Pleo did not claim anything on Day One. He has claimed on Day One for - I don’t know, it feels like forty straight games, but let’s just say a lot of games. I thought that there was a possibility that he was avoiding an early claim because it tends to get him lynched, and that he cared more in this case because he was Scum.
So I followed him. I figured that at worst, I’d be able to confirm/deny any claim he made about acting/not acting on Night One, and at best, I’d see him kill a Mason or something.
I also urge everyone to re-read Astral’s post and my responses to same. I stand by all of my statements and actions so far. There is nothing to his case, and I’m comfortable leaving it to fall on its merits.
I am, however, going to unvote Astral. His case has an air of earnestness about it that seems less Scum than Town to me, I think. There’s a fair chance I will be voting for Wolverine, but I’m waiting until tomorrow for a chance to look everything over one more time (sorry Astral, if that qualifies more as agnosticism in your view <g>).
First of all, I’d just like to say that real life hammered me the past day or two, so I haven’t been following the thread as closely as I’d like. Wednesdays in general are rough for me this semester, but this week was especially so. I’ll look more in detail tomorrow morning.
But since I’m here,
I don’t think we’ve ever had a Jester role around here, and for good reason. As I saw stated somewhere, the proper response to discovering a Jester in a game is to lynch the moderator: It’s just such a huge upset to the game. Now, we have had some pretty complicated third parties, but I would tend to suspect (even without Red’s evidence that this is the same setup as Harry Potter) that Cookies was the only third party. It’s not unheard of for a game to have multiple third (fourth?) parties (Mahaloth’s Screamers game, for instance, or Storyteller’s recent Evil Dead), but it’s rare.
My case against **story **starts in Post 926, where I note my problems with his votes on Days 1 and 2. On both Days he makes votes ‘out of the blue’ on players that he hadn’t even so much as mentioned earlier in the Day, and in both cases the players in question were Town. And his vote on **Astral **Today was pure OMGUS.
In Post 937 I point out an error that **Astral **made in his criticism of story, and note that **story **failed to correct it in his rebuttal. In the next post, **Astral **gives me an ‘atta-boy’ for catching the ‘slip’. Later, when **story **responds (Post 945), he responds to ***Astral’s ***comment, but never does respond to me; he never rebuts my argument that his failure to notice he was misrepresented was Scummy. It makes me think he wanted to deflect attention from the actual point I was trying to make by instead focusing on the ongoing argument with Astral.
I also disagree strongly with his ‘multiple **Cookies **theory’, though that in and of itself doesn’t necessarily make him Scummy. But combined with his voting habits, and the fact that his defense of himself today strikes me as just a bit ‘over the top’ (sorry story, I know there is absolutely no way for you to defend yourself against that one), makes me think he’s Scum.
I still think **Cookies **is lying to us, but since I seem to be very much in the minority here, I’ll look elsewhere for Scum Today.
And as I’ve already stated, it doesn’t look or feel very third party to me what with the late-arriving win condition and early exposure via scum investigative mechanic. I get what you’re saying though, partially. I don’t necessarily know what to think about this being templated after the Harry Potter, though I understand there are similarities. What I have seen even upon re-use of certain mechanics, that roles can be adjusted just so as to make such assumptions risky.
I suppose it doesn’t matter much as far as the observable end-point would be the same in this case, but I’m still willing to consider the possibility that it was my choice to kill that may have triggered my decision of sides. I did not play in Harry Potter game and was not paying attention to the game or otherwise aware of how the Snape character apparently worked. If I had been aware of it and more confident that my role had the same mechanics, I probably would have not been nearly as conflicted about whether or not I should have killed. I that has been my mindset, I absolutely would have killed in order to bring about my side choice as soon as possible.
Suffice it to say, I’m don’t see a compelling reason to assume that I’m the only ‘3rd Party’, or that there may be any number of differences between this and the HP game, regardless of how many similarities there are proven to be.
I’ve been following the thread closely, but have decided to drastically limit my posting.
unvote Wolverine vote Storyteller
A large dollop of self-preservation here. Again, I’m forced to make a largely defensive vote - some will be pleased to hear me state I have myself to blame for a healthy portion of that. I actually think there are scummier players (Chronos), but it looks like only Story is anywhere close to make my vote count enough to stay alive.
Even so, it is not unsupported. In addition to the points made by others, I’m particularly surprised that no closer examination of the partial claim has come about (though that might change with these additional votes).
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I also would be remiss to leave unsaid that I think the most sound move is to demand a claim from Scuba_Ben and then lynch him.
Here is why, and it is predicated on him not participating (or absolute minimal participation):
If he is Town, Scum knows that, and probably will not Kill him as he is “dormant”. This hurts Town, because it is - in effect - a free kill for Scum. Town also gets no insight on his role (if he is either Faction) , nor help in analysis (if he is Town).
If he is Scum, Scum knows that, and it doesn’t really hurt them, they can still kill who they want, and he is - in effect - 1 free “death shield for them”. (They have already “lost” him to inactivity, so if we lynch him they only lose the “number” not the “brain”).
In either case, it is an uncertainty that benefits Town to remove, and the cost of the loss is worth paying because the player is - in effect - already removed.
A similar logic extends if he is a power role, in which I still think Town comes out the loser. (Briefly: If he goes unclaimed and dormant, Town may assume they have a power role which is not actually in play. In contrast, I do not now, but I assume Scum knows their own roles and therefore do not have this handicap.)
Again, this is based on his “dormancy”. If he comes back saying he can participate, then this reasoning does not hold.
Without being funny, I understand me simply mentioning it virtually ensures it won’t happen, but I think someone else may want to consider this suggestion and second or reject it.
I think it’s a little premature to decide what to do about Scuba– Let’s wait to hear back from him. If he says “well, OK, I’ll stick around, but remind me not to sign up for the next one”, or the like, then we can treat him like any other player. On the other hand, if he says “Nah, screw it, I’m just going to abandon the game completely”, that’s a different matter.
On the other hand, if he does just decide to abandon the game completely, then what’s the difference between lynching him and just voting for “no lynch”? If he’s alive-but-comatose, then he technically counts towards one side’s numbers, but I don’t see that that actually matters: If he’s Town, then Scum can just pretend that he doesn’t exist, and when they outnumber (Town minus Scuba), just mass-vote for some Townie. If he’s Scum, then once all the other Scum are dead, then presumably the absent Scuba would fail to put in the kill order, and Town could finish him off at their leisure. Either way, the effective win conditions are the same as if he were dead.
Now, I can see an argument for asking him to claim, if he’s going to go dormant: If he’s some power role that everyone would assume would be in the game (Doctor or Detective or the like), and a Scum claims that role, then he wouldn’t counterclaim. But again, let’s wait to hear back from him.
There is at least one difference between lynching Scuba and a “no lynch” - it will reduce uncertainty for Town. (I recall some discussion earlier about “lynching for information” - it would be a similar point.)
Overall, I think we agree on the effect. The key point to me is when you say (and I agree) that “the effective win conditions are the same as if he were dead”.
The difference is Scum would know this before Town does.
So I just arrived at work to find that all of the documents on which I’ve been working for the last three days have been deleted from my hard drive. I realize this is terrible timing, but my participation in this game will be drastically limited today. I will do my best to answer any questions directed to me, albeit briefly.
Massive apologies.
I should note that I will vote for ushi defensively if need be. While I think he is much more likely to be Town than Scum, I know that I am Town, and do not know the same of him. Further, I am a power role and he has claimed vanilla, so his loss would be modestly less damaging than my own.
Here’s some quick anticipatory answers and answers to questions that I think have been asked (I really really don’t have time to go back and look):
@ushi - Partial role claims are not Scummy. Perhaps one day our group of players will realize this, though I have no illusions that today will be the day. I have three powers left to me. Why would Town benefit from knowing what they are? Would they affect your decision to vote for me or not? Almost certainly not. Now, how would Scum benefit from knowing exactly what I can do? I’m sure you can figure out a bunch of ways. One more time, with feeling: there is nothing inherently anti-Town about partial role claims.
@Whoever Asked (I think it was Chronos): I claimed because I felt it was time to claim. I was hoping to see more claims toDay. I was hoping that claims would narrow the lynch pool and increase our chances of hitting Scum. More to the point, I also claimed because I knew I would draw a substantial number of votes toDay from the moment Pleonast flipped, and thought it would be better to have a claim on the table pre-emptively rather than wait until zero hour. It is true that I was under little pressure, but I knew I was going to be.
@all: I don’t apologize for disagreeing with the decision to lynch Pleonast. It was the wrong decision given the information we had at the time. If that is your primary reason for voting for me, we will agree to disagree, and then when I’m gone you will see that this was genuine and hopefully carry that memory over to future games.
@Suburban:
Yours is a nonsense argument; how do you wish me to “rebut” it? I mean, it’s just a terrible, terrible argument. I spent literally 90 minutes combing through posts to compose my lengthy response to Astral. Along the way, I missed an incidental fact that really didn’t affect the analysis or the discussion. Who cares? I didn’t re-read the entire 20-page thread for perfect comprehesion and recall of detail. Not only is this not Scummy, it’s not even relevant or worth mentioning in context.
Again, and with all due respect, the point you were trying to make is silly.
I wasn’t certain originally if your ‘slip’ was Scummy or not; it was just something that bugged me that I wanted an explanation for. Frankly, I expected you to say something like “I actually thought you were voting for **ushi **at the time”, or “in my reread, I missed the fact that you weren’t actually voting for **ushi **at that point”. Either answer, or any other answer probably, would have at the very least provided a plausible reason for you having ‘slipped’ in your response to Astral.
What was more telling to me was that you didn’t address the question at all. You never even replied to me. Instead, you replied to Astral’s comment, focusing on his mistake, without even addressing the original query at all. It looks like you were trying to deflect attantion from what you had said and instead turning this into just another case of **Astral **making another empty (in your opinion) argument that you can dismiss out-of-hand like you did his earlier ones.