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.