Mafia: Evil Dead - DAY/NIGHT FIVE

[Trepa_Mayfield]

On looking:

First thing I noticed was how little he said at first. Despite about 16 posts before it, his first statement that has any real meat is this:

@MHaye

Finally caught up with posts, so it’s time to vote. Hopefully the board won’t crash now.

At the end of last Night, I didn’t have much in the way of suspicion. The things that had pinged me on Day 1 had been cleared up, or I’d settled in my own mind that the case was a mistake – and now Thing Fish is dead, I had to start anew Today.

The first big thing to catch my eye was Dotchan’s vote in post [post=10621193]16[/post]. My impression was that it was a simple slip, and she’d switched Hockey Monkey (who did “me too” vote, and has never denied doing that) and DarkCookies. When this was pointed out, she unvoted; however, she did not immediately vote HM, who was the actual “me too” voter. Why not?

Maybe Dot was just not suspicious of HM, or maybe she didn’t want to throw suspicion on HM. I could fall either way.

As for HM’s “me too” vote, this can be scummy, but is not necessarily scummy. Laziness, efficiency (the other player has said what you were thinking so much more clearly than you could) or lack of time could all be reasons for a “me too vote” applicable to either Town or Scum. HM’s reaction (being up front with what she did) makes it a null tell for me; she’s either got a clear conscience or she’s facing her accusers down. I’m not voting for her just for this.

I want to spend a little time thinking about Hawkeyeop. He’s had one or two theses in this game which have set my teeth on edge. The first one was floated last Night in post [post=10613667]D01.268[/post]. His suggestion that the quality of an argument helps determine whether the subject of the argument is scum is wrong. What it does help is in determining whether that subject gets lynched. It does not change the actual alignment of the subject at all. Mind you, if the subject is lynched, that reveals the alignment. Usually. Some games (see Pleonast’s Conspiracy games) obfuscate it for a while, though. However, that’s not a scumtell on its own. After all, Town can misstate things too.

Hawk’s next thesis was in post [post=10624324]D02.037[/post]. My problem with it is that the standard position on votes (especially early-day votes like this) is that you should vote for who you think is most scummy. A vote for someone other than Macey yesterday, by any Townie, simply says “I think this person is scummier than Macey.” Any scum caught voting for someone other than Macey is in fact voting against a Macey lynch, but townspeople so voting are not. So the thesis is flawed.

Now I know, from assisting Hawk with the last game, that he’s developing some radical theories about Mafia, and I want to discuss some of them; but doing it now will mean I don’t get a vote in. Also, I keep telling myself that floating ideas that provoke discussion is not necessarily a scum tell. It could be done to generate data or to obfuscate patterns that might be emerging to a scum eye. I think this qualifies for a note that Hawkeyeop needs to be watched for a while.

Now I come to Peekercpa’s posts ([post=10628561]D02.099[/post] and [post=10628575]100[/post]). Here Peeker reveals (if he is telling the truth) that he’s playing some sort of game within a game. The thing is, what? It appears to be a claim that he killed Bufftabby. So he has a killing role. But (a) why did he strike Buff (who didn’t have much (if any) evidence pointing at her, at least as far as I recall) and (b) what is the purpose of his game?

Now here I have to say that this is a bit reminiscent of the Marvel Mutants game set on Skrull Planet (see here.) In this game, Peeker made a Day 1 claim of Miller – that is, a Town-aligned player who investigates as scum. Despite the inherent impossibility of distinguishing his true alignment with conventional investigators (and the person who did claim to do so was a lying scum), he wasn’t Nightkilled to test his claim. He had just enough of a downside to kill him to make us decide against lynching him, day after day, until finally we got some evidence to reveal the truth.

Maybe he’s trying that gambit again? This time planning to claim vig, and manipulating us into not voting him, when he is in fact an SK? I can’t see that he’s scum, but I strongly suspect SK.

In the absence of a strong pointer to scum, an SK will do.

Vote Peekercpa.

From day 2, where he makes a very safe vote, among other things. Lots of equivocating, something that stays true throughout.
Next substance is halfway through day 3.

@MHaye

That went faster than I anticipated.

Most of the action since the fall of Night 2 has centred around the two claims of Detective type rolesThat makes three. players known or claiming to be a Detective. I could see Town getting three detectives working in different ways and each of which gets different information. That doesn’t mean that I believe all three (yet); I’m maintaining a healthy scepticism on both the claimed detectives, looking for ways we can test their claims and inconsistency between the results.

NAF’s claim.
NAF either has the powers he claims, or doesn’t. If he doesn’t, given the way he’s approached it he’d be a deadite. Suppose (for the purpose of this argument) that he does not have the powers. Then he’s not Town, because he’s lying, and even if you think that’s reasonable for a Townsperson NAF could horribly mislead us. If he’s PFK then every time he “tests” a statement saying “I am town aligned” or similar, he risks calling a Townsperson a nonTown. The likely followup to such an accusation is the death of the accused, and he immediately stands exposed as a liar, gets lynched and loses. No, if he is false claiming the powers, he pretty much has to be a deadite.

If NAF has the powers he claims, he’s on a lot safer ground, whatever his alignment. He really is testing one statement per Night, and really gets some results back. By cherry-picking the statement he tests, he can pursue his own agenda.[ol][li]A townie NAF wants to build a Masonry, or failing that find liars to get lynched.[/li][li]A deadite NAF probably wants to build a pool of players he says is Town, and most of whom would be; however, he’d also be aiming to conceal a bad apple in the bunch. For an example of this sort of scum play (from another direction) see Pedescribe’s game and particularly the hunt for the recruited player.[/li][li]A PFK NAF would be using these powers to pursue his win condition. We could speculate endlessly and fruitlessly on what that wincon is. (A variant on Hal’s Riddler wincon where he has to correctly list all the players and alignments to win; possibly with a deadline of so many Days or so many living players, might work.) However, it’s still a poor fit for a PFK to claim in this way, especially when NAF was under no real pressure when he claimed.[/ol]If you ask me whether NAF does have the claimed powers I’d say yes; the gambit makes little sense if he doesn’t. That’s supported by the quoted PM, which has the Storyteller feel.[/li]
If you ask what his alignment is, I’d say he’s more likely to be Town than deadite, and much more likely to be deadite than PFK.

Chucara’s reactions to NAF’s claim.

Chucara seems (from where I sit) to have done his best to obfuscate his alignment by providing so many statements that can be tested. His behaviour in (for example) claiming both Alpha Redshirt and Beta Redshirt is a prime example – if NAF picks (say) the latter statement and gets a “false,” then Chucara can simply claim to be the other, and discerning the truth of that will take another investigation, thus wasting time. This gives the appearance of wanting to appear helpful while actually trying to dodge a bullet.

Surely, the most pro-Town way to deal with the problem of not wanting to reveal Alpha/Beta status is to claim vanilla Town but refuse to reveal what is status is.

Chucara clearly isn’t a Town power role. He pushed hard for an alpha/beta claim (see particularly [post=10609414]post D01.221[/post])). This idea was filled with several questionable assumptions (to say the least), one of which was that Town power roles had Alpha/Beta status, something he’d have known was false if he had been a Town power role (at least, Pedescribe so testifies, and Pedescribe is very possibly in a position to know). This does, however, show Chucara has a significant concern with Alpha/Beta status, and I cannot see why unless it has something to do with his role; and if it does, he’s not vanilla. Thus, he’s probably not Town at all, and that’s good enough for a vote.

Vote Chucara

Diggit’s claim.
Diggit’s claim is interesting. The flavour of the role, a medium investigator, is a good fit to this game where dead people don’t die, and indeed some can still post strategy. (We can trust Hawkeyeop’s motivation, even though we know he has access to only the basic level – his own role plus what he learned here).

Diggit has been deliberately sparse with supporting details, in particular whether he can actually question a dead player more than once, and whether he is restricted in who he can ask (for example, can he question someone who’s alignment differs from his own, and if he does how does he know the spirit won’t lie?)

I have to say that this doesn’t feel like the sort of role you’d give a deadite; they probably just want the dead to shut up and not reveal their secrets from beyond the grave. It’s actually a better fit for the Riddler-type PFK role that’s been mentioned above. Like NAF’s claim, this claim makes no sense if Diggit doesn’t really have the claimed powers.

Overall, I’d say Diggit is most likely to be Town, with a possibility of being a PFK; however the chances of him being a deadite are vanishingly small.

Time to go blow stuff up. This may be the close of the Red Hand, after which it’s switch DM time.

See you after Nigthfall.

He concludes NAF is town, because if he wasn’t, it would be high risk, low reward. Again, a safe argument. He also concludes Chucara is PFK for the same reason I did: his obsession with the AlphaBeta. Fair enough. One thing sticks out, though–he [MHaye] says that he [chuc] was trying to ‘obfuscate’ NAF by posting multiple statements. Except NAF’s power only works when he has statements to work with. The more statements provided, the more NAF can do. And since he’d have almost certainly told us which statement he investigated, chuc’s idea would have only helped. Also says Diggit’s probably not a deadite.
Next, explains self in night three here:

@MHaye

What can I say? I was due out by about 35 minutes before that post was submitted. I missed stuff out.

I don’t think that Chucara’s expressed willingness to run a 50-50 risk of death for some benefits (I assume you meant “net benefit” rather than “not benefit?”) swayed me very much, primarily because of of post [post=10644957]D03.065[/post].

That post gave me the impression (at the time) that Chucara was out to confuse you. I thought I’d made that clear in my post here :(Emphasis added.)

I took the claim of being willing to sacrifice himself as flim-flammery, more than offset by the smokescreen he seemed to me to be throwing up. In retrospect I should certainly have discussed it, because it is a pointer that runs counter to my belief. However, I don’t believe (now) that it would have changed my mind at the time.

While on the subject of current versus contemporary knowledge, something occurred to me last night. Thing Fish could have investigated Bufftabby. She was still alive when his investigation was submitted, and was a scum. Whether Buff counted as someone TF interacted with is something I aim to look into this evening. Ah, the marvels of thread searching in this new vBulletin.

(Macey, otoh, was dead when TF submitted his investigation, so we can safely leave him off the lists.)

I don’t know what would happen if the investigated player wasn’t on one of the lists. It would actually make all the questions as written unanswerable, which means you’d waste a Night’s investigation. Of course, the fact that the questions didn’t get answered would be an answer (of a kind) in itself.

Not much here, except to point out that buff could have been investigated by TF. Again, helpful; again, safe.
Next post here:

Even less substance than usual. Claims to have a good reason for lurking; based more on metagaming than in-gaming, or perhaps RL–just like Blaster Master.

Part 2 in a bit.