If only there were a happy medium somewhere between the 2 options.
I could vote once for each of you, if that would help…
That gets dangerously near the whimsical zone. We can’t have that!
Do you think anyone else is still playing? Or are they just watching us?
I’m not entirely sure.
I suppose I should use this time more constructively. Ummm… yeah I’ve been accused, and quite rightly so, of hypocrisy in lots of games. I will often condemn others for my own behavior.
I don’t always get away with it, but I sometimes do. The reason I do that is because (A) I know I’m innocent and the context of my own actions and (B) hypocrisy is the easiest thing to pick on when giving pretexts for a vote. Nothing acts like a scum magnet better than saying one thing and doing another. Then, the reason for voting that person becomes unassailable. And of course, if you’re scum, you have absolutely zero reasons not to vote for said person.
It’s kind of like moths to a flame.
The other thing is, and especially so, when I’m in several games at once I often forget things that happened before and a new thought crosses my mind and I do something different from what I had planned. Skimming plus being distracted plus changing ones’ mind leads to actions which can rightly be accused of hypocrisy.
I’m not saying I don’t understand these votes for me. In fact, I welcome them. I always point my finger hardest at those who most enthusiastically campaign for my death, because their eagerness is often twofold… look “correct” while also destroying a townie.
I’m sure this is just going to get some more eyerolls in my direction. I see I’m going to need to earn my right to be bizarre here. 
I’ve been quiet the past few days for a few reasons, mostly because much of the discussion is above my head. It’s also just darn hard trying to learn the game a) while in the game, and b) without asking questions, because apparently my asking questions risks screwing things up for my fellow townies. Feels like every question I want to ask would inadvertently reveal too much. For example, earlier I was trying to ascertain what I felt was a suspicious discrepency between Silver Jan’s behavior and her claim, and (more to the point) between what we know of her claim, our moderators’ disinclination to allow handshakes, and D&D story conventions in general. That got me chastized, possibly correctly. So ever since I’ve tried to keep my mouth shut.
Part of my problem with the latest discussions I’ve been reading here is that I’m finding it hard to distinguish between posting that’s “scummy” and a general posting style that’s simply part and parcel of the member’s personality. Some folks here (okay, I won’t be coy: Askthepizzaguy, special ed and sometimes Normal Phase are on this list) are what my late mom would call “personality kids,” … and that wasn’t always a compliment. They thrive on being forceful, confident, different and eclectic. The kindest reading is that they’re just A-type personalities who just want to be funny and stir the pot, livening things up. The less generous take is that these guys take absolute pride in posting in a cocky, dismissive, off-putting way.
When I see someone posting like that, I think to myself: is this person being disruptive, fomenting suspicion and generally being kinda annoying because s/he’s so darn confident that s/he’s an innocent townie and s/he’s trying to ward off scum? Or is s/he being disruptive and fomenting suspicion because that’s what scum would do? If innocent, is this person utterly unaware how s/he’s coming off to the rest of his or her townie neighbors – making it hard for us to trust him or her?
Classic WIFOM, I know. But you see, since I’m sucky at metagaming and generally ignorant of the rules, I’m trying to make up for it with psychology and characterization. (I’m both a writer and an admin of a message board, so I’m pretty good at assessing personalities/characters through written communication.)
I’m putting that out there just so that the innocent town folks on my team might think about toning themselves down a bit, if only because it’ll help us act as a team instead of a loose collection of paranoid miscreants.
Anyway, on to my suspicions. Right toward the end of Day 1, I said I found Silver Jan scummier than KellyCriterion, especially after her claim and the constant “li’l ol’ me?” behavior. I haven’t changed that opinion, and frankly Normal Phase, whom I respect as a player (and clearly many others do too), turned me off with her defense of Jan, which everyone seemed to take as gospel but seemed to me to be utterly worthless if both Normal and Jan are scum. Which I kinda think they both are.
My instinct would normally be to just FOS 'em both. But since everyone’s trying to get us all to vote early, vote often, I guess I’ll codify my thoughts thusly:
vote Silver Jan
vote Normal Phase
Sigh. I just know I’m gonna get dinged for making a crappy rationale-less vote. Sadly, since we’re not allowed, or at least encouraged, to continue the line of thought that gets me to this point (Silver Jan and Normal Phase’s claims), I’m gonna have to shut up about it. If anyone can figure out a way I can talk about this stuff without giving away any farms to the scummy Lords of Slaughter* please let me know.
- Remember them? At the end of last Night we sure didn’t seem to get much info about their style of killing or, really, anything. For a D&D-based game, there’s not much color or role-playing involved, is there? I hope that increases as time goes by.
@ choieThe thing is, if they are both Scum, why did Normal come to Silver Jan’s aid?
Normal knows well enough that once Jan is dead, she’s exposed.
Well… wouldn’t Scum protect Scum, especially if the vote was getting relatively close (as I believe it was then)? Or am I missing some nuance of strategy here? Especially if my theory – that Silver Jan is a Scum power role, NOT an NPC – is correct. Normal was quick to dismiss that claim as being meaningless by hurriedly making her own claim (which seems like a very, very unusual act, at laest according to all the games I’ve read here on the SDMB) with a similar yet allegedly powerless role. Which goes against all good strategy, including the strategy Normal was espousing herself (“Don’t talk about [del]Fight Club[/del] Vanilla claims!”).
But DARN IT we’re not supposed to be discussing this stuff, right? Okay, shutting up now.
@ choie, I think that if both Normal and I were both scum she would have stayed as far away from me as possible. I don’t know if Normal is scum or not but I am not. I rather like your theory that I could be a scum power role, but your theory is wrong!
Why is everyone locking in their votes today?? Has me a bit confused as this was discussed at lenght on D1
Vote choie
For unsound reasoning
Normal could still be scum though so I suppose this is a FOS but I don’t want to lock myself in just yet.
Why is my reasoning unsound? Because you say you’re vanilla town? But that’s not good enough to convince us, is it? How can it be?
Not to mention the fact that unsound or even flat-out wrong reasoning isn’t necessarily scummy, and thus not a very good reason to vote, I don’t think. Deceptive or willfully misleading reasoning is scummy. Do you find my reasoning deceptive or misleading?
Eh, actually, I’m not gonna get up in arms over your me-voting. It’s basically a knee-jerk OMGUS vote, which IIRC is pretty much a common pattern.
Actually, it was your votes on BOTH Normal and me that didn’t sit well, if you had voted for either of us, fair enough but to vote for both of us looked scummy.
I liked the post by choie. This kind of frank discussion of feelings is what has helped Townies identify fellow Townies in the games I’ve played. For your comments, here’s what I’ve learned about scum-hunting:
(1) The player who behaves very anti-Town is seldom Scum! In the past I’ve voted OMGUS and for actions or posts that seem anti-Town and been disappointed.
(2) In the last Mafia game I played, a Scum (guiri) cast FOS on me, then quickly backed off when I called him on it. I wish I’d caught that. Instead I went after the player who sunk his teeth into me and wouldn’t let go… He turned out to be Town. :smack:
(3) The one thing I’ve found that often works is to gauge posts by sincerity. The problem is that Scum try to act very sincerely; so you need to distinguish fake sincerity from real sincerity. I do realize this can be very hard to do, and I’m not competent to offer details on how to do it, beyond saying Scum try to act “agreeable.”
As to choie’s specific accusations, I will consider them but I’m pretty sure special ed is right: one of the two might be Scum, but unlikely both.
I’ve been rereading pizza’s case against me, and it seems to be groundless. One of his posts caught my eye:
Pizza tried to dominate the double-voting debate … yet “didn’t even read it”?
And the comment that he could “quote my post again” confuses me. Looking back, the following appears to be the only time he’s quoted me:
Oh gawd.
Vote: septimus
Locking it in,* for obvious reasons.*
[/QUOTE]
He’s never made a real case against me, but he wants others to think he did. Maybe he’s “just being anti-Town” but we can’t give that a completely free ride. (Otherwise, Scum could get credibility by acting anti-Town! :smack: )
Vote: AskthePizzaGuy
I’m pretty confident about this vote. But I’m only going to vote him once. For all I know, LightFoot will show up and pronounce him Town later on.
It was clarified near the end of Day 1 that you are only locked in when you vote for the same person twice. So far only **ATPG **and **pedescribe **have done so. We are free to vote for two different players and then unvote as desired. This takes a lot of the bite out of the double voting discussion we had in early Day 1.
**Vote Count:
Septimus(2): Askthepizzaguy, Askthepizzaguy,
ShadowFacts(1): Normal
Specialed(1): Stanislaus
Gnarly(2): Mentalguy, Normal
Koldanar(1): Mentalguy
Normal(2): Specialed, Choie
Askthepizzaguy(4): Specialed, Pedescribe, Pedescribe, Septimus
Silver Jan(1): Choie
Choie(1): SilverJan
**
Do you just reflexively vote anyone who has suspicion on you, or what? :dubious:
I’ve been chewing on what to do about you for a bit. I moved my vote off of KellyCriterion yesterday because his reaction to being vote leader, while not wise, felt townie to me. So I looked at your posts and ended up voting for you. I felt as good about that case as one normally can for Day One. But your reaction to gathering votes felt similar to Kelly’s reaction, and I began to have doubts. But it was late in the Day and Kelly was clearly going to swing, so I didn’t remove my vote, figuring I would wait to see what you said toDay.
I’m not encouraged so far. First, you haven’t posted anything until now, which makes me think you’re keeping your head down and lying low. (Not a townie thing to do). When you finally come in, it’s only to place a lame OMGUS vote on choie. You did a similar thing yesterDay, voting for Normal Phase because she said you “pinged” her. Your reasoning: “I am definitly Town in this game so all Normal has on me really is from metagaming…” Ugh. I gave you some credit, though, because you came back and unvoted, realizing that was a bad vote. But now you’re back doing the exact same thing!
vote Silver Jan
(And just to follow my own excellent advice, here is a link back to my case on Silver Jan yesterDay.)
I am considering using my second vote to get the attention of some people who are not posting, but I’ll try some regular encouragement first: Let’s go people, it’s Tuesday, and some folks have no posts at all toDay. Lame!
NETA:
Also, I am increasingly convinced by the case against AskthePizzaGuy and his excuses are less convincing toDay than they were yesterDay.
I didn’t post yesterday because of a power failure, so no, I am not laying low.
choie was feeling guilty for placing a vote on D1 and D2 she quite merrily places a vote on 2 people.
@ ShadowFacts I have already said that I am Vanilla Town and that’s why the level cap thing worried me, there was nothing about levels or caps in my PM. I am sorry that my playing style isn’t up to your expectations but that’s the way I play.
I don’t always place a vote on people that have voted for me but I just didn’t like the whole case. Your case is almost as bad, just because I moved my vote a lot is cos I am Town with no powers and I was very uncertain who to vote for, and yes I am now being defensive. I was right about Kelly though and you even said you didn’t remove your vote even though you had doubts about her being scum, why not, just because it was late in the day. If you removed your vote you could have got other people thinking that maybe they were wrong too! But no, you just kept your vote there and don’t seem particularly worried about it.
:rolleyes:
Too much of a temptation.
I had a feeling you and Ed would get along like a house afire.
Keep in mind when you’re playing this way that we can’t talk after death here, ok? If you want to nail any of your accusers to the wall you’re going to have to buckle down and point fingers while you’re still alive.
Isn’t that fascinating. No vote, either.
@ Pedescribe re: Shadowfacts –
When something happens that is puzzling to the townies but presumably not to the scum (like the no-reveal of scathach’s role and alignment), scum have a few options as to how to react to it.
- Say nothing. This is by far the safest course in the short term, though it comes with some minor risks down the road if anyone ever works themselves around to seeing who has failed to comment on itchy, PIS-y subjects like that.
- Just react to other people’s analysis, without providing your own. Some risk of getting negative attention immediately, but still fairly safe.
- Offer your own analysis. This is the riskiest play, but many scum (myself included, when I am scum) feel compelled to do it regardless, just because it’s something that it feels like they should do, to look townie.
If ShadowFacts is scum, he chose option 3. It’s risky because, unlike the townies in the game, a scummy ShadowFacts DOES know exactly what happened last night. So he has to be very very careful, in his analysis, to stick to facts as observed by the townies and not to say anything that could lead to accusations of PIS.
Only, townies don’t always do that. They DO make assumptions. They DO sometimes get wrongly accused of PIS for those assumptions (just look at SP taking aim at Ed up above for the roleblocker thing, which is clearly not a valid accusation of PIS in the context of the ongoing discussion regardless of Ed’s own alignment. Yet SP accused him anyway.) So if ShadowFacts wants the townie cred of seeming to discuss and analyze the unexpected night result, but he doesn’t want to risk being accused of PIS, you get things like he said. Where he avoids a VERY safe, VERY straightforward assumption of not-scum on scathach’s part, instead saying only that we know nothing more than we did yesterday.
As I’ve clarified, that is technically true. Absolutely unassailable on matters of truthiness or PIS. And, I think, quite possibly designed to be exactly that. I think a townie ShadowFacts would have gone that half step further into assumption and said something about scathach probably not being scum.