Capitalist Democracy Mafia 2: Credit Card Bubble

The citizens of Capitalismville have rested easy in their beds for a year, comforted in the knowledge that the crime ring that once plagued them has been stamped out. One night, however, their phones buzz loudly just before bedtime: *bzz bzz*

One-Time Offer: Earn points when you fly Capital Air! 0% APR! You profit when you SPEND.

Yes, credit cards had come to Capitalismville! Specifically, they were promoted by a company called Special Promotions Everyone Needs to Do, at least at first. But within days, dozens of the darn things had set up shop, and the advertisements were everywhere. In fact, some especially sinister ones had the citizens a bit concerned...

Night 0 has begun.
48 hours for night actions.

Sorry for the delay. I normally work nights, but today I had to work an unexpected day shift so I couldn't process everything until now.

Just so everyone's on the same page, I decided to use the generic phrase "due to outside effects" in night-end PMs for whenever anyone's money was affected by something other than their income or their own night action.

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The people of Capitalismville wake up unexpectedly, 10 minutes before the first alarm clock was set to go off, to their phones blaring with notifications that flash back and forth between two odd messages:

Music Dragon is innocent.

Metallica Fanboy is mafia.

The citizens don't know where these messages came from, but they do know one thing — this means another round of that awful business from last year. Knowing the procedure well by this point, they file into City Hall for the mandatory citywide vote. Or, at least, all but one file in.

A CNN push notification informs the townspeople that the FBI has discovered Superbird dead at his home, his neck snapped and his body still draped over his computer.

With little to go on, the people of Capitalismville must make a decision...

Night 0 is over.
Superbird is dead. He was innocent.

Day 1 has begun.
48 hours for day phase discussion.

Say whaaat! My alignment got spoiled already!? Augh, that means I can't be a zany wild card this game!

Well, these mysterious messages are correct about me, so I have no reason to assume they'd be lying about MF. I vote to lynch Metallica Fanboy! Huhuhu!

Oh yes, you're supposed to pay for it too, aren't you. Damned Americans. Let me hold off on that until tomorrow.

MD, did you do anything last night? Or was that notification random?

My action was blocked, and I was charged. I'm miffed

Nope! Didn't do anything. So, someone else has a power that publicly reveals the alignments of two players, I guess.

... Can't believe I'm posting this. What am I doing with my life!? It's 3 AM. Jesus. Here I am, in the middle of the night, contemplating how much money to spend on killing someone... It's times likes these you lose faith in privately-funded death penalties. I'm gonna go to bed.

Wargle said:

My action was blocked, and I was charged. I'm miffed

Click to expand...

Music Dragon said:

Nope! Didn't do anything. So, someone else has a power that publicly reveals the alignments of two players, I guess.

Click to expand...

If we're going to be saying what happened to us last night, I'll go next: I did absolutely nothing. I don't think I got targeted either, since my income is exactly as much as its supposed to be.

So, anything out of the ordinary happen to anyone else last night besides Wargle?

Merp. I didn't do anything last night either, and my money is as it should be.

I used my action last night, but it didn't provide anything useful. My money is fine.

I get the strangest feeling that MD's posts sound awfully suspicious.

...Naaaah.

Seriously tho, what're we gonna do? 'Cause I wanna hear what Metallica Fanboy has to say before we do anything.

Well, that's bizarre. I honestly went and double-checked my role just in case I was supposed to be miller and didn't catch the memo. That's not the case, so I just have no idea what's happening there.

Although...

JackPK said:

The people of Capitalismville wake up unexpectedly, 10 minutes before the first alarm clock was set to go off, to their phones blaring with notifications that flash back and forth between two odd messages:

Click to expand...

In the absence of any other evidence whatsoever, I'd take this to imply that one message or another is correct. Kind of like a rather awry way to cop? The last game around did have an investigative role that sends results to other people instead of getting them personally; publishing the results instead of personally receiving them seems another way to twist up the usual cop dynamic, and not always getting truthful information out of it seems a worthy tradeoff for the fact that it's a lot more powerful.

Anyways, since I'm understandably under suspicion and my role is not at all very sensitive, I might as well claim. I'm Corrupt Congressman, which is one of the roles that got cut from Capitalist Democracy Mafia I. In fact, here's the role description published for that game, which is publicized information so I'm allowed to quote it word for word:

Corrupt Congressman
You are innocent!
Your nightly income changes (see below).

Everybody knows democracy is just a way for politicians to get a little kickback from lobbyists and PACs, don’t they? Because of these kickbacks, your nightly income is equal to one-half, rounded up, of the amount of money that is spent on voting the previous day. (You start with 2 dollars on night zero.)

Click to expand...

My PM for this game is the exact same, plus a line on how much debt I'm allowed to incur, which is $20 for 11 players and -$2 per death at a minimum of $4.

And yes, claiming an already publicized role would be extremely convenient if I were scum, so it doesn't help my case much. Unfortunately, I have too much sociology exam tomorrow to come up with a decent town gambit, so honesty will have to do. Just note that if I were fakeclaiming this I'd also be incurring some astoundingly high risk of being counterclaimed, in a situation where getting counterclaimed is almost guaranteed to get me lynched.

Anyways -- the little information I can work with at the moment doesn't point to MD being scum, so I can only take the lame approach to defending myself and abstain for $2.

$2 to abstain

Seems solid enough.

$2 to abstain.

Well this is... interesting. Two broadcasts on night zero? If we could take them both at face value this would be a fantastic lead, but I suppose what MF says does make sense. If such a role really did exist that could publicly reveal TWO players alignments at once, it would be the most overpowered role I've ever seen. It would have to have some kind of drawback. Maybe it's a one-time activation, and it was triggered by Superbird's death? I guess we'd have to see if this happens again on the following days to know that. But, as MF said, if one of the statements is true and the other is false, that would make a lot of sense. The role could be fairly balanced that way.

Let's assume that only one statement is true. This means either A) MD is innocent and MF is NOT mafia, therefore they are both innocent B) MD is NOT innocent and MF mafia, therefore they are both mafia.

Now, statistically, the odds of this power randomly choosing two mafia is rather low (about 6.67%, assuming that the person who activates the power is not included and there are three mafia total) so I'm inclined, given the following information, to believe that these two are both innocent. This of course, depends on whether or not the broadcasts continue to happen. We'll just have to wait and see whether or not they do.

(And by the way, I'm still in Japan, so don't expect me to be able to post at the same times as the rest of you. That would be really time-zone-ist.)

Argh! I can't believe everyone's willing to pay to maintain the status quo, instead of spending that money on enacting meaningful social change. Typical, just typical! Damned Americans.

Look. We don't know how this "reveal two alignments publicly" power works, but the way I see it, one of the following is almost certainly true:
a) It's a power that you can only use once or very rarely, and it correctly identifies two players. Maybe it's an activated power or maybe it's something that triggers on death, but either way, it would make sense for it to be very powerful if it's a one-off. Both messages could then be true.
b) It's a power that you can use repeatedly, but the information is flawed in some way. It could be a once-per-night thing, or more likely, it could be a power that costs money... but in any case, if these messages are going to be a recurring event, then we need to figure out how they work immediately.

Now, I still maintain that lynching MF is the optimal course of action here. Because if we're in situation a), then both messages are probably true, and we should act on that as soon as possible; and if we're in situation b), then these messages will keep coming, so even if we mislynch we'll gain invaluable information about their nature.

And one final remark: remember that this is Night Zero we're talking about, so whoever used this power probably had no money at the time. So if it's a paid power, they would have had to put themselves in debt to use it. That would also imply that it's a very valuable power.

Alright, so! By myself, I can't outspend MF, Cynder and DarkAura, but seriously: I think this is a pretty solid argument. I'll wait and see what everybody else says, but I'll honestly find it disappointing (and suspicious...) if everybody insists on abstaining instead of actually making something happen when, for once, we have genuinely interesting information on the first day. VM's suggestion is to wait and see if there are more messages, but how long should we wait before we can be certain that they're not a recurring thing? Much more efficient to just murder somebody right now and check their insides for clues.

mrrrr. I'm feeling more than a bit nervous about the situation and I'm not certain when I'll be able to get back on and post, so I'll put a dollar to abstaining for now. (unless there's a minimum?? In that case it will be $2)

The only thing that stands out to me here is that Jack noted that the messages were odd - which implies either that their information is odd or their general being there is odd, right?

Based purely on flavor and the presentation of the scene, I don't think it was triggered by Superbird's death. (because we did get CNN to cover it, I mean, CNN could have just as easily covered Superbird's dramatic written-in-blood reveal if that's what it was.) So I do not think these messages are a reliable, powerful, one-time-only thing.

So if we're to go by flavor, I'm more inclined to think that the messages are indeed screwing with us and one is incorrect. If we are not going by flavor, I'm just as lost as I usually am in a mafia game. which is p lost.

Generally speaking I don't know how useful flavor text usually is, so I don't know how useful this post is. it wasn't important for the last couple games I was in, but we are in some need of a decision here. opinions? thoughts?

Faorzia said:

(unless there's a minimum?? In that case it will be $2)

Click to expand...

No, there's no minimum. (Well, I guess technically you could look at it as the minimum being $1.)

Hm. I hope these broadcasts end up being useful. Abstain $1.

Ok, guess I should tell you guys. When I used my power last night, I targeted MF. I thought my result was unimportant, but it leads me to believe that he's innocent (or at least not mafia).