I wouldn’t want the Oracle to investigate claims that can be easily confirmed in other ways. For example, if someone claimed Monk, would you really insist that it be verified by the Oracle?
And note that the Oracle/Apprentice cannot report their findings without claiming themselves. Sure they can breadcrumb, but they can be difficult to interpret, as we have seen with Hal Briston.
And, more on #1786
I trimmed off that last bit when I last quoted, as I wanted to comment about the Oracle. But it seems that you’re asking the Apprentice to investigate. Sure there’s a smilie (actually a frown) so I’m not sure what you mean. Are you suggesting that the Apprentice investigate or not?
And as for ‘And are you seriously trying to make me look scummy based on speculation on my part on what the Oracle might have been up to on the night he died? :rolleyes:’,
I may have overreacted, but it looked to me like you were saying “Damn, the Oracle couldn’t verify the claim. Now we’ll never know if it’s true”
MadTheSwine, I’m sure you see how this doesn’t help the case against you. Telling us after the fact that you intended to investigate further someone who happens to have turned out to be scum is at best useless and at worst scummy. Truthfully it could go either way, I can see you as town, frustrated that you had a read on scum, but didn’t have time to make a case only to find the town did it for you. I personally view the identity of your suspect a no-op, but the evasiveness and vagueness earlier still has me concerned about your scumness. Basically, the best thing to do now is just play and be present!
I’m inclined to believe MadTheSwine for meta-game reasons. I know Blaster Master said he wasn’t managing based on game identities, but if MadTheSwine were scum, Blaster Master would have had to replace Mad for being a no show for most of Day 1 and all of Day 2. It simply isn’t fair or logical to reduce the pool of eligible scum and leave a blank record on scum for two days.
I agree with Captain Klutz, though moot now, it doesn’t make sense for the Oracle to investigate a roleclaim. The goal for the Town is to gain information. A roleclaim gives us information. Even if it is a false roleclaim, at some point the real role will counterclaim or end up dead. The goal is to root out unknowns. Adding an Oracle read on top of a roleclaim doesn’t help any.
I have said previously that I will always be suspicious of people who don’t vote. So during the night I went back and did a work-up of all the players who didn’t vote. I included Mad the Swine because of his lack of participation and his last minute vote; that post saying “hi” when I asked where he was really set off my scumdar. Here are the results:
Day 3 starts #1356.
Malacandra
#1363 - “bugger” #1427 - vague suspicion of fluiddruid. Doesn’t have time for more than “vague suspicions”. #1440 - in response to a question by Kyrie Eleison about his reason for not voting on Day 2, he says that any vote he made would be seen as trying to avoid being dunked, that any meaningful votes would have looked like OMGUS so he didn’t want to make it more likely he would be dunked. #1577 - agrees that Oracle should not out Priest and Disciple. Says the 2 people he is most suspicious of will look like OMGUS votes so he’s going to see if he can make a case.
Mad the Swine
#1411 - “hi”. #1423 - Was going to look back at the posts of a player but that player has been killed. Asks for patience. #1426 - asks who the “noob” players are. #1429 - response to a post by sachertorte concerning the “3rd vote as scum tell”. #1435 name abbreviation preference. #1509 - in response to question by HazelNutCoffee he says he made a mistake in referring to the FOS Clockwork Jackal placed on him as a vote, but that CJ saying “no one looks scummy yet” is a scum tell. #1528 - in response to question by HNC he says he couldn’t vote for both Hal Briston and CJ, that he had picked CJ over Hal because he had killed Hal in previous games and because he wanted to get some discussion flowing. “I rate FOS’s, implied or straight up, as important as a vote. They can be very revealing.” #1529 - asked that Blaster Master note on the living players list who subbed in and who they replaced. #1679 - voted Scuba Ben "on the strength of Q’ings analysis.
Pasta
#1414 - discussion of Pleonast, says he gets a “townie vibe”. Gives a post list. #1415 - spelling correction. #1575 - slow posting because of work, doesn’t feel the “homework” is of much use. Doing one on other players would be more useful. #1644 - looked over Pleonast, Scuba Ben & Hockey Monkey but can’t find a good reason to vote for any of them. Will try to get in another sesson later and come up with a name. The “recent vote/unvote flurry will give us something to chew on toMorrow”.
Nava
#1421 - ouch to lost Crusader and Monk, crazy at work. #1432 - time zone discussion. #1466 - Day 1 recap to post #1256. Isn’t going to re-vote sachertorte and wants to read what others post.
USCDiver
#1465 - goes back over reasons for vote for MHaye on Day 2, adds more reasons, revotes MHaye #1474 - composed previous post in Word. #1475 - repeats reasoning and vote for MHaye. #1476 - reminds Blaster Master that "that is only one vote for MHaye. #1479 - Day 2 recap. #1483 - response to MHaye. #1496 - says that Kat wouldn’t have been able to talk strategy with fellow Cultists before being lynched. #1530 - acknowledges that he forgot Cult could read the scum board during the day. #1531 - says he misunderstood what MHaye had said, unvotes MHaye but leaves FOS. #1681 - just woke up and missed deadline.
This makes it sound as if your vote for Scuba_Ben was cast mainly for appearance’s sake, and not necessarily because you thought him most likely to be a cultist. Is that a safe assumption? Your vote was rather weakly supported, but then you didn’t appear to have much time to compose it.
You had previously hinted at some unspecified suspicion that you were going to investigate via “Plan B”. If you truly have some insight that you were going to investigate, it’s starting to look like this day might be a good day to lay it out as much you can.
It sure does look suspiciously like we have a Judas in our midsts, coughing up the town power roles for a little extra coin…
I regret that I wasn’t around after my vote yesterDay to try and keep more pressure on Hockey. I won’t start throwing votes around just yet, but my FOS is still very much on Hockey.
Due to the quotes going back and forth, you can get the full context of the thread that I’m about to respond to by re-reading Hockey’s response to my vote for her yesterDay, in #1619
Obviously my FOS hunches regarding Hal and Scuba were off yesterDay, but Hockey’s responses only reinforce her as scum in my book, and she was the one who garnered my vote.
This in and of itself doesn’t get us very far, with the “She said, she said” and “wine before me” potential ruts of circular reasoning, but the exchange doesn’t stop there. The Day after Hockey contributed to the Mgtman dunking, I made a quick drive-by post. It was quick because I didn’t have much time, and I hadn’t read everything carefully. What I did have a chance to read was a number of folks trying to sniff out scum based solely on who had voted for Mgtman. That struck me as not a very strong approach to take on its own. In addition, it was very early in the game, when town-on-town violence is common, so with my short post I was attempting to dissuade people from reading too much into the Mgtman bandwagon too early, and incurring risk of false-positives.
Hockey keyed in on my drive-by post and proceeded to use it as a justification to cast suspicion on me.
In between my driveby post and the above quote, I had expanded on why I feel the way I do about town-killing bandwagon analysis, see #1229. So having more of the “why” didn’t stop her from continuing to direct suspicion my way.
As I said in my vote justification for her yesterDay, I read it all as Hockey attempting to divert attention away from the town Mgtman blood on her hands. I do think it is risky to base a vote solely on Hockey’s vote for Mgtman, but the subsequent conversations combined with her arguments for suspicion based on votes/unvotes were enough for me to vote for her yesterday.
Yes, it is indeed possible for scum to vote/unvote in ways that are similar to the way the voting went for your list of FOSs on myself, Pleonast, Zerial, and sachertorte, and yes I didn’t like it because you FOS’d me and I’m town, which lead me to the equally logical conclusion that your analysis has a high degree of risk of false-positives (whether intentional or not), meaning that anyone else on that list could also be an innocent.
She then went on to role-claim as the Alchemist, which I’m less than inclined to believe, and the tie things up for the Day in a nice scummy bow, she also contribute to yet another town dunk with her vote for Scuba.
Lots of folks are hot after Mad this morning. I’m a little bit dubious as to how quickly and strongly things are moving, but all I can do is throw this novella at the hamsters and see if it sticks with anyone. My vote will come later after things have had a chance to settle and be pondered for awhile.
Mad the Swine has used the excuse of being “away” for his lack of participation. Day 3 he managed 9 posts - none of which contain any analysis. He managed to swoop in for a last minute vote - for a townie.
Cookies, you and I posted at the same time; I agree that Hockey Monkey’s role claim did not remove all suspicion from her. I unvoted her because I felt it necessary under the circumstances. I am also suspicious of Captain Klutz because he seems to think it would be a good idea for the real Alchemist to counter-claim, which would end up losing us another power role.
Whew. Having read all of Hal Briston’s posts, here are my conclusions:
Hal never investigated Hockey Monkey. On Day 3 (1612), he says he’d totally forgotten he FoSed her on Day 1, and this is not something that he’d say if he had investigated her. He wouldn’t have investigated her on Night 3, either, since there is no way for the Oracle to differentiate between the Alchemist and a vanilla Cultist.
Hal probably never investigated Queuing. On Day 2, he first FoSes Queuing (1144) and then later states that he thinks Queuing is town (1189), which suggests that he has no read on Queuing at that point. He could have investigated Queuing on Night 2, of course, but I can’t find anything in the Day 3 posts that looks like a breadcrumb.
Hal may have investigated either Mad the Swine or sachertorte on Night 2. His vote for Mad may well be a breadcrumb, especially given the “going with my gut” justification, but so could Post 1504. Both would be plausible players to investigate, Mad because of his silence and sachertorte because a number of people suspected him.
Hal (unfortunately) probably investigated zuma on Night 1. After zuma’s death, Hal says that zuma was high on his suspicion list (986), which could be a breadcrumb indicating whom he had investigated. (I can’t find any other possible breadcrumbs from Day 2 except maybe the late vote for Malacandra, but I think it more likely that he would investigate zuma, who cast – in Hal’s words on Day 1 “an exceptionally weak vote” against Hal and had therefore “caught [Hal’s] eye.” I think Hal might have been under the impression that zuma was the Apprentice trying to signal him.)
For the reasons previously listed here and here, and because nothing I’ve seen so far has done anything to diminish those suspicions Vote MadTheSwine.
It’s still early, and I’m always a bit leery when someone starts to gather so many votes early in the day, but I’ve yet to see anything that tells me that there’s a more promising candidate out there.
I agree. Unfortunately for this Day I’m going to be out of town most of the time, but I didn’t want to end another day with a no-vote . I’m leaving in the morning for South Carolina and won’t be back until late Sunday afternoon. I won’t have any internet access while I’m there. I should be back in time to make a quick read through and vote change if necessary.
If consensus is that I should be subbed out, I’ll be ok with that.
The analyses of our late Oracle’s posts seem reasonable: suspicion of MadTheSwine, Queuing, and Malacandra; mild support for sachertorte and Hockey Monkey. I think his mention of Pleonast is more a statement of suspicion against Mal than of support of me.
Despite the rush of votes for Mad (yay for early votes! just don’t hit the insta-dunk mark), I’m still think Mal is the better candidate. I find it interesting that of the three “crumbs” left by the Oracle, two of them have quickly jumped onto Mad. Is this coincidence?
So for yet another Day, Vote Malacandra
I’m sure you all are tired of me jumping on him, but I got to go where my suspicions lead. I’m also happy to vote for both Mad and Queuing; I may switch to them towards the end of the Day if no one else likes Mal.
zuma 2.0 has assuaged my suspicions of MonkeyMensch, fo now.
I think it’s possible that he didn’t investigate you, but I don’t see anything suggesting that he did so, and cleared you. I find it odd that you suggest that he might have – he ended yesterday with a vote for you. Why would he have been voting to dunk someone he had cleared?
I put forward a case, one which I wanted answered. I then voted for you in a separate post. Your reply is “You vote, but don’t give a case,” which would be fine if 1263 was the only post to consider. It was not, as I pointed out in 1277. I didn’t link because I thought you already knew where it was; evidently I was wrong.
Now, at that point I would not be expecting any immediate response, because the clock was near the end of the Day. Any reasonable person would decide to wait for the next Day, which I did.
Nothing came. Not a sign of any response. You ask why I did not say anything- well, why should I? The challenge was out in the public arena. I chose not to say anything in the first day or so because I was waiting for a response from you.
(I said nothing on Saturday because I went out for the day instead of sitting reading the thread.)
I’m surprised you didn’t address it in five days. Just as you are surprised I said nothing in five days.
I did not (and still don’t) like your contention that someone who mistakenly supports an idea, then withdraws that support on being shown the error of their ways, cannot use that understanding in expressing suspicion of the originator.
Thanks for explaining the delay in response.
Other matters.
I started a post analysis of Scuba_Ben in the hope that it would reveal something in time to place a better-informed vote Yesterday. It didn’t. I’m unsure whether to continue. I think I’d rather turn my attention away to a more daunting subject (in sheer volume terms) and maybe come back to Scuba later in the Day. I should be able to lay the foundations for a review of HazelNutCoffee’s posts today, but the post itself might not go up until Friday afternoon. Later if rl rears its ugly head again.
The bandwagon for MadTheSwine has built up very quickly. I don’t know whether he’s a Cultist or not, but he’s accrued nearly half the votes needed for a twelve-hour countdown to start. I’m a little uneasy… but he might really be a Cultist.
Well after taking another look at Hal’s posts I think this bit I am quoting from Fretful is the only thing I came away believing.
I don’t know what he did on night 1 or 3, but I think one of the breadcrumbs is absolutly either sach or Mad.
I don’t know who though. Hal has played the game long enough to know that the Oracle can’t go around saying things like “this has cleared so and so character in my eyes” without it being read into. Post 1504 reads as a clear breadcrumb to me because of that.
On the other hand, Mad got Hal’s vote.
I think it is more dangerous to believe that sach was the breadcrumb (if we are wrong), but I also think it is more likely. Sach was/is a high profile player that was gathering a good amount of suspicion, a very likely candidate for investigation. Mad was behaving oddly, but a much lower profile person. The question is, after day 2 what would Hal have been thinking? I don’t know, but I am going to go back and re read all of day 2 in isolation, and would recommend everyone else do the same before we decide anything.
This is exactly what I was thinking. Either he investigated Mad and found him scummy (which would explain the vote) or he didn’t investigate him at all. The fact that he dropped his vote for Mal suggests he might have investigated him (or possibly zuma01), but there’s nothing conclusive either way. There is certainly nothing to suggest that he cleared Mad of anything.
Here’s my (quick & dirty) take on Hal’s probable investigations:
Night 1: probable investigatee– zuma
evidence: First post after the Night was
**zuma** voted for him and he may have thought (after the lengthy discussion about Apprentice enhancement techniques) that the Apprentice had voted for him.
Night 2: probable investigatee–Queuing
evidence:
Lengthy discussions with Queuing on the preceding day. (Hal’s “homework” ) Queuing voted for him and he may have thought (after the lengthy discussion about Apprentice enhancement techniques) that the Apprentice had voted for him (especially since the originator of the idea, the Crusader, had by now died and showed that the plan was not scum-originated). alternate investigatee–sachertorte–due to this post
Queuing seems to have been exonerated by Hal’s (though, of course, if he’s the Priest, he’d show up as a “Believer”). evidence: Hal dropped his feud with him after Night 2