I suppose it depends on the game history for a given group of players. Godfathers that investigate as Town are standard procedure around here, so we know to watch out for them. I’ve never seen a role that could alter the cardflip, so I would never even consider that a moderator might spring that on me without some kind of warning.
Since I’m no longer the only one who’s mentioned it, I agree with Zeriel that we may be making a mistake assuming that our cop is dead and until we have further evidence, we should avoid assuming that a character’s profession=role.
I may be being a little naïve but I don’t think it’s 100% definite that Story was our cop, although it’s quite likely. The profession shown in his reveal was Detective Chief Superintendent, a term mainly used in the UK and was most certainly the profession of the character he was assigned, not a generic mafia term for his role in this game. After the name claim Story himself commented on how unlikely it would be for characters and their professions to match roles in the game. Sure, this could have been wifom to throw scum off his tail (or sarcasm aimed at sachertorte?) but as he chose to false claim, I think both options are valid:
Another factor is related to the newbie-friendliness of the game, I find it hard to believe that a newbie could have been assigned a town-aligned role of, for example, Gregory House (Medical Doctor) (fictional) and would have been forced to lie during the name claim which, in this particular game, could have been the player’s very first post. What happened to lynch all liars?
I realize this discussion doesn’t get us anywhere useful and possibly opens a door to a scum false-claiming detective later in the game while also opening a door to a claim from a real surviving cop but I’d prefer we didn’t automatically assume character=role without further evidence.
If character does not indicate the role, then we have no method of knowing who had what role. And given sachertorte’s comments after Cecil Pond, there’s no way he left the Town with no way of knowing who was the cop, for example.
We don’t even know that there IS a cop.
My expectation is that we would see something like
storyteller0910 (Detective Chief Superintendent (Fictional)) is dead.
Freudian Slit(Greek (Fictional)) is dead.
Joe Schmoe Townie (Painter (Town Investigator)) is dead.
Let’s worry about that if we ever see a reveal like "Joe Schmoe Townie (Painter (Town Investigator)). In the meanwhile, we’re only on Day 3, and wouldn’t have expected to have any Detective information available yet anyway. We should probably move on with what we do have, not what we might hypothetically eventually have.
More or less what I’m trying to say–hunting for a Story breadcrumb is just about as pointless as it gets.
sachertorte stated repeatedly after Cecil Pond that he feels that any game without a cop is broken. I’m quite sure that we had a cop in this game.
This is a guessing game I’d prefer not to play in a closed setup, regardless of author, without more information either way.
So. Texcat:
Here’s the set of posts directly related and leading up to her peeker vote. First, to Chronos, on the question of whether or not (possibly modified) quotes of PMs were a good format for the name claim: (somehow I missed this in my multi-quote round up so it’s copy/pasted, ohtheirony - it’s post #208):
She then posted twice about how unclear peeker’s claim was, and requested that he clarify it, including the parenthetical. (quotes deleted to make this less spammy) several other people also chime in.
peeker responds to Red Skeezix with a clarification of his claim. (also copy/pasted rather than multiquotes, it’s post #303)
Now, I’m reading this with hindsight and all, but to me THAT claim was perfectly clear, including where the () around “witch” should go. (“i am a witch”)
(the vote, 11 posts and about an hour and a half after the above)
Anyway, I voted her (twice) because I thought it was disingenuous to go after peeker for obfuscation after he’d just clarified himself, and because I thought there was a major disconnect between her 208 and her insistence that the parenthetical be between actual parentheses.
She never really responded to that, nobody else ever picked up on it, and I wound up shifting my vote both days.
Anyway, moving on to the post that caught my eye Yesterday about her vote on Jimmy:
Now this post jumped out at me because it finally offers at some length what she was thinking about peeker: not that his information would have made a difference, but that he was hiding it. But going back, the fundamental inconsistency between 208 and everything that follows is still there: if the form the name claim was made in isn’t important - if cutting and pasting is only a matter of convenience - then why is it that it suddenly becomes terribly suspicious if people don’t want to cut and paste or use [ quote ] tags? (And a reason to suspect Jimmy and Chronos)?
Maybe I’m too hung up on 208 - it was a quickly bashed-out post, maybe her thought evolved between point A and point B. But it pings me hard.
Another thing that is pinging me: how does TexCat go from casting a reluctant vote for Freudian yesterday, to being so convinced that she was scum that she now thinks she was a death-godfather? (I do believe her claim that she didn’t realize how outre a death-godfather would be, but I think that’s a null tell as to her townieness - neither Town nor Scum would have speculated on that if they’d realized how gastardly it would be.)
Anyway, I’m going to try and take another look at Day 2, but it might have to wait until I’ve gotten a bit more sleep.
Oh, yeah:
vote TexCat
On the was-story-a-real-cop question - if he wasn’t (or at least some power role), why did he false-claim his name? Yes, his real claim would have put him in the scum’s crosshairs, but for a Vanilla townie, being night-killed by the scum is something you WANT to happen. And of course if there happens to be some kind of name cop or lie detector, false-claiming your name opens you to the possibility of being caught in a lie, exposing a power role, and probably being mislynched; where’s the percentage?
Something I just noticed from Guiri– He was the first to speculate about a Serial Killer, in post 683:
Now, one thing I’ve found is that Scum tend to be much more concerned about third parties than Town are: The first game I played in, I correctly identified Rysto as Scum for that (he was focusing exclusively on the third-party in that game, not on the Scum), and when I was Scum in Screamers, I genuinely, honestly believed that peeker was a third party. This happens because, even when we’re Scum, our Scumdar keeps on working: If you’re Scum but think someone else looks Scummy, then you’ll naturally jump to the conclusion that that person is a third party. So I think that a Scum would be more likely than a Townie to bring up the possibility of a Serial Killer.
Combined with my previous reason, I’m still suspicious of Guiri.
Meanwhile, the voting yesterDay: The end-of-Day votes can’t tell us very much, since (almost) everyone voted for Freudian or Wanderers, and they were both Town. However, it might be instructive to look at where those two wagons came from. Jimmy started the case on Wanderers, but it looks to me like his voters had a variety of reasons. The Freudian case, however, looks like it was driven pretty heavily by Tom, starting from before it was clear that the only two end-of-Day wagons would be on Townies. This looks to me to put some suspicion on Jimmy, and more on Tom. And I still haven’t seen a plausible explanation for a Town Tom coming up with that “overnight thread” phrasing.
Vote Tom Scud
Didn’t everyone show up this mOrning ready to lynch Freudian? Several people have stated that the vig has saved us a mislynch. I was convinced that either OaOW or Freudian was scum, and yesterDay OaOW looked slightly less scummy to me. After he showed up in blue, I was convinced that Freudian was scum. New information leads to new opinions…it’s hard to see what’s wrong with that.
Paraphrase, “After OaOW showed up in blue, and thus must have been town, I was convinced that Freudian, who showed up in blue, was scum.”
C’mon, TexCat. Up until now I’ve been seeing you as just as likely to be an overzealous townie making a mistake (which, in my privileged position of knowing what I am, I can say definitively you are making with at least your vote), but this is an exceedingly bizarre avenue of argument you’re taking us down. It’s getting increasingly difficult to read your level of investment in this argument as harmless, and I really, really really don’t want anybody else getting lynched just for being stubborn in their particular flavor of distraction.
Separate discussion that I’d like some input from others about – Meeko has more or less disappeared from gameplay lately. As far as I can remember that’s unprecedented. Except it was preceded in this case by him catching some heat for his Kelly defense. Increasingly suspicious given the way the lynch proceeded between two townies, one of whom he’d gotten a vote on, n’est ce pas? He’s even been called out a couple of times, which I would expect him to have a response to, but nothing. Cat got your tongue or what, Meeko? I fully realize the potential for a damned-if-you-do/don’t phenomenon here, but that’s not what I’m after. I’m looking at the ratio of scumminess-to-post, and the suspicious activity followed by a sudden withdrawal, except for a few nitpicks that weren’t followed up on, has caught my attention.
Time to play catchup, again.
First off storyteller as a power role: Maybe he was the cop maybe he wasn’t. I do think the fact that he came up as town, and he lied during the name claim indicates that he was some sort of power role. Does his, for lack of a better word, occupation translate to cop? I don’t know. There has been little to suggest that this is the case and nothing to suggest that this is not the case. I would say that anything based solely on the assumption that storyteller was a cop and he breadcrumbed results, is a bit lacking in substance.
TexCat suggesting freudian might have been scum (death-godfather?):
I don’t see this as a very likely possibility, I’d give the thought a whole lot more creedence under a different mod, say pedescribe. But Sachertorte, IIRC, has made statements concerning truthfulness from mods in role reveals before, and has billed this game as “newbie friendly”. And a scum player who reveals as town on death is opposite of newbie friendly.
This vote is pinging me for a couple of reasons:
-
The random/coin-flip mentality of it seems like a minor abrogation of accountability of his vote.
-
Zeriel focused pretty intently on Drain late day 1, then voted Drain day 2 with a comment about the “overnight thread” on Tom, and now has moved on to Tom. I can see a potential scum motivation for playing this way. Focusing on a single player too long is often seen as a scum tell, and after two days of zero momentum on the Drain case (Which may also had an element of OMGUS), maybe it was time to move along.
I can’t see a motivation why a scum player would call attention to the fact that they were doing either of these things. So for now FOS Zeriel.
The case on Tom Scud:
His phrasing is a null tell for me. The reason being that in the last game I was in (SSBM:2), I made a colossal slip by criticizing another player for not mentioning his win condition when he quoted his PM, when none of the town PM’s (mine included) had the win condition in them.
Jimmy on Meeko:
It’s not unprecedented, maybe it’s a more recent thing for him, but I can think of 2 games where his participation occasionally waned. The first one is Colorless, where he was scum. The second one I’m thinking of is SSBM:2, where he was town.
Chronos:
You have commenting on being suspicious of Guiri mentioning a SK first. In the text block you quoted, he doesn’t. In the post you linked to, he doesn’t. The closest he comes is alluding a non-3rd party killing role, which does not immediately imply serial killer, as they are usually 3rd party/PFK.
And in fact, one of the conclusions that he made was :
Your statements are a mischaracterization, and ignore what he actually said, and are followed by an explanation why that mischaracterization would indicate scum if it were true. This looks like smudge and bluster to me.
vote Chronos
Good lord, I’m really off my game lately. I didn’t see the “non” in front of “third party”. OK, I retract that on Guiri, and apologize.
I’m still pretty comfortable with my Tom vote, though, unless someone points out another colossal blunder on my part.
@ Chronos, in #882 you said:
And more recently, in #971, along with a misinterpretation, you reiterated your suspicion of me:
If you’re so convinced of my scumminess, would you at least respond to my replies to your accusations?
I first made the comment about Peeker’s controversial claim in #345:
You first expressed a suspicion of me in #360 with:
Your comment was discussed at length by a number of players, Peeker included, so when I got back to the thread I thought it was clear that a number of players accepted Peeker’s claim as such and so I didn’t comment until when you restated Special Ed’s case against Peeker I responded in #467:
You did not feel the need to make any comment on this reply until 336 posts later, in #803, when you resurrected your case against me recognizing that you had actually read my reply, thought that I was backpedalling and placed a vote:
I promptly responded in #806:
Again you did not respond but 86 posts later you say you were looking for me to be lynched and now you repeat your suspicion of me. If you think I need to be lynched, why didn’t you respond to my comments on Day 1 or my response to your vote on Day 2 and explain why you still find me so scummy? If you don’t defend your case and ignore replies from your accused, how can you expect anyone else to buy into your case to have me lynched? Do you really think I’m scum or are these throwaway comments for show? You seem to be making a half-hearted attempt to paint me as scum but are not putting much interest or effort into it, just rehashing your suspicions every now and then. I’ll take your recent “serial killer” comments as a misinterpretation rather than an attempt to mischaracterize me but I’m very suspicious of your pursuit of me.
Chronos (2): special ed 924, Red Skeezix 974
Tom Scud (3): Mahaloth 931, Zeriel 954, Chronos 971
Jimmy Chitwood (1): TexCat 941
TexCat (1): Tom Scud 969
I, for one, would not have voted for Freudian–the case on her was pathetic.
I see. “the case against him is only a scum fabrication” == “slightly less scummy”.
(In case it’s unclear, the first quote above was TexCat’s vote post from yesterday.)