Great. What the hell am I supposed to do about that?
Oh no. We are so screwed 
Counterclaiming would be useless anyway, right, since the number of people with each role is a secret?
You know what? You’re pretty clever.
Folks, I don’t know what you’re going to wind up doing with me, but there’s not much left for me to say in my own defense. I will continue to advocate against my own lynching, but in that regard my points are going to get repetitive and do nothing to help the Town once I’m dead.
So with that in mind - when my role is confirmed by whatever means, please look at One and Only Wanderers. In particular, look at how he’s played the last real-life hour or two.
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I made a half-way role claim. I wanted to avoid exactly the situation I now find myself in - at the mercy of whatever power roles do or don’t exist in this set-up.
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Wanderers responds:
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I allowed myself to be baited. I regret doing so, but re-reading the exchange it’s pretty clear that’s what I did. I got frustrated, based on the above post which is pretty obviously baiting me to reveal more fully, and claimed. Now again, my reasons for not claiming fully were to prevent the present situation.
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Then, the minute I claim, Wanderers has this to say:
So, in other words, damning me for being in the exact pickle that he baited me to put myself in.
And then finally:
So when there is no counter claim - and there won’t be - Wanderers can refuse to count that as a point in my favor, too.
I guess getting an investigative role lynched on Day One would be a pretty impressive coup, Wanderers, but I’m sure as shit going to call you on it.
I think we have to do what is generally done in these cases, i.e. let storyteller live, and take everything he says with a mountain of salt. Unless someone else comes charging in saying “I’m the real detective” (at which point we’d want to lynch one of the two), I can’t think of a reason to rush **story’s **lynch. For all we know, there is no Alchemist and he will be able to investigate, and we can test him. Or the Wolves will kill him. In any case, it seems clear to me that he should live for now.
And it also seems clear that, if he’s telling the truth, it’s a major blow :mad:
You’re missing the subtle point here. The point of the mind games isn’t “this is what is definitely going to happen” it’s “here’s something you all now have to look out for because it could happen”. Bottom line, it’s to Dracula’s advantage, and ours, if the scum are afraid to out him by fear of being counter-claimed because it makes it so that they have to choose between killing him themselves or trading their own.
That incentive doesn’t apply to town, his threat to counter whoever claims doesn’t hurt a townie because he’ll be dead, the townie will be a townie again and, even if he’s lynched, he still wins with town. Now, of course there ARE people who decide it’s better for scum to win with town if they’re PFK, but really, if he’s lost he’s lost, so what’s important is to maximize his chances while he’s alive and Dracula maximizes his chances by threatening the scum, then it’s just up to the scum as to whether they think he’ll actually follow through and, of course, it’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t, because I imagine he’d be pissed that they got him lynched, right?
Actually - if there is an Alchemist, then I am now Vanilla. The Wolves would have no reason to do other than to block me for all eternity and go hunting for the Doc.
In such a case - if I am blocked toNight - you can clear up a few things by lynching me toMorrow. I’ll be dead, and you’ll have burned a mislynch, but you’ll then know for sure that there is an Alchemist, and you won’t have to worry about trusting what I’ve said so far.
If I am not blocked toNight, then it is very likely that there is no Alchemist. At that point, the fun and excitement we’re experiencing right now will likely be reprised, but that’s as will be.
If I die toNight, well, that’ll solve that (it’ll also likely mean that there is no Alchemist, because there’s no reason for the Wolves to kill me if they can block me).
Maybe it’s just me, but I only really caught that post as a “slip” because it had already been called out, otherwise, it really just doesn’t strike me as much. In general, I see slips, particularly ones like that as a null tell. To me, it seems just as likely that he’d make that kind of mistake as town as he would as scum so, even though he’s currently the person on whom I have my vote, I just don’t see that as anything other than a null tell.
It was a perfectly solid answer (except I did forget to mention that I think there are three to five scum. I thought it was understood) and you’re right, it told you nothing. I was asked for an opinion on a player about which I had no opinion. If there are 3-5 scum and 17 players, then every player at the start of the game has an 18-29% chance of being scum. Since the “I think there is no scout” business was a complete null tell to me, that was where my opinion remained. Is that clear enough?
Now this is a reason for keeping you around. Either way we get some info tomorrow.
either story IS a cop and gets an inv - we get info
he is a cop and gets no inv, we lynch him and know for sure there is a RB
he’s lying claims was blocked we lynch him bye bye scum
he’s lying, sets up a mislynch we get him the day after
hes lying says someone is town (could be real town or scum)#
The last option l;eaves us in WOFOM land, the first 3 give info
unvote storyteller
Okay, I probably said it too cumbersome. Her statement only potentially stinks of extra information if we’re in a situation with 5 wolves. However, I think it’s also intuitive to surmise that a 5 wolf scenario is a low probability scenario; that is, I’d imagine most of us would have guessed 4 scum, since it’s close to both the square root and the 25% rules for scum total. IOW, the probability that she has this extra information is no larger than the probability that we’re in a 5 wolf game, and even then, you’re still only guessing that it’s actually her having that information. Meanwhile, if she’s town, without knowing anything about the role distribution, it’s very likely that she could see such a role as over-powered. IOW, there’s a reasonable amount of pro-town motivation for her stating her opinion, but there’s only possibility that it stinks of perfect information in a small subset of games. How this balances out, I can’t say exactly, but I’d say it’s unlikely the the former outweighs the latter, hence my classification as a null tell.
I found your classification of it odd because you ONLY analyzed what it meant if she actually had knowledge of 5 scum. You didn’t analyze what it meant if there’s only 4 and you didn’t do any motivational analysis. This seems very OOC for you to pick such a minor point and drill it; that’s normally my shtick.
Ah, well. It wouldn’t be Mafia without one of us going after the other.
[/QUOTE]
Indeed. 
I find it vaguely funny that here I find myself in a similar situation to last game. Late in the day, at work, and a detective claim under pressure in front of me. Thankfully it isn’t 10 minutes before the end of Day this time. I hope I’m not repeating my Mad mistake, but I’m going to buy it for now at least.
Unvote storyteller
That being done, my first instinct is to put my vote back where it was, on CIAS. However, seeing OAOW’s actions and comments since the role claim give me pause. I have to mull this over a bit more before I revote.
<OutOfGame>
This is quite interesting. It’s something that gets mentioned a lot but I don’t think anyone has really looked into it.
I’ll disagree with you for the moment, but I would be interested in picking this up after the game has finished and looking at a few other game starts and see how they match up.
Save this one for post game discussion or possibly a seperate thread on Mafia Strategies.
</OutOfGame>
I don’t understand the timing of this post. Why bring this up now?
Cat over here.
Bag over there.
Bah… I probably would have still unvoted when you clarified that you had a claimable role, realizing the danger of the predicament. I will also say that I agree that the baiting by OAOW is fairly scummy if/when storyteller turns out to be anything other than wolf.
Unvote storyteller
That all said, the claim is pretty much exactly what I’d expect from a scummy storyteller as well, but the risk just isn’t worth it. If he’s lying, he’ll be caught eventually.
I was still in the process of catching up when I made that post, I had seen that storyteller made a vague claim, upon which I called him, but I had not seen anything beyond that. What I wanted was a confirmation on whether or not he actually had a claimable role, but I didn’t want to see what happened.
That said, I AM finally caught up.
Well, I really don’t like OAOW’s actions, including the unvote; my sense is that a Townie who sincerely believed storyteller was a Wolf would leave the vote where it was.
Vote One and Only Wanderers
so what you’re saying is I’m scummy for pressing him, but you also think his claim would make a good scum fake claim?
FOS Blaster Master
Fretful, I think you make a valid point, and I find OAOW suspicious, even somewhat before storyteller’s claim, and you may be right. However, even if he doesn’t believe him, you’re not acknowledging that there IS an inherent risk. Say he’s 90% sure storyteller is lying, the risk of that 10% is not just a mislynch but a mislynch of our most valuable role. That’s a HUGE risk and taking it is so anti-town, I can’t see any reason anyone would do it. Hence, regardless of his certainty that he’s lying, I can’t see an unvote as anything other than a null tell.
Huh?
What I said was it’s exactly what I’d expect him to say if he’s lying. IOW, there’s no way, based upon his claim, to discern whether he’s telling the truth or lying. Hence, the risk is too serious.
Now, seeing that I JUST made the point about why you unvoted him and this obviously wasn’t your logic since you’re FOSing me for it, I can’t see any other motivation for your behavior besides scum, so…
Vote One And Only Wanderers
Folks -
I am leaving work in fifteen minutes; I may check the game when I stumble in from rehearsal tonight but chances are that will be after midnight and I will not be in any kind of intellectually useful condition. Tomorrow I am not permitted near any electronic devices of any kind all day, and will have rehearsal again tomorrow night.
This will probably be my last post until Thursday morning.
I am left with a choice: leave my vote where it is, or switch it to Wanderers. My own experience over the last few hours has provided an object lesson in seizing on a single statement - no matter how evidently revealing - as a definitive scum tell, so I’m inclined to back off Fretful for the moment. Wanderers, on the other hand, engaged in a series of behaviors that were individually and collectively scummy.
So it’s really not much of a choice at all.
unvote Fretful Porpentine
vote One and Only Wanderers