On second thought, it’s not like somebody else couldn’t pick it up where she left off.
SBS, what do you mean by “B/C”?
Wow. It wasn’t last night. It was counts days on her fingers Saturday night. How did I lose two days? I wasn’t drunk or anything.
It’s a combination of the lurker-lynching sentiment and the abrupt decision to reverse his stance on believing role claims.
I’m kinda disappointed in that myself. I wanted to see my analysis. Someone else wanna do it?
Yes, you are right. I did point out that elaborate conspiracy theory in my Fretful analysis here. I didn’t really see a point for Mafia to create such a bizarre theory, and so assumed she was just making the game more complicated than she needed to for herself, but I didn’t have the SK in mind while I was looking her over. I was fixated on Mafia at the time. If she is SK, she’s done a good job of avoiding the “play for herself” style that the other SK suspects have been fingered for.
Ack, y’all, I really thought I had something. I still have something, but I don’t know if it’s very helpful. Here it is anyway, in case someone sees something I don’t:
I was looking at the post counts for our little thread, just out of curiosity, and noticed that the third most prolific living poster, behind only Queuing and brewha, was Rysto. I found that odd because, as I’ve mentioned recently, my initial early impression of Rysto as very strong town had faded, leaving me with no impression at all. I couldn’t really remember him being deeply involved in any of the major “events” of the game so far, couldn’t remember much at all. So I figured I’d read the helpful post summary written about him, jog my memory.
There was no helpful post summary written about him. Why not? Well, one player was assigned to the task of analyzing Rysto, but “didn’t see the assignment” and analyzed Queuing instead. That player?
Aguecheek.
Ah ha! I thought. Maybe this is a lead. Maybe Aguecheek balked at doing a summary / analysis of Rysto because he knew Rysto was Mafia, and that either: (1) Rysto’s posts would give him away somehow; or (2) just the act of doing the analysis would cast suspicion on one of them if the other was revealed.
So I did the Rysto analysis myself. It follows. I have done this slightly differently than the others; first of all, I didn’t link to each post, because frankly I forgot to do it until about halfway through and there is no way I’m going through the first 70 posts again. Also, I’ve listed posts together when they support the same idea. So here we go:
posts 2, 146, 540, 576, 609, 612, 750, 767, 850, 911, 1103, 1623, 1657, 1661, 1669, 1670, 1678, 1875, 1884, 1892, 1896, 1980, 1999, 2031, 2049, 2053, 2127, 2138, 2230, 2280, 2418, 2423, 2572, 2612, 2615, 2644, 2651, 2906, 2907, 2967, 2969, 2971, 3296, 3310, 3328, 3331, 3374, 3417, 3421, and 3442 - introductory, joke, night, or filler posts (also includes a few posts that are nominally game-related, but that I felt weren’t substantial enough to warrant including below and clouding the results with a lot of noise).
post 251 - unsurprised that Mafia went after experienced players; speculates on the probable strategy of the SK (he thinks the SK should be playing on the side of the town, at least at this point)
post 256 - asks for someone to take over spreadsheet duty from dnooman
post 272 - random vote Gadarene
posts 281, 286, 300 - Explains and analyzes chrisk’s Open Detection System, on the basis of the assumption that it will help the Mafia root out the real cops.
posts 308, 313, 397 - Defends sturmhauke against various people suggesting that sturm shouldn’t have survived Night 1; speculates that dnooman was the Mafia’s kill Night 1
posts 340, 344, 360, 366 - Talks about why analysis and lots of discussion are good things, and starts a spreadsheet. Feels that votes, rather than FoS-ing, are the key to generating useful analysis.
post 378 - asks for clarification on SK win conditions
post 385 - Describes how the beat cop might be useful.
posts 490, 543, 618, 705, 903, 1021, 2413, 3251 - Argues against rushing things - doesn’t want to end the Day early (this was right before the lynching of Enfant Terrible). After ET’s death, argues in favor of a 12-hour countdown period after a lynch majority is achieved. Later posts will show a similar interest in avoiding being in a hurry - agreeing with Zuma that we shouldn’t place a 10th vote until we’re happy with a target, unvoting chrisk to avoid a speed-lynch, wanting to wait to hear JSexton’s contributions before proceeding with votes in Day 2,
post 579 - Does not think the Doctor should be protecting him-/herself.
posts 584, 585 - notes that only the Mafia and SK can choose not to kill; wonders why there were only 2 deaths Night 2. Speculates that maybe SK chose not to kill in order to avoid hurting the town by kiling randomly, but thinks the Doctor’s protection is the most likely explanation, with the Miller another possibility.
posts 589, 591, 594, 717 - Comes out strongly against chrisk’s ODS, suggests that it (the ODS was a trawl for power roles, which ended in the death of the detective, also suspicious that chrisk was against the cooldown period (in this group of posts, also urges FCoD not to make trust lists). Votes chrisk. In 717, encourages cops to find more subtle means of breadcrumbing than simple trust/mistrust lists.
posts 650, 766, 770 - Points FoS at Blaster Master, MadtheSwine, Pleonast. In 766, chastises BM for saying that the bandwagon against him was “indefensible,” pointing to the fact that BM supported trust lists, led the ET bandwagon, and called for the death of CaerieD. At 770, is not voting but would be happy lynching Pleonast, BM, or chrisk.
post 690 - Wonders whether the Doctor protected Autolycus Night 2.
post 1086, 1095, 1108, 1125 - Proposes the “Use Blaster Master as a tool, telling him who to kill” plan that was eventually adopted by the town. Proposes an alternate plan involving BM receiving Doc protection until a “real” Vig counterclaimed, but then suggests flaws in this plan.
1417, 1465, 1562 - Says regarding Day 2 donnybrook “If the Mafia have any brains at all, they’re on both sides.” Repeats this assertion in 1465, then votes Gadarene, and to Vig kill Winston Smith. Eventually changes his mind about the Vig kill plan.
1465 - Urges Masons to counterclaim if Pleonast and Zuma are lying about being Masons.
1882 - In his longest post so far, he casts suspicion variously and a bit vaguely, with no particularly strong push in any one direction. Does not vote.
1883, 1939 - votes hocow; FoS on me (for not voting for pima when I FoS’ed her). Wants to Vig kill JSexton. At 1939 asks me for clarifcation regarding when I intended to vote for pima.
1885, 1888 - Notes that if hocow is the SK and she is lynched, we will lose Blaster Master’s night kill. Eventually switches his earlier vote to solve this problem by lynching JSexton and Vig killing hocow. Editor’s Note: I’m not sure I understood the benefit of this switch.
1931 - Discusses disadvantages of failing to lynch SK early.
1977, 1981, 2013 - Suggests another conditional lynch / Vig kill scenario, but does not amend vote. Shortly thereafter, does change his conditions, and I think I clearly missed something along the way here, because the vote he says he is changing from does not match the vote that I thought he had at this point, but that is almost certainly my error and should be ignored by the reader. At 2013, changes vote again, this time to Vig kill JSexton if FCoD is Mafia/Miller, or pima if FCoD is town.
2031 - Argues with Fern Forest, stating that “we are certain that FCoD is Mafia,” which we technically weren’t yet, but it was looking pretty obvious at that point. Wants to lynch FCoD immediately (FF seems to have been arguing that he should be let to live while we hunt other targets, or something like that). Returns to JSexton or hocow as Vig conditionals.
2049, 2055 - Likes the plan to test FCoD’s Miller claim; doesn’t have a lynch suggestion.
2190 - Doesn’t believe JSexton’s role claim, but goes with it anyway. He wants to vote for me, but decides to vote instead for Suburban Plankton.
2362, 2375 - Urges Masons to keep under the radar; reminds pima to reveal only pro-Town or pro-Scum status of her investigation targets, not their actual roles.
2368 - Notes that confirmed scum were starting the JSexton bandwagon. Editorial note: As this record shows, Rysto was pretty actively against chrisk/JSexton from the start. However, I’d say that he had clearly articulated reasons throughout and wasn’t really bandwagoning in any meaningful sense.
2379, 2387, 2602 - Supports pima’s reading of Fern Forest as SK, and suggests that it may imply that sturmhauke is the Godfather. Doesn’t vote. Then abandons previous theorizing to vote** for Autolycus **after pima posts her big GF theory. Eventually unvotes and revotes Autolycus to slow the lynch and allow for discussion.
2702 - Changes tack; thinks prolific posters keep coming up town and lurkers need to be prompted to participate more.
2709 - Not sure whether he is still suspicious of me or not.
2872, 2878, 2881, 2890, 2896 - Clearly hates Aguecheek’s role claim and questions him aggressively about it. However, at 2895 he votes to lynch MadtheSwine anyway, despite saying that he would vote Aguecheek if Aguecheek didn’t describe his breadcrumbs by a certain deadline.
3247 - Calls attention to the fact that no one has done his analysis yet. Editorial Note: I was very deflated when I saw this. My whole point in starting this analysis was that I thought Aguecheek and Rysto were getting away with something, and here Rysto pointed it out himself. Anyway, still drawing attention toward Aguecheek.
3268 - Observes that the Mafia can buy time against a SK win by outing themselves one by one.
3271, 3273, 3276 - Light sparring with Queuing over Queuing’s contention that vocal players have been targeted; ends by vaguely defending Queuing.
3280 - Incorrectly identifies the killing of FCoD as a lynch. Probably doesn’t mean anything.
3309, 3321 - Thinks Queuing v. brewha looks like Day 2 all over again; votes Aguecheek and essentially leads the successful push to lynch him. Later responds to Aguecheek’s defense, pretty effectively.
3311, 3381, 3388 - FoS cowgirl, no particularly elaborate reason given (he doesn’t believe her claim, and doesn’t know why Aguecheek didn’t investigate her). At 3381, he tries to catch cowgirl in a mis-statement regarding the Night 2 death of CaerieD, and responds to Pygmy Rugger’s very limited defense of cowgirl at 3388.
3377 - Thinks a last minute shift of lynch target would be a scummy act.
Analysis and conclusions to follow in another post.
Now the hard part: what does all that tell us about Rysto?
Well, honestly, not as much as I’d hoped.
What we have here is a very cautious player. This is reflected in his philosophy - always trying to slow down rushes to judgment, preferring the Beat Cop and Masons to play carefully and reveal as little as possible - but also in his voting pattern. He has voted relatively infrequently. My list above shows several places where he points the FoS at someone, but opts not to vote at all or votes for someone else. Generally, the people he has voted for were people that had garnered some measure of suspicion already - he focused on chrisk/JSexton when everyone had already looked askance at chrisk, voted for Suburban Plankton when the vote was going his/her way. He was very skeptical of Aguecheek, but so were many. He has generally espoused safe opinions that are likely to be popular. This is not neccessarily nor even probably scummy in my mind; just cautious.
See, in the end, I don’t see a lot of evidence that Rysto is Mafia. The thing is, he’s been careful but consistent. He hasn’t shown the voting opportunism that other Mafia have. When he develops a suspicion of someone, he follows it to its conclusion. His observations and strategic approaches have always been very pro-Town.
I guess it is possible that he is the Serial Killer. The way he has voted has kept him from developing a lot of enemies, as it were; if you always vote for someone that you know is suspicious to several others, you can hide in a crowd of other voters. Combine that with his tendency to promote safe, calm strategies and you have an ideal profile for a Serial Killer trying to avoid being noticed. There are a few bits and pieces of evidence that could support this idea, if you look at them funny:
-
He developed the initial idea of the Town telling the Vig who to kill. If he is the SK, that would allow him to stay in control of his kills, reducing the risk that his kills would overlap with the Vig’s.
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He leaped quickly to embrace the idea of hocow as SK, then did the same with Fern Forest; if Rysto is the SK, any line of thinking regarding the SK that points at someone other than Rysto would be a line of thinking he would support.
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He did describe our killing of FCoD as a lynch rather than a night kill, which might be the slip-up of someone used to avoiding the use of night kill terms for safety’s sake and… oh, now I’m just reaching.
See, the thing is, Rysto could be the Serial Killer. But at this point, I’m pretty sure anyone could be the Serial Killer. Lt. Col. Markinson could be the Serial Killer for all I know. I don’t really know of any way to figure it out.
So for the moment, having wasted my entire night on this analysis, I’m going to say: I don’t think Rysto is Mafia and I think he has about the same odds of being the SK as anyone in town other than Pleonast. Which is pretty much where I was when I started all of this.
Pygmy Rugger next.
I’m wondering what, if anything, can be gleaned from Aguecheek’s fake investigations.
On Day 5, when he made his initial cop claim, he claimed that his prior investigations and results were as follows:
Night 1 - Sturmhauke (Mafia)
Night 2 - Sturmhauke (Mason)
Night 3 - Blaster Master (Vigilante)
Night 4 - Pimaspinner (cop)
Night 5 - Queuing (SK)
I think the strategy behind the first four is straightforward: pick three people whose status the Town already knows, throw in one fake result for verisimilitude, but no more than one, to give the impression of being generally trustworthy. The fifth one is interesting; it seems that he wanted Queuing lynched, but was willing to back off when the idea seemed unpopular. On the following day he posted his supposed second investigation of Queuing:
Night 6 - Queuing (Town)
Subsequently, Aguecheek tried to argue that he got it right the first time and start another bandwagon against Queuing. I’m not sure whether he was genuinely under the impression that Queuing was the SK or simply saw a widely distrusted townie who would make a convenient lynch victim, but I don’t think his behavior makes sense at all if Queuing is Mafia. (I believe that Queuing is town, because he seems much too vocal to be the SK.)
Night 7 - MonkeyMensch (Town)
Already discussed by a whole bunch of folks, and probably impossible to tell what it signifies – but I’d like to point out that Aguecheek could well be pulling a double bluff here:
How about Option Three: Ague knew that MM WAS Mafia, but was trying to make us think he did Option Two?
How about doing me, storyteller? (At this rate, I may have to do myself…)
I mean that if we aim to lynch a mafia (B) we are also at risk of getting a townie ©, instead.
On further thought, the other option should be A/C – we may intend to kill the SK, but get a townie.
(Or, I suppose, we could try for someone as a Mafia and have them turn out to be the sk, or vice versa.)
Mainly I was thinking of the situation with Queuing. I think it’s clear that Queuing is NOT mafia, given the determined efforts of a confirmed mafia to get him lynched. OTOH, a fair number of people seem to think Queuing might be the SK. So – if we lynch Q, we may be killing the SK, but there’s a really small chance that we’d be getting a mafia.
Suppose we think X is the SK, and Y is a mafia, and our suspicions are equally strong about both. Who would it be more advantageous to lynch today and who tomorrow?
Umm, if he doesn’t take you up on your gracious offer, can I watch? 
No, I’m pretty sure Option Four is the most likely scenario.
But seriously, I get your point. I think we’ll have to dig up a bit more evidence to make sure it wasn’t Option Five. 
Well, assuming that we get a bead on the SK and Mafia, I’d say it’d be advantageous to take out the SK. My reasoning being, it looks like the SK has been going after town lately. Also, as has been said before, lynching has accountability whereas night kills do not. If the SK were gone, we’d have control over 1/2 of the deaths, instead of 1/3.
Please excuse my horrible spelling, I’m going to bed now.
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
Umm, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
The thread left the 1st page!
No.
Wow. I suggested a few (real time) days back that people were losing interest in this game … but THEN was nothing like NOW.
I think we simply started with too many people – the game has take so long that all the tasks we ‘put off’ to find time to play have now become so urgent that they MUST be given priority over the game.
Still, we must soldier onward.
Right now I still feel that going after mafia is our best bet to win. So, even though I’m half-sold on the idea of Queuing being the SK, I’m going to
Vote Hocow.
Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s a crypt in here. I mean, I did that crazy long and elaborate Rysto post 36 hours ago, and we’ve basically had no substantive discussion since. I’m still waiting to do my Pygmy Rugger post because I’m not really sure there’s anyone even coming to read it.
What’s happening, all? Are we out of gas?
Well, on the bright side, there aren’t many places left for scum to hide.
So, twelve players, of whom one is the SK and up to four may be Mafia. We can eliminate Pleonast from consideration. Of the others:
brewha. I was supicious of him before, and am now more so; both Menoccio and sturmhauke FoSed him before they died.
Fretful Porpentine. I ain’t voting for myself.
hocow. Has adopted a slip-under-the-radar persona; voting patterns resemble those of known Mafia. Somewhat suspicious of this one.
Kat. Unsure, but she seems helpful.
Lakai. pimaspinner identified Lakai as a citizen, and there’s a more than 50% chance that this ID is correct. Shouldn’t be eliminated from consideration, but not a good bet at the moment.
MonkeyMensch. Unsure, but Aguecheek’s last-minute ID as a townie plus his earlier attempts to cast suspicion on MM suggest a genuine effort to get MM lynched, so I’m leaning town.
Pygmy Rugger. Unsure. Casts a lot of votes; known Mafia cast relatively few.
Queuing. Very vocal, votes a lot, seems to have a roughly equal mixture of wrongheaded and sensible theories. Aguecheek seems to have made a concerted effort to have him lynch. I think he’s town.
Rysto. Unsure, but seems helpful.
StarvingButStrong. Unsure.
Storyteller0910. Unsure.
So, uh … possibly not the most useful post, but I’m voting for brewha again unless I see any better choices.
We really will never make this the longest thread in SDMB history if we keep going like this. Come on guys, you are so close to finishing this thing!
Anyway here are the votes so far:
1 - brewha - (Fretful Porpentine)
1 - hocow - (StarvingButStrong)
1 - MonkeyMensch - (Lakai)
1 - Pygmy Rugger - (Queuing)
I gots a Pygmy Rugger vote in a little bit earlier, too.