I don’t really have a read yet on whether NAF is Town or not, but I do think that Town can’t afford to take the chance. If he’s Scum, then his plan allows him to use the Book for several nights in a row, without any oversight or verification from anyone. As others have already pointed out, letting Scum have the book for multiple Nights is probably very bad for Town, since almost anything it does in Scum hands would not hurt Scum (plus, of course, they might have the instruction manual). Frankly, without some idea of how to use it, I’m not sure it has any net value to Town at all: Yes, a Townie could experiment like NAF is (or at least, like he’s claiming to), but would the information gained outweigh the cost of the experimentation?
I’ve been suspicious from the start of people trying to get the book. This is something that really ought to be decided by a consensus of the entire Town, not just by whomever was quickest to hit the “send PM” button. If I had my druthers, anyone who took the book without first convincing the rest of Town that they, personally, having it was a good idea would be immediately lynched. Since that obviously isn’t possible, I think the best plan remaining is Idle Thoughts’ of whomever takes it immediately putting it back, on pain of lynching, so that it’s confirmably doing nothing (at least until there’s a confirmed Town who’s willing to take it).
Oh, and it’s subtle, but I think there is a clue in the color that Chip was protecting someone: He took two beers from the fridge, not one: One for him and one for someone else. If he hadn’t volunteered to go get the beer, then the intended victim would have done it instead. I think.
I think that, if there is a thief and that person is Town, then whomever it is should claim at this point, since it’s bad for Town to not know where the book is. If nobody claims and any Townie ever gets the book again, I think that person should use the Dread Finger, since it will be a reasonable conclusion that the thief is anti-Town. But in the meanwhile, I’m even more eager now than I was before to lynch NAF: The whole key to his plan was that he would tell Town everything he learned from his experimentation, and he’s not doing that. And it’s quite possible that he just made up this thief story out of whole cloth.
At the very least, a Detective ought to investigate him toNight. If he shows up as Scum, then either he’s lying about having lost the book, or the investigation is correct and he really is Scum, and either way, he needs to die. If he shows up as Town, then Town can start taking his word on what he says.
I mean, I’m spoiled and all, so I know what the book’s powers are, but if I were playing in this game and thus oblivious to what the book does, I’d be completely chomping at the bit to get this thing as a vanilla town (since I don’t have a power that gets nullified by book possession).
Heck, it’s reasonable to assume that there are scum power roles out there, and based on last game, the scum had a lot of power roles. So in order for scum to take this book, you’d have to assume that one of them was going to give up his power (since if there is a goon, the goon would likely do the kill, since the kill is a power that belongs to the scum, the goon can’t do the kill, thereby it would require two scum goons for the scum to not sacrifice anything to pick up the book).
So I would consider anyone who actually picks up the thing as less likely to be scum, not more likely. And probably a vanilla townie. Granted, what people don’t seem to be bringing up in the game thread is you are pretty much narrowing where power roles can hide by passing it around. This is why Idle’s idea is not as great as he thinks. Because a power role will have to weigh sacrificing a night usage in exchange for staying hidden. For a doc or block it might be worth it, but for a dick it’d be a huge sacrifice.
Forgot to add that there is the possibility that NAF could have made up the PM that he claims Story gave him about how the book works, but if you believe he didn’t, the book has a big penalty for anyone with a power.
The thing is, I don’t know what powers (if any) the Scum have, I don’t know how those powers interact with the kill, I don’t know how valuable the Book’s powers are, and I don’t know how much the Scum know. It’s quite plausible, for instance, that the Scum have one Godfather (whose power is passive, and doesn’t interfere with making the kill) and one Goon, in which case it’d make sense for the Goon to go after the Book. It’s plausible that one of the Scum powers might be to make that person a better killer, in which case, again, the Goon (if there is one) would take it. It’s possible that one or more of the Scum have a power that is active, but which the Scum team doesn’t consider all that valuable, so they’re willing to do without it to get the book. It’s possible that the Scum already know what the book does, and know that it’s better than what they’ve got. It’s possible that the Scum are counting on people coming to the same conclusion you did, and hoping to pass for vanilla by going after it. I don’t know any of that, and so I see the best case scenario as being full transparency.
As for brewha’s talk of thieves, while I’ll grant that I think NAF’s account of the table of contents was honest, I also think brewha has a good point. How would the thieving mechanic work, that could make sense in the game?
Could be a one-shot power (or something in the hands of a third party); could be counterbalanced by a specialized investigator who can only find who has the book.
What I am pretty sure of is that Story wasn’t going to let the book be easily handled/controlled in a public manner without throwing some kind of monkey wrench into the works.
NAF’s argument that Drain Bead and peeker must be non-vanilla doesn’t hold water:
Now, granted, someone who got a role like “You are a pharmaceutical rep” would not plausibly have thought that all roles are the same. But someone who got a role like “You are a sorority girl” might reasonably have thought that. And I think that sorority girl (or something like that) would be a perfectly reasonable role to show up in the game.
Idle Thoughts’s reversal on NAF doesn’t make sense. He said that he’s no longer suspicious because NAF is no longer doing the thing he was suspicious of. But that’s not true: The thing that NAF was doing was that he was trying to keep the book. He never stopped trying to keep the book. He might (or might not) have failed, but he never stopped trying.
NAF’s suggestion that he be vigged instead of lynched doesn’t make sense, either, at least from a Townie. OK, someone gets lynched, and someone gets vigged. Why does it matter which is which? If one of the two short-lived folks is a Scum power role, then it’d be best to kill them before they have a chance to take their Night action. Thing is, though, if NAF is Scum, then he’s effectively a power role, by virtue of having the Book.
That said, if NAF really is Town, then he’s given away what he was trying to hide: The curse of night, or whatever it’s called, can be inferred from what he’s said to be a lynch-stop mechanism.
Finally, I’m really disliking peeker’s refusal to give his role PM. Yeah, it’d give Scum a little more clue about the format of a vanilla PM, but why do Scum benefit from that? So that when Town demands a PM from them, they can lie more convincingly about it. But if folks are going to just say “I’m vanilla, but I’m not going to share my PM”, then Scum have no need for a template PM to work from.
I agree completely and if I was still in the game Peeker would be getting my vote. Based on what I saw in my PM as long as the scum can imitate Story’s style it doesn’t matter what they put in the PM but being able to fake Story’s style is hard so at least making them type out a page if they aren’t already provided with false roles has a good chance of catching an error.
It was one of the reasons that I posted my PM so that if a scum claimed vanilla there would be something to check it against stylistically.
Ok, so Idle’s reversal now actually makes sense, but this:
does not seem like sound reasoning to me; his public reasoning for changing stances didn’t make sense, was (in fact) dishonest, and several players picked up on the dishonesty. One or another of them might be scum, but I don’t see it as the tell Idle does.
Agreed on Idle’s play: His publicly-visible play didn’t really make sense, he knew it didn’t make sense, and he’s still suspicious of people for thinking that it didn’t make sense. He’s also wrong about not telling whom he’s going to touch, and about needing Doctor protection: His investigation power, assuming he’s honest, is unusual in that he does not need to be alive to reveal his results to Town. What he should do (again, assuming he’s honest) is announce to the Town one minute before Dawn whom he touched that Night: That way, even if he gets killed (by the touch or by an attack), the Town will get a (semi)-confirmed Townie at the very least. By the same token, though, he also should not have announced in advance who his top four suspects were: If one of them really is Scum, then the Scum know to put an extra-high priority on killing him before he gets to that person. Worse, if one of them is Scum but still human (effectively a Godfather, with respect to his power) then the Scum know to not kill him until after he’s successfully investigated that person.
I sort of get the impression that he’s not even intending to announce whom he investigated after the fact. If that’s the case, then he’ll really need to die: An outed investigator should always reveal their results as soon as they get them.
Oh, and Idle does, at least, acknowledge that NAF might still be Scum: His power explicitly states that not all his enemies are necessarily Deadites, and all he’s actually said is that NAF is not a Deadite. While it’s not absolute proof, though, it is pretty good circumstantial evidence, so it’s the right conclusion to say that NAFprobably isn’t Scum.
But why poke about it in the thread? If the scum had caught on to Idle (and I agree with Normal’s reasoning that it would have been obvious), why not crow about it on the scum board and then night-kill him without raising a peep about it in the game thread, so that you can bury any of his investigative results with him?
As to the whole “anti-town vs. pro-scum” thing, I wouldn’t vote for Idle because I thought he really was a Town investigator and just doing a lousy job of it. I might, however, conclude that if Idle really were a Town investigator, he wouldn’t be doing such a lousy job of it. It could be that his play looks funny because it’s based on lies. In fact, that would make a lot of sense: He might, for instance, have been the one who stole the book from NAF. That would neatly explain his certainty (which he really did express, regardless of whether he intended to or not) that he no longer had it, and his claim would be exactly the thing in case there were a Watcher (which story already implied we had, and which would certainly be reasonable in a game this size) who saw him interacting with NAF last Night. Most of the plausible Town power roles could not plausibly have claimed to have targeted NAF, but the power he claimed could have, and is sufficiently oddball that it’s not likely to draw a counterclaim.
Idle is definitely not confirmed, and frankly, I also find Normal Phase’s attitude that he is, fishy. I probably would not vote for him yet, since I believe (in general) in giving claimed information-gathering roles a chance to prove themselves (or enough rope to hang themselves) in the early game. But he’s still pretty high on my suspect list.
