In addition to what Mennochio said, you also are distancing yourself from your vote.
I am not going to be around for much of the rest of the weekend, but I will try to post at least once tomorrow. And more Monday.
I’m leaning toward “newbie mistake.” I’ve been guilty of that in the past. When you see two players, each trying to argue that that the other is the scum, it seems like one of them MUST have some sort of vital info. In reality, it’s likely that they’re both just townies on the defensive. Especially since there are only two scum in this game, at most.
Another scenario to consider, for when there are more scum–scum in-fighting is a good way to throw the townies off the scent and keep one scum hidden. If A and B are fighting, and we lynch A and A comes up scum, it doesn’t necessarily mean that B isn’t scum.
In short, I don’t know that person-to-person scuffles are any good at helping us determine overall allegiance. A scuffle does not necessarily mean the two players are working for opposite sides.
I can see the scum trying to perpetuate a black-and-white “one is scum, one is not” theory, because it gets rid of two townies in two lynches. However, it’s a pretty bold move to come out and say it. I’ll give the Captain the benefit of the doubt for now but I’ll remember this for later.
In other observations, I see that Menocchio thinks that the Vig might be a liability. This strikes me as pro-town because I don’t think there’s any way a scum would come out and basically tell the town that they might want to dispose of the Vig. No, it seems to suggest to me that the scum DID make the kill, hoping to turn the town against the Vig in exactly this way. I say we don’t bite. The Vig might have made the kill, but I’m seriously doubting it now.
Well, I can see where this idea would come from. The Vigilante is a loose cannon. It’s like a person who gets to kill in 1 vote instead of 24. They could be pursuing their own agenda, fulfilling old vendettas, or just throwing darts at a board with all of our names written on them. But I think they’re good because it gives a way for someone to act outside majority tyranny. They might have info we don’t, and might not be able to convince others about it. And they keep the game moving and give us something to bicker about.
The problem with the vigilante is that there’s no real discussion about who to kill. No explaining one’s actions. No chance for a role-claim. No input from other players. They’re firing blind and while false kills are part of the game, the Vig is operating with less information than the town as a whole has.
The advantage the vigilante has is that the scum don’t get to vote either. Yeah, he’s firing blind, but at least we know he’s pro-town.
And he/she keeps us on our toes. If we hang “the wrong person,” then the Vig can try to fix our mistake. Then again, this can backfire, as I said before. If the Vig assumes a dichotomy (either A or B is scum), and this is not the case, the scum are laughing all the way home. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad to have someone keeping us from arguing too ferociously for a specific person’s lynching–which is what I think will happen. However, the Vigilante is a tool in the town’s toolbox. Loose cannon or not, we could theoretically end the game TONIGHT because of the Vigilante. (That is, if there was a recruitment last night but no recruitment tonight, or if there was no prior recruitment and the Vig kills the recruit tonight.)
Thank you for this post. Now I see where NAF is coming from. The whole MUST thing is what I apparently got caught up in.
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“Pleo said he wanted to stop the town from talking about us all Day”–nice attempt to distort what I said. I wanted to end discussion about me. I recapped my defense and said that’s all I got. Either convict me on that or not, and then move on. It’s a waste of the Town’s time for us to rehash until the Day’s end. Better to focus on others. And I think it has worked for the most part. Even if I’m lynched, people have been discussing others. That is important!
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“Coming out that early with that narrow a lead in the vote was a foolish move for town.”–so what if it was foolish? Do you plan on lynching every Townie who does something foolish? That’s a great tactic for scum to keep the focus off themselves.
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“Especially a priest, who’s primary importance is that he could baffle attempts to recruit him.”–The Boss would be foolish to recruit anyone near the hotseat. Once the attention was on me, it’s unlikely they’d attempt to recruit me.
Yeah. This is enough for me.
Vote Pleonast. (Again)
My mistake. That’s what I meant to type. And it hasn’t worked. At all. We were already discussing others, and could have moved on to other people entirely if you didn’t give us something you had to know we’d discuss the rest of the Day. Even supposed sign is either on you or on a reaction to you (I’m too bloodthirsty, others are too wishy-washy, that sort of thing). I have to believe you knew that.
Take it as a compliment. I think a scum using your tactics is smarter than a townie would be.
Maybe not Tonight, but on following Nights once attention around you had died down and other suspects popped up? Yeah, I could see the Boss wasting a move trying to recruit you. But you’d have considered that before coming out. If you were really a priest.
Well it looks like we are just going around in circles, but I think that is to be expected.
**
BlasterMaster **,
I quoted your earlier response, since I thought you were being inconsistent, and it was how I would of responded to the latter post. I don’t think the scum would do anything that would put themselves in the spotlight this early in the game. Certainly we do have to consider every possibility, but I just didn’t see it as being very likely.
Pleo,
I think it is a little unrealistic to say stop talking about me, not give anything else to talk about, and expect the town to move on. Regardless of whether or not you are scum we can learn things from how people react to apparent scum. Just ask Capnpitt
As for whether or not I believe you, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I wish to lynch you. First off, I don’t believe you are the godfather, and that is where I think our focus should be. Secondly your position is verifiable. I suggest the detective check is out tonight and the cops pick other targets, since the detective should be able to get the most accurate read. The detective can attempt to leave a clue as to the verdict tomorrow.
As for today, I’m happy with my vote, and given the lack of need of majority, I don’t plan on changing it, unless new evidence pops up.
I’m starting to lean towards Pleo being an innocent priest, a little upset that no matter what he says it seems to call more suspicion towards him. Been there myself. (Except I wasn’t a priest.)
And I think that I’m also starting to get a FOS of my own for CapnPitt, though I’m not going to switch my vote at this point. Being a bit weasely and sticking to your dichotomy guns may not be a certain scum tell, but it doesn’t seem to be very good for us as the town. (Of course, I’m not sure that my own style of play is any better, we’re all just trying to find mafia as best we can etcetera.)
I didn’t ask to town to only stop talking about me. I asked them to make a decision based on my final defense and then move on. Important difference. Although I’d prefer staying alive, I’m a priest–not that critical a power a role. That’s why I wanted the town to vote and then move.
And I’ve pointed out what I think is a scum tell from Menocchio: being against those who came out early for No Lynch on Day 1 (me) and against those who were strongly for A Lynch. Playing the extremes while staying safely in the middle is a primo scum technique.
Also, I complained about sinjin’s poor explanation. That wasn’t a scumtell as much as poor play, in my opinion. Finding errors in arguments isn’t enough to find scum, you have to make a case for why any given problem is more likely to be from scum.
Hmm, along that line of thought, does anyone who’s said my early claim is suspicious want to say why an early claim is suspicious? Or mine in particular?
Sure. It seemed opportunistic and premature. While I don’t think a last-minute role-claim would’ve been preferable, I would think town would’ve tried some other techniques first, like defending oneself more as well as arguing against someone else more. Your current discussion of Menocchio seems to embrace the scum dichotomy theory that CapnPitt seems so fond of. I realize there’s a bit more to your argument against him than “I’m not scum so he must be”! But I still get a whiff of that sort of argument out of it.
The Day ends in less than 48 real-time hours.
Vote tallies:
Pleonast (7) - Hockey Monkey, Menocchio*, Freudian Slit, bufftabby, (Diomedes), Millit the Frail, OneCentStamp, Darth Sensitive
Menocchio (5) - Diomedes*, dotchan, CapnPitt, Pleonast, Idle Thoughts
HazelNutCoffee (2) - Blaster Master, chrisk
Freudian Slit (1) - Hawkeyeop
CapnPitt (1) - NAF1138
bufftabby (0) - (Idle Thoughts)
Has yet to cast a vote on Day 2:
MHaye
Santo Rugger
Koldanar
HazelNutCoffee
Hotflungwok
sinjin
Hal Briston
Because a premature claim is very poor strategy for town and better strategy for scum. This is particularly true for a priest, who can’t be confirmed or contradicted by the other (real) priests.
I’m horribly sorry guys, but something has come up for class, and I have two rather large items due for tomorrow night. I won’t have time to look or vote until 10 pm tomorrow or so 
Mod question: What is our schedule, now? I thought we were going back to ending the days on Wednesdays and ending the nights on Fridays. I think I missed something somewhere…
- I have nothing else to add to my defense. There was no point dragging it out. 2) I’m not sure why you think there’s an either-or argument coming from me. Saying you have a “whiff” seems rather vague.
Can you be more specific about why it’s bad strategy for town? I don’t see it.
And it’s not like I had a choice about what to claim.
In general, power roles shouldn’t claim this early in the game unless their lynching seems otherwise inevitable (and yours wasn’t when you claimed), if only to not be on the scum’s hit list. This is true for everyone, but especially for the priest.
The priest brings two advantages to the town. The first is the prayer ability, but that’s one shot only and hard to use effectively without knowing the minds of the scum, other priests/bishop and doctor. More important is the fact that they can’t be recruited. And this is why they must remain hidden. Hidden, there’s a chance that the scum could try to recruit a priest and fail, wasting their action for the night. Open, they know to try other targets, or to kill when they feel a recruit is too risky. And as you see right now, there’s no way for the town to trust a claimed priest alive, short of the detective (or beat cop) investigating the claimant and then coming out himself to tell the result.
I think you’re scum because I think you would see that all yourself, and because the priest is the perfect role for a scum to claim. Unverifiable without outing the investigators, and if the town actually believed you, they’d believe you until the end of the game, unlike the recruitable power roles.
I’ve been focussing elsewhere for a while, but the weekend (and a cancelled D&D game ) has given me the opportunity to play catchup on nearly five pages of posts.
Put me in the camp of those who think the Boss tried a recruit last night. I understand that the failure chance of a recruitment is much higher than that of a kill. To offset that, the payoff of success is very much greater. Not only is there now some insurance that a low-chance event won’t wipe the Mafia side out, but also the gain from a single recruitment is equivalent to two kills.
Also, if the Vig kills and the recruitment fails the Boss is no worse off than if he kills and the Vig does not, plus if there are two kills the town knows what the Boss did last night, whereas if he tries a recruit and the Vig lies low, the town knows nothing. Not only don’t we know whether the recruitment was successful or not, we can’t even be certain the Boss tried for a recruit.
Mennochio’s arguments around the vote for Pleonast smelled to me.
Mennochio (post [post=9528143]471[/post]) said :
I thought around this issue in a game last year when I, a vanilla Townie, was up for lynch against two others with no claim on any part. I decided then that if one of the other parties makes a reasonable claim, I would stand aside – that or try and disprove the claim. I’d still feel free to argue to lynch the other player if we said we were both vanilla – after all, I cannot be sure about the other player.
That self-sacrifice is all very well for a confirmed role, or one that can be tested; but what about this case? Well, a priest may be a weak power, but the value of being immune in their own person to recruitment, the scum’s more powerful weapon, should not be underestimated. So saying “I’d rather him than me, even though I believe he has a power” is not really acting in the town’s best interests.
The other thing I want to chime in on is the Vig-as-loose-cannon issue. A vig who must kill is a loose cannon, but our Vig does not have to kill. That makes the role better. I’m not one who favours trying to order power roles. They will do what they will do. I don’t have any executive oversight of the messages they send the GO so any attempt I may make to order the power roles is an exercise in futility. (Unless I am one of course ;).)
However, I found this statement in post [post=9532519]524[/post] wildly inaccurate.
(Bolding mine).
The Vig has more information. The town has what it can read in the thread. He has that plus knowledge of his actions.
That’s two things Mennochio has done that set my teeth on edge. I’m right on the verge of voting for him. I’ll think about it for a while and come back tomorrow to see what’s happened.
That depends on how you interpret it. If you mean, ‘the town, working together openly,’ then it may not have any extra info. If you mean ‘the town, as the sum of all of its parts’ then obviously there are other pro-town power roles who have secret night info that the vig doesn’t automatically get. Of course, how to get that info into play during the daytime lynch voting without exposing said power roles to danger is one of the central dilemmas of mafia, I guess.