Mid-Range Game 12: Turf War

[Mark IV he/him]

Superiors? I don't know my immediate superior...

[Paranoid King he/him]

This just occurred to me, but won't following meta's plan just bunch everyone together, hence making the eliminators less easy to narrow down upon?

Agreed. I'm opposed to that plan for a few reasons:

1: there is already a command structure in place. Those in their own structure can just PM each other, and reveal membership without any chance of being spied on. But I'd rather not do that either, because...

2: government agents are part of the group. Giving them set locations to find out who is in a group? Bad idea. I suggest that people just PM their immediate leaders to suggest strategies. Everyone is connected, everyone can work together without knowing who they're working with. This plan might be difficult to implement at first, (although it's better than the "group meeting" plan,) because of...

3: Drunks. These people don't know which base to start out in. They could choose a random group and not be blamed for it, but when they remember who they are, they'll happily defect back with all the info they've learned. Although they still wouldn't know who to share it with.

4: Different areas have different powers. Scientists, for example, will be worse off than anyone who goes to a government building. Restricting a group to a location means that you also restrict their actions.

This being said, *hic* I are heavily opposed to dur plan. As a drunk, I'm giving an unbiased opinion.

Edit: two people posted before me. I think that people in the command chain know who is below them, but now who is above them. If the group is organized with one commander, two captains, and four regulars, in C1, the commander pm's captain 1. Captain 1 will pm regular 1, regular 1 pm's regular 2. Meanwhile the other captain is pming his underlings. C2, the commander pm's captain 2. Now everyone knows who's just above them in the command structure, and from then on can communication with their superior.

Edited March 12, 2016 by Paranoid King

[Kynedath]

It was mostly a reference to MR10 again. It was my first game and it was very similar to this one.

 

However, they might make a PM with you, or do something else to claim that. I'm not sure how, but they might.

 

But how about this? "I think that I like Meta's plan. It'll give people other people to trust, other than just their immediate [underlings]."

[Mark IV he/him]

I was about to put in a request to my superior, whoever that may be, but then I realised I wouldn't be of much help, especially considering the fact that I live mostly about 10 hours earlier than all you MST people.

[Kynedath]

Woooo! MST, MST, MST, MST, MST, MST!

[Elkanah he/him]

concentrating the groups into three buildings is only a problem if we aren't going with the "feed the bankers" plan. You're right that that it makes it harder to narrow down who the Agents are logically, but that's what the points are for. I suppose we could go with the plan to spread everyone throughout the buildings and still feed the points to the bankers, but I like the idea of expediting the gangs knowing who is in their faction.

 

As for the drunks, we could set another place for them to meet. I'm not sure it'll do that much damage to have drunks pick a building and show up with a random faction anyway. However, I'd say be careful with sensitive information like the identity of your gang's banker regardless of where we send the drunks. There are government agents in every gang.

 

I've thought about the shared win condition and the only way I can think of to pull it off is to kill three people simultaneously. The only ways to do this are if we have three hitmen poison the last epic in each gang, or we could have the bankers spend seven points each to kill the three people. The most difficult part will be to find all the epics. Some might not be as willing to come forward as Meta is.

 

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Hank collapsed against a wall, gasping for breath. He'd finally lost the epic, but he didn't recognize the area either. He wandered down the street looking for something familiar. As he turned the corner onto another street, he saw the harbor. But that wasn't possible. The last he remembered he had been on the other side of the river!

 

will RP for points!

[Mark IV he/him]

Problem I see elkanah (nice pic btw), is that even if the banker themselves finds out that there is one disloyal in his/her group, they still can't pin-point who it it. Also, the GAs could just confuse us and donate points anyways...

[STINK he/him]

Unlike Deal or No Deal, I am placing my points (and thus some of my trust) into the banker. 

 

Don't expect much more.

[Clanky he/him]

Bankers will have a direct knowledge of gang members. We also have a convenient list of ways to gain points. If we pay attention, and catalog every action that leads to the point, we can use those pieces of info to see who's donated. If someone's done something that gains points, and those points aren't in the bank by next turn, then they're holding back.  

 

That would take a ridiculous amount of work for anyone to figure out who is actually giving the points. Basically the Banker is given a number and from that they have to determine how many people actually gave points based on making a tally of everyone in the games post? Plus private actions, lynch votes and room actions all affect a players points. The variables are just way to high for that to have any hope of working without knowing most of the group members anyways. 

 

Anyways I think that the best way to share group membership without any chance of non GA spies is through the rank PMs. So basically thow you ca get everyone through this is:

 

Commander PM --> Captain 1: Gives name of Captain 2

Captain 1 PM --> Captain 2: Gives names of the Regulars

Captain 2 PM --> Regular giving them the names of all the other regulars.

Regular PM--> Other Regular giving them the names and telling them who has been PMd already to ensure that everyone gets included.

 

The problem with that is that a single inactive can stop the whole chain

[Mark IV he/him]

But then, wouldn't this just ensure that everyone in the faction knew each other. Which would similarly be accomplished by meta's plan. Both have their demerits and advantages. Decisions.... Decisions....

But, this plan does do away with the problem in meta's plan- the clubbing together of people.

[Elkanah he/him]

Problem I see elkanah (nice pic btw), is that even if the banker themselves finds out that there is one disloyal in his/her group, they still can't pin-point who it it. Also, the GAs could just confuse us and donate points anyways...

 

Thank you, Mark. You're right that the bankers can't out the GAs. They'd need a proxy. I think, given all the points they are being sent, they'll be able to open a one turn PM with someone random in their gang. That way, it doesn't make a difference if the proxy gets killed by the Agents because there'll be a new proxy the next turn anyway.

 

Also, the bankers won't be finding GAs by how many points they receive. Instead they spend seven points and learn the identity of a random GA. When they pass that through a (excuse the term) disposable proxy we have an Agent revealed. On top of that, there are three Bankers so three proxies and the Agents only have one kill anyway.

 

The only issue I see there is narrowing down that the proxies aren't bankers by changing proxies every night. So maybe another precaution is to use the same proxy repeatedly until they die.

[Mark IV he/him]

Ah! Good one. I'd forgotten the meaning of GA scan for a second there.

P.S. I just noticed that's slender man. °~°

Also, I'm posting way too much for usual self....

[Elkanah he/him]

What did you think my picture was before?

 

You must be evil... again. Then again, evil might be your usual self.

[Amanuensis he/him]

I'm on the side that we do not attempt to determine who is in our faction by all "agreeing" to go to our headquarters this turn. When this plan was first suggested I immediately put in orders to go to the headquarters of the faction I'm against so that I could find out what players I need to lynch for victory, with the intent to disseminate that information via a PM with one of my subordinates. I have since changed my mind and decided to advocate that we do not follow through with Meta's suggestion for the following reasons:

 

One, because I'm afraid creating that opportunity might encourage some players to focus on the faction aspect of this game over the elimination. I am of the opinion that our priority should be finding and kill the GAs regardless of what faction they belong to because so long as they are alive they will be killing us.

 

Two, I believe that our most effective tool for weeding out the GAs will be narrowing down suspects based off of who was in the same location as the victim, therefore it is in the best interest of the village to make sure no one place is loaded. I support Lopen's initial plan of dividing the players up evenly across them. However I don't think using the player list to determine who goes where is necessarily best.

 

I like Clanky's idea the best so far (in regards to finding out who is in our faction). So if you're a Captain I suggest that you do not use your PM next turn until your Commander contacts you with the name of your peer, that way you can create a three way communication chain and discuss the members of your faction without risking enemy spies. As Elbereth (I believe it was her, might have been Burnt) stated earlier, the GAs are already going to have some idea of who belongs to what, so I'm not very concerned with that information getting into their hands.

 

Finally, I'm going to announce a couple things. First, I'm a Commander. Second, I currently have my location as the Pool. GAs, consider this an invitation to come have a swim with me.

 

Oh and for the record I have no intention of voting this cycle, except perhaps on a random player last minute to earn some points.

[phattemer]

Well, I'll just agree that I would also like to play a faction game with secret factions.

I also don't think we should have set locations(clarify: for the gangs), what with the drunken people running around. Also, I think it's worth mentioning that the rules say "some locations may have benefits/drawbacks for Epics". I think those are probably the Pub and the Pool, since they don't have room actions.

Also, I'll vote for Shallan.

Edited March 12, 2016 by phattemer

[Shallan she/her]

Seriously? phattemer

NOT appreciated. Anyway, back to the real game. I'm planning to stay in my current location for a while to try to meet some fellow gang members, and also it seems to me that the only reason for making people go to set locations is to have a guaranteed number of targets who include at least one GA. That doesn't seem like a good enough reason to make people not gain points from staying in the Pub.

[TheMightyLopen he/him]

Sorry guys, but I'm really tired right now, so I can't think very clearly. I'd love to make plans and stuff, but I don't think I'm up for it right now. Aman, what groupings would you suggest for my plan? I figure there could be a lot to take into account when making the pairings. Like, we could put you and Meta in the same group with only 1 other player, causing you both to be protected in a way, seeing as you couldn't be attacked without us learning that 1 out of the 2 surviving members of your group was a GA. We could also try to direct the GA kill by grouping a group of players together that we all suspect a little, and make that group a little larger than others, making it tempting for the GA's to attack someone in that group, as it wouldn't narrow it down a lot, but it could give us information about who they pick, as well as the alignment of someone who is a little suspicious, allowing us to keep discussion flowing smoothly, rather than getting stuck on a certain player for a Cycle or 2 or 3.

 

Strawman, I'd like an explanation for your vote.

[Amanuensis he/him]

Eh, upon further consideration using the player list might be wise, as it would have a pretty drastic impact on the GAs. By that I mean, if they go along with it then they'll not be able to be as tactical with their kills as they would like. If they decide to do their own thing then it'll look bad on them. A win-win, really.

 

Unfortunately my conscience is nagging me about how unpleasant this plan would feel for the GAs. At the moment I'm not sure what's more important; finding and lynching them, or not ruining their fun. Leaning towards the second (sparking morality). On top of that, I do believe that things like this should be up to each individual player to decide. There's plenty of good reasons why players might want to go to a certain location, and given that a relatively big aspect of this game is the different rewards at certain locations, I feel like people should be able to take advantage of it as they please.

 

It's a bit late in this cycle for us to successfully decide on one plan or another as its doubtful everyone will get on before change over and agree. Probably for the best, though I think this next turn we all should vote on how we're going to handle this location business.

[STINK he/him]

I vote people go wherever they wanna go. To do otherwise is just eh.

[Master Elodin]

I agree, STINK.

[Mailliw73 he/him]

So how do PMs work for this game exactly? I've skimmed through the rules a few times and can't seem to find a solid answer.

Each player can make one on every even numbered cycle. Players can also make them using their own points and Bankers can do the same. There's also the Sneaky Messenger who can make one extra PM with a player every cycle.

 

GM's, can Snitches Snitch on a player not in the same building as them? Do they have to give the note to a player in the same building as them?

Also, there are Thugs as well, not only Bodyguards and Angry Guards. Just thought I'd point that out. 

 

GM's, how many votes are needed to lynch someone? What happens in the case of a tied lynch?

All roles can only target people in the same location as them or someone on the streets. For the Snitch, both people(the one being Snitched on and the one being Snitched to must be in the same room as the Snitch.)

 

That's actually a typo. Thugs and Bodyguards are the same thing. 

 

2 votes are the minimum to lynch someone. A tied lynch results in a coin flip between the two.

 

Edit: two people posted before me. I think that people in the command chain know who is below them, but now who is above them. If the group is organized with one commander, two captains, and four regulars, in C1, the commander pm's captain 1. Captain 1 will pm regular 1, regular 1 pm's regular 2. Meanwhile the other captain is pming his underlings. C2, the commander pm's captain 2. Now everyone knows who's just above them in the command structure, and from then on can communication with their superior.

Correct. Commanders know their captains, Captains know the regulars below them, etc.

[Amanuensis he/him]

(1) Stink: Rae

(2) Lopen: Meta, Strawman

(1) Shallan: phattemer

(1) phattemer: Shallan

 

So this is where the votes are cast so far. As it stands Lopen is going to be lynched. My gut tells me he's good and that's a mistake, but I am not sure if I want to intervene. Oh, huh. So tied votes still result in a death. Will probably stay out of it for sure, then. If someone has to die I would rather it not be determined by chance, and I simply don't feel strong enough about anyone to take part in killing them.

 

Also, I asked the GMs if the Ferry qualifies as a location (among other things regarding it) and thought that you should all be aware of that.

[Mailliw73 he/him]

The Cycle ends in just over 3 hours! Remember to decide on a location and to decide if you're keeping your points or sending them to your Banker!

[Elkanah he/him]

The streets were silent as night fell. A chill wind made the hair on Hank's neck bristle. Dusk brings a new danger. He strode of to find some shelter before it was too late.

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Just a reminder, whether you agree with the plan or not, everyone needs to find lodging somewhere if we want to catch the agents. Otherwise the rooms are a waste.

[Wonko the Sane he/him]

Sorry about the spotty activity. I've been busy the last couple of days, and unfortunately that's going to stay the case for a little while. Not enough to render me inactive, but I won't be as central to the discussion as I like to be.

 

I have not had the time to really consider the plans put forward this round, so I'll reserve judgement for now. Whatever our plan regarding faction identities, though, we need to make sure the Bankers know everyone in their gang. Despite what people have said above, no, the banker does not have the ability to get a random GA identity. They can only check the alignment of a player they specifically target.

 

Guys, why on Earth are we letting Lopen get lynched? He's been one of the strongest discussion leaders in this game; we want him alive to continue that. Meta or Straw, please drop your vote before something really regrettable happens.

 

So no one's going to tell me where to stay tonight, right? I just have to decide on my own?