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421

The reason I’m not entirely comfortable voting for RyJae at this point is as follows. The case I have made against him is the best case I feel I can make against anyone at this point. However, it still basically boils down to taking a series of actions, all of which taken individually could have very plausible Town motivations, and spotting a pattern in the timing of these actions which seems to support a hypothesis of scum motivation. I know we all have real life issues that affect our ability to post, and I’m hesitant to put too much weight on an argument that relies so heavily on timing. I would sure like to find at least one action for which the scum motivation seems markedly more plausible than the town motivation before I start tying any nooses.

Besides, much like the arguments made against me yesterday, it doesn’t seem like a case that has much potential to move the discussion forward. There isn’t really any way RyJae can defend himself against it except to say “Really, guys, trust me, I’m Town”. Then we either believe him or we don’t, but in either case there’s not much to talk about. So I’m definitely on the lookout for a more compelling case.

422

Here is the voting history from yesterday, with lists of who everyone voted for and when, except for a few that I missed the timing of in my notes. Please feel free to add corrections.

anyrose: Thing Fish (116)
Zsofia: bufftabby (109), Thing Fish (267)
peekercpa: fluid (83), unvote (283), Thing Fish (323)
Thing Fish: anyrose (97), RyJae (231), anyrose (368)
Oredigger77: Thing Fish (???)
bufftabby: Unkempt (109), Koldanar (???), anyrose (303)
cckerboros: OD77 (107), anyrose (293)
dotchan*: anyrose(95)
RyJae: cckerboros (93), Thing Fish (200), anyrose (336)
The Unkempt One: Hoopy (86), unvote (155), Thing Fish (213), anyrose (353)
Hoopy Frood: OD77 (???), twickster (273)
fluiddruid: peekercpa (???)
Koldanar: Thing Fish (304)
Blaster Master: Koldanar (78), Thing Fish (188)

*dotchan replaced twickster toward the end of the Day and attempted to unvote at the end of the day (post 371) but missed the deadline

423

Well no it confused me more than anyone I think. I really did think anyrose was scum, your compelling arguments aside I would have voted for her today barring anything funky happening.
It was day 1, we had nothing to go on, still don’t have a helluva lot that’s why I am working on the why kill Koldanar angle. It is probably a meh issue but it’s the only one I have right now.

424

GD, dude. This post hurts my head. Not sure what the point is supposed to be but visually it is just very painful - at least on this BB.

425

And of course by not stripping it down I have added to the confusion. My bad. Mother of og.

426

Vote Count
**Oredigger77 - 1 ** (RyJae)
**RyJae - 1 ** (Thing Fish)

Not Voting
Zsofia, peekercpa, Oredigger77, bufftabby, cckerberos, Dotchan, The Unkempt One, Hoopy Frood, fluiddruid, Blaster Master

427

The first name on each line is the voter. The following names on each line are the votees. The numbers in parentheses are the post numbers for which each vote was made. The names in red are the two that are dead.

Oh, and Thing Fish my vote for Oredigger77 occurred on post #210.

428

Ok, got it. But it still looked like a bad impressionistic painting when I first read it.

429

Okay guys, gonna try to get caught up Today. I see that there was at least one major vote swing from Yesterday because anyrose was killed instead of Thing Fish. I’m gonna read through the rest of Day One before I post any thoughts.

430

Okay, I just finished reading through the rest of Day One, and the end of that Day went horribly. The anyrose wagon seemed to rise out of no where with very little reasoning behind it, the votes that really struck me as odd were Unkempt One, bufftabby, and RyJae in about the order that struck me.

That said, I’m still suspicious of Thing Fish, but I think the motivations of those voting for anyrose are more suspect than his at this point, particularly in the light of a complete lack of scummy motivation on the part of anyrose. This was best illustrated by someone (I forget who), who explained why she wouldn’t be frustrated if she were scum.

Whether Thing Fish be townie or scum, a vote for him was not in the best interest of scum. The latter is obvious, but the former also because not ALL of the scum would want to vote for a townie for reasons I explained Yesterday.

I’m going to finish catching up on Today before I cast a vote.

431

Ok, I am here. Work will probably keep me pretty busy until around 3:30, but I will definitely be contributing after that!

432

Okay, being that you’re one of my top suspects right now in light of Yesterday, this seems a bit odd.

This is not an unexpected move at all. Scum have several reasonable options when evaluating whom to kill on Night One.

  1. They can try to target experience. This is generally a good move unless there’s a large amount of discrepancy between the few who are most experienced and the rest of the field AND one of those few is scum. In either case, there’s several of us with a fairly good chuck of experience (fluiddruid, Koldanar, Dotchan, and myself). So, even if one of this group is scum, it’s not unreasonable to think that the benefit of removing an experienced townie out-weighs the somewhat increased suspicion on an experienced scum.

  2. They can try to target a power role. This is a bit more risky, but generally still a good move. The interesting thing here is that though it’s less of an advantage to remove a less experienced player, they are also the most likely to give power role tells (if they are one), so it kind of balances out.

  3. They can try to either increase or diffuse suspicion. If a player was focused on a scum, they can kill him to remove that threat. Or if he was focused on a townie, they can kill him to try to increase the suspicion on him. Or, they can try to bluff it if the cases are reversed. It all depends on how they play it. Either way, this is always a WIFOM and is seldom good reason upon which to indict or acquit someone.

  4. They can kill at random. This does happen, but IMO it’s just them being too lazy to substantiate why (unlike we have to with votes), because they still have SOME reason for doing it. For instance, in Simpletown, that was the reason given, but one scum actually said “I think she’s a Mason” after the person who suggested “she would be a good random kill”. IOW, even if this is the case, it basically just means they’re defering to intuition rather than logic.

  5. They can kill the most townie. This also happens sometimes, but is probably a suboptimal strategy. Basically, rather than eliminating the biggest threat to finding them, they just eliminate the one they think is least likely to get lynched.

There may be other possibilities, but I can’t think of them right now. Either way, with Koldanar, he is a reasonable possibility for more than one of those, so it really shouldn’t be too surprising that he’s dead.

This is where the post really seems to get odd. You stated that either fluid or I were better candidates, which would imply we’re potentially good assets to the town, but then you go right into why you won’t be examining us. You’re completely skipping the thought process that goes from “I expected so-and-so to die last night” over “maybe he’s scum” straight to “here’s why he’s not scum”.

This is very specious reasoning based on what I outlined above. It is generally valid to reason about why someone was killed and then make inferences from there. However, if that reason was to redirect/focus suspicion, it is no longer valid, because that, in and of itself, is purely WIFOM.

Also, you stick this in at the end that your assumption that Thing Fish is town. Why did you decide this? From your late interaction from Thing Fish where you prompted him for what he might change? If you’re going to believe Koldanar was killed because of his suspicions, why would you cursorily dismiss the one of whom he was most suspicious?

433

Sorry, everyone. My participation will be abysmal this week due to real life issues. (I got my fool self into a car accident and I need to get that taken care of, and then over Memorial Day weekend I’m traveling to a place with no internet access whatsoever.)

FoS Ryjae for using the Night kill to justify his vote. We don’t know what the scum are thinking. The “why so and so died” question is known only to the scum, and I doubt they’re willing to share that until the game ends.

434

Just to touch on this, but it wasn’t quite as accidental as it seemed. One thing you have to remember is that the goals and reasoning behind those goals are very different for the town as a whole and for the scum. The town is trying to eliminate scum through votes where they either don’t know, or are pretending they don’t know (in the case of scum or various other power roles) the alignments of others. This means that every move needs to be substantiated with some form of evidence and/or logic. General gut feelings just don’t cut it here. Also, there’s a conflict of interests because some of the votes are trying to help the town and some are trying to help the scum.

Compare this to the scum board. They all know who the others are, they all know they have the same goals. Seldom is there a lot of argument, and often it does end up going on gut feelings because you don’t HAVE to prove your point, because they already trust you. As such, Queen of Town was suggested in Simpletown as a good random kill, but no really good reason was given (did he intuitively see the same tells that I did?) and another scum specifically said “hey, she may be a mason”.

IOW, during the Day, if we think “hey, he may be scum” we have to go back and prove it. At night, if a scum thinks “hey, he may be the doctor/detective”, unless someone disagrees for good reason, it goes.

435

It’s very easy to say that a vote for Thing Fish was not in the best interest of scum when you are one of those voters. I found anyrose’s reasons for voting Thing Fish highly suspect, and that’s why I put my vote there. Saying that if she were scum she would not be frustrated really seems like a logical leap, not to mention 20/20 hindsight and all that. She had two votes on her. My reasoning was that a newb scum could definitely be frightened and frustrated by that, especially when accompanied by all of the attention that had gone her way for editing and such. While it turned out that I was wrong about anyrose, I think the reasons for voting for her made a lot of sense at the time. I think an anyrose vote made way more sense than a Thing Fish vote.

436

The late in the day anyrose bandwagon does smell a little odd to me, only because of what somebody pointed out - if she were new scum, wouldn’t she have stopped freaking out once the bandwagon on Thing Fish got rolling good and well? However, it was kind of easy to get caught up in the hysteria - there were only two people making any waves yesterDay, and it’s easy to get caught up thinking, one or the other is scum! When it’s really more probable that neither is.

Similarly, looking back, Oredigger has had a lot to say about being concerned about Blaster Master and his “leadership”, while always giving himself the caveat that “it isn’t necessarily bad…” - so either could be scum, or neither.

437

Thing Fish, this is a very lucid post that does a good job of outlining a lot of the reasons I found RyJae very suspicious after finishing catching up on Yesterday. I was unaware of the NAF angle you mention as well. That said, even without it, the anyrose vote has at least as much motivation for scum as it does for town. Consider, be you town, he doesn’t want to be on that Bandwagon, and be you scum, he doesn’t want to kill you. He posts a question of “What would you do differently?” Why would a townie do that? If you’re town, it won’t help him find scum. If you’re scum, you’re already dead, so anything you’d say to that is completely useless. The only motivation I can see is that he’s trying to find an excuse to unvote you and pretty much anything you’d say in response to that question would be “Seems townie enough for me”.

So why the vote for anyrose? If he’s scum, he wanted another wagon so it would look like genuine suspicion rather than a completely random other person. Also, at the point he voted, your death seemed like a foregone conclusion, so the anti-motivation that he would still be a part of a mislynch doesn’t really apply. OTOH, if you are also scum, anyrose was also the most likely wagon that would overcome yours, so that’s ALSO sufficient reasoning as to why he might vote there.

IOW, regardless of whether you’re actually townie or scum, his actions are fairly consistent with scum motivation for either scenario, and much less consistent with an unknowing townie.

438

I want to emphasize this point, because it’s very important, and it’s often VERY distracting. It is sometimes useful to look at why someone was killed, it is seldom useful to look at why someone lived. There’s TONS of reasons why a potentially good kill candidate for scum is left alive, and one of the most obvious reasons for it leads to the whole “Why was so-and-so left alive?” Maybe they ARE a good candidate but they found someone else slightly better. Maybe they’re hoping to cause a bunch of hysteria about why they’re alive (a la me in Simpletown). Maybe there’s some information that they have that we don’t that changes how “obvious” a kill target is. Maybe they’re concerned that person is protected so they go to a less optimal target that is less likely to be protected. IOW, it’s almost always completely useless to reason on why anyone is left alive, because it just depends on too many unknowns.

That said, there are cases where it’s reasonable to use being left alive as reason for suspicion, and these cases are usually resigned to individuals who have claims and there’s good reason to suspect that the Doctor is self-protecting, protecting someone else, or is dead.

You also make the correct point that Koldanar was amongst the most experienced in this game, probably at about the same level of experience as fluiddruid. But, since Koldanar could have been killed for any number of reasons, and no good way to pick one of those out as the most likely one, reasoning either on why he was killed or why someone else lived is bordering on useless at this time. The utility of this sort of reasoning may change as we gather more information.

439

You’re not going to see a whole lot of cases where one individual action shows a whole lot more scum motivation than town. It’s generally going to be a sumation over multiple actions, or a single series of events.

Why is it a bad thing if he can’t defend himself? If it’s a nonsensical case, and he can’t defend himself because it makes no sense, that’s one thing. But if he can’t defend himself because it’s logical and there’s little wiggle room, that’s a good thing, because that means you made a good case. In general, there’s going to be some wiggle room because, without a detective or plenty of confirmed townies, it’s all but impossible to make an airtight case.

440

Really? What if Thing Fish had died, as I’m sure you expected was going to happen when you changed your vote and had turned up scum. Would you still have voted for her? What if she had been allowed to sub out? Neither of those cases seems “funky” to me.

Besides, now that you KNOW she was town and you “assume” that Thing Fish is town, then you have to reasonably conclude that it was town vs. town. Shouldn’t you then be more reasonably concerned with those who were pushing the town vs. town violence with little or no good reason?