Scum mafia: On Cecil pond [Game Over]

[Zeriel]

unvote Drain Bead

Fair enough. I still think your chase after Rysto is spurious as stated above.

vote spawn for now.

[storyteller0910]

<sigh>

OK, here’s the thing. I’m going to be gone for almost the entire (real-life) day tomorrow (Wednesday). I’m going to try to make a few decent posts early in the day and on Thursday, but my participation will be limited for a big chunk of what’s left of the day.

It’s funny. People pay lip service to the idea that “disagreement on strategy isn’t Scummy,” but ultimately, they don’t believe it. Disagree with someone on strategy and you will usually earn their vote. They will twist themselves into knots convincing themselves that it’s really about something other than the strategy disagreement, but in the end, that’s all Alka Seltzer has and all fluiddruid has, and here I am with two votes, and I know sach is always happy to see me dead, and if none of the aforementioned folks are Scum then I can bet good money that soon there will be some votes from Scum.

And frankly, I’ve felt I should role claim since basically the beginning of the game.

So.

I am a Vigilante. In color terms, I am an Amoeba. I kill in the Winter. I cannot kill Spawn. I did not attempt a kill last Winter, and it is highly likely that I will never attempt a kill, as the use of my power involves a very significant drawback that I would prefer not to disclose.

So good job, Alka and fluid. Over a difference in strategy you have outed a Town power role.

---

And fluid, I would very much appreciate a response of either “true” or “false” to my last post.

[storyteller0910]

Alka -

I entirely decline to discuss the double-lyse issue with you, ever again. I do not agree with you, and I do not believe you intend reasonable discussion on the subject. Period.

I will, however, discuss other things:

@Alka_Seltzer

This has nothing to do with Fluid or Story’s alignment, and ignores the fact that Fluid has just made two very long posts.

It has plenty to do with her alignment. She has mischaracterized my participation in this game, which has included multiple posts, including some very long posts of my own, related to matters other than the double-lyse. My point in bringing up her own participation was to point out what is presumably her reference standard for an active participant, and to establish that I was well exceeding it. She has since clarified that she thinks I’ve been inactive for me, which is an entirely different accusation from the accusation that I’ve been inactive full stop.

I wish to hear a direct answer to my question to fluid before I comment further.

[Meeko]

@storyteller0910

So.

I am a Vigilante. In color terms, I am an Amoeba. I kill in the Winter. I cannot kill Spawn. I did not attempt a kill last Winter, and it is highly likely that I will never attempt a kill, as the use of my power involves a very significant drawback that I would prefer not to disclose.

FWIW, you were on my short list story.

Not taking what you are saying as Gospel though, but it did buy you some time in my book.

[Meeko]

@Drain_Bead

No, of course not. Please apply Occam’s Razor quite liberally.

Ok. I am never going to explain my Logic ever again. I try for Occam’s and you guys think I grew three heads.

[storyteller0910]

@Meeko

Not taking what you are saying as Gospel though, but it did buy you some time in my book.

It’s not really about buying time. If folks want to lynch me, they’re welcome to do so; my rapidly increasing hypertension would at least be ameliorated. But the necessary information is available now, and the Pond can use it as it sees fit. I’m going to try to find Scum, up to and until they or the Pond kills me; keeping myself alive is increasingly not a major priority for me.

[Oredigger77]

Geeze, I disapear for a day and a half and power roles come crawling out of the woodwork. I realize that each of you were the vote leader when you claimed but dang you had less then half the votes that it took to lynch Peeker yesterDay. As far as the cases go I was really getting convinced about the Drain case before her claim, which I buy (it’s too crazy otherwise). I don’t like the Story case and while I’m not sure about the claim the case is by far weaker then the claim.

The Mahaloth case slightly seems good but I don’t remember why I was thinking that way and I’m barely functioning as it is. I’ll come back to it tomorrow. I just wanted to check in so I didn’t bail for the majority of a summer without leaving some thoughts for you guys to pick over.

[storyteller0910]

Oredigger -

Again, I won’t really be around at all on Wednesday. If I picked up half a dozen more votes and then claimed on Thursday morning, there would be no time the digest and handle the claim properly.

[Drain_Bead]

Well, if story’s claim is true, so be it. He’s admitted himself that he’s essentially vanilla, because he has a power that he’d most likely never use.

If it’s false, our real Vig will get him tonight.

unvote Rysto

I’d like to see Mahaloth answer some of the questions upthread, mainly the one where someone (sorry, can’t remember who) asked him to evaluate all the peeker votes to see which ones were lame vs. not-lame. I’m also still not keen on fluiddruid, either.

[Mahaloth]

@Drain_Bead

I’d like to see Mahaloth answer some of the questions upthread, mainly the one where someone (sorry, can’t remember who) asked him to evaluate all the peeker votes to see which ones were lame vs. not-lame. I’m also still not keen on fluiddruid, either.

Sigh. Do I have to go back and isolate everyone’s peeker vote and say which one is lame and which one isn’t? I already said(I assume you realize this) that I regret saying the other votes were lame. It was poorly phrased and incorrect.

The main poorly justified votes, in my opinion, have been by Kelly, and it was for Scuba…and then his OMGUS vote for me toDay.

I hereby regret the “lame” comment of earlier today(or was that yesterday?).

[Chronos]

Vote total:
Spawn 12
KellyCriterion 3
Mahaloth 2
storyteller0910 2
Rysto 1

[del]1: special ed[/del]
2: ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies – Spawn (727)
3: Drain Bead – Spawn (737), [del]Rysto[/del] (785-909)
4: Oredigger77 – Spawn (717)
5: storyteller0910
6: Meeko – Spawn (715), [del]KellyCriterion[/del] (824-874)
7: Mahaloth – Spawn (721), KellyCriterion (778)
8: Freudian Slit – Spawn (718), Rysto (802)
9: USCDiver – Spawn (749)
10: Alka Seltzer – Spawn (821), Storyteller (900)
[del]11: peekercpa[/del]
12: Natlaw – KellyCriterion (886)
13: Zeriel – Drain Bead (796-901), KellyCriterion (796), Spawn (901)
14: DiggitCamara – [del]Drain Bead[/del] (795-894)
15: amrussell – [del]Drain Bead[/del] (867-880)
16: KellyCriterion – Spawn (740), Mahaloth (838)
17: Scuba_Ben
18: sachertorte – Mahaloth (860), Spawn (864)
19: fluiddruid – Spawn (804), storyteller (851)
20: TexCat – Spawn (722)
21: Rysto

[Meeko]

@storyteller0910

I am a Vigilante. In color terms, I am an Amoeba. I kill in the Winter. I cannot kill Spawn. I did not attempt a kill last Winter, and it is highly likely that I will never attempt a kill, as the use of my power involves a very significant drawback that I would prefer not to disclose.

Snipped. Bolding mine.

Storyteller, if you were not Vig, would you have pressed as hard for not lysing spawn?

[TexCat]

Hmmm…the claims have started already. I tend to believe Drain Bead’s claim, particularly since it has not been counter-claimed. I’m more suspicious of Story’s claim, and in fact was getting ready to vote for Story, but I am unsure now that I’ve seen the claim. I might be willing to give Story a pass for this summer, because, as Drain pointed out, if Story is not a vig and we have a vig, Story should be killed over winter. If Story shows up alive next summer though, does that prove his claim or prove that we don’t have a vig or prove that he was protected? I do think that Story would not be counter-claimed. I agree with Drain that if there was a counter-claim it should be made with a death over winter.

[Rysto]

@TexCat: I would definitely not assume that we have a Vig in this game. story not dying overnight wouldn’t prove anything – we’ve had plenty of games with no Vig.

[Zeriel]

There’s going to be a point in a day or two, Story, when I’m going to seriously want to know what your drawback to killing is–if you are claiming to be a vig who won’t kill, that’s nothing that can be proven.

[Meeko]

Perhaps Story is the one that hates shoes.

[Rysto]

First off, vote spawn before I forget.

Second of all, I’ve spent much of my time looking at fluid, focusing on her case against story. The short version is, she looks extremely scummy to me

• First, fluid has placed two non-Spawn votes in this game. Her vote for peeker was quite provocative – her reasoning was

I get his frustration, but not his anger. At the risk of being labeled a bandwagoner, I confess this vote is largely for selfish reasons – I don’t want to play in a game with the tone that peeker has been using. Scum or not, I don’t get a good feeling.

Her vote for storyteller has focused on the double lynch debate – a subject that fluid herself has admitted is more of a distraction to Town than anything, and a subject that story is obviously extremely frustrated over.

The two votes, taken together, look like they were deliberately crafted to try and provoke and angry, and noisy response from their targets. I can see no Town motivation to be so intentionally provocative – especially the peeker vote. There is a very good scum motivation, though: an angry response is likely to draw attention and votes(as happened to peeker), and the fracas is going to be noisy, which can really help scum stay under the radar.

• Second, fluid consistently puts the scummiest spin on every post that story has made, and has mischaracterized storyteller so often I can only conclude that this is deliberate. I’m going to be doing a lot of snipping here, but hopefully I keep enough context:

@fluid

@story

Spawn cannot coordinate, they cannot vote in a directed fashion, and their deaths will reveal nothing about the game. Every lyse of a player will increase our ability to analyze what has happened so far; every lyse of Spawn will give us nothing, no information, nada. The idea that having two living Spawn is so egregiously problematic that it mandates daily split voting seems to me, at first glance, to be one that doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny.

With 21 players, I figure 3-5 PC Scum, with 4 the most likely number given the existence of the Spawn mechanic. Discounting for a moment the influence of third parties, that would mean 17 Town. So right now, the balance may be 17 Town vs. 5 Scum total. In the worst case, if we were to lynch two players this Summer and hit both Town, we’d end up at 15 T vs. 5 Scum going into Winter (assuming one Scum directed Night kill and ignoring other factors), and then 14 T / 6 S next Summer. But a quick double Spawn lyse gets us back to 14-4.

On the other hand, if one of the two players lynched turned out to be Scum, then it’d be 16-4 starting Winter, then 15-5 at the outset of next Summer. If we then lynched one player and one Spawn, we’d trim things to (worst case) 14-4 or (best case) 15-3.
I think the short version of this is that the knee-jerk response is wrong. In some cases, lynching multiple players may prove to be a beneficial strategy, because having an extra Spawn hanging around won’t really affect us at all until the endgame.

Now, so far, so good. This makes sense; the logic is sound.

In fact, for these reasons, I’m not even 100% sure that it makes sense to lyse Spawn at all this Summer. I realize that this opinion may get no traction, and that I’ll most likely take heat for it, but I learned a very important lesson from Ed’s game about playing to not get lynched, so there’s my opinion - let’s see what folks think.

This addition is the undermining part of the argument. “Double voting players instead of spawn” – sure, not a problem. But now, all of a sudden, it’s “Double voting players TODAY instead of spawn”. That’s a pretty big difference (as of course is pointed out later).

This argument is absurd. The original example, that fluid apparently had no issue with, starts with us double-lynching Day One. But then she takes this second quote from the same post, and says that story is attempting to make a subtle shift from “double lynching is good” to “double lynching TODAY is good”. And if you’re just skimming through that huge quote from story you can completely miss it, but if you really take the time to read the quotes it’s clear that fluid has invented this supposed shift out of thin air. story was completely consistent from the start.

@fluid

@story

Well, look. Leave aside the Spawn for just one tiny moment, OK? I’ll get back to the Spawn.

Let’s say the Mod gave you a choice.

Let’s say the Mod said, you may pick from the following two options:

1. Game as normal. One lynch Day One, Night kill Night One, and so on into eternity; or
2. You lynch Day One, but you don’t get your results until the end of Day Two. The catch? No Night actions, including Scum kill, during Night One.

We would all jump on #2, right? Lynches are our tool, our way of getting information. Even if they are sloppy, two lynches without the Scum getting to Night kill is always a plus; it’s as if a Doctor had a successful protection. Well, the present situation, sans Spawn lynch, is, essentially, option #2.

This is where things start to get fuzzy on logic for me. Saying a double player lyse on Day 1 is, essentially, getting a free extra lynch if you don’t consider the spawn lynch is meaningless. It’s like saying, <for example> ‘Well, we scum players can kill a Doctor or a vanilla Townie, and if you don’t consider the protection power of the Doctor, it makes more sense to kill the vanilla Townie if they’re a stronger player.’ Being in favor of something without considering the disadvantage of it doesn’t really make sense even as a theoretical construct.

Hey, fluid, what was the next bit in that post you snipped? Let’s see now:

Now, the Spawn mechanic changes things in a very serious way. I just don’t think it’s the slam dunk that you and sachertorte believe it to be. More on this in the morning.

Well that rather changes the tenor of things, doesn’t it?

Seriously, go look at the post that fluid quoted. story basically fit two posts into one. The first is a reply to me. The second is a reply to Cookies. fluid quoted all of the reply to me, except for that last, critical line. Snipping like that amounts to a blatant mischaracterization of what story was actually saying.

@fluid

@story

…Also, re: your longer post about double-lysing, etc - can we agree to disagree on this subject? I’m not trying to drive you insane, honestly, I’m not, but I don’t agree with you and I’m not going to and it doesn’t really matter right now. If a situation emerges where I feel strongly that a double-lyse is the best course of action, we can pick up the debate then. For now, going point-by-point on a subject that is completely academic for this Summer at least is not a good use of anyone’s time.

This is where Story backs off. Okay, I can buy that this argument isn’t really helping town. I tend to agree. But Story says “going point-by-point on a subject that is completely academic for this Summer at least is not a good use of anyone’s time”. This discussion was not only academic, he seriously did, albeit weakly, propose this in post 211.

Further, why is it at this point that it is suddenly not worth Town’s time? It was worth discussing in practically all of his previous posts, posts which took complete priority above voting or discussing vote candidates; all of a sudden, not now?

First, at the time story posted his capitulation, there 18 votes for spawn. That meets any definition of academic I can think of. This is another serious mischaracterization of storyteller.

I don’t even know where fluid is going with the second paragraph. story took a step back from the game and realized that he was spending all of his time and energy defending a position that the Town as a whole disagreed with him on, and that wasn’t helping us find scum. So he comes out and says that, and tries to move on, and fluid says this is scummy somehow?

fluid asks “Further, why is it at this point that it is suddenly not worth Town’s time?”. I ask in response, “Is story not admitting in this post that the discussion was not worth the Town’s time?”
There’s a whole second post, but I’m quickly running out of the energy to keep this up, so I’m going to move to my last point:

• There are several critical, glaring inconsistencies in fluid’s case

@fluid

@story

OK, last word on the double-PC vs. one-PC-one-NPC thing from me. I think I favor a double-lyse this Summer iff we have two compelling targets, because the main portion of the downside - that one Spawn will linger thereafter, until we deal with it somewhere down the road - just doesn’t seem particularly compelling to me. I think we stand a chance to generate a lot more information.

And here it is. Finally, once the debate heats up, he’s softened his point. If there are two really good candidates, let’s not prohibit double-voting. “Compelling” is a pretty weak word and can mean nearly anything in hindsight, from “Well, no kidding. If two people are caught red-handed as scum, of course we need to vote both and not have some rule!” to “I thought it was worth voting for both because of <some tenuous case>”.

fluid has taken story to task for refusing to back down over the double lynch issue. But here she indicts him for giving in a little on the subject? fluid, you can’t have it both ways. This reads to me like you are reaching for any individual piece of evidence you can find against story, without considering whether it fits with the whole picture you are trying to present. You’ve clearly read story’s posts looking for reasons to call him scum, and that’s extremely scummy.

@fluid

Below, I’ll go through in a lot more detail, but my summary is:(snip)

• It does not make sense (to me at least) to pursue a topic so vigorously and stubbornly, but yet to suddenly refuse to defend it on the grounds that it has been overdiscussed, while at the same time providing little to no substance for a vote

(bolding mine)

This is a good point. There is no good reason not to continue to discuss doubling-lynching, right guys?

@fluid

I really, really, really hate to reopen the lyse spawn debate. Frankly it has been more of a distraction than anything.

fluid, you acknowledge that the double-lynch debate has not been helpful to Town, and you are hesitant to post something that could re-kindle the debate. Why can you not believe that story feels the same way?

Vote fluiddruid

[KellyCriterion]

Natlaw, I couldn’t for the life of me follow your logic there, and I dare not ask you what “OMGUS” voting is, lest that kind of noobish behaviour make me look scummy.

[ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies]

OMGUS = “Oh my god you suck” considered retaliatory and/or emotional, not necessarily based on logic.

I always wince when the claims start coming early, but hopefully we can make the most of it. From a biological color perspective, the first thing I thought of when storyteller said he was an amoeba, was that he could be a possible third party, assuming he’s telling the truth about that much at least. There are also aspects of amoeba that leave room for a Toughguy type of power.

Yes this is all WAG and conjecture, but nothing that is not a quick wikipedia search away for someone either trying to come up with a fake claim or Scum trying to weigh their options on a Pondie story. Not yet having something confirmable in story’s story is problematic, especially when making such a claim so early.

I’m inclined to believe Drain Bead for now.

[Alka_Seltzer]

@storyteller0910

Alka -

I entirely decline to discuss the double-lyse issue with you, ever again. I do not agree with you, and I do not believe you intend reasonable discussion on the subject. Period.

The problem with this is, it directly relates to your claim. Why would a vig who can’t kill spawn be so keen on a double player lyse? Letting the vig kill spawn was always the strongest argument in favour of letting one live until night.

@Town - Can one of you ask Story this please.

@storyteller0910

Again, I won’t really be around at all on Wednesday. If I picked up half a dozen more votes and then claimed on Thursday morning, there would be no time the digest and handle the claim properly.

If you are town, I think the timing of the claim was pro-town, last minute claims throw town into a tizzy and lead to bad lynches.

@Drain_Bead

If it’s false, our real Vig will get him tonight.

This assumes we have a vig (which I think likely just based on the size of the game), and that scum don’t have a doctor or redirector.

@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies

I always wince when the claims start coming early, but hopefully we can make the most of it. From a biological color perspective, the first thing I thought of when storyteller said he was an amoeba, was that he could be a possible third party, assuming he’s telling the truth about that much at least. There are also aspects of amoeba that leave room for a Toughguy type of power.

Colour-wise, I think amoeba works for vig, SK, toughguy, 3rd-party or a second scum faction. There is nothing in the colour about a second scum faction, there was only 1 kill last night, and I don’t see why an SK would draw so much attention to himself, so I think SK or second scum faction is really unlikely. Story’s play would make a lot of sense if he was a 3rd party spawn-eater. However, that would be a pretty horrible role to give a player, and I don’t see his claim as being survivable (a real vig would kill him, or he’d be lynched after a vig flip, and he’d have no way of knowing there was no vig).

If Story is scum, his claim would benefit them if he is a toughguy, or if they have a redirector. The first case gives him a chance to use his bonus kill, a redirect would give scum a bonus kill if the vig targeted him. If scum have a doctor they might force a town vig to counter-claim, but I think they’d prefer to out a higher value role than a vig at this stage.

Ben hasn’t logged onto the board for 8 days now, it’s looking increasing unlikely that he will return to the game. If he doesn’t post anything next Summer, I’m wondering if we could test Story’s claim by having him kill Ben, instead of letting him be mod-killed?