I fully understand your vexation here, fwiw
GP = Greyparrot?
He played Mafia? That must have been interesting. Honestly shocked he hasn't showed up on this site.
Suikoden was a roleplaying game released for the PS1 back in the old people times. It was a Japanese game, with the first iteration being loosely based on one of the four classics of Chinese literature, the horribly titled 'Water Margin' (maybe the first example of awful East to West localization). This mafia game will be a thirteen-person game based on the first entry in the series. The first and second games were recently remastered and released on every platform under the sun so check it out if you want to play an old game that's still fun and has a good story.
The central mechanics of the games are the 108 stars of destiny. The novel begins with an arrogant official demanding that a sealed door in a temple be opened, against the protest of the clergy in charge. After they reluctantly open the door and release the seal, 108 demons are released. Having repented during their long imprisonment, these spirits will in time be reincarnated as 108 mortals which are supernaturally drawn to one another to atone by fighting for justice. In each game you will have a chance to recruit 108 total characters to fight for your cause. In the game's world, the primordial forces are embodied in 27 true runes which can inhabit the body of bearers, suspending their aging and using their host to influence the world in different ways. Each of these runes has a will and agenda of its own which is often inscrutable to all but the rarest of hosts.
The mechanics of the game will not be completely vanilla, but it won't be bastard modded either. I like to make fun, flexible games in which referencing theme and character analysis is important but is also punished if overused in an attempt to brute force the game. I will probably brazenly steal Pie's approach to fake claims for scum - being able to ask if a certain number of characters/roles are in the game. I like that idea. Game will start after Kohai's, so probably October.
My rules are:
Signups:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
My game is 13 players so it will probably be a longer one. By the time I got signups full Kohai's game would probably be ready.
I can post signups in the meantime though so it's ready to launch once his is done.
Lol disagree, 3 mislynches flew by me without me influencing them in a better direction. Felt like a passenger to this game.
Don't feel too bad about it. They're just part and parcel of every mafia game. And I don't really think the Thoth one counts lol.
I felt bad that my joke vote was used to string up poor Thothy DP1.
The Yakuza was kind of ironic because, while it confused me when it came to Pie, it also made me dump both Supa and Wryly into my town pile and give the actual scum team much more scrutiny.
I had Mikal on behavior, but Whiteflame I wasn't sure about. I even town read him until DP3 where the Supa lynch made me suspicious. The fake Yakuza definitely had me tunneling Pie, which was my main error in this game. That and constantly saying 'role' instead of 'character' because I had never seen a character cop before.
I've only seen it work in live mafia
Not to deny that the American public education system is shambolic, but the problem with lynching is the connotation it has incurred, not its etymology. The infamous N-word, the one that the Boondocks version of Martin Luther King Jr. rightly called the ugliest word in the English language, comes from the Latin niger, which means black. If I called a black person the slur that starts with N and explained that, if he had paid attention in Latin class, he would have known that I was only calling him black, do you think that black people would crown me King of the Black People a la Peter Griffin? The slur for homosexuals that starts with F can also mean a cigarette or a bundle of sticks.
I feel as if the distinction does not make sense. Nigger is not a word with utility or meaning outside its use as a contentless slur. It is more or less a linguistic arrow hurled at an opponent to wound them. It's not a word typically bandied about to discuss any objective idea. Lynch is such a word - moreover, it is the only such word, it is a word without effective synonyms, hence the impotent scramble to hunt for an effective replacement.
I can't say that any of this is wrong, but it does not change the fact that people associate lynching with racism because, within memory much more recent than the American Revolution or even the Wild West, lynching was largely a method by which white people terrorized black people and maintained white supremacy. Slavery has been almost co-extensive with civilization throughout history, many non-black people have been enslaved, and black slaves were often sold to white traders after having been enslaved by other black Africans, yet, when most Americans think of slavery, they immediately think of black people picking cotton for white masters. Whether or not the word slavery should make people think of that is irrelevant because it conjures thoughts of racism and oppression still relevant to our society, which, if you ask me, is undesirable.
It was not 'largely' such a method. There was a specific period in which lynching targets among blacks spiked over that of whites and it coincided with a sharp overall drop in lynchings.
So, you are looking at a localized phenomenon in a specific region which spans 35 years before numbers drop to negligible levels and which looms very large in the public consciousness despite the fact that it constitutes a sliver of overall lynchings. In Gunnar Myrdal's massive tome 'An American Dilemma', one of the seminal works on racism in American and a book which was intensely disliked by opponents of the Civil Rights movement, the following is said about lynchings:
"Lynching is spectacular and has attracted a good deal of popular and scientific attention. It is one Southern pattern which has continued to arouse disgust and reaction in the North and has, therefore, been made much of by Negro publicists. It should not be forgotten, however, that lynching is just one type of extra-legal violence in a whole range of types that exist in the South. The other types, which were considered earlier in this chapter are much more common than lynching and their bad effects on white morals and Negro security are greater. Lynchings were becoming common in the South in the 'thirties, 'forties and 'fifties of the nineteenth century. Most of the victims in this early period were white men. The pattern of lynching Negroes became set during Reconstruction. No reliable statistics before 1889 are available. Between 1889 and 1940, according to Tuskegee Institute figures, 3,833 people were lynched, about four-fifths of whom were Negroes. The South states account for nine-tenths of the lynchings. More than two-thirds of the remaining one-tenth occurred in the six states which immediately border the South: Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Kansas. Since the early 1890's, the trend has been toward fewer and fewer lynchings. The annual average in the 'nineties was near 200; in the 'thirties it dropped to slightly over 10. In 1941 it was down to 4, but there are already more than this in 1942 (July). The decrease has been faster outside the South, and the lynching of whites has dropped much more than that of Negroes. Lynching has become, therefore, more and more a Southern phenomenon and a racial one. Against the decrease in number of victims there has been a marked trend toward greatly aggravated brutality, extending to torture, mutilation and other sadistic excesses.
Lynching is a rural and small town custom and occurs most commonly in poor districts. There are some indications that lynchings go in waves and tend to recur in the same districts. The accusations against persons lynched during the period for which there are records were: in 38 per cent of the cases for homicide, 6 per cent for felonious assault, in 6 per cent for rape, 7 per cent for attempted rape, 7 per cent for theft, 2 per cent for insult to white persons and 24 per cent for miscellaneous offenses or no offense at all. In the last category are all sorts of irritations: testifying at court against a white man or bringing suit against him, refusal to pay a note, seeking employment out of place, offensive language or boastful remarks. Regarding the accusations for crime, Raper testifies: "Case studies of nearly one hundred lynchings since 1929 convince the writer that around a third of the victims were falsely accused."
A couple things to mention here. Despite the dramatization of and large public preoccupation with lynchings, they were very minor when it came to abuses suffered by blacks in the south. Most of these abuses took place outside even the rudimentary structure of the lynch mob, and the brutalization of blacks was an everyday, normalized occurrence. When lynch mobs did take place, even sympathetic sources hold that the victims were innocent in only a third of the cases, meaning that about 2/3rds of them were not the brutalization of innocent people but justice aimed at actual criminals, most of which were guilty of violent crimes like murder and rape. Now you could argue that these lynchings disproportionately targeted blacks at the time, but if you crunch the numbers (64% actual crimes, 33% of which were innocent, and 36% 'not real crimes') you end up with a little over 50% being innocent victims being persecuted and a little under 50% being legitimate criminals being pursued extrajudicially. And these are going by numbers sourced from authors and institutions which were incredibly hostile to the South in general and sympathetic to the black plight, and sources which were largely seen as unreliable by the supporters of such practices.
So if there is this perception that lynching was some unique horror visited on blacks in the south it is flat-out wrong. Violence against and persecution of blacks in the south was ubiquitous, and lynch mobs were a very minor part of that overall and almost a 50-50 mixed bag. Random beatings and murders were much, much more common than organized lynches. While it's true the Hollywood sensationalism often colors our view of the past, I think it's important to seek to rise above tawdry passion plays and melodrama and to look at the hard facts and base our feelings and reactions on those.
There is no escaping that the flavor is voting someone out is killing them, which inherently has ugly real-world connotations and can bring nasty thoughts to mind, but 'lynch' sprinkles racism on top of murder.
I agree that a better alternative than 'elimination' is wanted, but not that elimination is less accurate, although it is perhaps less precise, using the scientific definitions of accurate and precise. Voting someone out eliminates them from the pool of living players. If whatever word we use to mean, "vote a player out during the day", becomes accepted vernacular, then implications like potentially killing the wrong person, voting based on unverifiable gut feelings, and relying on falsified evidence will transfer to the new word unaccompanied by the racist connotation of 'lynch'.
Players should understand that anyway, no?
But it shouldn't transfer to the new word. It should remain attached to the word which it ought to be properly associated with - the one which specifically refers to an extrajudicial execution.
As enlightening of a classroom exercise as this could be, whatever lesson in herd mentality 'lynch' imparts is outweighed many times over by its potential to instigate thoughts of racist violence, almost like a trauma trigger. Should we start every post in the day thread with Heil Hitler and flavor getting voted out as being put on a train to the gas chamber so that games will double as reminders that we can be susceptible to fascist propaganda?
Mafia has nothing to do with Hitler, the holocaust, or gas chambers. It does have to do with lynchings. Is it a bit uncomfortable? Sure. Chesterton once said of misanthropy that it was the most pardonable of vices and the most unpardonable of virtues; that if you tire of crowds or humanity in general it is a very sympathetic weakness or flaw which is completely understandable and excusable. However, if you attempted to frame it as a virtue or a strength rather than a flaw or weakness, that was completely inexcusable, farcical, and worthy of ridicule. I think that the exact same argument can be applied to choosing comfort over confronting the truth. If it's framed a weakness or a frailty, as a failure to live up to an ideal we all should strive to, sure I can have sympathy for that. But the second it's framed as a righteous cause or a form of bravery and is used to dilute language and to alter collective behavior to cater to this weakness in others it must be opposed. Choosing comfort over truth is a failure. It is not admirable or empathetic or brave or noble. It is a weakness, a form of stumbling that makes society poorer when we succumb to it but which can be understood and forgiven as an aspect of human frailty. But it should never be made the default, and people who choose the more admirable, harder path should never be shamed for doing so.
It's convoluted, you'll know next DP when you read my flip. I can ask Luna if a role exists. He will tell me 'Yes'. Or he can tell me 'No'. If he tells me 'No' I don't move or do anything. If he tells me 'Yes' I will visit whomever has that role.
I think that if Mikal had claimed his real character he would want me alive to give him town cred. So I think is character is a fake claim, hence the hard push for my lynch.
Looks like this will be my first Debateart mislynch. It's been real. Hope y'all come to your senses tomorrow.
Just caught up. I’m parking my vote on Rex. I argue we should lynch the role that has the least town utility
Pie's role has zero town utility. Now that he's disclosed it scum will never NK him if he's town. Mine at least has some. I'd agree that it will have zero utility next DP, but it has at least some now. And should we really be lynching based on role utility when we have two lynches left and one will likely be a policy lynch of you next DP, and then a shot in the dark if you are town?
I don't think it's a fake claim, I think it's your original role and you were recruited.
Okay, glad you got your story straight.
Nothing to get straight, I never once implied that you fakeclaimed. Supa did, not sure why, but I haven't.
Now that you are scum, you see the role as useless and want to use it as a tool to explain why you haven't been Nkd as the game goes on.
Or mass claiming was the only way to generate reads cause DP1 was useless with the quick hammer. Plus I already mentioned the strategy for this DP.
Activity could have been spun out of speculating over the recruit and pushing for claims in a more sensible manner. Once activity starts it feeds itself. In fact, I'd say the long amount of time spent arguing about a mass claim consituted a derailment of otherwise productive discussion over who was recruited and more surgical application of pressure towards likely candidates. The subtle push for a lynch was also towards people not in the likely recruit pool, who should be under the most scrutiny imo.
A mass claim allows you to put it out there and instrumentalize the role in that way. If you were town you'd see the role for the potent weapon that it is and want to keep it hidden at all costs, and try to bait the NK this NP - because you would be thinking they fired off the yakuza recruit DP1 instead of killing you and that you're still a the top of their shitlist.
So you think I suggested a mass claiming and claimed Martyr for towncred? Yes, I would like to keep my role hidden, but we had no path forward because DP1 there was nothing. Rather sitting here twiddling our thumbs, I led the initiative. You wouldn’t even be talking about this if I hadn’t suggested the mass claim lol, so it’s really rich that you’re calling me out for my claim when you didn’t even want to mass claim in the first place.
I think you pushed a mass claim for two reasons. One is that you wanted to disclose your role but didn't want it to look scummy, so a mass claim lets you do that. The other is that you wanted to get all the info on the table to plan your night action now that there's no protective roles (Whiteflame's role was unknown at the time). That way the scum team can eliminate any investigative roles NP2 and, if they pull off a mislynch today, go hard for another mislynch next DP and clinch the game. Whereas without a mass claim even if we didn't lynch scum today we could at least have the investigative roles protected via anonymity and have some results to discuss next DP. As town you could have let pressure fall on you, as it naturally would, and claim something that would draw the NK but instead you subtly pushed pressure elsewhere while acting in ways that only make sense if you are scum.
/in Nostalgia
On the contrary, if you were Pie and were recruited (very likely scenario), wouldn't you want to mass claim? If you are Pie and are scum, one of the hardest things to explain as the game drags on is why you haven't been killed yet when it is basically scum meta to do so.
As I mentioned to Supa, why would I fake claim this if I was converted? I would have just used my true town role. If you hate my claim, then you have to assume I was the original scum, not the converted
His claim is perfect for explaining that very thing. Disclosing it has huge anti-town ramifications while being very beneficial to scum. If he out and disclosed it on his own it would look sus, but as part of a mass claim it looks far more natural.
So you think I was the original scum? You can’t have it both ways. Either I was converted and so my “behavior” is wrong or I am the original scum fake claiming this when I had already sorted DP1.
I don't think it's a fake claim, I think it's your original role and you were recruited. Now that you are scum, you see the role as useless and want to use it as a tool to explain why you haven't been Nkd as the game goes on. A mass claim allows you to put it out there and instrumentalize the role in that way. If you were town you'd see the role for the potent weapon that it is and want to keep it hidden at all costs, and try to bait the NK this NP - because you would be thinking they fired off the yakuza recruit DP1 instead of killing you and that you're still a the top of their shitlist.
My fuck-up in that game was going too far out on a limb trying to stop scum lynches. Had nothing to do with my claim which was immaculate and not the reason for my lynch, which was 100% behavior driven.
I just fundamentally disagree that a Yakuza upends behavioral reads. I think it makes them more important. A player who has flipped alignment will change their behavior in ways which diverts from their normal town meta and often from their behavior pre-recruitment. Pie, for example, just went through all the rigamarole about what killing David means this DP vc next DP and agonized over how many NKs we will have. Then he claimed a role which, if he is NK'd, will buy us another night. Pie is often targetted early in the game when he is town. If you were Pie and new this and weren't recruited, wouldn't the obvious pro-town move be to draw the NK? I'd even fake-claim in that situation to make myself a juicier target. I think the benefit of that overwhlems whatever we gained from this mass claim.
On the contrary, if you were Pie and were recruited (very likely scenario), wouldn't you want to mass claim? If you are Pie and are scum, one of the hardest things to explain as the game drags on is why you haven't been killed yet when it is basically scum meta to do so. His claim is perfect for explaining that very thing. Disclosing it has huge anti-town ramifications while being very beneficial to scum. If he out and disclosed it on his own it would look sus, but as part of a mass claim it looks far more natural.
I'll probably be lynched for that claim fumble. So I want to present my reasoning for the next DP in case that happens.
I didn't want a full claim today because I think that it allows scum to target our remaining power roles while giving scum wiggle room to drive a mislynch. I had also intended to use my role tonight to confirm Mikal's character, as he's been my top scum read this game due to his oopsie hammer last DP feeling incredibly greasy (a Casey lynch would be disastrous for scum - she was inactive and they had no fake claims, so him hammering basically ensured that she could get the Yakuza fired off NP1 without the possibility of being lynched), his call for a mass claim this DP, and the overall 'vibe' of his game being different than my town games with him - less noncommittal and rational if a bit indecisive (his normal town meta imo), more driven by a personal agenda and a 'manipulative' feel. Of the three veteran players, all of them supported this imo anti-town move. However, Whiteflame's support makes a lot of sense given his role, as he can use Thoth's protective role to protect a claimed power role. That leaves Pie and Mikal. Pie to me would be the top recruitment attempt target. He's often the NP1 NK target, but he's much more use to scum as a recruit than a dead townie. And the way he and Mikal have been posting feels like a scum team, the way they apply pressure and drop off. Especially for Mikal, who is usually more pensive and contemplative in his playstyle and less 'driven'. Mikal just feels incredibly off to me.
Pie wanting a mass claim also makes zero sense as town. He knows he's almost always NKd as town, he has a role in which him baiting the NK basically stops the NK for the next NP. He should have wanted to stay quiet about the role and bait the NK - which wouldn't be hard seeing as he's Pie and is an NK magnet to begin with, but instead he outed that info. As scum, he would have motivation to out his role because it being out there will serve as an excuse for why he hasn't been NK'd going forward. When someone says 'why haven't you been NK'd yet' he can say 'well, scum won't NK me because it will cost them an NP!' I see a lot of scum motivation for him disclosing his role and pretty much zero town motivation. This is especially bad given that he was one of the big people pushing the mass claim - nobody had to twist his arm to spill the tea.
Then there's the Kohai issue. Mikal kept saying over and over that we have to lynch him this DP or it's game over, when if he's town lynching him this DP is a great way to lose the game. Kohai to me is null - I can see reasons for him being the scum recruit and for him not being the scum recruit. I don't think Casey using the Yakuza necessarily means they really wanted that role. Casey could be busy IRL (was inactive all last DP) and saw it as an exit, as being lynched as the Yakuza before using it would be disastrous for scum. But it is a tempting prospect as a hedge, as they wouldn't know about it being active at MYLO/LYLO. Whiteflame is also null/town lean.
Supa to me is like 90% town for previously disclosed reasons. Same with Wryly, whom I don't see as a likely scum recruit and my role PM heavily implies the existence of some sort of tracker.
Opposition to the use of the word is, imo, moronic, and a reflection of the shambolic state of American education. The word 'lynching' was specifically coined to describe a specific type of execution which was extrajudicial. It was coined around the time of the Revolutionary War, likely when a man by the name of Charles Lynch was performing such extrajudicial executions on people who were suspected British loyalists - mostly white. The word entered the American lexicon to describe this process, which was messy, often inaccurate, and which undermined the protections of due process on which the country was at least partially founded. The practice continued to pervade American life for several centuries, with some instances having a racial element while others were much more muddled. It expanded with the frontier, into areas where judicial institutions were embryonic at best, and was often employed to punish horse thieves and other such crimes which were incredibly disruptive to frontier life.
In this sense, it acted as a sort of ersatz justice system in areas which were still 'wild' and untamed, and I believe the overall estimated 'accuracy' of such trials hovered around 66%. At its best the practice erased the privileges granted by wealth and political connections and acted as a 'mob's veto' on the unbiased ruling of a corrupt judge or of the abuse of pardon powers - to excuse those with power who had behaved in a way which would have seen a normal citizen executed. At its worst, it fueled witch hunts or represented an escalation of factional opprobrium, racial or religious or otherwise, to a deadly pitch.
Yeah, lynchings can be an ugly thing. Yes, lynchings have a complicated history in the US. But lynchings in mafia are also ugly. We often kill the wrong person, persecuting the innocent while the guilty go free. It's an often inaccurate, emotionally charged, and driven by paranoia, or personal animus, or by results which have been tampered with. I loathe the pattern of neutering language in a way which makes it inaccurate. Calling it an 'elimination' is sterile and less accurate. The problem is that any word that accurately reflects what is being done - eliminating someone by mob rule often in the absence of hard facts - will have ugly real-world connotations because any such process will be ugly and prone to historical abuses.
Using the word lynch is good because it impresses into players' minds both the fact that they are engaging in an inexact process that is easily manipulated by both high emotional tides and nefarious actors. At the same time, when you leave the game and go into the real world, the word 'lynch' will be accurately tinged with an aura of unreliability, injustice, doubt, and finality that is far more visceral than any connotations imparted by the dry historical record. You will also understand why lynching happened and why it is historically a tempting process because you would have engaged in a simulacrum of the process yourself. You will remember being absolutely convinced that someone was guilty, gathering up a mob, pushing their lynch, only to sheepishly see the flip and realize how wrong you were. A word like 'eliminate' feels better because it gives the process a feel of objectivity, impartiality, or wisdom, but the process is not objective, impartial, or wise. The eventual elimination of the lynchings was driven by making people aware that it was none of those things, which is why it's considered an ugly word today. Conducting simulated lynchings and calling them 'eliminations' is far uglier and more dangerous than calling them what they are, imo.
Whatever. Maybe town will catch you next DP, maybe they won't. I'm logging off for the night.