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[Caithness]

Hahahaha, good game everyone. I don't feel as foolish as I potentially could, since I did vote to test Destil.

[Kazz]

Hahahaha, good game everyone. I don't feel as foolish as I potentially could, since I did vote to test Destil.

we're just lucky that nobody took you seriously

[Kayma]

Boo.

[Lottel]

Yeah, this was on me. Sorry Kayma. I was actually busy when I got the test and just tested the last name suggested.

Probably could have done that a little better.

[Caithness]

I think it's really hard for the Things to win without everybody self-testing.

[Destil]

I would also like to thank the Things for playing like absolute retards. Protip: the only two conditions for the extra test? Don't re-test someone on Day 2 and don't test another Thing. Anything else seems completely legit.

If the assumption is that it's always sub-optional (an, in fact, a kill able offense) to re-test someone then the things are just going to always prefer to convert a day one test, however.

Actually, you know what? I let emotion get the better of me there. After looking back it seems more plausible that Dest is just a human moron. Switching my vote back to Zara. If I'm wrong there we can still have a great little argument over whether to burn Gha or Dest. Hell, at this point I'd like to see them throwing each other under the bus. So hey, I still get to have at least a little petty vengeance.

This is the exact reason I acted as I did, I was hoping Friend would come to this conclusion and kill Gahitsu. Killing an innocent I'd be high on the flame list and have to dodge three flames and win a coinfip (since Gahistu has also basically revealed to me she wasn't a flame, I had it down to zara and Ako). I liked my odds better having to only have the town make one misplay (especially since killing a non-flamer innocent would just shrink my hiding pool), since Zara was already on the table for testing I didn't feel I had much of a choice. Preferred the odds that Friend would make one wrong move over the odds that friend and the second flame would make a total of three. If I killed Gahistu and you tested Zara the optimal moves for you guys becomes flame Sharky, Ako and Myself in any order, add in any number of tests tomorrow and I lose that sequence.

I don't think the game's unwinnable for the things, but with one thing killed on day two the odds go way down.

For what it's worth I've have killed Kayma myself if someone killed Beat Bandit first.

[Friend]

Ahh that does make sense from your perspective. Y'know, I really considered you a clueless innocent, but I figured on the off chance that you were a thing, I would never want you to even have a chance at winning. That's why when I revealed who I would be burning, both options had you getting caught, either by burning, or a scan.  Also, the four way coin flip was essentially a red herring. Considering Kazz, Sharkey, and Gahitsu would have nothing to lose by voting  Zaratustra(or potentially anyone, it just made sense to vote for him because he was the vote leader) and much to lose by voting for Destil, I was implicitly leaving the door open to test whoever they thought was most guilty.

[Ocksi]

I would also like to thank the Things for playing like absolute retards. Protip: the only two conditions for the extra test? Don't re-test someone on Day 2 and don't test another Thing. Anything else seems completely legit.

If the assumption is that it's always sub-optional (an, in fact, a kill able offense) to re-test someone then the things are just going to always prefer to convert a day one test, however.

So what if they do? Innocent players have a better shot finding a Thing with the narrowed testing pool (second day, there are at least two Things among a shrinking untested player pool). Things turn someone every night, whether it's someone who was tested or wasn't. Day Two is a bit early to begin retesting. If Innocents are going to start retesting, that soon, they've given up.

[Sharkey]

Post-game analysis, I guess. Looking forward to hearing from everyone else on this.

Dest's bombing still seems illogical in retrospect. From a thing's point of view there was still a pool of unknowns that included himself, Zara, Gha, and to a lesser degree Aok, Kazz, and Myself. With only two flame kills (and only one that the innocents were counting on) and a test that night there was a small but definitely non-zero chance that he might not be tested or burned. Especially with some fast talking. He might well have got Gha to bat for him with the rest of us privately.

As opposed to chucking an undeclared bomb and hitting an innocent, which absolutely guaranteed a test and/or burning, especially if he hit a flame thrower (was that a deduction, by the way? I had Aok pegged as likely for that, but sure as fuck wasn't going to share the conclusion. Especially given that from my standpoint there wasn't a good way of guessing between human-flamer and flamer-thing.) Figuring that out would have been smart, but doing it anyway equally dumb.

From a metagame standpoint it made so little sense that it almost seemed easier to believe that he was just being innocently stupid (especially after seeing so much of that in this game.) Testing Zara first didn't make any quantitative difference provided Dest got burned, but he actually seemed almost more likely at that point. Again, this is my first game, and if I've learned anything it's that I give way too much weight to people playing rationally with the information they have, even while playing irrationaly myself in the early game when there's nothing to go on and it doesn't particularly matter. killkazzkillkazznohomokillkazz

Also, Caith is a very, very silly person.

Aok not identifying also seems odd in hindsight, but on the off chance we didn't get the last thing there are a couple scenarios where that might have possibly provided a slim advantage. Whether or not that would have conveyed a greater one than everyone identifying and possibly sparking an argument is difficult to quantify. Identifying would have narrowed the pool and reduced the chances of being randomly killed, but would have left more ambiguity over which flame got turned the next day. Hard call.

Also, I still think Ok's all-in was very risky. It probably provided an advantage this time around, but if this is an iterative experiment it's a trojan horse strategy in that it'd probably only work that well with the same pool of players the first time.

[Ocksi]

I stand by going all-in in any situation where you have enough kills and tests to cover every possible suspect in the game in one turn if you know exactly how many targets you have, especially because it's only a matter of time until you're down to one flamethrower, which means you can't kill faster than the Things turn. We just happened to hit that point very early.

[Esperath]

From a spectator's perspective, this game was a fantastic read.  In fact, all three of the standard Thing games (ignoring the wonky rules from Thing3) were awesome.

I'm curious how the meta would favor multiple iterations of the day 2 all-in.

[Destil]

The 'coinflip' I'm referring to are my odds of killing/converting the second flame, who I at that point knew was either Zara or Ako. I needed to do that to win.

Ocksi's entirely right that all-in is in your favor once the numbers are in your advantage. Once Lottel was dead you guys had this in the bag, and you ran with it, so good for you. I don't know if that's a bug or a feature in the ruleset, though (I think I'd personally prefer a slight random variation on the number of dynimite, even something as small as 4-5).

[Sharkey]

I stand by going all-in in any situation where you have enough kills and tests to cover every possible suspect in the game in one turn if you know exactly how many targets you have, especially because it's only a matter of time until you're down to one flamethrower, which means you can't kill faster than the Things turn. We just happened to hit that point very early.

I also agree, from a raw numbers perspective. In fact, I clapped for it. The problem is that it assumes rational play, or at the very least a minimum of metagaming to work optimally. It may not have worked out if not for the fact that the things actually played pretty damn foolishly. Not that Caith wasn't almost goofy enough to make up for it. I just looked over this again and I'm still boggling at very nearly everything he said. If he weren't a double confirmed human he would have been instantly burned.

Still, the odds at the time dictated it to be sound, and it worked even with a number of monkey wrenches. I'd almost advocate doing a game with unknown assets to mitigate that somewhat, but I think that'd probably just make the outcome more arbitrary rather than making social factors and dumbassery more relevant.

The 'coinflip' I'm referring to are my odds of killing/converting the second flame, who I at that point knew was either Zara or Ako. I needed to do that to win.

Except it would have been more logical to let things shake out with a small chance of survival and then taken a shot at converting a flame on a coinflip, rather than collapsing the whole thing to zero with a bomb on one of the less likely candidates. In fact, even if you made that mistake, a bomb on zara would have aroused slightly less suspicion. I still don't see how the move made any sense, other than "Wow, that was so stupid we'll put off killing him for half a second while we test the other guy."

[Esperath]

Thing3 had variable Things and assets, but as it turns out, even a slight tweak can cause game balance to swing pretty wildly.

[Sharkey]

Yeah, that's unsurprising. After my first subjective experience I'd hardly call these things deterministic, but maybe it'd be more better with a larger player pool and/or more initial factors that remain non-random.

[A²]

You should try Vampires vs Werewolves, Sharkey. It's the clusterfuckiest of the clusterfucks.

[Friend]

Except it would have been more logical to let things shake out with a small chance of survival and then taken a shot at converting a flame on a coinflip, rather than collapsing the whole thing to zero with a bomb on one of the less likely candidates. In fact, even if you made that mistake, a bomb on zara would have aroused slightly less suspicion. I still don't see how the move made any sense, other than "Wow, that was so stupid we'll put off killing him for half a second while we test the other guy."

That could have possibly won him the game, though, depending on who was the flamethrower. Unfortunately for Destil, I was pretty dead set on burning him. But, if I recall, you were the one who came to the conclusion that Destil was a dumb human, a conclusion that I also felt was extremely plausible. If I weren't so petty, I might have chosen Gahitsu to burn instead of Destil.

[Sharkey]

I mostly just wanted to see Destil and Gha argue a bit before we burned Destil anyway. Seriously, that nonsense actually made me want to see him squirm more than just die.

So, yeah, so much for rationality, but that shit was practically insulting. I guess that's another factor.

[Sharkey]

You should try Vampires vs Werewolves, Sharkey. It's the clusterfuckiest of the clusterfucks.

I'll definitely throw in for the next one. Ideally I'd like to see it from the actual monster side at some point without just projecting, but then, now that I've said that someone's probably going to use "Sharkey said he wanted to be a monster! Burn him!"

So that's fun, too.

But really, this was easy mode. It must be a blast trying to put together an impenetrable argument that reaches an untrue conclusion while taking into account what your opponents can conceivably know for certain and what their innate and irrational biases might be. Or keeping quiet and letting people fuck up. I'll be playing more, I think.

And yeah, sorry for calling a bunch of you stupid. Repeatedly. With occasional appended profanity. That's pretty much the best indicator that I'm having a good time. I was occasionally thick, myself. If I replayed this I would have held off on that initial arbitrary free test. People say way the fuck more than they intend to, even in the random phase of the game. Not just in Lot and Kayma's late votes, but in how they were delivered.

That scene from War Games

[Destil]

Ultimately my biggest failure was one of player psychology, as people really wanted to see me burn just because I blew ou the second flame. Should have counted on that a bit more.

Sharky: You can't really take anything anyone ever says in wolf/mafia personally, I've learned. Some games the optimal play is just to be an abrasive asshole (or to try and look like the village idiot and hope no one sees through it).