Someone asked, so I will address it here for all:

Henchmen were assigned to players prior to alignment. Alignments (town/scum) were then rolled using random.org. After alignments were assigned, flavor was molded/modified (if necessary) to fit with alignment. Your henchman role is no indication of your alignment. The flavor is meant purely for flavor.

You are welcome to share/not share/lie at your discretion. In the spirit of the game, please do not copy/paste your flavor. Paraphrasing is fine.

Since scum can't pick themselves, any pairing revealed by scum must be true. Scum could hang back with reveals, and list two pairs which were also picked by other people to not give town new information, but that in itself is dangerous, as someone offering up two duplicated pairs will come under suspicion because of it. So even if scum lies about their picks, it still gives town useful information.

I was pretty much convinced by the argument in the mafiascum thread that revealing soon is absolutely to our benefit, as late reveals would allow scum to tailor their reveals to increase the percentage chance on suspicious townies who would leave them the largest amount of wriggle room (that's paraphrasing heavily, I read the thread last week when cristi first posted the link, so don't have the exact argument in mind anymore). FWIW, for those who didn't read the thread, the other game initially made heavy use of a matrix of "can't be scum together" pairings to direct attention to people to pay attention to (both: "most of the possible pairings for this person have been excluded, so they have a lower chance of being scum" and "a scum flip for this person would confirm X other people as town"), and I'd say this gave town a slight advantage. Use of the matrix faded as the game progressed, and it ended pretty regularly. Normal scum hunting is still very much essential, but the matrix of exclusions looked to me to be useful enough to offset the benefit scum will be gaining from day chat.

I'm off to bed momentarily, but I say we absolutely should all reveal asap.

You're admittedly immediately walking this back a lot with your further comments, but all the same, I find this casting doubt somewhat suspicious. Could you clarify why town-you wouldn't want the slight advantage of figuring out this puzzle, and particularly what about it is a slippery slope? (As in, what lies at the bottom of that slope? I just don't see what bad thing this could lead toward...)

I like this post, and not just because it agrees with what I said. gogtrial is clearly showing they have given this some thought.

I agree that scums best bet is to lie and choose a pair already revealed to minimise towns knowledge. But I'm not sure how to prevent that, or if we should even try.

What if everyone revealed one half of their pairs first? Not sure if there is much benefit to that or not but it locks scum down to half of a pair before they can see full pairs to lie about...

[emphasis added]

Please, elaborate on the bit I highlighted. Also, what do you think of adaliabooks suggestion?



I don't see it any different than doing some reads, offering a view/opinion, or just feeling, about other players; scum use all that as well. As town, I always expect scum to WIFOM and manipulate things, but the grid can provide us with info to work with.


I don't think that this is the way to make use of the grid. As adaliabooks and gogtrial34987 said, we can use it to try and eliminate pairs, while allowing as little room as possible for scum to hide and WIFOM things. Scumhunting can, and will, still take place, or do you expect zero discussion and reactions to follow?
For someone who likes to look at things from different angles, I'm a bit surprised all you see about it is "a bunch of wasted time built on a bunch of crap", and that this is your argument against doing the grid.


[emphasis added]

Must say, you give me reasons to see why you think you might be better to not.

*has drealmer7's scum-partner yet to show up in the scum-chat?*


Of course. Surely you don't think that I expected you to come out and admit it, do you now?



Are you suggesting one name out of the four, or one name from each pair?


Whatever way we decide to go with the grid (full or partly/gradually), I'd also like to suggest that those most reluctant should go first.


I'm off to bed, hopefully next time I check the thread, the rest of the henchmen will have chimed in.

oh how tiresome

I'll take the time later to address more specifically and at length, but, as always, ALL I'm doing is talking about the various angles of things and going through them and putting stuff out there trying to weigh the pros and cons and get others thoughts about it and as usual I come under fire for it blah blah blah

Scum hunt then later we can share picks.

Frankly, I believe knowledge is power. The pairings are just the type of information which is more useful to us, than to scum. We don't know who the scum are and they do, so by revealing our choices, it helps us. I also like Gogtrial's thinking in pointing out that revealing early may be more beneficial then if we wait until later, scum might be able to use a "Oh my pairing is this..." to steer a lynch in a particular direction which would require quite the premonition if all is revealed early.

In short...I 100% support revealing our pairings. I can care less about which henchmen are whom, but I will say I was randomly assigned to my favorite of the bunch.

I think the "one name from each" idea is good for now.

But...
Scum cannot list a pair which isn't true. Even if they lie, any pair they name won't include themselves and are thus automatically not the scum team...

So, assuming town doesn't lie, all pairings will be true (lie or not).

Scum could easily say pairs that someone else did just to leave more options open and if someone really did pick the same people as someone else everyone will think they are scum trying to do just that even if the picks really were the same.

Talking in circles about the merits of revealing or not will get us nowhere. It seems that most want this to be a puzzle solving game so here are my picks:

I picked
RW & Hunter
Hyper & Gogtrial

I also drew the name Nick Nack

@trent awww I made it to your pick list ;)

Everyone's in a during mood, is it Christmas or something?
Anyway I agree with adalia so here's my picks:
Trent and HSL
Drealmer and gamma

I almost picked Drealmer and gamma since they are buddies but figured that someone else would.

From what you've posted so far, I see talk only about a single angle and only cons presented. If you've done more than

that, forgive me for missing it, and kindly point me to it.



Sure, we can share picks at any point, but why later? What's the benefit of later over now?


Why is it good for now? Is it better than full reveal? If yes, why is it better, and if not, why choose this over a full reveal?



The grid itself is not enough to break and solve the game out of the gate, is it? Your response to adaliabooks sounds like you agree with this, and as I said to drealmer7, scumhunting is still very much required.


These are two very good points, but here's where people have to do the regular mafia game solving work. So, let's see how this goes.

1st pair: drealmer7 + GammaEmerald
2nd pair: RWarehall + Hunter65536

1st pair: Since scum have day chat, breaking up pairs of players in the same timezone was something I took into account. GammaEmerald is an unknown, to us, player but who knows and has played with drealmer7, so I chose to break them up.
2nd pair: They seem to coordinate too well last game, even without day chat, so I'd rather not have those two working together.


Why did you pick these pairs?

Oh I didn't know they were buddies, I just didn't want 2 unknowns in same team (yep drealmer is an unknown for me, never quite get his read right)
Also stupid autocorrect it is sharing not during, please lynch me now