Alright, a summary of the actions I’ve found to be anti-town so far, in no particular order:
Hirka’s tying of the game yesterDay. Ties are not good for town. With the tiebreaker mechanics as they are, we have a fairly large chance of a no-lynch. No-lynches do not give us information, which is sorely needed especially now that we know that the death reveals do not give us full information.
Pleonast’s magic bag. Magic bags are generally bad–they influence town voting, as they amount to a soft non-vanilla claim. They may or may not influence scum actions enough to counteract the muddying of the waters.
As an aside: They are especially bad in this game, since we don’t even get the benefit of knowing what you were hinting at when you die. You cannot be faulted for this, though, as we didn’t know that’d be the rule at game start.
gnarlycharlie’s self-vote. Not only is it useless, it smacks of the patented Idle Thoughts gratuitous martyr complex defense. (“I’m SO townie, you guys are going to be SO sorry when you kill me, etc”. The “I’m too histrionic to be scum” defense. :D).
SilverJan’s marvelous ability to have made 44 posts to this thread without making much of a coherent contribution regarding anything. Seriously, every time I try to re-read your stuff I go all cross-eyed.
Astral’s suggestion that the lack of a counterclaim proves anything. Closed game means you can assume NOTHING about roles. This horse is so dead, and has been beaten so often, its is now officially paste.
In the absence of anything else, the most palpable tell on there (that is, the one that was an action, and not mere words) is the one that will get my vote.
I’m keeping my vote on gnarly for now, but I did want to comment on nesta and Texcat. I may switch my vote, I need to think on them for a while.
First, nesta. The first in-game post by nesta, after excluding my quotes, looks like this:
My posts have been bugging him. He asks two hypothetical questions, and then concludes that something doesn’t add up. He then points to another of my posts, and states that I am indicating I have more information than I should have.
His next post is also directed at me. Here it is:
He assumes my answer is no, or I would have already brought it up. In fact, I had asked Red, but didn’t think to comment on that, since my question for Red was intended as a joke. I didn’t believe it was actually valuable information. Once nesta asked, however, I realized I should share with the class.
What’s bugging me about this is that nesta specifically says he assumes my answer is no. His stated reason: I would have already brought it up. However, the next time nesta brings it up, he seems noncommittal about it.
nesta will mention it once more, here:
And there, he isn’t even talking directly about me.
I have more info than I should. I’m confused about my team’s name. I didn’t reveal what Red said until asked, even though nesta specifically asked, presumably to see my reaction to the question. He clearly states he believes my story isn’t adding up. And yet, nesta doesn’t vote for me. Not even for a little bit.
Instead, nesta jumps on fubbles. His reasons for voting for fubbles aren’t bad… with a notable exception.
That’s not fair. While I know my PM is legit, and it’s just the way Red Skeezix wrote it, fubbles couldn’t know it at the time. Ed’s side-by-side comparison of our PMs would seem a bit fishy. I have no idea what nesta is attempting to say here. He’s trying to imply that fubbles pulled a 180 for no reason whatsoever, and that is clearly not the case. Fubbles had a reason, even if nesta doesn’t agree with it. He had an okay (if ultimately wrong) Day 1 case on fubbles, and he throws in that mistake at the end.
Also, he concludes with this:
The obvious conclusion is that we’re scum buddies, based on what he’s said up above. Why else would fubbles be defending me so ardently? Why risk his neck for me? Why does nesta not make this connection at the end of his post? In fact, why does nesta have nothing whatsoever to say about his views of MY scumminess? Why does he make no effort to connect us?
I have a theory, and I’ll admit it’s pretty tenuous. I’d suggest that nesta, being scum, knows I’m being truthful about my claim of cop. nesta does not want to be attached to a lynching of a cop. nesta questions me, implies I’m scum, but does not vote for me. nesta also knows fubbles is town, but without a claim assumes it’s safer to drive a lynch on fubbles than me.
Later, nesta finally does connect me and fubbles.
nesta believes the former is more likely. I’m scum, and fubbles’ defense of me has marked him as scum, too. Again… why did nesta fail to vote for me before?
One possible explanation is given in that same post:
I’ve been wrong on Day 1 before, so I’m not gonna lynch Astral. Instead, I’ll lynch you. Does this make sense to anyone else? nesta doesn’t point to my claim, or my defense posts, or anything else. Just that nesta has been wrong in the past, so he won’t vote for me. Instead, he’ll vote for someone else.
This makes no sense.
And now, let’s move on to Day 2. Only two posts to dig through, so let’s wade on in.
Fair enough. Still worth the attempt, I’d say, but being careful when making assumptions is fine advice.
Also fine enough, it’s similar to what I said to gnarly.
And that’s it. No vote for me, as his Day 1 suspicions should lead him. No explanation of why I’m no longer suspicious. No case building on anyone else, despite obviously setting himself up for a gnarly vote toDay as shown here:
Two comments on gnarly, with no vote. Plenty of discussion on me, with no vote. 19 posts, with a very high fluff-to-content ratio.
Texcat next, but I have to leave to play some late-night tennis. When I come back, I’ll tackle TexCat’s 9 posts.
I was tackling TexCat next because he is one of our primary lurkers. However, after two read-throughs of his posts, I have no substantial issues with what he’s posted. It strikes me as pro-town, what little of it there is.
Tex, do you have any comments on toDay’s votes, cases, and posts? Gnarly is our current vote leader - what are your feelings on him? Hirka and Pleonast are our next two, tied for second. What are your feelings on them?
Do you have a reading on anybody not currently in danger of being lynched?
I still think that Ed’s case here makes a lot of sense, particularly his #6. I think Astral’s claim of weak cop was invented. It doesn’t seem to hang together with his earlier statements. I don’t like the fact that he claims to have asked one question of Red, “This sounds like “regular” cop. What are the limitations?” and claims “That’s my discussion with Red.” I even asked:
and Astral responds only with
It’s much later when he suddenly remembers that he did ask Red at least one other question,
This looks to me like Astral suddenly saw a way to make his claim look a little more legitimate and took it. But why wouldn’t he have posted this earlier if this second interaction actually took place? When I asked about follow-up questions, why didn’t he respond with, No, my only other question was sort of a joke about investigating on night 0. Is this because he didn’t remember asking another question until someone mentioned night 0? I don’t think so. If he asked 2 questions, how hard would it be to forget the second one, and why not mention it? I think he didn’t think to make his claim look more legitimate until someone mention night 0.
I also don’t like Astral’s begging for a counter-claim, and I don’t like the way he fished for Sister C to claim.
This smells to me like a scum who is going down and is trying to do his best to help his team on the way.
Tex, do you have any comments on toDay’s votes, cases, and posts? Gnarly is our current vote leader - what are your feelings on him? Hirka and Pleonast are our next two, tied for second. What are your feelings on them?
Do you have a reading on anybody not currently in danger of being lynched?
I would, while I’m still up, like to dispute a few of your points.
I posted it two minutes after claiming. Roughly the time to open my messages, copy it, and paste it.
When asked by Ed, I posted them exactly 5 minutes later. Roughly the time to open the thread, read up to that point, and copy and paste Red’s PM.
I was arguing it as a reason to leave me alive for now. If there was another cop, he could counterclaim me Day 3 or 4 or whenever he damn well felt like. I don’t feel like hunting it down, but I’m fairly certain I explicitly say this somewhere.
No. It’s much later, after someone directly asks me, that I share my joke with the moderator from before the game started. Yup. That joke predates the opening color. I sent that message 3 hours after I madethis post, a full day before the game will start.
You can’t have this both ways. ‘Follow-up questions’ referred specifically to you questioning me about my PM with Red about the “weak” part of my role. A joke I made two days prior about an unrelated subject does not count as a “follow-up question.”
If I’m scum, why did I speak up at all? Surely you don’t think I was totally unaware offering up additional information would look slightly suspicious? I could have just said “no” like nesta expected if I cared more about my survival than being honest with the town.
So she starts off inclined to brush off the behavior that others have seen as suspicious. The next couple posts give the impression that she thinks he’s a “scummy townie” (doing it deliberately? That part I don’t get).
By the time of the next post Jan has unvoted Astral and has no vote on record. What does “SisC seems to be a bit iffy about everyone even mean?” Gnarly continues to have some suspicion on him; she wants to hear from him.
Votes gnarly for being “not quite right” and (sort of) lurking. The “I could be wrong” bit earns a “bah” from Special Ed that I think is richly deserved, though it makes a lot more sense as a scum tell if gnarly is town (or at least non-scum) than if he is scum.
She’s then challenged by gnarly on her vote, and just like with Astral (“weak vote”) her first instinct is to deflect, by saying she hadn’t planned on voting Gnarly, he just sort of forced her into it with his behavior.
Note the comment to Ed, the justification of her vote on gnarly by reference to something he did after she placed her vote. Again this is just like with Astral: first deflect, then justify with something she didn’t mention the first time around (this time because she literally could not have; gnarly hadn’t replied to her yet, obviously).
So her vote on gnarlycharlie could be very well placed, but then in her very next post he’s not on her hit list anymore. (And she unvotes him.)
(I have no idea what she’s talking about with the quote people/when I said lie stuff. I can’t find reference to anything like that directed at her.)
Her various responses to me today also rub me the wrong way, but I’m too out of it to try to put it in words. Something like a high level of watchfulness/awareness, but no real engagement with my arguments.
unvote vote: SilverJan
For emphasis, even if I ultimately switch back to gnarly.
A Scummy Townie is the way someone on FB played. He was Town but he was also very abrasive and a lot of people got angry with him, I felt and still fee that gnarly was/is doing the same thing. I voted for gnarly because I wanted a response, which I have said already. He is no longer on my Hit List because I don’t believe him to be scum, I really don’t know how to explain it better than that. If you hadn’t brought gnarly into this discussion, I would have left him alone for a bit to see what pans out.
I haven’t had a lot of time this weekend to go into depth on SisC, I will get to it ASAP.
Even the ghost doesn’t want to talk.
I would add one thing to gnarlycharlie’s summation of the case against himself:
That is, a lot of reference to and reliance on what people are “supposed to” do, as a means of defending himself. Some quotes from various posts of his:
– since in these boards, people seem to adhere more to the vote early and often belief, i did just that.
– if i saw the logic of those posts, i would definitely change my vote (vote often, right?).
– i’m also following the vote early, vote often belief which seems to be followed more in these boards.
– Astral was my vote yesterDay. wouldn’t it have seemed strange if i voted for someone else without any reason at all?
– funny how people complained when players joined on a bandwagon in my other game.
It’s scummy because that’s not how townies tend to defend themselves. “But I’m following the townie playbook, why are you voting me?” Who says that? On the other hand, it can be intensely aggravating when you’re mafia and a case blows up against you for what appears to be no good reason, and maybe that’s what’s going with gnarly here.
And ha, I missed this before (gnarlycharlie in reference to Weedy):
I’ve seen that “you’re being coached” thing five times. The first four were from scum, the last was from Meeko.
He didn’t actually create a tie, unless there’s a mistake in Red’s vote count. From post 654:
Why is this supposed to be so anti-town/scummy anyway? Even accepting that ties are in fact bad in this game, there were three hours left in the Day at the time of Hirka’s vote.
However, looking back at his late-Day-1 posts, I have a hard time reading his mad flopping from player to player as anything but a relatively new Townie.
unvote
which leaves me without a vote and with crap-all contribution so far Today. I sure hope Gnarly is scum and not a super-petulant Townie.