NETA yet again: Post #380 was meant in response to Hoopy, of course.
Just make sure that if you are town and it is remotely useful for us to know at some point, you reveal it before you die. Otherwise, it’s kind of pointless you soft-claiming like this. After all, whether scum think you’re a power role and kill you, or know you’re a power-role with information that the town doesn’t know and kill you, a town power role with information winds up dead, and we lose whatever it was you had. I don’t really understand why you felt the need to confirm any suspicions that might be out there, without actually giving town anything in return.
Substantivity is a word. And can be used in the way you used it. (Usually it applies to how long the smell of a volatile substance, like perfume, will last.) However, for the usage you’re choosing, “substance” is a more elegant choice.
And don’t judge anything by Nanook’s (in)frequency of posting. He’s a man of little words, though those words usually convey great information. He always plays that way regardless of alignment.
Okay, one last post: How is your argument about Chronos’s claim here not appreciably identical to my argument about Pleo’s claim? (With the exception that Chronos’s claim is, at least potentially, retrospectively verifiable?)
Almost all talking is good talking. There’s a big gray area between what is futile discussion and not. A good rule of thumb is that once the debates and information become endlessly repeated, it’s probably best to move on. You might not think the handshaking is relevant anymore, and you may even be right, but as long as new information keeps flowing, there’s no reason to really curtail it. I didn’t think it’d be that useful from the start, but I participated in it anyway, because there were things to bring to the table, even if they would be useless in the end. But asking people to move on when the full repercussions haven’t been explored to everyone’s satisfaction can reflect bad on you. (The whole stifling discussion thing, which will rear it’s head in pretty much every game.) Welcome to mafia.
Usually if you get sick of a subject, the best tack to take rather than complaining about it is to just steer the conversation another direction. It shows that you are actually making an effort to play the game rather than complaining. And you did do so.
Though I have to say that Ed being involved in controversy is a null tell for him. I don’t think he can avoid it, regardless of alignment.
But, the fact that he started the handshake means to me that either Scum definitely have a cover PM, or that he is town.
Not a whole lot at this point, but it’s something.
NETA: By “you did do so” I mean that you changed the discussion subject by giving your analysis, not that you were complaining.
Because Pleo does this in just about all, if not all, games. If it were just this one, we’d have the same scenario as Chronos. But we don’t. We have Pleo playing like Pleo, and Chronos playing with a legitimate soft claim. (Regardless of the truthfulness of the claim itself.)
People say you shouldn’t metagame Mafia, but I disagree. The Meta is just as much part of the game your playing in as the actual setup is.
Just to provide some idea of my thinking.
I hate meta. This game is designed by x and they wouldn’t do y. Hate it. If a mod wants to stop this kind of handshake, my preference is for the vanilla town post to be included in the rules. I don’t mind thematic stuff at all (within reason) but the game should be playable with only the rules as stated. Players who have never played under a mod before should not be at a disadvantage from not knowing their design preferences!
Now, hands up if you’re an Orc.
I haven’t been chiming in much because, while I find the handshaking conversation interesting, I don’t have all that much to say about it that hasn’t already been said. FWIW, I think Special Ed is right about the value of finding vanilla town. Even if it hands the power roles to the scum on a platter, that just locates the scum by elimination. Big win.
I suspect that at least some of the inconsistencies in the handshaking is just from unclear definitions.
Chronos: I just woke up, and my brain isn’t up to speed, but I’m having trouble imagining what sort of information would be worth keeping from the townies, especially since you’ve rather marked yourself for a nightkill if you’re telling the truth.
Oh, may as well include a handshake. My win condition sentence, the sentence beginning with “You win” includes three instances of double letters.
Unless those letters aren’t “ll”, “ll”, and “ee”, I think this is something that’s already been well-established. 
Hurr, right. Like I said, just got up. Heh.
OK, trying something less stupid: Double letters in the paragraph immediately BEFORE the heading “Powers:” = five. Has that already been covered?
I don’t think it’s been covered, and I don’t know how helpful it will be (since it does seem like there are several variations of the flavor text floating around out there), but I’ll confirm five double letter sets in that paragraph/section.
ll, ll, ___, oo, and dd.
(I’ll leave it to someone else to fill in the fifth one if they want, Chip, or I can supply it if you feel that would be helpful.)
@Chronos, Just to be clear I misread ed’s handshake and posted my portion before I confirmed his. My handshake was based solely on the wincondition, not on the full last section. so take that what it’s worth i guess.
I’ve been sick and trying to get a house ready to go on the market on Monday, so my participation may be drastically low for the first half of this Day. My apologies. By Monday I’ll be back to normal, I hope.
As far as the whole handshaking thing, my PM has the word “Sauron” in it three times, and the last sentence has 2 W’s, 2 Y’s, and 2 D’s.
I’m still a touch concerned that all this is doing is handing power roles to the Scum, but if ed is right, this info could be very helpful to us. I’m willing to take that gamble at the moment.
Also, with the double letters thing, I’m getting LL, LL, LL, OO, DD, and EE. I think you guys may have overlooked a LL in there, so check again.
Of course, whether you’re missing or not counting another LL depends on what you consider the section before powers. I was counting everything that came after my role name. If you were not, then your count is correct.
By my definition, each paragraph is separated by line breaks. Your post 394 has 4 paragraphs.
I believe, without evidence backing it up, that the paragraph I used should be identical for at least all vanilla town, maybe all town.
I didn’t overlook the LL, but I did miss the EE. Hyphens are tricky!
My information would probably help Town in the midgame, help Scum in the early game, and is little enough that if I die, my taking the information to the grave would not particularly cripple the Town.
It occurs to me, though, that even if I die unexpectedly, it’s still possible to prevent the information from being lost. What I could do (but won’t just yet, without some more discussion of pros and cons; we have plenty of time left in the Day) is to use my role-name as a key to encode my information (and then, of course, keep my role name secret until I’m ready to tell all). That way, when and if I die unexpectedly, you all could use my revealed name to decrypt the information, and it wouldn’t be lost. The two biggest drawbacks that I can see are that, first, if I’m killed early enough, that might get the information out sooner than optimal, and second, that there is a small enough set of potential role names that it would be feasible for an attacker to just try potential names until they found one that decrypted to something intelligible, thus defeating the encryption (this is why proper one-time pads should be random).
Of course, if I die from lynching rather than from Night-kill, then I’ll be able to see it coming, and decide at that time whether I want to just say it clearly or not.
And does anyone have any thoughts on USCDiver matching all of the handshakes, or are we waiting for him to weigh in on it first?
NETA: I was also counting everything that came after my role name. Which would be multiple “paragraphs,” by Chip’s reckoning, so that’s further evidence that the paragraphs aren’t necessarily identical – or at least formatted identically – after all.
I’d like to hear him weigh in on it. It might just be a matter of interpretation, but I certainly don’t see how he could match all of the handshakes up to that point, if several of them were inconsistent and/or mutually exclusive.