MAFIA: The Road to Canterbury - Game Thread

On **Mosier’s **claim:

I absolutely believe that he was sent a PM informing him he was the Summoner.

The question is whether he subsequently received any other PMs telling him he had a new vocation. The simple fact that he’s claimed Summoner throws no light on this whatsoever.

The fact that he claims to have used his power to no visible effect is of some slight interest, however. If he were Scum, and **SP **were Town, then he’d be *guessing *that **SP **did nothing last Night. Such a guess would have a big downside risk for Scum. So on the whole I’m inclined to believe that Mosier really does know what SP did last Night.

That leaves us with four options:

Mosier is Town; SP is Town; SP did nothing last Night.
Mosier is Town; SP is Scum; SP did nothing last Night
Mosier is Scum, SP is Town; SP did nothing and Mosier used the Memento to get a true read.
Mosier is Scum; SP is Scum; SP may or may not have acted last Night.

The last option would imply that if we found Mosier were Scum, it would be very likely that SP would be Scum too. So it’s a risk to link the pair in this way. The Memento option is harder to make a call on. If the Scum had picked it, using it to try to “fake” Town powers in a semi-confirmable way would be a good plan. But they don’t necessarily have the Memento, and if so they were lucky that they found someone doing nothing, who was thus happy to confirm.

Overall, I’m more inclined to believe that Mosier is Town than Scum, at this point. But his observations don’t tell us anything about SP.

unvote Suburban Plankton

I’m not picking up a scum vibe in his post-my-vote posts.

I’ll work on a vote tomorrow.

I apologize. I was thinking that you did vote for me (when you said my post was very scummy) and I did not go back and check. Now that I look, I see that you did not. I still thought your responses were an attempt to misdirect from the actual case Stanislaus had against you. “Rant” may have been too strong a word, but I think it was more like two or three sentences and more than you addressed any other part of his case (in that post). You did talk about the timing, but not in the way Stanislaus meant it. I don’t know if that was a legitimate misunderstanding or another attempt at pulling the focus away from his actual case.

I was a late voter, but I posted that I was suspicious of Visor very early in the day. I voted late when it appeared that no-lynch was not going to win the day.

My theory about whether scum was on the Visor lynch or not was mostly a reaction to gnarlycharlie’s asking investigators to look at the Visor voters overnight. Since I suspect that gnarlycharlie is scum, I also suspect that he was trying to direct the investigators into a place where they would not find scum. Or perhaps where they might find one scum who was protected by the cloak.

It’s a gut feeling and no confirmation back-up from me.

I see no reason why a Scum **Mosier **would have volunteered the information he did; it would have been a pretty big risk for this stage of the game. I’m willing to believe his claim.

I’d like to take this opportunity to remind any of our non-US friends that tomorrow, the 4th, is the day we set aside for barbecues, beer, and blowing stuff up to celebrate our Countryhood (or else it’s a Wednesday), so I expect participation to be on the light side. I know mine will be. I will try to make some more relevant contribution to things before this evening is over, though.

Game thread seems a bit quiet compared to other Mafia games I have seen.

No one is majorly pinging me yet… I could just throw my vote at Tengu again but that would be somewhat boring, and doesn’t help learn anything new.

Is it worth looking through the town power roles and trying to work how best and/or when to use them? Would it help if certain power roles “outed” themselves now? Are there some power roles where the owner of that role should definitely keep their head down until much later in the game? Can we encourage certain power roles to get busy?

I assume we’re still waiting to find out the results of any investigations that were strongly encouraged on Day 1? Did no one investigate?

On Mosier’s claim, I was thinking along similar lines to Stanislaus. I’m leaning town on Mosier unless Suburban Plankton is scum. Taking a blind punt on SP not acting overnight would be very risky, and it strikes me a wasteful use of The Memento.

The aspect of the claim that bothers me is that Mosier says he used his power as a weak investigator, looking for the scum killer. The Summoner’s power also had the potential to confirm town. That’s why I asked Mosier when he’d submitted his action. Specifically, I was wondering whether he’d seen Hal Briston’s night post about how The Pardoner would make a great target for The Canon’s restorative. That would have made Visorslash a potential target for watching, as he might have been targeted by The Canon, protective roles or a scum killer. I don’t see any evidence Mosier weighed up the alternative uses of his power as I’d expect a townie to.

The timing of the claim wasn’t pro-town. If Suburban Plankton is scum, at some point he has to make a claim, which might have included a Night action (e.g. investigator). Revealing he knew SP hadn’t acted gives him an opportunity to change his claim. (As an aside, this is why mine and others advice on when to claim was bad, ultimately it’s up to the power role to decide what to do with it.) The roles assigned to the scum are potential coffins for them. Some are tighter fitting than others (I’ve already mentioned why The Pardoner would be a really horrible role for scum to be assigned, there are others). Claims are a potential way of catching scum in this game.

A point in favour of Mosier is that he did answer my question about timing. If he is scum, he could of course lie, but he probably wouldn’t know why I was asking. (If anyone else guessed what I was driving at, I’d be interested.) Overall, I think it’s more likely that Mosier is town than scum, but I’d have a lot more confidence if the claim had been handled differently.

Some implications for the claim:

  • If Mosier is town, Suburban Plankton is almost certainly not a Godfather or Miller, as he’d have seen him target himself or be targeted. If scum have the cloak, they’d be foolish not to use it on Night 1.
  • If Suburban Plankton is town, and we see some evidence that The Memento is not in play or has been used for something else, Mosier is very likely to be town.

Those points might be worth revisiting later in the game.

@TexCat, the above was directed at you, can you please respond?

the second half of this is a possibility, but it’s certainly not strong enough to support you first two statements that there are no scum in the wagon. I’m troubled that you seem to be so eagerly dissuading us from looking at Visor’s voters.

I look forward to your analysis on this.

Can you be more specific about what pinged you?

this is what we waited four days for? look, it’s great that you’re not dead and all, but the fact is that so far you’re the only confirmed town, which means that your thoughts when it comes to scum-hunting have a different weight to them than anyone else - we don’t have to wonder about your motivations, only your logic. you have an obligation to the rest of town to tell us everything you know, everything you think you know, everything you think you don’t know (see a pattern here?)

interesting points.

very good point.

are you even reading the thread?

I thought I did.. although I do start skimming if someone skews off on a tangent that I don’t think is productive.

At the moment, I want to know the results of any investigations. If the investigators have already posted their findings up-thread, I’ll read a bit more closely.

It’s important to me to have a vote registered before any bandwagon develops, so nobody can accuse me of jumping on it. It’s the 4th of July and I likely wont be able to read the thread any more today, but I’ll get a chance to revisit the vote before end of Day tomorrow.

For now, I will

vote: Texcat

as an extension of my vote yesterday. I don’t like that he (she?) tried to get a no-lynch passed (and almost succeeded, prior to the huge Visorslash wagon!) and that today all of his suggestions for how to proceed are to scrutinize any group of people that doesn’t include him. The scum lean is still small (as it was in Day 1) but I think he has a better-than-random chance to be scum. That’s good enough for me.

FOS Kelly for obviously not reading any of Day 2 before posting.

I thought gnarly posted in the wrong thread. The fact that he was responding to Alka would mean that he and Alka were also talking in the scum thread.

The line of logic tying gnarly to the scum boards is already weak at best, but this is bordering on ridiculous.

We seem to have a lot of players with very low post counts. It’s too late in the Day to multivote a bunch as an encouragement, but as they can’t all be Scum, it’s worth saying the following:

You guys are killing us. We’ll lose this game, because you’re not playing.
In such a game, it’s easy to hide in plain sight. I’m going to

vote Inner Stickler

for doing precisely that.

He’s happy to push discussions that don’t themselves lead to finding scum. E.g. Directing investigators. So he throws out an option here

But he’s not married to it, because he goes on to say:

He’s non-committal in strategy discussions:

and happy to stir the pot by bringing up old ideas:

…and happy to spread WIFOM

He has, however, made a case. But it’s a very weak one - accusing Mosier of scum gloating.

I think it’s a very weak case, but the timing is also interesting. TexCat has announced some suspicion of Mosier, and then Inner pops up to add some fuel to that fire. It looks a little like trying to make something happen once there was some potential back up out there. Inner’s an experienced enough player to know that he needs to make some effort a case, but this seems very half-hearted.

Then there’s a series of essentialy non-descript posts toDay - they don’t do more than scratch the surface, and seem to be made mainly to demonstrate presence rather than to drive discussion forward.

I assume you mean “Why did I change my mind about lynching Day 1?”

I didn’t.

I’ll say it again. I did not change my mind.

I started off the game in what I might call the traditional mindset; namely that, despite the high likelihood of losing one of our own to the lynch, and therefore taking a step towards the Mafia winning, that a Day 1 lynch generates enough information, over the course of the game, to be worth the loss.

It wasn’t until around the time I made post 169 that it occurred to me that I had not considered the special nature of this game, namely that everyone has a one-shot power, and we might gain more information from allowing everyone a chance to use their power.

A put it out to be thought about because I am under no illusions that I have a monopoly on brains, and I wanted to get other people’s input on them. I also knew that I would not be able to devote much time to thinking about the issue at that point (RL obligations that I chose not to bore you with at the time, to do with my fiancee returning home the next day).

Saying “hang on, there’s something I haven’t thought about before, does it change the plan?” is not “changing my mind” it is “ensuring all relevant factors are taken into consideration.” Your attempt to label it as a change of mind is not correct. Had I actually come down in favour of no lynch, then you could call that a change of mind.

Your reaction was disappointing, and I would describe it as a knee-jerk. You show no signs of having actually considered whether the design of this game mandates departing from normal practice. I would also categorise Stanislaus’s reaction (post 171) as a knee-jerk. (I can’t claim to be innocent of this; my initial declaration that I would vote also falls into the knee-jerk category.) I was a little disappointed.

Now that’s out of the way, I’ll get back to a reread of Today. I need to place a vote before I retire tonight, as I shall be out all day tomorrow, getting home at about 6pm (or the earliest moment Dusk could fall).

Answer me this question.

What would you have said if I had not voted Yesterday? Not “voted no lynch” but failed to place a vote at all?

It occurred to me over dinner that this might so ridiculous it’s not an approach scum would risk taking…

I’m not sure if I’ll have a chance to read again thoroughly or post anything of value before end of Day, so I’m going to try to place a vote now (“try” because I’m posting from my phone):

** vote InnerStickler** for the reasons outlined by Stanislaus

Eek, almost missed the vote deadline! Stupid work. Grumble grumble.

I have been reading, but haven’t had a chance to post this week. So, where will I cast my vote? Let me see…

Stanislaus suggested that we all wait before revealing any investigative results. While I disagree with this, I see why he would suggest it.

Mosier’s comment

seems a little Scummy to me. This is very close to WIFOM, and there are lots of other explanations (such as a protection or role block), so Mosier’s comment seems to be saying “I’m not Scum; I’d never NOT kill! Honest!”. FOS here.

TexCat then proceeds to vote for gnarlycharlie for what seems like a typo. When called out on it, she suggests that two Scum posted in the wrong forum in a way that could easily be seen as referring to something applicable in this forum? That seems a little far fetched. OK, very far fetched. FOS again.

All of these things happened in the first few posts, and the thread has been pretty quiet since then (partially my fault, I know!). sinjin pushed for revealing results, which could have been a Scum tell, but since I agree with him…

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that Visorslash is acting Scummy. As is, I suppose he’s just being an a-hole. “See? I was brilliant all along! I’ll be back ASAP to give you my thoughts” and then disappearing for 4 days, returning only to give a quick one-liner? If the Pardoner isn’t Visorslash, I’d say you wasted your vote.

So, who shall I vote for? I think it will be Mosier. He tells us that he’s only voting early because he doesn’t want to seem Scummy, where I think a Town Mosier won’t be so cautious as to how he is viewed. I’d not be surprised if he never shows up to revisit his vote. If he is, I will consider changing mine.

So, let’s make it official: Vote: Mosier

My thoughts so far.

On the no-kill.

I was surprised by the no-kill Night. There could be many explanations, but one that needs to be kept in mind (at least until disproved) is that the Mafia might have failed to submit a kill. I’ve seen it nearly happen in the past, and once or twice solo operators have failed to act at Night. So don’t rule it out. Unlikely, yes. Impossible, no.

I’m not surprised that Visorslash survived last Night, as I’d expect the Mafia to kill someone who hasn’t yet had a chance to use their power, and Visorslash (probably) has.

Visorslash is now a confirmed Town. That’s a good thing, because he becomes a thorn in the Mafia’s side. Sooner or later the Mafia will have to try and eliminate him. Until they do, perhaps he could make use of the fact that we can trust him by analysing the cases other players present. Visorslash? What do you think of the cases so far?

Gnarlycharlie’s slip.
Gnarlycharlie gets some heat (and a vote from Texcat) because of [post=15224371]post 299[/post]. Gnarly claims that he was referring to the investigation powers as a whole, and should have written “them” instead of “it.” Texcat, on the other hand, claims that when using “it,” Gnarly is referring back to what Alka Seltzer was referring to; that is, the Cloak of Lies. That is slightly more plausible than confusing “it” and “them” to me, but I don’t think that’s right either. The comment arose from Alka’s response to Gnarly’s suggestion that the investigators look into the voters for Visorslash. I don’t see how Gnarly can leap from there to the Cloak very easily. There is a third possibility, namely that Gnarlycharlie was pondering the timing of the use of his own power. That makes sense of Gnarly’s sudden use of the singular.

Also, as Alka Seltzer points out in 314, the Mafia’s problem re the cloak would be who to use it on, not when to use it. (Among other things, if you defer putting the cloak on the subject, you risk multiple investigations of that subject getting different results, betraying the placing of the Cloak.)

Currently I am inclined to think that Gnarly slipped into thinking about his own power, not the investigations. You might want to take into account that I have a poor track record analysing such “slips” as this – see my vote for Visorslash Yesterday.

Mosier’s claim.
Mosier, in [post=15230661]post 331[/post], claimed to be the Summoner, and to have watched Suburban Plankton, who did nothing. Unfortunately, this seems to me, if true, to be a waste of a Power. The actual result tells us nothing, and the choice of subject would have to be lucky to tell us anything. It might have been better to save the Watcher power for a later Night. Failing that, Visorslash might have been a better choice.

Mosier explains his rationale behind the choice of SP in [post=15233711]post 352[/post]. I have to say I’m a little sceptical of it. I’ve been a Mafia aligned watcher (in a Storyteller game, even), and the biggest problem I had was justifying my choice of subjects in a pro-town way. It smells a little of evasion. Stanislaus makes some good counterpoints in [post=15234846]post 361[/post], particularly the risk involved if Mosier is Mafia and guessed what SP did last Night.

In [post=15231390]post 334[/post], Alka asks when, roughly, Mosier submitted his action. Mosier replies “in between,” which Alka acknowledges but declines to comment until others weigh in. Alka finally explains in [post=15236590]post 368[/post] that he was wondering whether Mosier had seen a suggested Night action potentially targeting Visorslash.

I lean slightly towards Mosier being Mafia, simply because faking that claim is difficult, but a Mafiate Mosier would have to avoid Watching Visorslash.

I want to review one more case before bed.