Tol-in-Gaurhoth III (The Saga Continues...)

[The Only Real Estel]

And perhaps its no coincidence that the victim was a free thinker, one whose philosophising might challenge the strict teachings of the church. I see that his books were left in a state such that his thoughts may no longer be shared ...

Now that does make a bit of sense. Although our talk rarely ventured beyond village news and such, it was easy enough to see that he was a free thinker. He tried to talk to me a bit about his views on preaching and religion and such, but, well, I’m afraid I’d had a few too many ales by that point and he knew I'd never remember it by morning. What have you to say about it, parson Morm?

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Fiendish wolves! Beasts! Murderers!

All right, so now we have to figure out how we’re going to catch these monsters before they devour us all – more importantly, we have to figure out how we’re going to catch these monsters before we do their dirty work for them by lynching one another. As the village loremaster, I’ve spent a lot of time in study on theoretical matters of risk/reward, and I’ve read many chronicles of the past; I do not claim to know the mind of a monster, but I do know that if we don’t work together, they will be able to destroy us one at a time.

Here’s the situation, as I see it. On our side are numbers – and when I say “our side” I mean of course the innocent villagers not you hairy brutes who hide amongst us. So on our side are numbers, and on theirs is information: the wolves know precisely who is a wolf and who is an innocent, and that’s their one real advantage, for while the rest of us are working in the dark they can silently prowl about, nudging us in one direction or another. We need to correct that – we need solid information rather than guesswork or intuition.

Let’s face it, at the beginning of the game there’s little-to-nothing for us to base our judgements on. How and whom people accuse might be genuine or it might be a bluff; it could be a bluff-in-a-bluff: maybe one person accuses another to hide something, to misdirect, or in a genuine move. How someone is “behaving” might be the result of cunning, naivete, a particular strategy, or honesty. The important thing that we have to realise from the outset is that we can’t know anything for certain – only the werewolves have that luxury.

So at the outset the advantage is entirely the wolves’ – their best strategy is to sit back and let the villagers lynch someone without interference from them: since the choice of who to lynch is utterly random (at first) the odds are wildly in the wolves’ favour: and by the time the odds are getting more even, the villagers have lost the game! So how to defeat them…?

Change the odds.

In order to determine who is what, we need hard information. Not speculation or theories; no spurious “logic” or bizarrely convoluted lines of reasoning through the “evidence”, but verifiable facts. And the only facts of this nature that exist in this situation are the votes. Whom one accuses or suspects is irrelevant: again, the speculations could be strategic, bluffs, guesswork, random or arrived at through the kind of spurious reasoning we need to avoid if we are going to survive. How one votes however is a real fact that we can look at to determine patterns and allegiances. So we need to find a way to make the vote work for us and not against us.

The one thing we absolutely must avoid in these early rounds is consensus. If we all move toward voting for the same person, then the wolves will laugh themselves silly. If by some stroke of fortune we are voting for a wolf, the other two can easily hide by joining with us in the vote – if it’s clear their counterpart is going to die anyway, they throw in their lots with us and win the appearance of innocence, falsely casting doubt on any who abstain or vote another way. If we are voting for an innocent, then the wolves’ options increase: they can cast their vote with us, or abstain or even vote another way and use that later as “evidence” that they are innocents too. We need to force their hands…paws.

This is how I would suggest we do that: we ask the mod to randomly select three names for a short list of nominees for lynching. We need this to be a random selection to make sure that the wolves (who know who is guilty or innocent) are as likely to be among the three as are we innocents. Like I said above, the one thing we have to avoid is consensus, so to make sure we spread the votes around we institute the following rules:

First, there will be a short-list for the next round of voting, and this list will be made up of everyone who votes for the lynched person, if that person is an innocent. (If we are lucky enough to catch a werewolf – and the odds are less than 1 in 50 that we will – we should generate another random list for the second round.) This means that voting to lynch someone carries a real threat of danger: the wolves will be in as much danger from the vote as will the innocents – if they want to kill a particular person, they will have to think long and hard about whether they want to automatically be in the short list for next time!

Second, anyone who does not vote is also added to the short-list. We need to force the wolves to vote, and to vote in a way that is meaningful – that’s the only way we can catch them out.

I would recommend that we do this same process until we catch a werewolf – we will then have sufficient information about the wolf’s voting record, which we can match up with the voting records of other people. The purpose of this strategy is that at best it will give the wolves’ less room to manoeuvre and we can catch them out; the worst case scenario is that developing our own strategy will force the wolves to vote according to our rules and not according to their hidden agenda. With a level playing field, our advantage in numbers becomes a true advantage.

One more idea in this already long diatribe: our seer. Whoever they are, they are our greatest asset, but we can’t really use them. The seer has to be extremely guarded in their actions unless they bring down the wolves on them – this means that if the seer is eaten, the evidence left behind might be somewhat fragmentary (“did the seer accuse this person because of a vision or as a gambit?”). We can help the seer by providing camouflage: after each night, we should all declare the results of our “seer vision” – that is, each one of us will put up the name of one other person and whether that person is innocent or a wolf as though each of us is the seer. In these moments, the real seer MUST always tell the absolute truth: this will make it possible for the seer to flag the truth for the other innocents while hiding from the wolves. This might make the seer more visible to the Wolves as the game goes on, but if they know that the seer is leaving behind the real results of true visions with each and every round, to kill the seer is to identify them, which will mean that we will have the benefit of hard information from each seer vision. To kill the seer becomes a terrible risk for the wolves, and not a benefit. As information emerges (through lynchings and wolf attacks) the other villagers will also be in a position to figure out who is the seer alongside the wolves, so perhaps the seer won’t have to die before we can use their information to bag a hairy monster, or two, or three…

Obviously, for these strategies to work, we are all going to have to subscribe to them – so what do you all think? The one thing we must do is work together if we are to have any hope of destroying these monsters. We are our own worst enemies at the moment…

[the guy who be short]

Danger! Accusations! Fingers pointing left and right!
Squabble if you must, but resolve yourselves by night.

Fordim: The Seer's job is to guide us, as unsuspiciously as possible, in the game. I think having everybody pretend to be a Seer would simply undermine this. Also, as Firefoot says, your ideas are mathematically unsound; for example,

If we are lucky enough to catch a werewolf – and the odds are less than 1 in 50 that we will

It is clear you meant 1 in 5, but 3 in 14 is a better chance than 1 in 5, not worse, albeit slightly.
I am opposed to the ideas because having a short list does not seem feasable to me. All three wolves could easily stay off the shortlist by voting for an innocent villager who doesn't end up getting lynched, etc. By keeping everybody votable, we know that we can end up voting for a wolf, even if they influence our decisions.

Another thing that concerns me is Saucy's jesting. Verily, I enjoy jokes as much as the next man, but this seems incredibly out of place when one fifteenth of the hamlet has just been viciously slaughtered. He also voiced suspicion, perhaps jestingly, of Phantom and Kuru without offering any sort of explanation.

Mormegil and Saucy both voiced suspicion of Kuru on the basis that he is a newcomer. I am not aiming suspicion at them here, but would like to take this moment to condemn both Xenophobia and Dwarrowphobia which appear to be rampant amongst our populance.

Sono said

The Guy Who Be Short, too, seemed jealous of Mr. Eomer's learning, always trying to show him up at town book readings and the like.

What do you mean trying to show him up? I did show him up, poor soul.
Our Holy Father Mormegil will confirm that I did come to him to ask for guidance over my feelings of jealousy, both of Eomer and of Azaelia whose vegetables seem to be much more popular than mine. With his help, and the help of Eru Iluvatar, I was able to overcome these emotions many months ago.

Finally:

Without guidance from some sort of seer it is, as short guy (can I call you that?) said, a "shot into the dark".

I'm generally called TGWBS.

[The Only Real Estel]

He also voiced suspicion, perhaps jestingly, of Phantom and Kuru without offering any sort of explanation

I think that this can surely be written off as jest-Kuru and Phantom have hardly been trustworthy figures in two past occasions (that I can’t name more fully because past villages aren’t supposed to be referenced ). A hard look at the beginning can really be no more than jest in my opinion.

Mormegil and Saucy both voiced suspicion of Kuru on the basis that he is a newcomer

I am not about to vouch for either Morm’s or Saucey’s innocence, but I will say that if you’re going to be suspicious because of accusations you have to be cautious. Someone has to cast the first stone, and history has generally been against those that do, and often unjustly.

I myself am one to wait until more evidence is heard, but what concrete evidence can we have until more unfolds? I would not wish for any further deaths solely for the purposes of having more evidence, but neither do I wish to cast hasty suspicions and votes and lynch an innocent! What to do?

edit: I am now split on the seer idea. I do see how it would help the villagers (that seems pretty obvious), but I also see 'short guy's' point about how it could potentially undermine some of the basic guesswork and sleuthing that are involved in the four-letter-word-that-starts-with-'g.'

[Holbytlass]

I kinda like the protecting of the seer idea. I'm not going to comment about the voting idea because, right now, I'm confused. And so sad for that rascal, Eomer.

[Kuruharan]

It seems to me that Fordim has provided a sounding board to gauge people's reactions (and perhaps gauge his own motives in offering it). However, the difficulty is knowing what to make of the observations...