You’re right. It will. Barring that is the case. (and heck, maybe if it ISN’T the case like what happened with you and fluiddruid. I’m just going to take my chances though.
Snipped some.
I like how you put it that way. How I’m DETERMINED not to listen and making it seem like you’re putting forth this great reasoning that you don’t see how I could not pay attention to it.
This is, yet again, what I don’t get.
Listen, all I’m doing is voting and getting suspicions on people based on my observations and reasoning from what has transpired, so far, in the game. How is that weird or determined not to listen? The case seems to be, right now, that you’re going: “One person voted for me based on perfectly possible reasons. However let me try to telling all I can to get him to unvote me and then, when he sticks to his guns, accuse him of being determined to be “wrong””.
You’re saying I’m not listening to anything you’re saying. I say that I am and have understood everything so far…but still think it’s extremely plausible that it was a set up. Well hey! If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. I admit fully that I could be wrong. However, I don’t FEEL or THINK I’m wrong and have also explained to you all the reasons why I think this. So what are we left with? Nothing. No harm, no foul. You’re in no danger of being lynched and think of it THIS way…if you really ARE town, then chances are everyone scummy will gang up on you and help me lynch you, just so it will look bad for me the next day. THAT certainly seems plausible, doesn’t it?
Only guess what? I don’t think that’s going to happen.
Ok, my low-post-count investigation is done, and I’ve found an intrinsic flaw in my theory – “flying under the radar” is a very subjective concept. I’d previously said that I had little read on tirial, yet even though Rachm Qoch has the lowest in-thread post count of any living player, I know exactly where he stands on my radar.
I suppose some of this comes from recognizing names pre-Mafia. I had never noticed tirial before this game, but I was very much aware of Rachm “Reaper” Qoch.
Anyway, even though “flying under the radar” is subjective, post counts are not (well, maybe they are a little…some players prefer to put five points into five short posts, while others would put those same five points into one long post…but I digress). So, I’m taking a look at those with the lowest post counts as of 5:00pm EST, 5/15/07:
Rachm Qoch 39
Hal Briston 47
nesta 49
Lightnin’ 60
Millit the Frail 60
ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies 60
One thing I’ve figured out through this – my theory was crap. Pretty much useless. I gleaned very little from this, and as (I think) tirial pointed out awhile back, the lack of posting makes finding the nuggets more difficult. But, here’s what I managed to scrape up, in order by post count:
Rachm Qoch – My take: Not Scum. He puts quite a bit of analysis into this post in response to Idle Thoughts’ post about the events of Night Three. If Rachm isn’t town, then putting this much work into appearing to be town is a magnificent bluff.
Hal Briston – My take: Definitely Not Scum. Gadarene told me so. 
nesta – My take: Undecided, leaning towards Not Scum. I didn’t find anything terribly convincing either way. However, I did find an interesting post about the next player on our block…
Lightnin’ – My take: Prossibly scum. The reasons for such have been bandied about for quite awhile now, and to be honest, it was looking like a bit of a railroading to me. However, reading back through older posts with fresh eyes brings interesting things to light. nesta’s Post #475, for example (Johnny Dangerously quotes excepted).
Millit the Frail – My take: Undecided, leaning ever so slightly towards Not Scum. This would probably be a flat-out undecided if he didn’t push pretty hard for lynching fluiddruid. Beyond that, I didn’t come across much that hasn’t been heavily covered elsewhere.
ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies – My take: Damnation, do I ever want to say Scum. Maybe it’s posting style, hell, maybe it’s just username, but DarkSideCookies has lit up my scumdar for days now. Trouble is, I can’t find a shred of anything to back that up. It seems to be a common problem of mine. I’ll say this much – I will absolutely, 100% guarantee that of DarkSideCookies, SnakesCatLady and CaerieD, we’ve got at least one Mafia member in there. Ok…99% guarantee. But I’m pretty damn sure of it anyway. Just wish I could back it up with more than the bits others have already posted.
Ok, I started this post (in Notepad, obviously) over 24 hours ago. Time to toss it on the board and see what shakes out of it.
Hmmm…did I just invent a new word? If I’m not mistaken, that started out as “Probably”, but I attempted to change it to “Possibly”.
To be honest, “Prossibly” fits the bill better than either of those others, though.
I realized about halfway through composing this that it’s anything but concise – sorry about that. I looked through Hal Briston’s posts last night, making some notes on ones I wanted to mention, but it got late so I’ve been writing it all day when I had a few free minutes during work.
First, I need to revise my suspicion list I posted (in-game) yesterday. After a quick review I’m slightly less suspicious of Lemur866 and Blaster Master. This leaves CaerieD and DiggitCamara. Reading back through the thread I’m reminded of why I’ve been suspicious of Lightnin’, so he deserves a mention for the obvious reasons.
A number of people today have mentioned suspicions of Hal Briston. He’s been flying mostly under my radar, as I think he has for the whole town, so I reviewed his posts to form some type of opinion about him. There wasn’t a lot there, but I don’t really like what little there was.
First, I’d like to remind everyone of his over-anxious vanilla townie claim in post 190:
This was in his first in-game post. He was called out back in Day 1 for this, so I won’t harp on it, but I still find this a little odd.
In post 196 he votes for NAF1138, citing Kyrie Eleison calling NAF out for asking questions he already knew the answer to. I don’t like this early pile-on.
In post 210 Kyrie Eleison turn around and FOSes Hal Briston for his townie claim, saying:
In post 383 he says:
A few interesting points here. He’s casting suspicion on NAF and percypercy, two confirmed townies that both wind up dead by next morning. Also notice dnooman, who he says is pinging heavily townie. Keep that in mind as he switches to helping to get dnooman lynched the next day.
In post 389 he posts this in reply to Idle Thoughts making a case against fluiddruid due to non-random role assignments:
ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies questions this in post 426:
He answers this in post 429:
This post seems a little over-defensive to me. I didn’t think ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies’s gut feeling that neither Hal Briston or Idle Thoughts would legitimately be pondering this issue. Later Idle Thoughts says that in games he runs roles aren’t assigned randomly, but Hal Briston’s reaction seemed over the top.
In post 491 he decides that since Lightnin’ is a big target, Hal doesn’t like having his vote in the same place as Lightnin’ because if Lightnin’ is lynched, and turns out to be scum, he’s worried about guilt by association. In this post he unvotes NAF and votes ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies, citing post 429 (quoted above) as his reason. I encourage everyone to go read this post, as it is one of his that seems a little off to me.
In post 598 he replies to my saying we need to take a serious look at who derailed the Projammer wagon. He says:
This was the first suspicion cast on dnooman during Day 2, and he wound up being lynched. Hal continues to push for a dnooman lynching throughout the day. In post 655 he says two of dnooman’s posts were screaming out to him:
And in post 746 he votes for dnooman:
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This was the vote that tied up dnooman and Projammer on day two, for what it’s worth. I noticed something interesting when checking the vote count. The four people voting for dnooman at that point are pretty much my suspicion list: Lightin’, DiggitCamara, CaerieD, Hal Briston. I’m not sure what to make of that.
In post 826 he says:
I include this one for completeness. If Hal is scum, this could be him trying to sit firmly on the fence so as to not look so bad when a townie is lynched.
During Day 3, after Kyrie had been killed and a lot of suspicion thrown towards fluiddruid, Hal posts his suspicion list in post 931:
Now, he does put fluiddruid second on the list, but Projammer before her. At this point I think the vote count was 3 votes fluiddruid (it was 4 until Blaster Master unvoted), and none for anyone else. If Hal is scum, he could be trying to derail the fluiddruid bandwagon here, but also put her at the top of the list as a cover in case it didn’t work.
In post 1024 he votes for Projammer, making the vote count fluiddruid 5, Projammer 3 (including Hal):
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As I’m sure we all remember, the votes swung, and Projammer died instead of fluiddruid.
At the beginning of Day 4 he says in post 1150 that he wants to vote to lynch fluiddruid, but hedges a little:
In post 1160 he responds to DiggitCamara’s concern about a mason recruitment, saying that masons’ primary loyalty stays with the masons even if recruited:
This post surprised me, because I hadn’t remembered that rule. I thought maybe scum would be well aware of this since they would be paying careful attention to the recruitment rules.
In post 1340 he votes for fluiddruid, but this is fairly late in the day when her fate was all but sealed. I’m not going to quote that post, but I encourage everyone to re-read it.
The last post I’m going to point out, because the rest are all recent enough that everyone probably remembers them, is post 1413, where he asks for a rules clarification on whether the Mafia were told who each other were during Day 1:
This was asked and answered during Day 1 (I think I was the one who asked, but I’m not sure). It’s not an unreasonable question, but this late in the game it pinged my scumdar.
I was hoping to find a smoking gun in his posts, but I didn’t. His posting record is bad, but so are many of the rest of ours. He hasn’t posted much, and has been flying under the radar, but the same could be said of me and a few others. The biggest point in his favor has been his votes and FOSes for fluiddruid, but he did so in a way that it could have been out of necessity, since he didn’t add much suspicion until it seemed inevitable that she was going to get lynched. Many of his posts ping my scumdar, but not strongly enough for me to be 100% convinced.
So I don’t know about Hal Briston. His posts and history have earned him a solid FOS from me, but not enough to vote for him yet.
It’s been so quiet today! Do we need a town pep talk? I think we do.
We’re tired. We’re weary. We’ve abandoned the local bar and are instead hiding in our root cellars. Our eyes are burning from gazing our monitors. I mean, from…looking around stealthily at each other. And the darkness in those root cellars. (Yeah.) It’s time to rise up, and take charge again. There’s gonna be a lynchin’!
waves pitchfork
That’s the spirit!
I’m starting to fear that we’re going to have a last-minute vote rush. That’s never good. The scum have it easiest when things happen too quickly for us to keep track of things. Right now, we have a 2-2 tie between Lightnin’ and SnakesCatLady. I’m definitely sticking with Lightnin’ for now, though SCL is up there on my list. Could we possibly get some more votes in tonight, or early tomorrow, before the snot starts hitting the fan? Before we’re trying to hack our way through the darkness among a small but fast-acting group who know all of our allegiances?
As far as Hal and nesta, it’s good to hear from you both, though it’s only served to put both of you more firmly in my ??? category. I’m not sure I can buy the idea that asking questions about the game is a “scum acting clueless in order to hide” technique. But I was more than a little excited to see this:
That’s kind of crazy. I’m not sure I could see more than two Mafia being on that list. They couldn’t care that much about the “swing” from Projammer to dnooman. Plus, such an obvious voting bloc would be really foolish. I strongly doubt they’d be bold enough (on Day 2!) to be three (or four) of the first four voters on a bandwagon that lynched a townie.
Of nesta’s list, two are on my shortlist, one is impossible to get a read on, and the other is leaning town. If either Lightnin’ or CaerieD is town, well…I’m still not sold on Hal or Diggit being scum, but I’ll be taking them off the back-burner of my mind.
I don’t know about DiggitCamara, but I’m still just as curious about Lightnin’ as I was the last go-around. I can’t make up my mind if he’s mafia doing some kind of drunken-monkey kung-fu or if he’s just playing way out front as a townie. Same with CaeireD – she caught my interest coming down on both sides of fluiddruid. Looking at it now, she’s put herself in a damned-if-I-do damned-if-I-don’t situation, and I’m wondering to myself why a mafia would put herself in such a position, where she would attract suspicion from both sides. Is she a townie accidentally painting herself into a corner, or a clever mafia making a “townie mistake”? Or is she mafia but just screwed up, jumping off the pro-fluid wagon when she saw it was a lost cause?
I was fairly confident when I put my vote on fluiddruid; in comparison it’s kind of frustrating trying to make as solid a case against anyone else. It’s kind of funny now that I don’t see any particular individual as obvious scum, the whole damn town is looking kind of scummy, and I’m viewing virtually every post with suspicion.
The 2-2 tie is between Lightnin’ and CaerieD. I only have one vote at the moment.
Sorry. That’s what I meant. I’m feeling about the same toward you both, which is that you’re both “not as scummy-looking as Lightnin’.” So I got you confused. :smack:
At least my spreadsheet had the right answers…I just didn’t consult it.
I also agree that I’m worried about a last minute “rush to vote”. I do believe, however, that however the votes fall there will be some interesting discussions on Day 6.
Yeah, I thought the same thing. I had already revised my suspicion list and composed that part of my post before noticing this. It was a WTF moment when I saw they were all together like that on a day I figured the scum would be equally divided between the two confirmed townies or hanging back.
I knew my suspicion list had contradictions. I don’t have examples off the top of my head, but a few of them have been going after each other in ways I don’t expect scum to do. My suspicion list is really just the top of my list, and not a solid “I’m sure these are the remaining scum” list.
Can you re-parse that second sentence?
Ugh, sorry about that, it doesn’t really say anything does it. I know what I meant, but I obviously didn’t say it. I think I left out the end of the sentence.
I meant it to say that your gut feeling that Hal and Idle wouldn’t legitimately be pondering if role assignments were random was a valid gut feeling.
Or, to rephrase the actual sentence: “I didn’t think ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies’s gut feeling that neither Hal Briston or Idle Thoughts would legitimately be pondering this issue is absurd.”
I’m still undecided on this whole **Lightin’ ** vs CaerieD bit, but I just wanted to voice a slight observation; early on I mentioned that CaerieD was coming out of the gate much more confrontationally on day 1 than she’d ever behaved in the last game. A bunch of different people brought up the point that it’s often good for the detective to act conservatively and lay low, and I recall CaerieD confirming this by claiming that she’s ordinarily much more proactive. (I’m remembering this correctly, right? I’d appreciate it if Caerie or someone else point out her response to that affair, if my memories are off.)
Anyway, at the time this seemed like an extremely reasonable explanation, and I eased off. However, I do want to mention that as the game has continued, CaerieD has grown quieter and less confrontational… there could be a lot of reasonable explainations for this, but it seems a little odd that she would start out in a confrontational mood, explain that it was normal for her to play that way, and then suddenly abandon that approach a couple of days in.
Our only confirmed mobster, fluid, also made a lot of noise on day 1, probably in an effort to probe for power roles… so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wonder if CaerieD didn’t have a similiar objective.
FOS CaerieD
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I’d think that my reasons for being far less proactive and vocal recently would be obvious. I messed up big time on Day 3 and have pretty much guaranteed my own eventual lynching at this point by 1) having a poor voting history, 2) defending fluiddruid, and 3) voting for fluiddruid in the end. I’m still not sure how realizing I was wrong and casting a vote in that direction stamps me as scum, but it seems to be the reasoning SnakesCatLady is using (P1490) and there’s no arguing with the facts. I really did do those things. At this point, I feel like all I can do is make it worse.
Pretty much the only defense I have is that while I’ve made some huge missteps as a townie, I’d have to be some sort of raving lunatic to play like this as Mafia. Those interpreting my actions on previous days as trying to “lay low” or “disappear into the crowd” have really made me laugh. Everything I’ve done has drawn attention to me. I suppose you could say I’m scum with a bizarrely convoluted iocaine powder style strategy, but if I learned nothing else from Day 3 it’s that the more complicated you make your argument in this game the less likely you are to be right. I guess everyone else will have to make that mistake before they learn from it, though.
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SCL, the point about the voting history is that at that time no one, save scum and possibly Kyrie, knew for certain who they were voting for. The only way you’d know that you were voting for scum when you voted for fluiddruid is if you had insider information. Yes, in hindsight you hit the nail on the head, but that’s in hindsight. At the time of that post, you didn’t know unless you’re scum and were voting for your own kind, establishing a nice little “yay town!” record.
Now, I’ve got a little bit of insider information on all of this. I know I’m town and fluiddruid went out of her way to draw attention to my defense of her. It was her defense of herself on Day 3 that first gave me that sinking feeling in my stomach that maybe I’d been wrong all along. The vaguely “pro-town” role claim didn’t sit well with me, but more than that I didn’t like being called out in the defense as a defender. Town shouldn’t be trying to make alliances like that with one another, since it can come back to bite you if it turns out the other person is scum. And yet fluiddruid did. I started doubting all of my defense for her at that point, but still wasn’t sure she was scum and it seemed like Projammer was such a more likely target.
And then there’s her defense on Day 4. Again, she specifically advocates me, mentioning that I’m an alternate target but it wouldn’t be a good idea to go after me instead. I wavered on it a bit after that, but ultimately decided her defenses were so clearly designed to cast suspicion on others that she had to be scum. So I voted for her and for some bizarre reason my ability to change my mind and admit when I’m wrong is being touted by SCL as an example of my scumminess. My initial defense of fluiddruid, sure, but how exactly would you expect town to act when they realize they’re wrong?
Since all I know for certain is the dead and my own role, looking at fluiddruid’s defense makes me think SnakesCatLady is probably scum. Lightnin’ is likely town. Like she did with me, fluiddruid made little advocacy comments for Lightnin’s sake:
There are several references to what a bad idea it is to keep going after the same targets. Obviously, she meant herself, but kept inserting Lightnin’ in there, too. Why? Likely to establish this same sort of “alliance” appearance as she’d done between her and me. The only player she really attacks in any of this is SnakesCatLady, who’s called out and who repeatedly voted against her. fluiddruid has left two nice targets for the townies while giving enough townie cred to SCL that she can get away with voting for a few townies at this point, after having gone after scum three days in a row.
I really hadn’t been sure about SCL at the beginning of this day and I don’t think my vote on Day 3 had the best reasoning behind it, but I’m getting more and more certain that she’s scum.
Vote SnakesCatLady
In the middle of that monstrous post, I forgot to respond to the rest of Omi no Kami’s post. I already wasted an hour this morning going back over the thread so I can’t do it now to find the posts in question, but I believe early on in this game I was called out for being too quiet, not too vocal. I had one of the lowest post counts at that time and then on Day 2 was when I started posting quite a bit and drawing more and more attention to myself and everything went to hell on Day 3. So while I have gotten more quiet today and my explanation for that still stands, as far as I’ve seen no one on past days accused me for being too proactive.
<slow clap>…oh nesta, that was goood. Ok, let’s play along for a bit:
<shrug> Newbie mistake. Yup…it was my first game post, and it seemed like something I should get out the way at the time. At that point, I had read the first few days of Werewolf, and hadn’t looked into the first Mafia thread at all. I figured it was a standard move (obviously, I now realize it’s not a good thing to do at all).
Yeah, that was me. I killed them. Both of them. They never saw it coming…got them both, completely on my own.
Oh, wait, no, I remember now – I clearly said in the quoted post that my suspicions against NAF were wavering, and I later unvoted him. I also clearly explained my suspicions against percypercy, and for them to influence anyone else’s vote, that person would have to have had the same opinion of DiggitCamara that I had.
Next up, one of my favorites – the DarkSideCookies “roles assignment question” bit.
1: I ask if roles are assigned randomly or not.
2: DSC decides that a first-time player asking that question is suspicious, since everyone knows roles are assigned randomly.
3: This raises a flag for me. No, I did not know they were assigned randomly. I figured they were, but didn’t know it for sure. Vindication comes when it comes out that while the roles were assigned randomly in this game, other GMs do not do random assignments. This should be the obvious end to the matter.
However, now nesta has addressed DarkSideCookies’s suspicions:
So, my wondering if role assignments were random was in some way a scum tell, even though it has come out that some GMs don’t randomly assign? Ohhhh-kay then.
Yes, please everyone, do read it, and point out to me any subterfuge. I readily admitted that I didn’t not want the record to show that I was voting in allegiance with a player who was so heavily suspected to be scum (and who, mind you, is still at the top of many of your lists). Especially since DarkSideCookies had made quite the leap on my scumdar.
Ok, let’s get this straight.
You ask “Who derailed the Projammerwagon?”
I say “It looks like dnooman suggested it here”.
You ask a question, I give a factual answer. Woah, good thing you pointed that out to everyone.
You then go on to quote the bits about the possibility of dnooman slipping and admitting he knew how many scum players there were. This issue came up, was investigated, and was found to be faulty logic. Unfortunately, it was a large part of my suspicion of dnooman. I don’t know if it had bearing in his eventual lynching, but it was a mistake that I regret.
Actually, no. Sorry if it was misleading, but the names were in no particular order. I was equally suspicious of the both of them.
Amazing that the two people at the top of my suspicion list were the two people I voted for the next two days.
Or, it could have something to do with the printout of Gadarene’s roles post tacked up two feet to my right.
Now, here’s where my problem comes in. I know I’m not scum. But it’s been said, quite accurately, that in order for the town to win we have to have the ability to think like scum. So let’s do that for a minute, shall we?
So, what we have here is a mess of conjecture, easily explained. You’ve gone to a lot of work to cast dispersions on me, but there is very little meat on those bones you’ve cast out.
Now, I see two possibilities here:
- You’re town – you wanted to see if there was anything to the rising suspicion against me, so you picked through all my posts and culled that which you thought relevant. You somehow missed a lot of obvious answers, but you didn’t mean to. You simply had the town’s best interest at heart, and so you presented your evidence with honesty.
Wanna guess what the second possibility is?
Actually, I believe you know exactly where I stand.
Vote nesta
Like I mentioned before, I don’t really think we could or should base our positions strongly on fluiddruid’s defense. It’s likely that, long before posting it, she made sure that she both implicated and exonerated scum and did the same with Mafia.
There are some examples for this: her list of “most trusted” to “least trusted”, her attacks/defenses of certain players, etc. etc.
And then there are even more subtle ones. There is, for instance, the fact that she tried, again, to obfuscate the events of the first day. Specifically, the vote swing that saved Lightnin’, by making it appear that the vote swing had involved Projammer. Of course, by changing the perception of the events of the first day, one could argue she was actually trying to protect herself
However, I still hold to my theory: On Day One there was a vote swing to help Lightnin’ escape; on Day Three the same technique was used to help another scum (fluiddruid) escape.
Updated Vote Count
2 – Lightnin’ (DiggitCamara, Millit the Frail)
2 – CaerieD (Lightnin’, SnakesCatLady)
2 – SnakesCatLady (Idle Thoughts, SnakesCatLady)
1 – nesta (Hal Briston)
I do not think that post means what you think it means…