So Wishy-washy and vague. Scum like vague. Good scum have to fight the urge to be vague.
This is just terrible play for a Townie. It simply doesn’t make sense from a Townie point of view. He states outright that he thinks that septimus is Town, yet a tie is such an abomination to him that he is willing to lose the chance of killing TexCat for the certainty of killing someone he thinks is Town?! I’m baffled as to how a Townie could possibly think this is a good idea. As unspoiled I was reading the thread dreading that septimus would get lynched and hoping for votes for TexCat to save him. I can’t imagine ever switching vote like that as a Townie with a Town read on septimus.
I’d lynch JSexton & the good professor. Both have pinged me substantially in my read-along of the thread. TexCat reads wolf to me too, but I’d deal with the other two first.
Hmmm. That’s the thing. TexCat didn’t strike me as scummy like he has to the rest of you (He’s a he right? I get TexCat and bufftabby mixed up sometimes). But for Prof. Pepperwinkle’s behavior to make sense as a scum, TexCat has to be scum too right?
This is a bit of a mess. There is a tiny part of me that is thinking, Prof. Pepperwinkle just has no idea what he’s doing. If either one is Town, then the case falls apart. Should one lynch TexCat then lynch Prof. Pepperwinkle if TexCat is scum, or should one lynch Prof. Pepperwinkle then lynch TexCat if Prof. Pepperwinkle is scum?
I normally hate having a Town Vig role (not that there is one in this game), but if there was and I was it, I would be killing Tonight for sure.
Both TexCat and Bufftabby are female. Yes, I definitely delayed my claim far too long – I still hoped I’d skate without claiming. :smack: :smack: :eek:.
And though I thought TexCat was Scum, and still think she is now, I went through a brainstorm thinking “this feels unnatural” and “why doesn’t TexCat fake-claim?” :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: Imp of the Perverse indeed!
The Wolves’ inability to chat during the day is a wrinkle we need to account for. Prof. Pepperwinkle is new to the game, and in an effort to blend in, he might be trying to go with the flow as a wolf. TexCat was leading the lynch, and he might have hoped to score points for bussing a teammate. Then he saw a chance to spare his teammate instead, and forgot how inconsistent that made him look.
But ultimately, I’m doing exactly what I said I hated in the “let’s improve how we play mafia!” thread. I’ve decided Prof. Pepper winkle is scum, and I’m evaluating everything from that mindset. If TexCat is scum, he was bussing then sparing. If TexCat was town, then he was opportunistically blending in. I’ve not allowed an option that challenges my original condition.
Ultimately, you’re right. If TexCat is town, Prof. Pepperwinkle’s actions point to a new player feeling out his role in the game, not a murderous wolf. TexCat, then, would be the ideal lynch.
The lack of post counts was confusing, but if I’m understanding, with only a few hours to go, TexCat was 2 votes ahead of you? I can see the appeal of not claiming if that was the case. The rapid flip to you was strongly anti-Town. Changing the lynch target so late in the day is dangerous for exactly what happened here. Not giving Town Powers adequate time to claim is bad, they can’t assume the player will be online at EOD to enact a claim. Town Power lynched is terrible. Not only is the power removed, but Town Powers should help focus lynch power on potential scum. The game has 5 ‘unlynchable’ Town players, and now they’ve lynched one! [Edited to clarify: A good chunk of the Town Doc Power is the ability to claim a unique role]
You are correct that TexCat had plenty of time to claim. But it is also possible that TexCat was Vanilla Town and had no relevant claim to make. I saw the lack of claims (at first) as indicating Vanilla-ness potential for you.
Townie Points to Johnny Bravo. He’s wrong about septimus but specifically asks Jimmy Chitwood why Jimmy doesn’t like Johnny’s case on septimus. I find it less likely for scum to ask for someone else to criticize his case on someone he knows to be Town. I suppose I can think of edge cases where a scummy Johnny might do so, but I find those less likely than the easy explanation that Johnny is Town.
Your depiction of septimus’ tell-detector is wrong. Where did I “disagree with his ideas?” I think analytical Chronos would put his best foot forward (or nearly so) even when Scum. Such strategies are usually circumvented: the town-cred Chronos gains will easily outweigh alleged losses – theoretical losses since herding cats is needed for the Biotop-Chronos Plan. Indeed the losses may be negative as Scum, to some extent, may indeed lead Town down the Primrose Path.
A Town-aligned Chronos should have focused more attention on scum-hunting.
But Chronos is not a top suspect. I agree that TexCat, JSexton, and Pepperwinkle are the Scum.
But of course the big story is how horridly stupid and embarassingly awful I played. I really do have some sort of “loser’s complex”, e.g. I’ve blown ridiculously easy questions in job interviews.
I’m not sure I can even follow this game further without some amnesiac potion.
If I recall correctly, you clarified your thinking later in the week. In the early part of the week Chronos was getting heat for proposing a ‘bad plan.’ The game-breaking potential had not been discovered yet at the time of my post. Chronos was getting a pile of votes because people didn’t like the plan or thought it would help scum. There wasn’t much subtlety in those votes. If I misunderstood your vote or lumped you with others incorrectly, I’m sorry; but the fact is Chronos was getting a bunch of votes for what was, essentially, ‘I disagree with your plan so I’m voting you,’ which was very fashionable circa SDMB 2007.
Furthermore, the idea that a scummy Chronos would propose an idea that is pro-Town is not all that revelatory. Sure its possible, and Town is always super obsessed about what scum could possibly do. But has scum ever done it? To my knowledge, they have not. Scum will blend in and take pro-Town stances, but pro-Town invention is unheard of. Until I see it happen, I don’t believe it.
Yes, it’s possible that Chronos is scum and that he saw an exploit in the tie-break rules and decided to post that information even though it could damage scum because he thought that would bring him ‘town cred.’ Plausiblity is not proof. It’s also possible that Chronos is Town and posted thoughts on an idea that he thinks is pro-Town.
If you read our unspoiled thoughts from early in the week, the main pro-Town aspect for Chronos is the fact that his points out that the negative result of a tie (the group that did not win the tie) contains non-alphas. Everyone else was focused on the positive result (finding the alpha), but finding non-alphas is very powerful too. In my opinion, that insight is strongly pro-Town. Furthermore it makes sense from a Town perspective to toss that information out. If Chronos is Town, he can’t wait on that information because he might be dead by the time it becomes relevant.
I guess what I fail to see is why, Chronos’s actions strike you as more likely to come from scum than from Town. I could accept a neutral stance on such a thing based on his history, but pushing into evidence of scum, doesn’t add up (in my opinion).
This is opinion, not fact. In my opinion, Chronos is very much like me, and I would totally be distracted by shiny rulesets rather than ‘scum hunting.’ My cite is pretty much every game I’ve ever played in. Heck, my very first game almost led to my lynch on Day One for a ‘bad plan.’
Aside: I’ve found that in games we often toss out the term ‘scum hunting’ as if that means something specific and clear. In my opinion, in Chronos’s own way, he was scum hunting. He was gaming the rules in a way that would help Town find scum. Furthermore, I believe (I didn’t check) Chronos posted his thoughts early in the day when there was little ‘scum hunting’ available to anyone. Not to be too blunt, but if Chronos hadn’t posted what he did, what would you have done to ‘scum hunt’? Much of the ‘scum hunting’ was predicated on Chronos’s seminal post about tie-breaking.
Chronos, if you are scum, I’m going to be very angry with you.
Wow. I totally did not see that coming. Seriously. I was going to post before Dawn my thoughts on who would die at night. The only thing I was certain about was that Chronos would NOT die. I figured if he was Town, then the fact that known townie septimus was calling for Chronos’s head would make Chronos a viable lynch candidate. Heh. Shows what I know.
But I was right about Chronos though. Yay! I don’t have to be irrationally mad at Chronos.
Biotop is making my eyes cross. His initial post of the day seems weird. (Note weird, not scummy) He votes for TexCat, which in and of itself isn’t all that weird, but then he states:
Well, that only matters if TexCat is actually Town, which apparently Biotop doesn’t believe.
My confirmation-bias reading of Prof. Pepperwinkle’s post is that it was crafted with the help of the wolves during the Night.
(1) Prof. posts pretty darn early in the Day
(2) Acknowledges that he made an error with a terse mea culpa. I would expect a truly Townie to be either overly defensive or overly apologetic/guilt ridden. The middle of the road stuff screams ‘cautious wolf’ to me.
(3) Tries to explain his actions based on something that septimus did (blame the victim!)
(4) Slyly tries to throw Cygnus under the bus. The post is ambiguous though, just a “I don’t know what he’s doing” finger pointing without accusation. It could be either Cygnus voted septimus so he’s at fault too or Cygnus ‘tried’ to unvote septimus but was too late. Such a vote can easily be made to assure being late and might be interpreted as a scum ploy.
No one has mentioned that Prof. Pepperwinkle is on record as calling TexCat scummy, yet switched to septimus for no reason. I need this to happen.
When she was found innocent? What if TexCat is scum? It’s entirely possible that both are scum.
I know we shouldn’t lynch based on grammar, but I would be much less incensed if Biotop had said “if” instead of “when.” Especially since Biotop’s POV is that TexCat is scum. I’ve done this slip as town before in the past, but that’s usually because I’m of the mindset that someone is Town even though I don’t know it. Biotop is on record as thinking TexCat is scum.
I’m telling you, I do that all the time in mafia, always as town. I’ve got a hypothetical in my head, and I post it out without considering my language or how “sure” I’m making that hypothetical sound while explaining it.
Hello, everyone! Did you save any chips and dip for me?
First off, I’m actually kind of excited that I got killed. Usually, I spend a few days as the #2 or #3 Scum priority target, before I get mislynched and they don’t have to worry about it. Getting Night-killed, when the Scum had no way of knowing that I was a power role, is evidence that I must have been doing something right. It’s just too bad that I was, in fact, a power role.
And I first posted about the tiebreaker mechanism very early on on Night 0. To be honest, the use of the tiebreaker itself was only about half of my motivation for doing so. The other half of my motivation was just that it was a topic with which to start discussion, since that’s often somewhat anemic on Day 1, and to my mind, the sooner discussion (on any real topic) starts, the better.
I’ve actually done it before, though not with an idea as significant as this one. And it did, in fact, earn me some Town cred. But not enough. IIRC, in one game, we had a Detective-like role that was a lie detector: He could examine one post (or possibly one statement in a post), and determine whether the poster was lying. That game, the lie detector had a hard time of it, because it turns out that very few people actually come out and say “I’m Town”. So in the next game (where I was Scum), I suggested that, just in case we had that role again, everyone post a single-sentence post stating their alignment.
Man, the emotional sniping is my least favorite part of mafia. It’s a game based on lying and accusations of lying and impugning motives and being dead wrong (or just dead) most of the time. There shouldn’t be a place in the game for attacking players rather than their posts. I’ve got nobody in mind here, because I don’t think anything has gone over the line yet… but that doesn’t mean I can’t wish people were gentler in tone.
No, it just accentuates my sense of guilt and shame. :o I was disappointed to be reminded of the SDMB 60-second “cooling off” period for back-to-back posts, but can’t use that as an excuse – I should have claimed several minutes earlier, not seconds.
By EOD, I didn’t have a strong sense of Scumminess for Chronos; I just didn’t buy the argument that he was surely Town. I hadn’t decided whom to Protect last Night, except that it wouldn’t be myself even claiming, and Chronos would be very high on the short list.
I actually don’t agree that you should have claimed earlier. What should have happened is that Town should have gotten their consensus together earlier in the day. I think the Monday EOD is part of what worked against you. On Friday, there was ‘plenty of time,’ then over the weekend, less participation, then BAM, Monday happened leaving very little time in the day to process the switch from TexCat to you. If town expects power roles to claim, they have to give the power role sufficient time to claim. It isn’t all on you.
Also, you can edit your posts.
On the other hand, had you saved Chronos, that would have been good, but it would have driven me mad. I would have a hard time reconciling your voting for Chronos on Day One then protecting him on Night One. It happens, has happened and will happen, but I struggle with the logic.
My estimate of Chronos’ scummitude had dropped from 42% to 35%, or even less as Scum exposed themselves in the Day ending. I am NOT good at guessing Scum at all, especially Day 1. In other words, he was 65% or more to be Town in my crude estimation. As the Day wore on, there were 4 or 5 players I thought more scum-likely than Chronos.
What I DID know is that Chronos was a likely Night Kill if he is Town, say 30% compared with, say, 5% for a random player. Or even 50% or more if I’m exposed as the Guardian (since I’d be perceived as unlikely to protect him!)
65% * 30% = 19.5% chance of Chronos being Night Kill
compared with
100% * 5% = 5% chance
for a random player even if I know them as Town. The choice of Chronos was clear.
Certainly I wouldn’t have Protected JSexton who I was starting to read as Scum. I think I actually would have Protected Chronos. :o (The whole episode almost strikes me with grief!)
