Lord of the Rings Mafia

Hmmmm… I have to ponder the developing case against Snickers.

In the meantime… someone I have my eye on: Inner Stickler. I can’t remember who brought it up first, but it seems odd that Aragorn, Legolas, and Gandalf are power roles, but Gimli is not. That’s a little meta-game for me, but it does strike me as odd. I also wonder if a master Mafia designer like Mahaloth wouldn’t give scum a really solid character (like Gimli) as a cover role. The idea being that scum would claim Gimli, there would be no counter claim, and they would look like pretty good townies. I mean it’s LoTR Mafia… of course there’s going to be a Gimli! But if there isn’t, he’s a pretty convincing scum cover role.

YesterDay, Inner Stickler jumped onto the case for OAOW so fast it would make your head spin… 2-3 minutes after Snickers casts the first vote for OAOW. And it was a whole, “I find this case the most compelling” sort of thing. No independent reasoning that could be analyzed. (I will freely admit that, due to real life issues, I essentially did the same thing with the OAOW vote, but the timing of his vote seems suspect to me.)

And, of course, here’s the late great Guiri’s case against him. Inner Stickler goes on to claim in response to this in post 2788 and handwaves back to peeker. I got a real “nothing to see here” vibe.

Vote Inner Stickler.

As I said, I am going to consider the case against Snickers (and I would also like to take a harder look at USCDiver… Even after reading the wikipedia entry, I’m still not convinced that Gamling is a LoTR character). But for now, I feel comfortable putting a vote on Inner Stickler.

There’s been a surprising amount of discussion about my role name. I don’t know really what to do other than shrug my shoulders and point out that in Mahaloth’s last game which was based on Harry Potter, Ron Weasley was completely nonexistent. Think about that before you start slinging around accusations that a person must be scum because there’s no way the moderator would have made this role VT or that role a power role. I can’t control what name I was given. It’s going to irritate me if one of the pieces of evidence given to lynch me is something so out of my control.

We already know that Pippin was a cover name used by one of SAHM. Might Gimli be another? Yes. Is the fact that Gimli claims vanilla reason enough on its own to vote him? No, I don’t think so. But it’s worth a look.

@Doctor Who
I know what you mean. Of all the tertiary (or quaternary) characters to use Maha picks Gamling. And I seem to be the only player to get such an obscure role name.

For me, it’s not the role claim at this point, Inner Sticker. It’s the utter lack of participation. I think **Guiri **was on to something when she asked why you haven’t added much to the game, and the sum total of your response was, “meh. It’s how I play. Sorry.”

Then there’s this:

In post #1761, you say “**Chip **is going to swing no matter what I do.” Statements like this seem totally weaselly to me - if you have a case to make, make it. And of all the things to vote **Pleonast **for, the acronym thing’s the weakest of the bunch.

Your comment about how maybe scum haven’t already cast their votes in post #2053 jumps out at me. At this point, if you’re scum, you know that two scum have already cast their vote. And the sentence “Any scum without a vote right now is feeling the heat” seems designed to deflect suspicion off of yourself.

Then there’s the votes. As an example, your vote for **Astral **on D3 in post 2106 is a total “me too” vote with very little reasoning behind it. As most of your votes have been.

There’s just no substance here. I think you’re hiding.

Vote Inner Stickler.

**Vote count:

Snickers(2): Hoopy, USCDiver

Stickler(2): Doctorwho, Snickers
**

As for USCDiver’s unfortunate assignment of Gamling, I’m inclined to believe he’s town because it’s so obscure. Think about it: if you’re scum looking for a cover role, are you going to pick some fourth-string character that’s barely even mentioned? I don’t think that’s likely. I think it’s far more likely that scum would pick someone better known.

Oh, and one small correction for Doctor Who: I didn’t cast the first vote for OaOW. That was Hoopy. Still, your point stands.

I did not say anything that could be reasonably interpreted as meh, that’s how I play. I said that I was aware of my bas habits in Mafia and am working on making them better. Please don’t paraphrase me incorrectly in order to bolster your case.

As for voting Pleonast, I was tired of him talking about SAHM, as if it were actually telling of something. What better way to get my point across with a vote?

In regards post 2053, I wanted to make sure that Chronos had thought of all the permutations of the vote count. I was unaware you consider being thorough scummy. I will remember this for next time.

aware of my bad habits

Even though I’m confirmed, I can’t help but consider the fact that I am about to make the third vote for someone.

To let everyone know where I am : This game has been running in the background for me [I pick it up so to speak, in down moments, while doing other things.]

I honestly felt that I would have to resort to ““intuition*”” for the rest of this game, as nothing is sticking out to me. Knowing that to be… less that optimal, I figure piggy backing is light years better than gut feelings. [To say nothing that I know very little of the canon.]

Doctor Who: I follow your argument for “Cover Role”. Would it not be better design if Maha left a few roles out, leading to a complete at total, stick your neck out, guess by scum?

Don’t most Mafia games turn based on breaking one assumption or another?
**
So I don’t know who “Gimli” is, but meta-game or no, there is a precedence for scum playing on the edge and obtaining great reward for risk.** I wouldn’t doubt that this is the rule and not exception for the make-up of better scum games. [That is, their play in a game. Having “game”, You got Game. ETC.]

[Cecil Pond sticks out for me, a better faked Role PM than I have seen in a while. Crimson Glyph IIRC, had a third party steal a Scum cover PM part and parcel, making for a great showdown.]

In any event, its better than my “gut feeling” against Snickers that I had. [if one can really ““have”” a gut feeling case.]

**
Vote Inner Stickler.**

This is probably going to be suicide, but I’m going to get it out there anyway.

I’m looking at the others joining me in the unconfirmed pool. I know I’m town, and I think that USCDiver is too based on the WoW analysis I did earlier and his claimed role - I just don’t see it as something scum would claim. I’ve already posted my thoughts on Inner Stickler. But after looking more closely at Doctor Who, I think I’m wrong. Inner Stickler’s lack of substance still bothers me, but not as much as Doctor Who. I’m more worried by his late votes and late claim - it looks like he’s gone to some lengths to avoid any risk.

Unvote Inner Stickler
Vote Doctor Who

#2064: Says that it strikes him as odd that “ed was getting real heat and then suddenly there are switches and votes all over the place. It seems like the case against ed was coalescing and then … static.” I don’t get this. Since when is town sad that the case against someone might be falling apart?

#2515: The last paragraph of this post seems designed to say “look at how town I am.” And earlier in the post, he says that OaOW’s claim’s only value is to scum if there’s no way to confirm it. I don’t get this reasoning - scum knew that OaOW was town already, regardless of any handshaking. This looks like a smudge.

#2604: In light of post #2515, this also looks like it’s deflecting attention from himself. Then later in #2607, he shoves peeker forward as the next candidate by drawing parallels between peeker and Natlaw.

As last to claim, he knows everyone else’s role and thus has absolutely no risk.

#2879: More language to say “look how town I am.”

The voting pattern: ed and Inner Stickler are the only people he’s voted for early on in the Day. All his other votes have been late; he’s not taking any risks. And he’s smeared all of the other three unconfirmeds with his last vote.

NETA: That last link is screwed up - apologies for that. I didn’t preview.

**Vote count:

Snickers(2): Hoopy, USCDiver

Stickler(2): Doctorwho, Meeko**
**
Doctorwho(1): Snickers**

Post #2879. There you go, Snickers, fixed that link for you.

As to your points…

Ummm… when the case is against someone you believe to be scum? And at the last minute, there are tons of vote switches and movement and new candidates that you don’t really think are scum get thrust forward… that doesn’t make you suspicious? Maybe I play the game in a more hyper-alert state than you do. When I see noise and distraction, I am always ready to consider that scum is muddying the waters.

Maybe I haven’t been clear about where I am coming from: When I came into this game, we were losing power roles at an alarming rate. And everyone seemed just tickled to jump out there and make a claim. IMHO Vanilla Town has two powers: the lynch and hiding town power roles. I disagreed with everyone, like Meeko for example, jumping out there and giving up their role. I thought it was allowing scum to target our power roles and pick us apart … which they did. They didn’t even need an investigator with the amount of information we were giving up.

I thought peeker was scum. I was wrong.

I think I made it crystal up top: I disagreed with everyone claiming as early and often as they could. I think it gave scum way too much information. I had no interest in participating in that.

Well, I can’t excuse voting late… mostly a function of real life time pressures, but I can definitely understand the interpretation that I am lying low and waiting for cases to develop. Particularly that last vote (linked to above). That was horrible… like I said, my schedule changed and I did the best I could. Which admittedly was pretty horrible. Not much I can say there.

As far as not taking risks, I don’t really know what to say about that. I vote for the person I believe to be most likely to be scum. Sometimes I vote early, sometimes I vote late. Notice I haven’t had what I could consider significant heat to this point (just the pressure vote from Meeko). If I was interested in avoiding suspicion, would have been much easier to just vote for you than make the case for Inner Stickler.

Haha, exactly, there’s what… four or five of us unconfirmeds left? Who else am I supposed to be suspicious of? I don’t know who is really town, but I do know… I absolutely know… that at least one of us, maybe two, IS scum. So will I make suspicious statements about other unconfirmeds for the rest of the game? Yes, absolutely.

I’m going to continue the review of Snickers’ posts that I started back Yesterday in [post=12950392]post 2882[/post].

Day 3.
Snickers spends some time speculating about Aragorn’s powers (believing Gadarene to be a cop at first – see posts [post=12858482]1987[/post] and [post=12858811]2008[/post]) and worrying about whether she should revote Special Ed as she doesn’t really think he’s likely to be one of SAHM. She explains this shift in [post=12858860]post 2011[/post], also responding to Ed’s calling her on what appears to be excessive concern about appearance.

She spends a bit of time on the acronym debate, challenging Pleo’s assertion in [post=12858964]post 2017[/post] and doing an examination of my posts in [post=12862718]post 2038[/post]. In between, she finds time to criticise Nanook for attacking her (for waffling about her vote for Special Ed) while doing it himself. [post=12859315]Post 2021[/post] refers. When you dig a little deeper into this, though, Snickers is trying to equate two things that really aren’t alike.

Firstly, Nanook’s post on Ed ([post=12856301]post 1920[/post]) focussed primarily on Ed’s handshake attempt, its consequences and what could be deduced re Ed’s alignment. [post=12858664]Post 1996[/post], which is criticising Snickers’ post 1987, focuses on Snickers’ reasoning for voting someone that she didn’t really think was one of SAHM. Additionally, Nanook never once voted for Special Ed. It’s not as if Nanook had placed a vote and was now trying to back of it, the way Snickers does appear to be doing.

[post=12866667]Post 2070[/post]; a WoW on Nanook. And that’s all it is. A discussion of Nanook’s posts without actually drawing any conclusions from it. While the drawing together of posts is helpful, so is analysing the posts so collected and drawing conclusions. SAHM wouldn’t want to draw conclusions because, ultimately, they don’ want to clear Townies; that shrinks the pool of unclaimed/unconfirmed and reduces their scope to hide.

[post=12868550]Post 2109[/post]. Case and vote for Pleonast. The worst thing to say about this is that it’s late (12 hours remain in the Day, and most players would be asleep for a large part of that) and for a player who was in no danger of being lynched. This doesn’t tell me much; a SAHM would want to avoid trying to be a last-minute voter, but a Townie totally unconvinced of either of the lead cases might well opt to lay a vote on someone they find more suspicious.

End of Day 3’s contributions. Looking at them as a whole, I find a couple of things make me uneasy, most notably her attempt to draw parallels between the way she backed off an Ed vote with Nanook’s considering voting Ed for the first time. At this point, I’m beginning to lean possibly SAHM on her.

On to Day 4.
The pivotal moment of Day 4 was Nanook’s roleclaim in [post=12880059]post 2191[/post]. Snickers (having been away for Labor Day weekend) first weighs in long after that post, at a time when the vote is a foregone conclusion, so it’s no surprise she opens with a vote for Natlaw. She then turns to examine Natlaw’s claim/save of AR in [post=12894769]post 2358[/post]. While she did at least give us some analysis in addition to the annotated posts, I can’t give much credit for that since at that point the lynch was a foregone conclusion so whatever she does (or does not) do is a null tell – Townies and SAHM are likely to do the same thing in this sort of situation.

In [post=12895588]Post 2370[/post] Snickers postulates a motive for SAHM to undertake the gambit assuming AR was Town. It was plausible, and not contradicted by anything we then knew – at least I don’t think so.

That’s the end of Day 4. Not much read from that Day, primarily because she missed the action.

Snickers’ Day 5 begins with [post=12903952]post 2450[/post]. She accuses AR of being one of SAHM on the grounds that he (AR) is now pointing to his action in not voting Ed on Day 3 as a reason for his being Town. AR queries this in [post=12918720]post 2556[/post], asking how, if Snickers had considered hi not voting for Ed Day 3 a reason that AR might be town, why his using that in his defence makes that now evidence he (AR) is one of SAHM. Snickers responds with [post=12919069]post 2562[/post], citing 2358 and sidestepping the question AR asked. She repeats her accusation in [post=12921242]post 2612[/post].

Snickers then enters some discussions with and about Peeker. In [post=12908495]post 2477[/post], she and Peeker seem to be at cross purposes about whether anyone would claim to be Sauron the Townie (although closer inspection reveals they are agreeing.) In [post=12914024]post 2520[/post], she elucidates a key difference between Peeker “kind of knowing” who Faramir was, and Chronos knowing that Gadarene was Aragorn. She also responds to USCDiver, who was making a similar case.

The sidestepping of AR’s question is the only thing that worries me about her Day 5 participation.

Day 6.
Votes Peeker in [post=12935691]post 2757[/post] for his insistence that Chronos was one of SAHM. Claims Arwen, vanilla Town, in the very next post.

[post=12938906]Post 2796[/post] sees Snickers agreeing with Guiri (although I wasn’t able to find the reference in a quick scan) and suggesting Natlaw had not been able to tell Sauron or his fellow Minions that AR was one of them, hence the save. She also asks a couple of questions; Chronos (unfortunately) never answered the one aimed at him before being killed. Peeker declined to discuss how he knew USCDiver is Town.

Day 7.
[post=12943390]Post 2840[/post] – Scumdar failure. Interesting that Doctor Who has not claimed, did not know who Gamling was.

[post=12943479]Post 2843[/post] – no items received.

[post=12944830]Post 2853[/post] – OAOW part I. Finds several pointers in OAOW’s voting record. Continues with part II in [post=12947186]post 2864[/post], in which she further develops a case against OAOW and winds up voting. Pivotal to that decision seems to be an analysis that OAOW would not have attempted to save AR if he were not one of SAHM, an assertion that is questionable at best. Assuming that OAOW were not SAHM, he would probably have no knowledge of the truth of Natlaw’s claim, so voting to save AR and give time to develop Natlaw’s claim was reasonable, and the only option, with less than 25 minutes to Dusk, was Special Ed.

Now, I agree that, had Natlaw not claimed, we might well not have lynched Special Ed; I’ve seen at least one case where a Miller/Doc claimed on Day 1, narrowly missed being lynched for two or three days, and ultimately never did get lynched, a decision which turned out right for the Town. (That was Peeker, in Storyteller’s Skrull Planet game). So the statement that people were backing off the Ed as SAHMite hypothesis might well be right. However, to conclude that therefore OAOW must be SAHM or he’d have no motive for saving AR is not true.

Next, she turns her attention to USCDiver in [post=12948862]post 2872[/post], and presents some analysis in the subsequent post. Not much to be suspicious of is her conclusion.

[post=12948959]Post 2874[/post] sees Snickers still asserting that there “must have been” some involvement by SAHM in saving AR as a justification for lynching OAOW.

[post=12950938]Post 2884[/post] is a response to several comments. As well as agreeing with Guiri’s reason for voting OAOW, she responds to my analysis of her Day 2 play, defending herself against the comment that she used a term we associate with SAHM-on-SAHM action with “other people don’t,” which is fair enough. However, she does not comment at all on my issues with her throwing mud around in [post=12833126]post 1431[/post].

The pointers to Snickers being SAHM boil down to this.[ul][li]The widespread casting of suspicions in [post=12833126]post 1431[/post].[/li][li][post=12859315]Post 2021[/post], in which she attempts to compare two things that aren’t really alike to show her innocence.[/li][li][post=12919069]Post 2562[/post] in which, facing a defence by AR of an accusation she had made, she denied making it and pointed at the wrong post altogether to support the defence.[/ul]Being wrong about OAOW doesn’t quite make the cut, as if Snickers is in fact Town, she’d have no means of knowing OAOW’s alignment at the time she made those arguments.[/li]
The latter two weigh more heavily in the scales than the first does, and may be enough to produce a vote. First, however, I’m going to read the cases against Inner Stickler and Dr. Who, to see if there is something of merit in them.

As Astral stated, his accusation was “you thought I was town because I unvoted ed, until I brought up the fact that I unvoted ed.” But the problem is that I never believed that Astral was town because he unvoted ed. I never made any arguments about his previous actions or alignment at all - Astral was the only person making that argument. But when Astral came out all, “But look at how town I am, I unvoted ed even though doing so could’ve lynched me, look how town I am,” that caught my attention. And made me look closely at possible scum motivations why he unvoted ed. I thought I addressed this earlier, but apparently wasn’t clear enough. Let me know if I still aren’t making any sense on this, and I’ll try to explain further.

As for post #2021, I saw Nanook’s waffling on ed and my waffling on ed as roughly equivalent, if you subtracted my voting. MHaye doesn’t. Hell, I even pointed out that I knew I was weaselling on it - would scum draw such attention to their own voting? Nanook accused me of backing off my ed vote just when he was in danger of being lynched, which is correct. I did exactly that because I didn’t believe ed was scum. In hindsight, I’m glad I did - remember, ed was town.

As for my widespread smudges in #1431, I have no defense for them, other than bad play. I thought I addressed that earlier too - I’m pretty embarrassed about that first day.

As an aside, where’s everyone else? We need the discussion! (Yeah, work, I know.)

Echo echo echo

I’m here, trying to read. Unfortunately my right eye is cross with me. (I had some problems with my glasses over the weekend, and am adjusting back to my current pair again now.)

I don’t think you can say “I want to disregard some of my actions when trying to analyse my play.” Your play in a game is your play, and it’s all relevant. Also, you might be ashamed of your early posts because they’re your early posts, but they still form part of your play and are fair game to assess.

Back in a while.

Yeah, these short days are killing us. YesterDay seemed rushed, but not as rushed as toDay. I wonder if anyone has ever done a Mafia game where you just have to have a quorum vote to end the Day. Could add an interesting twist (and eliminate the advantage given to scum when the days get shorter)… the idea may have to wait until “Congressional Mafia.”

Despite the distractions of the day, I’m trying to read back on you Snickers. Not because OMGUS but because you are tied as the vote leader right now. Just relax… this won’t hurt a bit. Maybe.