Mafia: Baker Street [Game in progress]

[Darth_Sensitive]

I am tired and apologize if my formatting is fucked. This is my attempt to understand the extant cases better.

Astral Rejection (5) - wevets (177), Daphne Black (225), Chronos (237), Rysto (340), gnarlycharlie (407)

@wevets

Ok, so I’ve had a chance to read through the thread and here are some early thoughts:

Voting & all that discussion

Bottom line, both pizza and Chronos seem to be agreeing - we need votes, and considering how many posts and how few votes we have. But multi-voting is a blessing, so maybe spreading some votes around will help. If too many of us are all just pussyfooting around and too worried to offend anybody than perhaps the answer is just to go ahead and break the ice of offensiveness and get some discussion of suspects started.

We’ve got plenty of time, so let’s get some vote records started.

Inner Stickler

It seems like Inner Stickler is pretty noncommittal, in post #80 coming softly against a mass reveal, doing some waffling or very reasonable understanding in posts #84 and 89, and jumping into the random vote discussion in #125.

While that’s not a lot to go on, it could be either that Inner doesn’t want to be a part of some town on town controversy, or that s/he doesn’t want to attract a lot of attention as mafia.

There’s little risk in tossing out a vote at this point, so

Vote Inner Stickler
Askthepizzaguy

As usual, a maelstrom of discussion surrounds pizza. I like a lot of what he has said, but I haven’t seen anything to tell me his motivation yet. I can’t decide if the goading of Silver Jan to vote him in post 153 is something I could think of as a scummy or townie pizza. I really don’t even see a lot of distance between the two in the random vote discussion with him and Chronos. Aside from the weaknesses of vote analysis hitting the fan of reality, I don’t really see much ‘there’ there. Most importantly, I think he’s said some things we all know are true - that we can win this game without the clues and with just active voting based on people’s behavior. But that’s not something he would refrain from saying regardless of alignment.

Not finding anything suspicious, but I have been fooled by pizza too many times to think that means anything.

DaphneBlack

Daphne, if I could ask you for some more information and clarification on post #120, where you discuss voting Mahaloth - do you think there’s anything to be gained by mentioning that you might vote Mahaloth instead of just voting him/her? And do you think Chronos’s point about the vague hypocrisy of liking the plan but not necessarily revealing his clue is indicative of alignment at all?

Thanks for your help in advance.

Mahaloth

I think your discussion about the ‘bold plan’ has overshadowed what you might do with your votes toDay - can we talk about something not related to the clues… do you have anyone you’d like to vote for? If not, what do you like to look for in a scum candidate for your votes in general?

Chronos

I like a lot of what you’ve said Chronos, but I’m not sure your vote on Mahaloth makes sense to me - is his potential hypocrisy on the clue issue something you see as a scummy tactic? And regardless of whether hypocrisy is a scum/town indicator, is it even hypocrisy? How can we discussion courses of action if someone who tries to think through what doing the non-obvious course of action would be attracts votes?

I don’t know, Chronos, you certainly haven’t said anything I disagree with, but I’m not sure that what we’re learning from your posts tells us much, and I think it’s kinda ‘safe’ stuff that someone wanting to appear pro-town would post, even if their motivations were not pro-town. Sort of an ‘I’m townies than thou’ approach.

Vote Chronos

Johnny Bravo

You’ve talked a lot about the clues - and regarding your ambivalence about your own clue in post 94, I’d say it could be better to hold onto your clue until we have some firmer data to go on. We know Chronos’s clue and Dizzy’s clue, but it doesn’t seem like either of those are likely to lead to a lynch of a particular player. Unless it looks to you like we’re lynching a townie D1, is there any reason you shouldn’t hang onto your clue for another Day?

Or, in an even odder plan - does your clue have to do with a particular player? If so, could you wait until they’ve posted enough that you feel confident they’ve left a useful record of their opinions and then say who that player is, but not reveal the clue? That way, if they have made some sort of slip, we can find it and judge whether they’re likely scum or not without being tainted by the clue being wrong?

Idle Thoughts

I don’t know what to make of your vanilla claim right off the bat, but since almost no one else does that, I’m already suspicious. I don’t know enough to judge whether your claim is one I should trust or not. If you were in my shoes, looking at your claim, what would you look for?

And could I ask what you might have besides discussion of your PM and clue to offer the thread?

Vote Idle Thoughts

Astral Rejection

I’m worried about the implication that for you to defend Mahaloth you would have to be scum and Mahaloth would have to be scum (post 166) - I really don’t see why a scum couldn’t defend a townie, and then be vindicated if the townie is lynched. I think you’re using that post to stack the deck in your favor, and I’d like to know what you think of the other possibility.

Vote Astral Rejection

Darth Sensitive

So far it seems like you’ve focused on pizza’s vote and your clue to the exclusion of all else. Can we hear your thoughts on some of the other players, or where you’d like to place other votes?

TexCat

Not a lot to go on here, I feel your questions to Chronos Astral and Daphne about Idle’s claim too.

It seems we shouldn’t do a mass reveal of clues, so your post 130 can be set aside for now - how would you like to approach a D1 lynch with as little info as we have now? Do you have any suspicions? If you don’t, would you go for a random vote?

Captain Klutz

I dunno Captain, we’ve got two posts about clues and some speculation about recruitment. Since we’re not all going to share our clues, and we can’t possibly find out about recruitment before the end of D1, can we get some votes on the record maybe? Who would you like to vote for?

Rysto

I share some of your questions of sinjin… but can you help me with your suspicion of multi-voting from post 172? Are you suspicious of those who place multiple votes ( ) or do you prefer games without multiple votes?

Dizzymrsslizzy

Have you played with sinjin before and is s/he usually less aggressive D1?

DiggitCamara

Not enough to go on yet. Hopefully you won’t mind if I ask you some questions in my next wall of words. Sorry about that, getting tired.

septimus

I have to agree that Mahaloth’s just bringing up her/his proposal doesn’t make him/her scum. Can you tell me about the meta-clue idea you mentioned where you don’t think the Mod is using clues in such a way that scum could use them to out power roles or advance their wincon somehow? Why wouldn’t the Mod have done something like that?

Silver Jan

Is pizza really just being pizza? Or is he a breadstick? Sorry, I’m kind of running out of steam here, but I do just want to clarify - you’re thinking this is town pizza we’re seeing?

sinjin

I get from your posts 173 and 168 that it’s not the proposal itself that makes you look askance at Mahaloth, it’s that s/he is willfully disregarding the reasoning others are giving that suggests the game set-up is likely to hurt town in a mass clue-reveal, right? Is that a fair way to assess it? I may have to re-think what I’ve just written about that issue.

Clues

For now, the 2 we know: That a Godfather can lose Godfather status at some point (91) and that the scum have complete false IDs (118) seem harmless or potentially helpful to town. I don’t think we really need to worry about clues - I agree they are likely kind of a red herring… good to kick-start conversation, but not good if what we really want to do is accurately decide who to vote for. I think we should be focusing the lion’s share of our efforts on the latter, and not worry about the clues until each player decides their importance demands we pay attention to them.

@DaphneBlack

I know that Idle always claims. This claim seems townie to me, what can I say?

vote Astral Rejection

I’ve found rather that people who seize on “third vote = scum” are scum looking for an easy vote, or laaaazy townies. Boo.

These are some thin votes. Accepting Idle’s claim is pretty controversial – I admit I’m surprised by that. I made a snap judgement on it, and the notion that scum could have cover roles has made me reconsider a little bit, but I am reading Idle as being pretty much usual townie Idle, in toto, not just the claim, so I’m not backing off my read for now.

I have no special knowledge about Idle however.

@Chronos

OK, this is mostly going to be in response to Pizza, just because he’s done a lot of talking:

Vanilla claims are far safer for Scum than power claims are. Anyone who claims a power role first of all risks a counterclaim, and second must account for how they’re using their powers. Both of those are always risky. Claiming vanilla is only risky if you’re doing something active and there’s either a tracker in the game or a very lucky watcher.

And yet, you’re handing out the townie card to the same person, based on the same post.

How do you figure? If Mahaloth turns out to be Scum, it’ll do a lot to find Scum. Now, I don’t know whether he’s Scum… do you?

Funny, whatever else you might say about Daphne, I think that post is 100% true. I’m sure that she doesn’t have any idea who Estelle Anderson is, because nobody has any idea who Estelle Anderson is. Google doesn’t have any idea, either.

You missed a third possibility: Your clue is false, and Langdale Pike doesn’t exist. If that’s the case, then anyone claiming to be him is lying and should be lynched. If. Which means that, if someone does eventually claim to be Langdale Pike, your clue doesn’t really tell us what that person’s alignment is.

And just for a change, something posted by Astral Rejection:

Vague “pings” don’t mean anything, and Pizza’s reasoning on Daphne is basically nonexistent. Or are you saying that you just want to know someone else suspects a person before you’ll vote for them? Because that’s not really great, either.

I dunno, maybe Pizza really does just suck this much at playing as Town, though I doubt it. But who’s worse, the fool or the fool who follows him?

Vote Askthepizzaguy
Vote Astral Rejection

@Rysto

(bleaching mine)

This one caught my eye as I was catching up. Astral starts off with a “me, too” over pizza’s case. That’s not too terrible – townies do it all the time – but it’s worth pointing out. This, by the way, is the first Daphne vote after pizza’s case. The timing looks pretty opportunistic – this vote really seemed to build momentum on the train. Then Astral points out that Daphne was the third vote on a bandwagon.

A bandwagon that Astral says is still his second preference.

Huh? I mean, if you’re going to vote for a player over a supposedly opportunistic vote on a bandwagon, then you’re saying that player is probably scum trying to drive a lynch train on a townie. Simultaneously pushing that bandwagon looks incredibly opportunistic.

Vote Astral

@gnarlycharlie

that’s a dangerous assertion. if i am lynched, would you then lynch Scáthach when i flip town? if she and i were both town that would be great for scum.

** vote Astral Rejection **

---

what do you people think of the possibility that not only do scum have correct clues but also all the correct clues?

Texcat (5) - Scathach (290), septimus (310), dizzymrslizzy (343), gnarlycharly (362), Pleonast (431)

@Scathach

You know what, ** vote Texcat **.

It was one thing when I thought you were policy voting everyone who revealed a clue, but I don’t follow the reasoning here at all. You directly point out that Chronos’s clue could be helpful to scum, then point out that gnarlycharlie’s clue has no use at all. Then vote gnarlycharlie because his useless clue might be helpful to scum? I really struggle to see how it could possibly be to be honest.

Then voting me because I said I had a duplicate clue (of one that was already revealed). Which surely can’t fall under the “gives information to scum” because it was information that was already out there? You say it might be a cover role, but frankly not only do I think it would be unlikely for me to blithely reveal the duplicate if I was scum, I actually think it would be unfair of Storyteller to provide cover roles with such an easy way to out them.

In short, I don’t think your votes make sense or are consistent. And since you’re usually a player that makes clear convincing cases I think that’s scummy.

@septimus

I think prior experience of Players is very important. … For example, I suspect Mahaloth when he seems Townie, since I always get scum vibes from him when he’s Scum. :smack:
Anyway, for now I’ll follow my policy of delaying any early Lynch of a claimed Power.

Unvote: DaphneBlack

Texcat is playing much more aggressively than usual. I don’t know if that is a scum tell or a town tell for her, but
Vote: TexCat

My first vote on Idle was a joke/random vote: his character’s gender made him slightly more likely to be Scum than the output of random.org would be. But he reacted by flailing wildly, first “forgetting” his gender and then smudging me.
Vote: Idle Thoughts

No one, Scum or Town, would post the very same clue as another already posted unless it was truly their clue. This seems so obvious, I’ll be scrutinizing the posts of those who pretend to think otherwise.

@Dizzymrslizzy

Jan, that was an interesting catch…

Tex, I think that’s the first slip I’ve ever seen of yours…

Vote Texcat

@gnarlycharlie

i subscribe to this. the risk of counterclaim is greater.

the third vote tell is not reliable at all. as town, i’ve been the third vote several times and so have many others.
if i’m scum, how am i risking helping myself? that makes no sense.

careful, you might get voted for that. i initially thought that meant you were scum but i realized that doesn’t matter. with a large number of players duplication of clues isn’t implausible.

…and there it is. so we are both scum? still makes no sense.

you’re making the same argument as Texcat. so we’re both scum. this is using the shotgun approach. why are you minimizing the chances we’re both town?

did i see someone say that clues may be duplicated? i forget.

don’t bother. it’s possible scum would do anything no matter how stupid it may seem. :rolleyes:

vote Texcat
vote Darth Sensitive

seems it doesn’t matter to these two whoever is lynched between **Scathach **and me.

@Pleonast

Doing page 5…

Well, you did claim to be “Estelle Anderson”. And your claimed invitation is to a “Mrs. Anderson”. Are you saying that you’re a male named “Estelle” who uses the prefix “Mrs”?

Or was your claim fabricated and you forgot what gender you are?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Okay, not much worth commenting on, going to page 6.

No, it’s not. The rules say revealing a clue might not helping the revealer’s team. It very well could help. For example my clue if true, reveals a scum power, which scum would very probably already know about. If it’s false, scum already very likely know it’s not true.

Simply assuming revealing all clues will hurt us hurts us just as much as assuming revealing all clues will help us.

vote TexCat for discouraging players from revealing any clues at all. I don’t see a pro-town motivation for cutting off a source of information.

This is bizarre. Whether it’s true or not, evidence is useful. We may not figure out the full picture until later, but hiding the puzzle pieces helps us not at all.

Why are trying to defend yourself? Point out errors in others’ arguments, but there’s no reason to expect to be able change others’ assessments of you.

Please don’t use undefined abbreviations. I have no idea what you’re saying here with “meta-TVR” or “TVed”.

Your mistake is expecting that there is any pattern to how clues are distributed, other than scum clues definitely being true.

I think clue duplication both reduces the risk of not revealing a clue (since someone else has it) and reduces the risk of revealing a clue (since someone else already knows it). Which is a fancy way of saying don’t make any additional assumptions about the distribution of clues.

It’s very easy to include design elements that hurt or help one side more than the other. It’s balanced by giving an advantage or disadvantage elsewhere.

For example, multivoting helps town. If the game designer opts for multivoting, they need to compensate by reducing the effectiveness of town elsewhere or improving scum somehow.

This is why it’s very hard to make balancing arguments without knowing the full game setup.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Okay, that’s up to the end of page 6. I’ll try to get up to date before the end of the Day.

[Darth_Sensitive]

Askthepizzaguy (4) – sinjin (149), Chronos (237), Inner Stickler (364), Pleonast (415)

@sinjin

Yes, in overly powered games town does seem to rely on power roles to a ridiculous extent. What does that have to do with the scums ability to “smell the way the wind is blowing?” And why would scums not “know who is about to be lynched” in a mostly vanilla game vs a powered game? This makes no sense to me.

Several folks have brought up the fact that **STORYTELLER **himself said that posting your clue might be damaging to your team. If your clue cannot damage town then post it.

And here you go again. Urging town to do something that the **MOD **has said could be a bad idea and you don’t care.

Vote Mahaloth. I don’t subscribe to the “scums wouldn’t do that” line of thought.

This is ridiculous. Voting someone because they only posted once in the first 9 hours of the game. Some of us have real lives. I didn’t even know the game started til this am, when I started reading. And it’s false that he waffled on his own clue. He clearly stated it would not help unless we did a name claim.

Why all the talk and defense of random voting. You have made multiple posts about random voting, which is meaningless in this game, as you are the only person who has posted a random, obviously joking vote.

vote Pizza For, not for his random vote on Darth, but for his ridiculous vote on **Darth **and for spamming the thread with posts on random voting.

@Chronos

OK, this is mostly going to be in response to Pizza, just because he’s done a lot of talking:

Vanilla claims are far safer for Scum than power claims are. Anyone who claims a power role first of all risks a counterclaim, and second must account for how they’re using their powers. Both of those are always risky. Claiming vanilla is only risky if you’re doing something active and there’s either a tracker in the game or a very lucky watcher.

And yet, you’re handing out the townie card to the same person, based on the same post.

How do you figure? If Mahaloth turns out to be Scum, it’ll do a lot to find Scum. Now, I don’t know whether he’s Scum… do you?

Funny, whatever else you might say about Daphne, I think that post is 100% true. I’m sure that she doesn’t have any idea who Estelle Anderson is, because nobody has any idea who Estelle Anderson is. Google doesn’t have any idea, either.

You missed a third possibility: Your clue is false, and Langdale Pike doesn’t exist. If that’s the case, then anyone claiming to be him is lying and should be lynched. If. Which means that, if someone does eventually claim to be Langdale Pike, your clue doesn’t really tell us what that person’s alignment is.

And just for a change, something posted by Astral Rejection:

Vague “pings” don’t mean anything, and Pizza’s reasoning on Daphne is basically nonexistent. Or are you saying that you just want to know someone else suspects a person before you’ll vote for them? Because that’s not really great, either.

I dunno, maybe Pizza really does just suck this much at playing as Town, though I doubt it. But who’s worse, the fool or the fool who follows him?

Vote Askthepizzaguy
Vote Astral Rejection

@Inner_Stickler

Unvote DaphneBlack

Vote ATPG

It’s not much but I don’t like the fact that he called out the unusual Day setup in post 81 and then appeared to forget there’s no night twice later on.

@Pleonast

On to page 3…

Huh? Votes don’t need to be random. No one is suggesting we not vote at all.

There’s 22 players. If there’s 6 scum, that gives us (22-6 - 6) / 2 - 0.5 = 4.5 mislynches (that is, the 5th mislynch loses the game). That’s a very hard and would mean we have a lot of power roles to balance out that many scum.

If there’s 5 scum, that gives us (22-5 - 5) / 2 - 0.5 = 5.5 mislynches (the 6th loses). I’d call that the “standard” number, where we have to get half the lynches right.

If there’s 4 scum, we’d get 6.5 mislynches. That’d mean we have fewer power roles, but more numbers to make up for it.

You’re entitled to your suspicions, but keep in mind that lynching players who are doing things that help town while giving passes to those who are doing things that do not, leads to games where both town and scum do things to hurt town. I’d rather try to make scum feel like they have to do pro-town things, so that everyone is taking pro-town actions.

Note that I’m not saying you are advocating lynch pro-town players or giving passes to anti-town players. I want to point out that your statement could lead to that situation and I’d like to discourage it.

Hmm, “scum will vote for townies for no reason”? You have already voted for a player for no reason.

vote Askthepizzaguy for doing what they say scum do.

You need to rethink how you do your analysis, then.

The purpose of vote analysis (by human or algorithm) is to distinguish scum from town. Townies vote in a certain way: they are trying to vote for scum. If scum deviate from that in any way, it’s theoretically possible to discern it. Voting random is certainly a deviation from pro-town voting, because townies don’t vote randomly.

You’ve hit a false dilemma. Analysis does not have to be perfect to be useful.

And even if a player is voting another because they post a certain way, the reason they claim they voted is important. Ultimately, the difference between town and scum is motivation, and sussing that out involves not only what they do, but what they say, and especially if there’s not perfect alignment between what they say and do.

But we do have something: we have the posts of the players. That is not a lot to base a vote on, but it is something. Something more than nothing.

I don’t have anything against random votes, because they jumpstart the process. But you really overstretch their usefulness when you claim that random votes are all we have.

Yes, the moderator has said revealing clues could be bad for the team you’re on. That goes both ways: scum could be hurt just as much as town. Why don’t you care about that?

Mahaloth has a higher tolerance for risk than you do. As a player often willing to take high risks, I don’t appreciate it when players get voted for simply being willing to take a risk.

I should note that scum are often much more averse to taking risks than town. After all, scum have a smaller margin to work within, while losing a single townie has low impact to town. If we’re going to be voting players for different risk tolerance, we’ll find more scum in the low-risk group than the high-risk group.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And that’s it for page 3.

Pleonast (6) – Chronos (371), LightFoot(376), Mahaloth(384), Darth Sensitive(432), askthepizzaguy (455), Astral Rejection (467)

@Chronos

Some folks have mentioned that there’s a tendency to lynch the loud, so I thought I’d go through and see if there’s anyone who’s been lurking to avoid attention. From what I can see, there are seven players who haven’t yet gotten any votes (in order that they appear on the player list): Johnny Bravo, Wevets, DiggitCamara, Rysto, Lightfoot,Captain Klutz, and Pleonast. Of those:

Johnny Bravo is one of the more prolific posters in the thread, and his posts appear to have substance. He’s chiming in on major topics, voting, and giving reasons for his votes. He passes.

wevets has had only six posts since PMs were sent out: Receipt of PM, a little discussion of clues, a bunch of player analyses and votes, a short reply concerning that post, an explanation of a vote by sinjin, and [url=“http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=17104146#post17104146”]a minor NETA to that. I like the big long post analyzing players, but it was early enough to go largely unnoticed, and he hasn’t posted anything meaty since then.

DiggitCamara has also posted only six times since the PMs went out: Confirming his PM, some general theory talk about random votes and clues, More on clues, finding sinjin’s reactions to look townish, votes Daphne (whose wagon was gaining steam) for vague reasons, and then unvoting Daphne after her claim. Very little here, but there’s something.

And I note that he does actually have a couple of votes on him, from Johnny Bravo and Daphne, neither of which I noticed unvoting.

Rysto is off to a slow start, but he said before hand that he was going to be busy off the board, and he does at least have one vote and some back-and-forth concerning it. Pass for now, but I’d really like to see more from him.

Lightfoot has only two posts so far: A very belated check-in, and a no time to catch up post. Not good, but it probably is actually due to not noticing, and so wouldn’t reflect on her alignment.

Captain Klutz has 11 posts since the game started, but honestly, I can’t see anything of substance in them, and he hasn’t even voted. This is very, very bad.

And I thought at first that Pleonast hadn’t checked in at all, which is a problem for the mod, not for us. But he did actually check in, so he knows the game has started, but hasn’t posted since then. Now, Pleonast is another player (like Idle who tends to claim immediately, which (as mentioned) is problematic for a Scum. Maybe he decided that the way to avoid claiming was just to not post?

I’m going to
Vote Captain Klutz
Vote Pleonast
for their lack of participation.

@LightFoot

I get tangled up quoting on this board and since I’ve missed 8 pages I am just going to reference post numbers as I catch up
I have some things for you but first
** Vote: Pleo **
I didn’t realize he was even in the game until it was mentioned by Chronos- and as I have always found his habit of claiming early ( no matter the role) very annoying- the absence of that action screams suspect to me.

** JohnnyB ** when you said your clue was potentially dangerous and could result in a lynching- were you concerned about your own safety, or the good of Town?
** DarthS ** my clue also is irrelevant until names are claimed ( or can be discovered)- and I think someone else made reference to that possibility
Having said that if true or false it is information that I think could be used by Scum ( so I will sit tight until / if it is useful to Town )
** JohnnyB ** are claiming Vanilla #189 – where you state that ** Idle’s ** claim matches your PM and then vote him for it?

Re: ** Chronos’ ** clue- I don’t see how it benefits Scum- ** Pizza ** can you elaborate on your comment #202 for me?
** DarthS ** post #296
You state that you think it more likely that the first person to get a duplicated clue would be Scum- then you vote both of them ( you are riding the fence )

I am suspect of ** Texcat ** – can’t quite put my finger on it- but D1 wagons generally net Town players so I will stay out of that mix
** Vote JohnnyB **

it won’t get him lynched today but I want to go on record with a suspicion that stems from reading his posts/tone - also his concern that his clue might get him lynched- but no comment on if the clue would benefit Town.

@Mahaloth

Pleo laying low is odd.

Vote Pleo

@Darth_Sensitive

And ugh… now we have another set of duplicate clues. I’m really not sure what that means, especially as pleonast comes in with his duplicate clue after I’ve laid out my case that says one of the two is likely to be scum, though more likely the first one. Not sure if he read that far or not, but I have to assume that he did.

I really don’t know now which is more likely to be true: we have two pairs of town (possibly more) with the same clue, our first pair was t/s in some order and our second pair is t/t, the other way around, the chances of one of the pairs being ballsy scum trying to get one of them by (and if it’s the second pair, intimidate doctors out of protecting an obvious nightkill target (I think the odds that all 4 are scum is absolutely miniscule)), the chances that this is actually a form of masonry, and more importantly, the possibility that I’m overthinking all of this far too much, and I may be falling into the “clues can hurt your side” trap.

I realize that it’s inconsistent with my vote on gnarly/scat, but if one of the second pair is scum, it feels more likely to be pleonast, since he got set up to feel that the second claim was safer with my earlier arguments.
Vote pleonast

@Askthepizzaguy

Vote Pleonast

Oh, I can definitely get behind this lynch.

@Astral_Rejection

I didn’t realize Pleonast only has 4 “actually playing the game” posts. His other three are check-in-type posts. If you had asked me before re-reading his posts specifically, I would have guessed 10ish posts. Huh.

Anyway! His first post is entirely mechanics discussion. To be fair to Pleonast, that’s pretty much what all of us talked about at the beginning of the game… but it’s a bit late and a dollar short. Plus, he largely agrees with everyone. But when this is 1/4th of your posts, I feel like it needs to be a little more focused on scum hunting. Really, this is a lean neutral for me… scum tend to focus on mechanics posts, but he came to the game late and I can’t begrudge him wanting to chime in.

His second post of the game, he discusses a ton more mechanics and throws a weak vote out for Pizza. Then, more mechanics.

Thirdly, we get more mechanics, and some light questioning of wevets and some discussion with others. Pizza, to be fair, I agree with him about your self-professed tell being useless to town, since we can’t possibly know how earnest you’re being about it.

For his fourth and final post so far, we get a vote for Texcat for an understandable if overstated reason. I personally wouldn’t toss a vote out for that, because TexCat is largely right… the moderator has implied a mass claim of clues could hurt town to some degree, and it’s likely it would hurt town quite a bit more than it hurts scum. Regardless, I can’t assign too much scummyness for a vote I don’t agree with.

But… like with LightFoot, what bothers me is what isn’t said. In catching up, Pleonast was quick to offer his comments about any mechanics discussion was happening, regardless of how much conversation had already taken place. What he doesn’t do is comment on the cases of each day, and that’s a huge gaping hole in his play. We have no idea what he thinks of me or the cases on me, or what he thinks about Septimus or the cases on Septimus, and so on. That’s literally the most important thing he needs to be catching up on, and it’s what he chose to skip.

And I find that scummy.

I’m going to break my “no multivote going into the final day of the Day” rule (it lasted so long! Almost a whole Day!) and cast a vote for him while leaving my vote for LightFoot. Upon reflection, I remembered that we have a tendency to immediately forget the suspicions of those who die, and if I’m lynched I want you to remember that I find LightFoot scummy.

Vote Pleonast.

dizzymrslizzy (5) - Silver Jan(309), Septimus(395), Texcat(445), Daphne Black (449), Astral Rejection (473)

@Silver_Jan

Or lynch the quiet, cautious player. I thought your vote on me was just following a wagon,** Astral always finds me scummy and Pizza likes to get me upset so that I post more. I always find Dizzy** scummy (and she does me) but I have looked at her posts and apart from her revealing a clue that doesn’t really help either side she hasn’t said to much except goading Pizza. Scum often get cover roles so that’s not a big thing to reveal but nor are the other clues we have had.

Vote DizzymrsLizzy

I was going to vote for DaphneBlack until she said she was Uncle Sherlock so I would rather give her time to prove herself.

@septimus

There is an interesting connection between Lizzy and Texcat, but I’m not sure what inference to draw.

Very early, Lizzy revealed her clue.
As I alluded to earlier, this struck me as likely to be false. If we have an Investigator who learns names, would he learn the fake name or the real name? And what about clues that mention the gender of a Scum? If such clues are truthful, they also become useless if a Scum player has a “true” identity and a “fake” identity that might show up to Investigators.

Not only does the clue seem likely to be false, it seems like it might be a fake clue that Scum would construct. Lizzy pings me slightly for another reason: lowish participation, and a weakish vote.

But then

Reacting to Lizzy’s clue? Or private information?

… No mention of Lizzy’s clue.
Has Lizzy forgotten her own published clue?

I doubt if Texcat and Lizzy are Scum together, but this seems fishy enough to guess that one or the other is.

Vote: Dizzymrslizzy

It’s often easier to identify Townies than Scum. In answer to Daphne: Yes, Mahaloth seems very likely to be Town.

@TexCat

Dizzy’s entire contribution so far (purpling and bolding mine):

Vote: Dizzy

Not much to go on here. I really hate her vote for Sinjin for being aggressive, and note that she was bandwagoning Astral here. Why should we think aggressive players are scum? Aggressive players catch scum. Scum are much more likely to be quiet and trying to merge into the background; posting but without saying much and agreeing with others. Dizzy is bandwagoning SilverJan’s post when she votes me. And hasn’t bothered to explain even after I have asked twice about this vote. I actually think that Dizzy skimmed through what the “slip” was, since the alleged slip was based on her CLUE. I think Dizzy was just miming SilverJan and getting a vote in where she could.

Correction for Astral’s vote count: You missed the same two Diggitt votes that our mod missed. (291 and 308).

@DaphneBlack

Thanks, Texcat.

I won’t be voting Texcat today. I don’t agree with her assessment of ClueGate, but that is not an indicator of alignment.

That does not look good from Dizzy. I’d like to hear an explanation of how she thought Texcat had made a slip about scum clues, given her own clue. For now

unvote septimus – still suspicious, but probably not going to be lynched today.
vote Dizzymrslizzy

for a nonsensical vote (on Texcat), a poorly-reasoned vote (on sinjin), low engagement and just not seeming townie.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Oooooo… there it is.

Darth Sensitive just gave off the townie smell. Somehow it managed to reach my nose even through all the internet tubes.

It’s sort of like Aqua Velva.

Nice choice. I’m partial to that one myself.

[Pleonast]

Getting close to live now…

@Silver_Jan

@gnarlycharlie

what do you people think of the possibility that not only do scum have correct clues but also all the correct clues?

I don’t think scum have the only correct clues because I know I am town and my clue is correct. I do agree though that Town most likely have matching clues, I think it would be game breaking if Town and Scum were paired off with the same clues.

You are misunderstanding gnarly’s hypothesis. They’re asking about “scum have all the correct clues” vs “only scum have correct clues”. You are correct that the latter is false, because of the rules.

We don’t know what information scum start with. But because scum might be at risk by revealing their clues, I think it’s unlikely they have all the clues. Then they could avoid any risk when revealing their “clue”.

@Chronos

Pizza, I think gnarly means that the Scum might know everybody else’s clues in addition to their own. While that would fit with the flavor of Moriarty sending out all the invitations, I don’t think it would make much sense as a game mechanic, since it would give them too much information.

You have not read my original Apocalyptic Mafia over on Idle’s board, have you? Scum were given at game start all the role names, role powers, role alignments, and secret rules (including things like town’s victory conditions that even town didn’t know). “Too much information” is not relevant when balancing a game, because such things can be compensated for–town won that game (barely).

@Chronos

On another note, welcome, Pleonast, but I trust you understand that your uncharacteristic reluctance to claim, especially when we’ve already had a claim to our presumed primary power role, doesn’t do anything to make you look less suspect.

I should hope not. The intended audience of my initial soft claims are scum, not town. Ideally, town should ignore my claim. Scum should too, but it’s harder for them because they know I’m working against them. Town can simply delay judgement until more information comes out.

I’m not sure why you’re trying to link me with the Holmes claim. They’re completely independent.

@DaphneBlack

I am concerned that with relatively little time left, the votes are spread pretty thin. We need to start moving toward a consensus.

Gah, no! Consensus saps the utility of the vote record. We gain the most information when several players are at risk of being lynched. Then every vote and non-vote is important.

@Askthepizzaguy

@Pleonast

Hmm, “scum will vote for townies for no reason”? You have already voted for a player for no reason.

vote Askthepizzaguy for doing what they say scum do.

Who is they?

And I’m struggling to understand how you think you’re scum hunting right now.

I said:

They generally don’t vote for their fellow scums for no reason. They may joke vote their fellow scums and remove that vote later. But they don’t tend to lynch their fellow scums without first establishing how hard they’re using “real” detective work to bag their fellow scums, with a big ostentatious case or “solid” reasoning.

However, they don’t hold themselves to such a standard with townies because when a townie dies, they get no credit for being right. So why waste all that effort and why try to impress anyone with a case that they know will end up lynching a townie. Obviously they don’t want to take the main credit for a lousy case.

This is all discussing scum behavior.

Now a townie is not going to know IN ADVANCE that they’ve nailed a scumbag. That’s why they are more liable to cook up big cases on their fellow townies, and vote for scumbags for no particular reason.

Your conclusion is that since I voted people for no reason, I’m a hypocrite and must die?

Well, you join several others voting me for, apparently, hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is as good a scum tell as skimming. Have fun with it.

“They” is you, Askthepizzaguy. Sorry about using a gender-neutral pronoun, it can be confusing at times.

You said that scum will vote for a townie for no reason at all. Your first vote was for no reason at all. That is consistent with your description of scum behavior. I’m not accusing you of hypocrisy. I believe you. While acknowledged tells are worthless, when a player describes what they look for in scum, they are often unconsciously revealing their own traits when scum. That is something worthful.

@Inner_Stickler

If you’re going to give us a play by play as you catch up, would you mind giving it post numbers rather than page numbers. From where I sit, we’re just at the beginning of page 3. Saying you’ve finished page 4 tells me nothing about where you are in the game thread.

Sorry about that, I use the standard SDMB default of 50 posts per page. But there’s no need to print post numbers, you can simply click a quote’s button to see the original post in its original position in the thread.

@Astral_Rejection

Also, as a side-note: If I am tied with another player, I will vote for that player in the interest of self-preservation. If you really want me dead, make sure I’m one vote above everybody else… I won’t vote to cause a tie.

Just so you know, I have a habit of voting for players who vote simply for self preservation. Vanilla players should accept their lynch rather than risk lynching a town power role. If you’re going to vote to save yourself, make it clear that you are not vanilla town.

@TexCat

I’ll answer. Scathach, Gnarly, and Pleo are voting me because I was voting people who gave their clues away. Scathach makes the most cogent argument below. I have since unvoted those, but continue to think that revealing CLUEs is bad for Town. Pleo disagrees. I do wish Scathach would look at my cases on Septimus and Dizzy.
Septimus is voting me because I am aggressive.
And who knows what Dizzy was thinking?

No, I voted you for “for discouraging players from revealing any clues at all. I don’t see a pro-town motivation for cutting off a source of information.”. This was in reaction to your statement “We know that giving our clues away will help scum.”, not for any votes you’ve made.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

That’s it for page 9.

[Askthepizzaguy]

@Pleonast

“They” is you, Askthepizzaguy. Sorry about using a gender-neutral pronoun, it can be confusing at times.

You said that scum will vote for a townie for no reason at all. Your first vote was for no reason at all. That is consistent with your description of scum behavior. I’m not accusing you of hypocrisy. I believe you. While acknowledged tells are worthless, when a player describes what they look for in scum, they are often unconsciously revealing their own traits when scum. That is something worthful.

Now I get the strong sense you’re not reading for comprehension. If you spent any amount of actual time and concentration focusing on *what *I was saying, you’d realize the connection you are making between my point and initial day one no-reason votes is skin deep.

You’re barking up the wrong tree. You put stock in your unconscious scum revelation theory, and I subscribe to similar theories on how to find scum. Just ain’t gonna happen today. I doubt if you’re going to see that in time, but at the very least, I can correct myself.

Unvote pleonast

And with that move, I’m sure that I now appear to be a total flake, and look forward to being lynched as a result. I doubt there are many players who are going to grok my thought process, so I’m not even going to bother explaining it.

[Askthepizzaguy]

You’re cramming too much info at once. Slow down. More important than “catching up” is presence of mind. You cannot seriously hope to successfully analyze players when you’re barely getting the gist of what they’ve said.

I know you don’t believe this is your best analysis possible, so use day two to your advantage.

[DaphneBlack]

I may live to regret this, but I don’t know how great my chances are of living anyway, so I will say… I just typed out a long thing about how I still thought we should lynch Dizzy over Pleo but now I am second-guessing myself. I find Pleo so difficult for me to interact with it clouds my judgement. But nothing I have seen has disconcerted me more than usual with Pleo.

I will do this:
unvote Astral Rejection – onto the “makes me go hmm” pile with septimus

No, I am going to stick with my original gut. I think Dizzy is scum. The “slip” convo with Texcat is very “aha! I can use this”. And I can’t see the forgetting of her own clue as anything other than a big red flag. The low number of posts isn’t really a thing, but there is a lot that Dizzy apparently doesn’t want to comment on. I don’t like her early discussion about random votes – feels very paint-by-numbers. Tone tone tone. Argh, I wish I could be more confident and point out that the mud on her shoes is only found in greenhouses owned by Moriarty or something but alas, I can’t.

Vote for Dizzy!

[Pleonast]

@DaphneBlack

Hmm, I could be convinced to vote for Pleo. I haven’t voted for Pleo because I

a) can’t read Pleo
b) think Pleo’s way of playing Mafia is so diametrically opposite of mine that we aren’t even playing the same game
c) always want to lynch Pleo

but since I always want to lynch Pleo, I kinda want to lynch Pleo. Harrumph.

a) I don’t intend to be opaque. Please let me know if you can’t understand something and I’ll elaborate.
b) That’s weird, I’m fairly appreciative of your way of playing.
c) Have we ever played together before? I don’t recognize your name.

@Askthepizzaguy

In my opinion he’s avoiding being analyzed because he’s posting analysis of other players, and “catching up”, which means he can avoid prolonged conversations with people.

Basically, his posts look like he’s going through the motions of trying to look like a model townie.

He is not exposing flaws which can be picked at. Which is safe play, difficult to attack.

Between myself, Tex, Astral, and Pleo, I deem Pleo to be one that is not like the others.

Hardly an earth-shattering case, but out of 4 players, there’s a decent chance one of them is scum.

Thank you, I guess? But I’m rarely accused of playing it safe. Usually I express an opinion that rankles one player, and another opinion that rankles another, and so on until I get lynched or killed. Not unlike yourself in many games.

Of the four you listed, I think TexCat stands out the most. Their insistence that clues cannot be pro-town and should never be revealed, and their confirmation that scum have more than one clue are strong indication of their alignment.

I find your play to be mostly pro-town, but your slip about scum play puts you in the scum column, although not as likely as TexCat.

I’m not seeing anything useful in the cases against Astral.

And the votes on me are lazy “lynch the player who was out” votes. My lateness in this game so far was unavoidable. I had an extended absence over the holiday weekend and had to play catch up. Of course, you already know that, being a conscientious player in the game I’m moderating.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And that brings me to latest post.

[gnarlycharlie]

@DaphneBlack

Well, Pizza, I’m not voting for you so I can’t directly affect the outcome. I’m not going to push for your lynch today. I think Astral and Dizzy are both better, viable lynch candidates.

If you vote for Astral (or Texcat I suppose but see my post above) that would help your own cause. Any reason you won’t?

I won’t tell you not to claim.

in multi-vote games i think it’s better to vote someone you want to lynch whether they have a chance of being lynched or not. it makes your record clearer which is what townies want. scum not so much.

@Astral_Rejection

I didn’t realize Pleonast only has 4 “actually playing the game” posts. His other three are check-in-type posts. If you had asked me before re-reading his posts specifically, I would have guessed 10ish posts. Huh.

Anyway! His first post is entirely mechanics discussion. To be fair to Pleonast, that’s pretty much what all of us talked about at the beginning of the game… but it’s a bit late and a dollar short. Plus, he largely agrees with everyone. But when this is 1/4th of your posts, I feel like it needs to be a little more focused on scum hunting. Really, this is a lean neutral for me… scum tend to focus on mechanics posts, but he came to the game late and I can’t begrudge him wanting to chime in.

His second post of the game, he discusses a ton more mechanics and throws a weak vote out for Pizza. Then, more mechanics.

Thirdly, we get more mechanics, and some light questioning of wevets and some discussion with others. Pizza, to be fair, I agree with him about your self-professed tell being useless to town, since we can’t possibly know how earnest you’re being about it.

For his fourth and final post so far, we get a vote for Texcat for an understandable if overstated reason. I personally wouldn’t toss a vote out for that, because TexCat is largely right… the moderator has implied a mass claim of clues could hurt town to some degree, and it’s likely it would hurt town quite a bit more than it hurts scum. Regardless, I can’t assign too much scummyness for a vote I don’t agree with.

But… like with LightFoot, what bothers me is what isn’t said. In catching up, Pleonast was quick to offer his comments about any mechanics discussion was happening, regardless of how much conversation had already taken place. What he doesn’t do is comment on the cases of each day, and that’s a huge gaping hole in his play. We have no idea what he thinks of me or the cases on me, or what he thinks about Septimus or the cases on Septimus, and so on. That’s literally the most important thing he needs to be catching up on, and it’s what he chose to skip.

And I find that scummy.

I’m going to break my “no multivote going into the final day of the Day” rule (it lasted so long! Almost a whole Day!) and cast a vote for him while leaving my vote for LightFoot. Upon reflection, I remembered that we have a tendency to immediately forget the suspicions of those who die, and if I’m lynched I want you to remember that I find LightFoot scummy.

Vote Pleonast.

are you voting everyone who have few posts? if not, why pick on Pleonast? he did say he would be away.

[Askthepizzaguy]

@DaphneBlack

I may live to regret this, but I don’t know how great my chances are of living anyway, so I will say… I just typed out a long thing about how I still thought we should lynch Dizzy over Pleo but now I am second-guessing myself. I find Pleo so difficult for me to interact with it clouds my judgement. But nothing I have seen has disconcerted me more than usual with Pleo.

I will do this:
unvote Astral Rejection – onto the “makes me go hmm” pile with septimus

No, I am going to stick with my original gut. I think Dizzy is scum. The “slip” convo with Texcat is very “aha! I can use this”. And I can’t see the forgetting of her own clue as anything other than a big red flag. The low number of posts isn’t really a thing, but there is a lot that Dizzy apparently doesn’t want to comment on. I don’t like her early discussion about random votes – feels very paint-by-numbers. Tone tone tone. Argh, I wish I could be more confident and point out that the mud on her shoes is only found in greenhouses owned by Moriarty or something but alas, I can’t.

Vote for Dizzy!

Your wish, madame Sherlock, is my command.

Unvote all
(Might as well)

Vote Dizzymrslizzy

[Silver_Jan]

@storyteller0910

5. With one or two modest exceptions, every player - Town and Scum - has been given a single clue about the game setup, the roles, or the characters. More than half of these clues are 100% accurate; some proportion of them that is >0% and <50% are false. False clues have been given only to Town-aligned players. I will state for the record that I have by various means attempted to ensure that public reveal of certain clues or other information may not always benefit the side of the player given the clue.

This is right there in the rules, which I forgot about when I thought that **Texcat had slipped. It tells us that Scum have a clue to start with, then Dizzy **posted her clue which says that scum have cover roles and clues so when **Texcat **said that scum have double clues it really did look like a slip and still could be but I think she was taking Dizzy’s clue into account. For Dizzy to forget her own clue…well I think that definitely points to scum.

[Askthepizzaguy]

I am kinda sorta remembering that **DaphneBlack **is…
**Val Salva **from giraffe?

[DaphneBlack]

I’m sorry Pleo, I don’t mean to be rude. I think I just respond badly to your extremely unemotional style. The “logical” angle can be very useful, but it doesn’t always work for me, and I guess I perceive you as always thinking that there is one optimal way to do things. If that’s not so, then that’s my fault not yours.

Saying “I always want to lynch Pleo”, I’m referring to games I have read unspoiled. I’m not sure we’ve played together before. I always think you are scummy! I think it is a tone thing again. I’m more, especially early in the game, about tone and poking and prodding. Your tone comes across as deliberately opaque or “robotic” (as you say you do not intend). For example, I sincerely applaud your use of gender-neutral “they”, a perfectly ancient English usage, but it can get in the way of understanding when someone has a clearly gendered name or identity, I think.

It’s late and I’ve got to go to sleep. I hope I’ve not buggered this whole thing up for town single-handedly. I think we are actually at a tie right now. I will do what I can to make sure we don’t end that way tomorrow morning, if possible.

[DaphneBlack]

I am… DaphneBlack from Giraffe.

On Idle’s board, I have played as episodeofblonde.

[Darth_Sensitive]

My thoughts:

Pleonast went from no votes to many votes very quickly. 3 of the 6 are LtL/prod votes. Mine is for the double clue situation. Pizza’s post of “Oh, I can definitely get behind this lynch.” comes without any reasoning, then is followed up in 457 by asking for help in killing the pleonast-y. Major red flag there. Though he then makes a good set up for the vote when asked by DB - he’s now contributing, but being uncontroversial. Astral made a good case with his vote that expands on this - plenty of mechanics discussion, little contribution.

The case against **Astral ** (5 votes) is that he was using weak reasoning and bandwagoning early. It seems to me that he made a good case against pleo, and his argument to vote other frontrunner dizzy isn’t bad either. But it goes back to those early votes that accused him of bandwagoning - it looks like he is working to save himself here (and he did say as much), which is either poor (selfish) town play or the equivalent of soft claiming a power role. Or he’s scum. The first of those three seems more likely (because I know I can fall into that trap myself at times) at the moment.

Three of the five votes on TexCat are because of her voting people for clues coming out (especially the double clue), one for aggressiveness, and the 5th for a slip according to DML that I absolutely do not see. No way I’m putting a vote here toDay.

Dizzymrslizzy has five votes once TexCat fixes hers. She’s been quiet and unwilling to weigh in on things. Her only vote on one of the leaders is frankly nonsensical. The slip is only a slip if texcat didn’t have the information provided by dms! She is following Silver Jan here and ignoring her own info. Not a good look.

Askthepizza guy has four votes. Two for the not as random as he originally said random vote on me from pleo and sinjin. One for agressive/confusing play (?) for chronos, and one for forgetting the no night thing from stickler. I don’t like any of these votes on pizza, to be honest. I do think he is being a bit too deferent to daphneblack, our unconfirmed Sherlock, because I know people were suggested that a real Sherlock not counterclaim at this point.
Vote dizzymrslizzy - for bandwagoning at texcat and ignoring your own clue
Vote askthepizzaguy - for encouraging a bandwagon that had 3 prod votes without making a case for why it was good when you voted

I like my vote on pleo, I like astral’s vote on pleo, I think pizza’s vote on pleo is fine and would have been better if he had had his reasoning there instead of after he asked for bandwagoning. I do not like that our lynch leader had three prod votes on him. Chronos, LightFoot, Mahaloth - if your votes were just prods, take them off, if there was more too them than that, elaborate. If the cases since made make sense, vote him with vigor.

Night all - I’m off too bed way too late. I will try to post before work tomorrow (the dope is blocked at work), or possibly on my phone if I get a chance (unlikely)

[septimus]

Thank you, Darth Sensitive, for quoting the Lynch votes. That looks like a lot of work.

Among the leaders, I’d most like to Lynch Lizzy, and least like to Lynch Pleonast. Pleo’s RL delayed participation and led to a certain catch-up style. At least wait until he’s caught up.

I don’t fully understand the case against Astral, but my own case against Texcat is also weakish. I’ll have time to reconsider before deadline but for now, Astral vs Texcat seems a toss-up. I’m tempted to unvote Texcat, but that just pushes Pleo toward Lynch.

And it’s possible Mr. Rejection just slipped:

@Astral_Rejection

Those, uh, [s] tags should be [del] tags.

The Scum are probably communicating over at Proboards which uses different tags, including [s].

Vote Astral Rejection

[Askthepizzaguy]

@DaphneBlack

I am… DaphneBlack from Giraffe.

On Idle’s board, I have played as episodeofblonde.

Okay, apparently keeping track of people’s alternate names is not my forte.

I just remember that no matter how much he kicks and screams, septimus will always be septimus. That’s what I do remember.

[Darth_Sensitive]

@Askthepizzaguy

Unvote pleonast

And with that move, I’m sure that I now appear to be a total flake, and look forward to being lynched as a result. I doubt there are many players who are going to grok my thought process, so I’m not even going to bother explaining it.

Please try?

I’m really not getting your bandwagon whipping up then dialing back.

[Darth_Sensitive]

@septimus

Thank you, Darth Sensitive, for quoting the Lynch votes. That looks like a lot of work.

Yep. Not doing it again unless the sun is still up when I start.

[Askthepizzaguy]

@Darth_Sensitive

Vote askthepizzaguy - for encouraging a bandwagon that had 3 prod votes without making a case for why it was good when you voted

Ha! Too slow!

I already moved on from that. You’re still thinking about the Askthepizzaguy from like, a whole *hour *ago. Stop living in the past, maaaan.

I’m really not getting your bandwagon whipping up then dialing back.

I couldn’t follow how he was scum hunting before. Made no sense and appeared to be completely fake.

Now I get it, but the issue is that he’s not even really reading the people he’s making cases on. Not for understanding. He’s too busy catching up to make a serious crack at the game.

The timing of all the events unfolding also played a factor for me. What felt genuine about him was how oblivious he seemed to the events that took place in the pages that he hadn’t read yet.

That plus his explanation for his vote on me both rang true. Not accurate in finding scums, but rang true anyway.

When I see something townie from someone that overrides vague scum feelings. I’ll backtrack and reverse course on a dime. Sure, it makes me look like I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, but that should already be apparent.

(I do not do well on day one)