Random Mafia

[Freudian_Slit]

Goodbye, cruel world!

[Chronos]

If there are breadcrumbs, I think they’d be for an innocent result. I think that he would have claimed if he’d found a guilty.

[Tom_Scud]

Ugh. Dead cop.

Freudian looks like a classic vig kill, saving Town a mislynch and a wasted Day if she’s Town and nabbing a scum otherwise.

In terms of Story and breadcrumbs, the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that he was pretty hard after Chronos on Day 1 and then didn’t pick the case up at all on Day 2; but I think he did say that he was still suspicious of Chronos at some point or another.

[special_ed]

@Chronos

There is one piece of good news in this: Since we know know (or at least strongly suspect) that there’s a Vigilante in the game, that person can, when e thinks it appropriate, claim to confirm emself.

I agree that it appears we have a Vigilante. I also agree it’s liely the Vig killed Freudian (why would the Scum bother when she’s the likely lynch target.)

As an aside, even though she’s Town, it’s probably not entirely bad. I probably would have pushed for her lynch toDay, and it might have cost us an entire Day of conversation

@Chronos

:smack: Apparently I’m not fully awake yet, since I completely failed to notice that storyteller’s death reveal included a “real” Mafia role. I guess I was just thinking of the “roles” as meaningless, and didn’t even bother reading it. Losing a Detective before he had a chance to tell us anything hurts.

Of course, now I’m really wondering what, precisely, storyteller’s PM said. Was he really given the name “Baldrick”, or was he Clousseau or some such? Did he have the “role” “servant” in addition to detective? Did he have the random information and then his game powers, or just the game powers?

Maybe I’m just overly suspicious. But I’m not buying that you failed to notice the ‘detective’ in story’s death reveal.

based on what I see as subtle attempts at redirecting our attention, I’m going tofor now:

vote Chronos

I’ll do a more thorough re-read of Chronos as the Day goes on.

@Chronos

If there are breadcrumbs, I think they’d be for an innocent result. I think that he would have claimed if he’d found a guilty.

I don’t believe this either. A detective easily might not claim with one guilty finding, since building a troop of confirmed Town is much better than finding Scum.

Story’s Day 2 posts (I apologize that the quotes within quotes aren’t included) but click the little arrow thing and you can see the whole post:

@storyteller0910

Yikes, well, off to a rousing Day Two start. This “Day starts on a Saturday” thing is frustrating, because if I happen to have a busy Monday I’m basically AWOL until halfway through the Day.

I see on initial skim that there is a bit of speculation regarding the death of NAF. This early in the game, there’s really one especially likely reason for a Scum kill - they are trying to identify and kill power roles, and especially the Doctor. NAF may have looked like a potential Doctor for the simplest of reasons: his claimed name, with its religious overtones, could have been spun into a protective role. (Incidentally, if the Scum were thinking like this, it suggests [but does not prove] that the Scum themselves have names suggestive of their alignment, and have false-claimed. This isn’t particularly valuable in and of itself, but is worth keeping in mind going forward).

For the rest, I will begin re-reading immediately.

@storyteller0910

Day Two in (sort of) brief:

Freudian starts us off with a vote for Meeko (651). Logic is that his “clearing” of Kelly on the basis of probability is flawed. I don’t necessarily agree that this is vote-worthy, but it’s not egregious. However, Rysto disagrees and votes for Freudian (655), arguing that if Meeko had known his reasoning was bad, he would have also known he couldn’t sneak bad reasoning past us.

I disagree with Rysto here. Suppose Meeko as Scum and Kelly as Town. A good gambit for Scum is always to find some reason to clear a Townie – that makes the Townie in question subtly favor you and doesn’t put you in a position to be spectacularly wrong. A hypothetical Scum Meeko could have seized on this argument, thinking it adequate for his purposes.

Except: Freudian seems invested in the idea that Meeko is doing this as Scum, trying to protect fellow Scum in Kelly (as she outlines at 660). But this is problematic, because why, then, go for Meeko but not Kelly. I know she only has one vote, but if the argument against Meeko (in her mind) hinges on Kelly-as-Scum, then the more reasonable approach would be to vote Kelly first. Right? Ping on Freudian. Meeko OMGUSes Freudian at this point; he puts a bunch of words in her mouth, by the way – saying that she said that he said (heh) that he would never vote for Kelly, which she never claimed that I can see. Anyway, two votes Freudian, one vote Meeko.

Now we get a string of ed-on-Meeko posts, which frankly, have become an utter non-tell for me. Could be anything.

Now Wanderers strikes up a discussion of why NAF was killed. His first major suggestion concerns the damned mis-spelling, and Jimmy Chitwood jumps on him for it at 703, but without voting (Jimmy basically thinks Wanderers’ approach is flawed and self-centered but not necessarily Scummy).

Tom Scud votes Texcat at 706. He thinks TexCat’s peeker vote was opportunistic, and I agree.

Zeriel votes Drain Bead, evidently for the same reason as Day One. This is a weird thing. I get where Zeriel is coming from, but both his proposed explanation and Drain Bead’s proffered explanation seem about equally likely. So another null tell, in my opinion. But Z also promulgates a bit of suspicion of Tom for his use of the term “overnight thread,” which is kind of silly, to me. Rysto, at 716, points out some problems with Zeriel’s approach. I agree with Rysto’s post here.

Oredigger votes for Jimmy. I don’t exactly understand why, but the vote is subsequently withdrawn. Moving on.

Toward the bottom of Page 15, we get a bit of Mahaloth, kind of urging everyone to participate:

I’m not a huge fan of posts like this – sort of rah! Rah! We need to do better, guys! – particularly when couched with that “Perhaps I’m wrong,” which is a nice way to duck away from conflict. Coupled with Mahaloth’s own agnosticism regarding voting (his major substantive post at this point is one where he suggests that Drain’s apparently general but in practice specific smudge of Zeriel could be an attempt to “stir disorder up by taking what one individual did and try to spread it out and make it sound like there is some kind of negative trend occurring” (even as Mahaloth himself is kind of trying to make it sound like there is some kind of negative trend occurring) and this sequence causes me to view Mahaloth with some suspicion.

More to come in a separate post.

@storyteller0910

Now, it should be noted that by the top of page 16, we don’t have a strong lynch leader. Everyone is milling about a bit, and votes have gone toward Freudian, Wanderers, and elsewhere.

Wanderers votes for Jimmy, a vote for misrepresentation that wasn’t really misrepresentation.

Jimmy said this:

Wanderers replied with this:

I don’t think these two things are substantively different. Does anyone disagree?

Anyway, special ed questions Mahaloth about his posts (referred in my last post). He asks Mahaloth what he (Mahaloth) has been contributing, and Mahaloth replies:

This bothers me quite a bit. First of all, there’s the “there is little to comment on.” By my count, no one has really done an in-depth look at the peeker lynch. Then we have the Freudian-Meeko thing and the Meeko-ed thing, Drain Bead’s smudge of Zeriel and Z’s response, Tom Scud’s “overnight” thing, Wanderers’ questions about why NAF was killed and the rising suspicion between Wanderers and Jimmy, and lots of smaller side-plots. If that constitutes “little to comment on,” what would meet the Mahaloth standard for “plenty to comment on?” Further, there’s the last line, which to be seems to be baiting ed.

And now, suddenly, the votes for Wanderers start coming. And fast. More on this in a third (and final) post, forthcoming presently.

@storyteller0910

And finally, the Wanderers wagon.

At 757 Jimmy votes Wanderers. It’s a good vote, as far as I’m concerned. Jimmy points out that Wanderers seems to have just arbitrarily found a mid-Day-One post and seized on it, by happenstance right after Jimmy began expressing criticism of Wanderers’ play. I see a flaw – Townies as much as Scum get defensive when pressed, and it is very comforting to assume that someone coming after you is Scum, so you start looking for evidence that they might be. Taken alone, Wanderers’ weird cherry picking of a post by Jimmy thus isn’t really strong evidence, but it’s some evidence, and I don’t fault Jimmy for this vote.

Oredigger follows shortly, with this:

OK. Vote’s a little “me-too” for my taste, frankly. Moving on. Freudian adds on, and her vote is fine, I guess. She also points out the following, regarding Zeriel:

That’s a good question. Z?

PS – in here, there is some Jimmy-ed sniping. I don’t know what it means yet, but if I don’t move past it for now I may never finish the analysis.

Tom Scud switches over to Freudian. His reasoning, once questioned, is this:

I find this highly persuasive. In there, Mahaloth kind of defends Freudian. Gah. I really doubt that Mahaloth and Freudian are both Scum, and yet they are my top two candidates as this analysis winds down. Huh.

At 794, Freudian says:

Taking a quick stab at this: because sometimes the case against someone boils down to more than the sum of their actions. In your case, you have a pattern of pursuing soft targets, players who are generating suspicion in other quarters, and of jumping to those targets at times when you appear to be early on the wagon, but not early enough to get attention. Each individual move is justifiable – which is why, if you’re Scum, they’re good moves – but as a whole the picture looks odd.

Chronos comes in and votes for GuirienEspana. Money quote:

I think I have a blind spot here, but at least one player other than Guiri recognized what peeker did as a claim. Just saying. I continue to find Chronos suspicious.

Wanderers does that “maybe you should lynch me” thing (which I think qualifies, by the way, as a de facto claim of vanilla. If Wanderers claims a power role at some point I will be very suspicious). Mahaloth follows it up with an opportunistic vote.

OK.

---

I am suspicious, to varying degrees, of four players in particular: Chronos, Freudian, Mahaloth, and yes, Wanderers.

For the moment, I am going to put down my strongest suspicion in vote form:

vote Mahaloth

However, I think we are generally doing ourselves a disservice by spreading our votes so thin. I intend to go back to Day One tonight and see if I can dig up anything else there. My vote very well may change as tomorrow approaches.

@storyteller0910

I agree with you, and I don’t think Meeko was thinking that his logic was invalid. I think his argument sounded good to him.

My point is that it doesn’t really matter whether Meeko believed his own argument or not. What he clearly didn’t do was put a ton of thought into it. It is entirely possible that Meeko just wanted to get on the record as defending someone (he knew to be) Town, so he grabbed at what he considered to be a suitably likely reason.

Meeko’s been wildly paranoid the whole game, and suddenly, randomly, he finds a reason to declare someone off-limits for Day One?

So yeah, you know, add Meeko to my list, above, of folks who look questionable to me.

@storyteller0910

Near as I can tell, a late tie in this particular game isn’t a particularly big problem. If there’s a late tie, there will still be a lynch, and one that’s under our control. In fact, your vote has not altered the situation, as Ed’s vote, while putting us at a tie, didn’t change the identity of the lynch-ee currently on the block (nor did yours).

And I can’t see anything wrong with Ed voting for the player he thinks is scummy, whether or not it generates a tie. There are still four plus hours until the deadline - should everyone just stop voting at this point for anyone but the lynch leader, for fear of a tie?

Your FoS of Ed for this reason is highly suspect to me. My vote remains with Mahaloth, but you’ve shot up my list now.

@storyteller0910

Also, I hope sach won’t mind if I post a cleaned-up and simplified vote count, for reference purposes:

One And Only Wanderers - (6): Jimmy Chitwood, Oredigger77, Freudian Slit, Mahaloth, GuiriEnEspaña, Drain Bead

Freudian Slit - (5): Rysto, Meeko, Tom Scud, Red Skeezix, special ed

Jimmy Chitwood - (2): Oredigger, One And Only Wanderers, TexCat

Drain Bead - (1): Zeriel

GuiriEnEspaña - (1): Chronos

Mahaloth - (1): storyteller0910

@storyteller0910

Wanderers -

Actually, that makes a good deal of sense.

So, basically, story had suspicion of Chronos, Freudian (now dead), Mahaloth, OAOW (now dead), and Meeko.

[Drain_Bead]

ed, what do you think of the theory above that story investigated Chronos Night 1?

[special_ed]

@Drain_Bead

ed, what do you think of the theory above that story investigated Chronos Night 1?

I don’t think he would have he would have directly stated that he was still suspicious of Chronos in that case.

Unless he investigated Chronos as Scum, I suppose

[Jimmy_Chitwood]

Yeah, I really don’t understand, Drain Bead. Why would storyteller say something like “I continue to be suspicious of” a player he’s investigated and found to be town? That’s like the opposite of how you do that.

I agree that we probably have to assume he got a town reading on somebody, and that somebody is not in the list of people he’s suspicious of, and that’s all we’ve got. If he got a reading of scum, it wasn’t on the person he voted for, clearly, and so either way all we’ve got is the list of those he suspected.

Chronos, why do you think it matters whether storyteller got his role handed to him or whether he made it up?

[Rysto]

It’s possible that story didn’t get a Night One result, or it was on NAF. I would have expected him to breadcrumb that, but maybe he wouldn’t have.

[Chronos]

Chronos, why do you think it matters whether storyteller got his role handed to him or whether he made it up?

It probably doesn’t matter yet, but it might down the line, when people start making full claims, and we’re looking for inconsistencies.

And there’s not really any defense I can make to special ed’s vote: It really was a brain fart, but I don’t suppose there’s any way I can prove that.

By the way, I probably won’t be on at all tomorrow. Easter’s always a busy day for me.

[Meeko]

@Mahaloth

Wow, so we must have a vigilante.

I assume it is daytime now?

I guess it means its not a Compulsory Vig.

One wonders if that lends weight to it being a Town Vig.

[Mahaloth]

1. Good choice, vig. You either would have killed a scum or most likely saved us a bad Day Three lynch. Still, sorry to see Freudian go.

2. I see story’s vote ended on me yesterDay. I don’t really know why or have much to say about it. I’m town and that’s all I can say about it. Perhaps he got a town result on Night One for Freudian or OneandOnly. I guess we won’t know, unless he bread-crumbed in some way we haven’t figured out.

3. Having been wrong about OneandOnly(still a stupid move by him, I think), I still suspect Tom Scud first because of his terribly lame vote for Freudian.

In fact, I don’t mind getting a vote in early. So, I will.

Vote Tom Scud

Same case as I made yesterDay, but even stronger now we know Freudian was town.

[special_ed]

@Meeko

I guess it means its not a Compulsory Vig.

One wonders if that lends weight to it being a Town Vig.

I would bet not compulsory. I wouldn’t think sachertorte would put one in a more basic game. He’s usually not overly fond of anti-Town Town roles.

And, a Vig is pretty much Town by definition. A Scum with an extra kill would be a strongman, and certainly not basic. And a 3rd party killer would likely be a serial killer. And we don’t even have 3rd party roles.

But, yes, a kill of Freudian only makes sense coming from a Town role. Scum would have wanted us to waste a Day lynching her.

[Chronos]

Actually, come to think of it, I can make a defense against special ed’s vote on me. Namely, what would the benefit have been to Scum, for me to first deliberately ignore storyteller’s revealed role, and then to post that I hadn’t noticed it? ed, in his vote post, calls it an attempt at misdirection, but really, is there any chance that I would have been able to distract the Town so much that, out of all of the many folks still alive, none of them would have noticed? And even if I were naive enough to think that might work, why would I make that second post?

But enough about me. I agree with others that Freudian was a logical choice for the Vig last Night, but I would caution the Vig not to make it a habit to always kill the runner-up. A predictable Vig can too easily be exploited by the Scum. Even in the simplest case, the Scum can conspire to vote such that the runner-up is Town, secure in the knowledge that the Vig will kill that person for them, while avoiding the exposure that comes from leading an actual lynch of a Townie. In a worse scenario, if the Scum have a power that can protect one of their own or swap targets, or if they figure out who the Vig is and have a roleblocker, they can choose to just always block or redirect the Vig when he’s targeting Scum, and let him have a free hand when he’s targeting Town. The solution to this is for the Scum to not know who the Vig is targeting until they see the corpse, which means that the Vig has to be unpredictable.

[ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies]

Still trying to catch up guys. I’m looking primarily at Tom Scud right now, and will be putting together a more useful post tomorrow, once I’m off the clock.

[Oredigger77]

It’s good to know we have a vig but it’s too bad that Story got aced before he was able to let us know any results. I think it’s a good thing that the vig took out FS otherwise we would have had toDay lynch on rails pretty much. I’m going to have to go back and take a look at our two wagons from yesterDay and see if I can see any scum manipulation but with two vanillas in a race I’m not sure how much the scum would have cared.

[Meeko]

@special_ed

I would bet not compulsory. I wouldn’t think sachertorte would put one in a more basic game. He’s usually not overly fond of anti-Town Town roles.

And, a Vig is pretty much Town by definition. A Scum with an extra kill would be a strongman, and certainly not basic. And a 3rd party killer would likely be a serial killer. And we don’t even have 3rd party roles.

But, yes, a kill of Freudian only makes sense coming from a Town role. Scum would have wanted us to waste a Day lynching her.

Just calling this as I see it, on first blush :

That seems a tad too “fast” a reaction, there, Ed.

By that I mean to say, you seem eager to offer up reasons, and make conclusions that I think are a bit too far apart.

[Jimmy_Chitwood]

Would you like to provide an example of such a conclusion, having made the accusation?

[TexCat]

@Drain_Bead

ed, what do you think of the theory above that story investigated Chronos Night 1?

I’m not Ed, but I don’t think it’s possible. If story had investigated Chronos and found him scum, he would have, at the very least, voted for him. If story had investigated Chronos and found him town, he wouldn’t have put him on his FOS list.

He voted Mahaloth, so it’s possible that he got a scum result on Mahaloth, but he certainly didn’t push the case like he had that knowledge. Much more likely that he got a town result.

@Jimmy_Chitwood

[…]
Chronos, why do you think it matters whether storyteller got his role handed to him or whether he made it up?

If storyteller made up a role, then it’s likely the scum also made up roles.

Does anyone else have suspicions about blue really being town? When OaOW turned up town, I would have put money down that Freudian was scum. YesterDay in a two townie race, I would have guessed that a few of the scum would have taken the opportunity to put votes down on their fellow scum. Or is it possible that Freudian was scum and that the result was somehow tampered with?

[special_ed]

@Meeko

Just calling this as I see it, on first blush :

That seems a tad too “fast” a reaction, there, Ed.

By that I mean to say, you seem eager to offer up reasons, and make conclusions that I think are a bit too far apart.

maybe you should wait for your second blush.

Not that I actually understand what point you’re actually making…What is ‘too fast’ of a reaction? That I think a Vigilante is Town? OK, do you know of any other types of Vigilantes? And, aside from the fact that we know this game has no 3rd party players, would you call a Scum with a secondary kill a Vigilante? That’s not the standard use of the term.

Or maybe you object to my agreeing with you that the Vigilante appears not-compulsory.

Oh, why am I trying to figure out what ou mean when you use your very indirect way of posting?

Let me be more direct.

1. What did I do too fast for you?
2. What reasons did I offer up?
3. What conclusions did I reach?
4. How are those conclusions a bit too far apart?
5. What are those conclusions far apart from?

[Jimmy_Chitwood]

@TexCat

Does anyone else have suspicions about blue really being town? When OaOW turned up town, I would have put money down that Freudian was scum. YesterDay in a two townie race, I would have guessed that a few of the scum would have taken the opportunity to put votes down on their fellow scum. Or is it possible that Freudian was scum and that the result was somehow tampered with?

If blue doesn’t mean town there’s not much point to playing the game. We just kill each other until somebody says one team wins?

To put it another way, what can we do with this possibility other than discount it utterly? I don’t see how town can be served by speculating about this.