That’s what I’ve been doing, Tom - reviewing the Drain Bead thread. It’s very confusing.
Starting with post 239. DB has at this point learned that, contrary to her (her, right?) expectation as previously indicated, OaOW can’t be Leader because of his role, not because of somebody’s power. DB says not to claim, at least not yet. That’s more or less what a lot of us are saying at this point, and nobody’s giving Drain Bead any crap for it.
The crucial posts are # 332 and 345. Here’s why: DB has no votes on her for awhile after making those two posts, until amrussell says (post numbers added by me):
Was OaOW forced into claiming, though? I mean, we knew he couldn’t be leader, but we didn’t know why until he told us it was role-based and not power-based. In fact, up until the soft-claim, I was assuming he had been blocked by someone else. Now, maybe it was a good idea to clear up that misconception, or maybe it was a bit of early panic on OaOW’s part, or maybe OaOW is scum who is spreading discord and confusion.
Perhaps it was a mistake on our part to direct questions to OaOW and not the mods, but we really don’t know if soft-claiming was something that OaOW truly needed to do at the moment that he did it. I don’t think he was drawing suspicion, and while some of us may have misconstrued what was going on, I’m not sure if clearing that up was something that needed to happen right then. I agree with you that he needed to claim eventually, but it did seem a bit premature.
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At this point, it looks like Drain Bead agrees somewhat with Chronos - i.e. that OAOW deserves some scrutiny, at least over the timing of his claim. But then comes this post:
[QUOTE=Drain Bead at 345]
This lie-detector thing seems like it’s adding unnecessary noise. If it works by only being able to detect actual lies related to alignment, it’ll only be helpful if we all participate in stating our alignment. Ontherwise the scum can hide in the non-zero amount of townies who claim nothing. And seeing as we don’t even know if we have a lie detector, and if we do, his or her talents will eventually only be used to check actual role claims, this seems very premature.
I’m a bit concerned with Chronos and what appears to be two attempts at role-fishing. He’s an experienced player and should know better.
Vote Chronos
(vote formatting on the phone is annoying!)
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Two points here:
One, a U-turn on Chronos’ vote, which has gone from being an apparently reasonable scrutiny of OAOW to an attempt at role-fishing.
Two, the opposition to giving the putative Lie-Detector a lead. We’re all implicitly claiming town-alignment: why not come out and say it outright? No reason if you’re town; one good reason if you’re scum. I wouldn’t say it was proof, but I’d expect scum to tend to be reluctant to make the explicit claim. Couple that with the flip on the wisdom of Chronos’ vote, and I’m happy to:
Vote Drain Bead.
Oh, and in the light of the above: I am town-aligned.
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Follow-up votes come hot and heavy, with minor variations on the same theme. First obvious question that jumps out - were the two reasons amrussell gives here legitimate? So first, was there a U-turn on Chronos? I’d say no, there wasn’t. DB didn’t want OaOW to claim – don’t claim soft, don’t claim hard, don’t claim with a St. Bernard*. In this light, it is, I think, totally legitimate to say on the one hand that the willingness of OaOW to acknowledge a non-vanilla role was a bad thing (I disagree, but it’s a consistent position) and then say on the other hand that Chronos should not push for a full claim. That’s not a U-turn.
The second part of the case was the Lie Detector thing. I don’t think that there’s any reason not to give the LD a statement to work with, since it essentially deputizes the LD into a full role cop and that’s something we want. I have to admit, though, that I’m a very suspicious player in these games, and my initial thinking when Chronos said that was “He could be inviting an investigation because he knows he’ll trick the investigator.” I remember in the last game with a Lie Detector, there was concern that a Godfather might be able to trick the LD the same way he would trick an investigation. If somebody came right out and said “I’m Town, I should be investigated tonight so we can clear me,” that would be really suspicious, right? So I’m willing to give DB a little room there for healthy paranoia, personally, because it occurred to me. In the end, though, it’s probably reading too much of my own style into it, since that isn’t even what DB’s point was.
The bulk of the discussion, it seems to me, has been about DB and giving the LD something to work with. I think that’s been hashed out to everybody’s satisfaction, and DB has given her reasons, like them or not. I really feel like everything else has been without much merit.
Anyway, I started this summary in order to get my own thoughts straight about what’s going on here. I think my conclusion is that the hesitance to go along with the Lie Detector thing when others obviously were willing counts as anti-town enough to justify a day 1 vote, so if that’s why people feel she’s the prime candidate, I can see it. I also think it should be noted that point #1 in case #1 made against DB was a specious one, and we should be aware of that going forward, and scrutinize those who jumped on board with that analysis without much rigor.
*this is actually the improved version. It started as a Harry Potter joke, I’m sorry to say.