[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

To me it is all about who is contributing at the end. Things can still go all wrong up until the moment the fat lady sings, in spite of the greatest contributions in the world from the dearly departed.

It's precisely the same in team sports games. Take the football example I gave earlier (for those in the US, I am talking about soccer ). It's the cup final. Your team is 2-1 up. 20 minutes from the end, your manager substitutes one of the goal scorers because he has been injured in a tackle. He has certainly contributed to your team's chances, but it could still go wrong. The other side could score 2 more goals in the 20 minutes remaining (or score 1 more goal and win on penalties). It's down to the players left on the pitch to maintain your team's lead. Assuming that your team does end up winning, surely the substituted goal scorer deserves to share in the victory just as much as the players who remained playing until the end.

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

Or, on the other hand, you could be doing more to help your side by staying alive your ownself. Certainly, you can learn a lot from the casualties. However, this does not mean that the casualties themselves should be eager to become so.

I am most certainly not saying that innocent villagers should play with reckless disregard to the possibility of being lynched. A modicum of self-preservation is generally necessary because the villagers' aim is to lynch a Wolf and not an innocent (although there may be circumstances which would justify a suicidal approach). But the point is that the act of self-preservation here is directed towards the team effort not individual glory. And there is no justification for an ordinary villager going out of the way to avoid getting killed by the Wolves at night because, one way or another, an innocent is going to be killed and, if it's not you, it might be a gifted. Only gifteds are justified in making any particular effort to avoid the Wolves' jaws at night.

You see, it's all about playing for the team rather than purely for personal glory. And, if you do play for the team but end up getting killed, you deserve to share in the victory should your team end up winning.

But the villagers aren't on a team because they don't know who their fellow innocents are.

The fact that you do not know who your team-mates are does not alter the fact that you are playing in a team. As Boromir88 correctly states, despite not knowing who their team-mates are, the villagers still have to do their best to get round that problem and work as a team if they are to win.

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

That he did. However, things could still have gone all wrong for the village. He was not there at the end.

Yes, but they could have gone a lot worse had he not taken down a Wolf with him so early on. The fact that he was not there at the end does not, in my opinion, detract from his contribution, or his right to share in the villagers' victory, one iota.