Long Game 51: A Traitor in the Obligators

[xinoehp512]

It was RNG. And I hardly think that counts.

[Mailliw73]

“My fellow Obligators, various Cantons though we may represent, we are united today in one cause: finding this traitor among us,” Prelan Matarn Wachtrot made a point of glaring at the fringes of the crowd of tattooed, bald Obligators. “We seek to uphold the Lord Ruler and this Final Empire.

”We have sworn an oath in the presence of the Lord Ruler, Inquistors, and the Lord Prelan to serve with our might. I exhort you to cast your mind upon the day you swore such an oath. Remember the power of the moment. Remember your loyalty. 

“We have need of this loyalty in these times. Fierce, undying, and overpowering. Politics must be put aside for this cause.” Matarn scanned the crowd, seeing those he had sent letters to. They had been responsive, but the unification of the Ministry he sought had not yet been achieved in any measure. Some would hate him for this, he knew. But this was for the Empire. 

“I will be the first to put aside my own past conflicts and my prejudices. The cause of the Steel Ministry is the penultimate cause of humanity. For that, I will set aside all I have. To begin the process of cross-Canton unification, I will strip myself bare to you all. I have been granted the gift of copper burning, commmonly known as ‘Smoking’. I swear to use this to the aid of our search and trust you all to do your best as well. I encourage those gifted with brass to attempt now to dampen my emotions that I may show you my honesty. Those with zinc would be better served inspecting others today.”

Matarn knew that no traitor, rich as he may be, could sway him to betray his Lord. If some power were to force him to leave his oaths, he knew his prominence as prelan and his announcement would garner him all suspicion and he may even leave a trail to the traitor himself. 

Edited December 12, 2018 by Mailliw73
Added brass/zinc sentence

[Straw]

MORE CLARIFICATIONS:

PMs are only one-on-one;

The Seer can use the Traitor's kill.

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

6 hours ago, Alvron said:

Should a Seeker find the Seer within the first 2 cycles, I would strongly encourage them to out themselves.  Yes they become a prime target for death but it will let us burn down the Seers atium which means less converts.  The Seeker can only trust themselves as their contacts/scans can be converted after being Seeked so telling them puts the Seeker at risk while allowing the Seer to remain hidden.  I would rather lose a Seeker early in the game to out the Seer than for them to remain quiet and let the Seer use up their Atium giving us more to find.

Now that Seekers can detect role and alignment, they are valuable enough that while trading a Seeker for the Seer is still advantageous, additional effort to conceal the Seeker's identity is worthwhile. My current idea is for a Seeker to PM two players without the typical verification step and have them dually report the Seeker's findings to the thread. While this is riskier than the standard procedure, it is also safer than the Seeker claiming publicly. As a Seer starting with three beads will not be able to convert either of the reporters if the Seer already has a convert at that point[3-1(convert)-1(lynch)-1(coinshot)=0], the Seeker's identity will likely be secret unless one of the two chosen reporters is evil.

4 hours ago, Mailliw73 said:

For me, this time I’m suggesting a no vote. We each vote for one person and then soothers soothe and Rioters riot to no vote.

I would be willing to go for a no-lynch today, though I don't believe I'm entirely clear on the plan. Players whose votes are removed could be either Rioters or targets of vote manipulation, while players whose votes are not removed could be either Smokers or simply not have been targeted by a vote manipulator. Coordination is also important; we want exactly one vote manipulator to attempt to cancel your vote. The best I can think of right now is for the vote manipulators to target the first player above them on the player list who has cast a vote.

[Araris Valerian]

I feel somewhat obligated to say that the discussion about roleclaiming makes me somewhat uncomfortable. I would think that giving out information to all and sundry should wait at least a few cycles until the Seer has burned most of his/her atium beads. Something like Mailliw claiming Smoker is more helpful to the Seer at this point than to us in my opinion. Now it doesn't make too much sense for Mailliw to be the Seer, but I can totally see someone like Ookla the Heretical fishing for a Seeker convert early to inform further conversion decisions.

[Mailliw73]

26 minutes ago, Ookla the Heretical said:

I would be willing to go for a no-lynch today, though I don't believe I'm entirely clear on the plan. Players whose votes are removed could be either Rioters or targets of vote manipulation, while players whose votes are not removed could be either Smokers or simply not have been targeted by a vote manipulator. Coordination is also important; we want exactly one vote manipulator to attempt to cancel your vote. The best I can think of right now is for the vote manipulators to target the first player above them on the player list who has cast a vote.

This plan won’t make public any role confirmations, not really. But it will help those involved in the manipulation begin to verify people. Any soothers and rioters can know for sure if someone they try to manipulate us a coppercloud, though the rest of us won’t know. If a rioter doesn’t want to reveal themselves they can be tricky with the rioting, but if they’d like to claim themselves, then they can leave it obvious too. This wasn’t meant to make roles public, there isn’t an easy way to do that. Someone has to go public with their own role first. I’m not sure about people canceling the votes right above them. It can work and it’s as good a plan as any, but if they want to verify certain people they could do that too. If I were in a position to verify others, I’d probably prefer to choose my own targets. But I don’t have a problem with manipulators doing what you suggest. 

[Furamirionind]

41 minutes ago, Ookla the Heretical said:

The best I can think of right now is for the vote manipulators to target the first player above them on the player list who has cast a vote.

Wouldn't that just narrow down who the vote manips are for everyone (including the seer), while still running the same risk of people targeting the same person? If the seer can narrow down who the vote manips are, they will also gain info as to the roles of everyone else. We really don't want the seer getting a hold of the seeker or coin-shot.  

Edited December 12, 2018 by Furamirionind

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

34 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

I can totally see someone like [Ookla the Heretical] fishing for a Seeker convert early to inform further conversion decisions.

My suggestion for a Seeker to claim in PMs applies if and only if they manage to scan a Seer who has not yet run out of beads. Further, that plan is offered as an alternative to the Seeker outright claiming in thread. A Seeker claiming in PMs could only be identified and converted if one of the reporters is a convert and one of the following is true: the Seer started with four beads, the Coinshot is inactive, or the lone convert is a Lurcher. 

10 minutes ago, Mailliw73 said:

I’m not sure about people canceling the votes right above them. It can work and it’s as good a plan as any, but if they want to verify certain people they could do that too. If I were in a position to verify others, I’d probably prefer to choose my own targets. But I don’t have a problem with manipulators doing what you suggest. 

The main value of making roles apparent is to hard-clear enough players to give any Seekers the chance to identify the Seer before they run out of atium. Continued below, that does mean coordinating vote manipulation by player list position is not a good idea.

4 minutes ago, Furamirionind said:

Wouldn't that just narrow down who the vote manips are for everyone (including the seer), while still running the same risk of people targeting the same person? If the seer can narrow down who the vote manips are, they will also gain info as to the roles of everyone else. We really don't want the seer getting a hold of the seeker or coin-shot.  

This is a valid point. While the risk of duplicate targeting is lessened, that comes along with increased ability to pinpoint the identities of the vote manipulators. In conjunction with a goal to allow vote manipulators, and no one else, to learn the identities of any Smokers, that would be dangerous.

[Mailliw73]

12 minutes ago, Ookla the Heretical said:

The main value of making roles apparent is to hard-clear enough players to give any Seekers the chance to identify the Seer before they run out of atium. Continued below, that does mean coordinating vote manipulation by player list position is not a good idea.

This is a valid point. While the risk of duplicate targeting is lessened, that comes along with increased ability to pinpoint the identities of the vote manipulators. In conjunction with a goal to allow vote manipulators, and no one else, to learn the identities of any Smokers, that would be dangerous.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have the emotional Allomancers be obvious with it, I'm just saying that no one of such talents has yet claimed and I'm not sure they will. I'm all for public role reveals (Obviously ). Soothers, Rioters, where ya at?

[Walin]

Just hopping in to stay active; I'll try to get more reading done during Day Two. I have been contacted so far; unfortunately I'm probably going to be unable to reply unless I get some responsibility and get my stuff for today done faster.

See you all in ~40 hours.

[I think I am here.]

See ya.

Something I just thought of that may or may not be viable to work, but what if the Seeker found someone, and told them their results. But even after something interesting, they continued telling, so that at the end the Relayer could be like “Results from the past 5 cycles say X is good, Y is bad, Z is good, A is good, B is bad.”

Wait, just realised this wouldn’t work because of the conversion. Meaning at any point scans from a certain cycle might not be trustable.

I’ve got another idea that may or may not be too complex for my own good. What if the Seeker told someone to Relay their results, and that Relayer PM’d somebody else (pretending to be the Seeker themselves) and telling them the results. That way, the Seer wouldn’t know who the real Seeker would be unless they converted the original Relayer, which would be impossible to identify unless you found the second Relayer, which would be impossible until you found the third, and so forth. This way, nobody knows who the Seeker is (even the original Relayer might not be sure if the Seeker is real or another Relayer passing the message) and everybody gets the scan result.

The only problem I can see is if the Seer or a convert elim gets caught in the cycle and does a ‘Chinese Whispers-style’ move of changing the scan results, but just like in Chinese Whispers, we should be able to narrow down the chain to the Seer. How does it sound?

[Jondesu]

2 hours ago, Ookla the Guacless said:

See ya.

Something I just thought of that may or may not be viable to work, but what if the Seeker found someone, and told them their results. But even after something interesting, they continued telling, so that at the end the Relayer could be like “Results from the past 5 cycles say X is good, Y is bad, Z is good, A is good, B is bad.”

Wait, just realised this wouldn’t work because of the conversion. Meaning at any point scans from a certain cycle might not be trustable.

I’ve got another idea that may or may not be too complex for my own good. What if the Seeker told someone to Relay their results, and that Relayer PM’d somebody else (pretending to be the Seeker themselves) and telling them the results. That way, the Seer wouldn’t know who the real Seeker would be unless they converted the original Relayer, which would be impossible to identify unless you found the second Relayer, which would be impossible until you found the third, and so forth. This way, nobody knows who the Seeker is (even the original Relayer might not be sure if the Seeker is real or another Relayer passing the message) and everybody gets the scan result.

The only problem I can see is if the Seer or a convert elim gets caught in the cycle and does a ‘Chinese Whispers-style’ move of changing the scan results, but just like in Chinese Whispers, we should be able to narrow down the chain to the Seer. How does it sound?

That type of plan relies on everyone not knowing it's happening.  As it is, it'd be easy to just fake it and send out confusing messages but claim to just be a relayer and it ends up being useless.

EDIT: Most plans are not helpful if talked about publicly.  I would recommend anyone else with plans like this PM them to a few people instead of talking about them in the open.

Edited December 12, 2018 by Jondesu

[Mailliw73]

38 minutes ago, Jondesu said:

That type of plan relies on everyone not knowing it's happening.  As it is, it'd be easy to just fake it and send out confusing messages but claim to just be a relayer and it ends up being useless.

EDIT: Most plans are not helpful if talked about publicly.  I would recommend anyone else with plans like this PM them to a few people instead of talking about them in the open.

I disagree. Publicly discussing plans helps us to flesh out weak ones and remove ones that won’t work. It also gives us ways to read people and further the overall search. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend we stop talking about plans in thread; that’s a big chunk of what it’s for. 

[Jondesu]

3 minutes ago, Mailliw73 said:

I disagree. Publicly discussing plans helps us to flesh out weak ones and remove ones that won’t work. It also gives us ways to read people and further the overall search. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend we stop talking about plans in thread; that’s a big chunk of what it’s for. 

The problem with discussing plans like this is that it makes it extremely clear what an Elim (in this case the Seer, and then any converts he makes) needs to do to disrupt the plan.  There are sometimes plans that doesn't apply to, but rarely.

And that's not really the main purpose of the thread.  The thread is for voting, for voicing suspicions, and sharing information that should be public. Making plans publicly is just asking for disaster usually.

Note that I don't think this makes those sharing the plans suspect necessarily, since usually it's just an ill-advised move by a villager, and in this cycle I would highly recommend we stick to no lynch, but I wanted to make sure I warned against it anyways.

[Rathmaskal]

I'm kind of on the same page as Jondesu here...  No matter what the plan, there will be a way to exploit it as the seer if you know how the plan works.

[Furamirionind]

There are differant types of plans, but if there is a plan that revolves around secrecy, then that plan would be best kept secret.

The only plans that really work being shared publically are the ones that "checkmate" (reckoners definition) the Seer.  I genuinely can't think of a plan that would be an example of this though.

As for the relayer idea, I don't think it is a useless one now that it has been talked about, as long as the amount of relayers in a chain is variable.  It could work, but only if the seeker contacts a villager first, as if something goes wrong, it would be relatively simple to trace it back to the seeker.

[Mailliw73]

1 hour ago, Jondesu said:

The problem with discussing plans like this is that it makes it extremely clear what an Elim (in this case the Seer, and then any converts he makes) needs to do to disrupt the plan.  There are sometimes plans that doesn't apply to, but rarely.

And that's not really the main purpose of the thread.  The thread is for voting, for voicing suspicions, and sharing information that should be public. Making plans publicly is just asking for disaster usually.

Note that I don't think this makes those sharing the plans suspect necessarily, since usually it's just an ill-advised move by a villager, and in this cycle I would highly recommend we stick to no lynch, but I wanted to make sure I warned against it anyways.

It isn't the main purpose, sure. But it is a purpose that aids with the search for eliminators. I'm a huge fan of playing lots of IKYKs with the eliminators, which is part of why I agree with sharing plans in thread because the eliminator can never be sure what we are going to do and we have to outguess each other. We also have to share information with each other. If we don't, we will lose. 

In that spirit, I'd like to submit to the Ministry that we begin to share Allomantic powers here, forcing the Seer into a corner concerning conversions. Thoughts?

[Furamirionind]

I would be willing to try that tactic, if for no other reason than I haven't seen it done during the past 20 games I skimmed.  However, it will be more than just the seer who lies. The coinshot, lurcher and seeker probably all will.

Also with factoring in possible inactive players, I am not sure how much info on the Seer we will truly be able to get.

[CadCom]

So I'm counting, What? 3 votes for this cycle? With Just one Elim currently, I am more proned to not feel comfortable placing a vote yet, So I will let those that have voted or will vote determine the lynch for now.

[Alvron]

I'm with Maill and Guacless.  Talking about plans doesn't give the Seer a lot of information given we haven't decided on a plan.  Guacless' plan can be easily adapted to remove the small risk of the Seeker being revealed by adding a single line to their PM.  For instance, Maill is a Seeker and learns that Devotary is the Seer.  Maill wants to remain hidden so sends a PM to me which reads:

Quote

Greetings Alv,
You are the second to last link in a chain.  Please pass this along to another asking them to post the following in thread:
Devotary has been Seeked and found to be the Seer.

I receive the PM but thanks to the first two sentences, I don't know if Maill is the Seeker or just another link in the chain.  The Seeker can add as many links to the chain as they want to insure that it's impossible to learn who started it.  They could be the one that posts in thread or even the second to last link and no one would know but them.  Could even have 10 links and have one person get it twice.  Even if someone in the link is evil, there is no way for them to know who started the chain and if they don't pass it along then they run the risk of being found out.
 

10 minutes ago, Ookla the Duck said:

So I'm counting, What? 3 votes for this cycle? With Just one Elim currently, I am more proned to not feel comfortable placing a vote yet, So I will let those that have voted or will vote determine the lynch for now.

You should vote if for no other reason than to give the Soothers/Rioters targets for their abilities.  My vote is on Jondesu mainly so it can be soothed away but also, I have a slight suspicion of him and Devotary.
 

30 minutes ago, Furamirionind said:

I would be willing to try that tactic, if for no other reason than I haven't seen it done during the past 20 games I skimmed.  However, it will be more than just the seer who lies. The coinshot, lurcher and seeker probably all will.

Also with factoring in possible inactive players, I am not sure how much info on the Seer we will truly be able to get.

It's not just the Seer we would get information on but rather information as a whole.  We would have a clearer idea of what we are working with.  I for one won't be sharing my role as that's not how I play the game but if there are those that want to, then I encourage them to do so.  At moment the Seer has to decide who they convert/kill based on limited information but if they have more information then things become a little bit harder for them as they will have to decide who is lying and who isn't on top of what roles they would want and which player would make a good convert to help them.

[Mailliw73]

39 minutes ago, Furamirionind said:

I would be willing to try that tactic, if for no other reason than I haven't seen it done during the past 20 games I skimmed.  However, it will be more than just the seer who lies. The coinshot, lurcher and seeker probably all will.

Also with factoring in possible inactive players, I am not sure how much info on the Seer we will truly be able to get.

Probably Thugs too, but this will give us something to go off of. Right now, the discussion is lacking. I know it's Day 1, but if we don't start now, we will be behind.

30 minutes ago, Ookla the Duck said:

So I'm counting, What? 3 votes for this cycle? With Just one Elim currently, I am more proned to not feel comfortable placing a vote yet, So I will let those that have voted or will vote determine the lynch for now.

I feel it's more useful to vote, preferably for someone who isn't voted for yet, that we can have the soothers and rioters begin to check you. Right now, there's only three of us that Soothers can check. I don't think we need an actual lynch, but we need the information and there's only a little under 4 hours left.

Edit: Ninja'd by Alv and he said what I wanted to say, but better. 

Edited December 12, 2018 by Mailliw73

[Araris Valerian]

I'm not sure how sharing roles in the thread will force the Seer into a corner. Presumably the Seer has some sort of plan for conversions that doesn't rely on role information at all. Thus, they could use that plan regardless of what roles are/aren't revealed in thread. Also, the Seer doesn't just convert. Everyone revealing would let the elim team know precisely who to kill to cripple us.

[Furamirionind]

9 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

I'm not sure how sharing roles in the thread will force the Seer into a corner. Presumably the Seer has some sort of plan for conversions that doesn't rely on role information at all. Thus, they could use that plan regardless of what roles are/aren't revealed in thread. Also, the Seer doesn't just convert. Everyone revealing would let the elim team know precisely who to kill to cripple us.

Though that is true, if a lot of people do role claim, something like half of them would be lying. The common claims I expect will be roleless or soother/rioter.  And while many people may be telling the truth, many others won't be, and telling those groups apart will take time and analysis. In this respect, it could favor the village as, with more people, we are more likely to catch something or have more collective time to dedicate to analysis.

I am just playing devils advocate. I understand your concerns and agree with them. But as I havent seen this attempted, it could work better than expected... That is why i'd be for it. (It also would differentiate this game from LG39... Or any other recent LG for that matter.)

Edited December 12, 2018 by Furamirionind

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

That's five votes so far, now six counting mine.

Alv(1): Maill
Xino(1): Fura
Itiah(1): Xino
Devo(1): Araris
Jondesu(1): Alv
Rath(1): Devo

With the presence of roleless players, who composed over half of all players in LG39, roleclaiming alone will not narrow down the Seer to any great degree. Any benefit will likely lie in villagers false claiming to confuse the seer, though I do not know whether this would be beneficial overall.

Alv and Itiah's PM chain plan seems like it should work so long as everyone involved is active enough to a.) Pass the message along and b.) Speak up if the name revealed in thread does not match the name they were given. I would have to consider this more carefully, but my first impression is that a false claimer would be tracked down and killed with a maximum of two village deaths, and since the chain of public reveals would only go back to the first liar, a real Seeker wouldn't necessarily be uncovered even if they started out passing the message to an elim.

I am placing my vote on Rathmaskal mostly in accordance with the no-lynch/vote manipulation plan, but also because of his stance on public planning. I personally feel that even bad plans shared to the thread are better than no plans, as the level of responses, opinions, and counter-opinions on that plan can be measured in a way unachievable with one-on-one PMs. With luck, the thread might be able to turn the bad plan into a course of action worth pursuing, but even if a plan is deemed too exploitable and discarded, we'll at least have gotten some information from its failure.

[Karnatheon]

Would it be more viable for each person who received a pm about it to pm two other people? And to just say something to the effect of them passing it along. That way, it minimizes the amount of PM's needing to be sent and thus minimizes the potential for fraud. And since each person would pass it along no one would know who Seer was. The difficulty would be determining who would post. 

It could go, 4th person in chain should post. That way the Seeker could just pick a number from 1 to 4 when sending initial message, and everyone just ticks it up when they send. It guarantees the Seeker or anyone else can post it without revealing, and they can also claim someone is lying if something else gets posted in thread.