My apologies Pygmy Rugger. I misread your post 1811 as a reply to post 1810 rather than as to post 1809. I guess that’s what I get for not re-reading the quoted text. Thanks for correcting me.
Fretful Porpentine
I suspected Winston Smith because he never addressed my question to him Here
Instead he continued ranting against Blast Master and being aggressive. He had also been very much about getting the day over with NOW. Also, he did not go with the rest of the town in the planning, which I can understand if he truly believed differently, but he never really gave a reason why, just called a bunch of people scum and got all dramatic. OldPlanGoodness StillWithTheOld
Bloodthirst
He had gone from fairly quiet earlier in the game, to posting like a psychopath, and refusing to have reasoned arguments as to why we should listen to him. He was dead set on lynching Queuing and having BM take out either zuma or Gadarene, and persisted in this even after zuma’s Mason claim and subsequent confirmation. Queuing ended up in the town’s favor, although not fully trusted as town yet by many, and the other two are accepted as Town. I stand that at that point in time, Winston Smith’s posting netted him his fate. I did propose him as a possible conditional kill. But, it was others that took it and ran. I did not vote to lynch or to Vig, merely gave my opinion on the Vig.
Oh, also, I didn’t see Pleonast on your recap of people for the killing of Winston Smith, but he was for it before I made my suggestion. Here and Here
While he is now firmly Town, just showing that not everyone who was against Winston can be in your Group of Evil Peoples.
kivvik has it right about Winston. Based on the two games so far, his playstyle is apparently that of an irrational psychopath. 
He went to his grave, still believing me and zuma are scum. Nothing personal against him, but he surely was not posting in a way to convince others he was a Townie. At least he didn’t false role-claim again.
As for analysis, I wouldn’t hold anything against people who voted against him. Instead, look at people who were trying to defend him. They’re more likely to be Townies, since I can’t see why a Mafia would defend a Townie obviously headed for the grave.
I think my eyes are bleeding. OK, so today has been an exceedingly quiet day at work, and I had more free time than I anticipated. I just spent the last three hours (!) going through posts in a different way (by user rather than sequentially). I have many - probably an excess of - thoughts. I’d like to share them here. I’m dividing people into four categories here:
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STRONG TOWN: People who, for the purposes of my present analysis, I am considering to be very likely pro-town. I realize many of you disagree with these, but I have to start somewhere and this is where I’m starting. Their names, and my reasoning for each, should be found in one of my last few posts.
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LEANING TOWN: People who strike me as generally trustworthy, for whom I would be disinclined to vote at this particular point.
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QUESTION MARKS: This actually comprises two types of people: those who I feel have evidence of both town and pro-town leanings, about whom I am therefore uncertain, and those who haven’t given me enough information to develop an opinion in any direction.
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LEANING SCUM: These are the people I think are most likely to be the bad guys.
So…
CATEGORY 1 - STRONG TOWN
Pleonast, Zuma, Queuing, sturmhauke, JSexton, Autolycus, Rysto, Mennocchio, Blaster Master
CATEGORY 2 - LEANING TOWN
Fern Forest - one of our most prolific posters. I now consider her to be very strong town, for the following reasons. First, her post at 622, suggesting that the Mafia is trying to encourage us to lynch **sturm, Auto, ** and chrisk, has been the basis for my own thinking for a while now. Second, at 715 she called out nesta, albeit lightly, with utterly no prompting; I think scum will vote for and even call out other scum, but not so completely out of the blue. She has also argued that we should avoid going violently after those who make plays or suggestions that could be indicative of inexperience; I would expect Mafia to leap on signs of weakness.
Lakai - for the simple reason that s/he has had a very high signal-to-noise ratio throughout, was a supporter of Gadarene even when many of us were not, and seems to have a bead on the right way to approach the game.
Monkey Mensch - Did he read the parallel thread? I don’t know; I don’t think it matters. He might have been understating his own experience just to take the target off his back at night. All I know is that, as he himself notes in 1694, he has been willing to ride some very lonely bandwagons (for brewha and Aguecheek). This suggests town to me. He also did a few math-y posts, but I cannot manage to work through those right now.
CATEGORY 3 - QUESTION MARKS
Aguecheek - evidence in both directions. Generally seems to distrust people that I trust, notably BM, JSexton, and recently MonkeyMensch, on whom I’m currently leaning town as above. On the other hand, he argued generally in favor of fewer killings early in the game (400). Most in his favor, he argued against the escalating tensions that marked the middle-to-later part of Day 2 (in post 839). His position seemed to be that we needed more evidence to make a decision; given what we now know / think we know about the participants in the Queuing / Gadarene / BM / Pleonast / Zuma donnybrook, I’d think a Mafia member would have made more of an effort to encourage the battle, not defuse it.
ArizonaTeach - had early suspicion of both BM and chrisk/JSexton,, but had decent reasons for his suspicions in both cases and seems to have backed away from those two somewhat. Currently suspicious of Pygmy Rugger, which sounds like a good idea (see below).
brewha - part of yesterday’s chaos, but not a major part. Voted early against MonkeyMensch for vague reasons - he didn’t like Monkey’s early protestations of newbie-ness - but is currently accusing Fern Forest of posting without content, a charge with which I disagree. Not enough here to make a judgment one way or the other.
Fretful Porpentine - some very good recent points on the importance of keeping the Vig’s kills open to town discussion, and on the likelihood that the Mafia will not vote in concert. On the other hand, her most recent analysis seems targeted at JSexton and BlasterMaster, two people I believe to be town. On the other other hand, she has since amended that approach to aim more at two people on whom I have very little read - glee and kivvik. Other the other hand… there is no other hand. So I don’t really know.
glee - I got nothing.
howcow - on her, either. She seems very cautious in her approach.
Kat - as does she.
Kivvik - has generally defended Autolycus throughout. This probably means something; unfortunately, I have no idea what it is.
MadtheSwine - early in the game, threw around accusations pretty freely. Later, though, he caught out Pygmy Rugger at 860. He was back on Pygmy Rugger today, then unvoted Pygmy in order to vote for MonkeyMensch. He has since unvoted Monkey, but not revoted Pygmy. Again, I have no idea what, if anything, any of this means.
Malacandra - Honestly? He’s the only poster for whom participation in this thread hasn’t been the overwhelming majority of his time at the SDMB in the last few days. So combing through his posting history was much more difficult than it was for the rest of the players. This means nothing from a game standpoint other than that I can’t draw a bead on him either way.
StarvingButStrong - I haven’t had much to go on with her until very recently; I’d like to see how her recent analysis plays out before forming an opnion.
Suburban Plankton - ditto.
CATEGORY 4 - LEANING SCUM
FlyingCowofDoom - My evidence is way weaker than I thought it was, though. He has the appearance of a bandwagon voter to some extent, but so have many others in the first two Days. I have noticed that he has a tendency to post a lot of vote counts and vote corrections, giving him the impression of participating a lot without forcing him to do a lot of analysis. Trying to be helpful, or trying to keep the light out of corners he’d rather avoid?
pimaspinner - Where to begin? She voted Enfant Terrible for no particular reason (475) once others had gotten the voting started. She very bizarrely continued to insist that CaerieD’s crumb was Blaster Master and not Menocchio. Note that, as of post 712, she is not arguing, as others have, that the crumb could have been anyone; she is emphatically stating that it was most likely Blaster Master, which sounds incredibly specious. Of course, she backtracked on this and went with the safer “we just can’t know” explanation at 1003, but compare 712 and 1003 and see how different they read.
Then, at 984, she defends Pygmy Rugger, the only person to do so at that time, rather than wait for him to mount a defense of his own.
She was right there in the middle of the excitement yesterday, throwing votes around at every (presumed) townie in the bunch.
Finally, this morning, she first does the whole contradictory analysis, accusing me of being scum voting for scum, then casting doubt on Rysto for suggesting the Mafia would do exactly that. But hey, I’ve been “raising her suspicions all game” (post 1772), which explains why she’s been telling everyone about it for days, right? Like when she used my opinion of FCoD to bolster her own at 894! Or when she agreed with my point regarding CaerieD at 868. Oh, wait. She’s actually never mentioned being suspicious of me ever before, and agreed with me most of the times she’s even mentioned me. But suddenly, she’s been suspicious of me all game? <cough>SCUM<cough>
Pygmy Rugger - He might well be scum. He’s been a bit squirrelly the whole game. I do think he was disagreeing, not agreeing, with Suburban Plankton at 1814, so I wouldn’t use that as the basis for examination.
For the record, I’m not arguing that everyone who voted for Winston Smith is part of a Group of Evil Peoples; Menocchio is pretty clearly town unless he’s the Godfather, and glee, who never voted for WS at all, is probably the one I’m most convinced is in cahoots with Blaster Master. The posts where he invites BM to name his own target, BM makes a show of refusing, and eventually does just that, strike me as extremely suspicious.
As for kivvik, Rysto, and JSexton, it would not surprise me if one or even two of the three were innocent – I’m not placing any definite bets there.
May I make a suggestion? That if you are going to talk about posts, can we get a link to the actual post? I have figured out how to do this and here is how.
Click on the number of the post (in upper Right corner next to the report post) and open it in a different window/tab. Then copy the URL, and paste it into the |insert hyperlink"
Storyteller0910 are you keeping your vote at FCOD now? Or do you find pimaspinner the more worthy of lynch targets?
color removed from quote to avoid confusion
I think everyone would agree that this game has moved along a bit differently than the last one. We had over a thousand posts in one Game Day, for Og’s sake! every time I looked at the thread earlier this week, it was another page longer. By the time I had an opportunity to read through all of the posts I had missed and formulate a reply, there would be *another *page of posts. So just to let everyone know I was still playing along, I’d drop the odd “I’m still here and trying to catch up” post.
So I don’t think that my posting has dropped off so much as the posting in general has skyrocketed, and my contributions (as well as those of many others) just seem small in comparison.
So last night I finally had a chance to catch my breath (because the frantic pace of posting finally slowed down) and I posted some actual analysis, and look where it has gotten me. It seems that anyone who speaks their mind in this game automatically becomes a suspect. I’m sorry if my analysis thus far seems “wrongheaded”; please point me to some analysis that had proven better. Since the Town has managed collectively to kill exactly zero bad guys, I don’t think you’ll find any.
Regarding my analysis from last night: I stand by what I said; I think that we are worse off since Blaster Master “outed” himself. If he were truly doing the town’s bidding, that would be one thing, but I don’t think that is the case. I think that he and the Mafia (which he may or may not be part of) are manipulating the “Vigilante voting” to suit their own ends. I think that the town only has an illusion that they are in control of Blaster Master, and that is the problem. If he were truly doing what the good townspeople wanted, that would be fine. If he is not, then he is a liability.
And just to make things clear, I’m not calling for Blaster Master’s head if the vigilante kills one more Citizen. I don’t believe I ever said that. Hell, we’ve all killed Citizens, and we’re very likely to do it again before the game is over. What I said is that he needs to be held accountable for his actions. If he makes his own choice, and tells us about it ahead of time, then we have the opportunity to pass judgment on that choice. If we don’t like it, we can tell him so.
If, at the end of the day he makes a choice that we all think is logical, and it turns out to be wrong, I’m not going to automatically call for his head in the morning. However, if the same thing happens several days in a row, I’m going to change my tune, because it’s Blaster Master who is responsible. But if we are calling the shots for him, we can’t hold anyone responsible; we just have to keep chugging away, losing an extra Citizen every night.
You know, now that I think more about it, I don’t have a problem if we continue to vote on the Vigilante’s targets. But I think we should leave the final decision up to Blaster Master himself. He can listen to the town’s wishes, or he can set them aside. The choice should be his and his alone. If we collectively make a “bad” choice, and he ignores us and kills scum instead of our target, then everybody wins. If we make a “good” choice and he ignores us and kills a Citizen instead, then he loses. And if he agrees with the town’s choice, then we live or die together. The point is, Blaster master alone is actually doing the killing, so Blaster Master alone has to be held accountable for his actions. Maybe it’s not fair, because he didn’t ask for the role, but that’s life in Ceciltown.
I’s tired and going to work soon. Tried understanding this spaghetti thread, but gots nowhere. Apparenstly, this lynch mob ain’t neva gonna stop, so I’s put my name into the hat just likes everyone else.
lynch Suburban Plankton.
Psst, this game takes place in Doperville. The last one was in Ceiciltown. 
The problem I have with this is that I don’t see why Blaster Master would ever go against what the town has to say. It would not be in his best interests to do so. IMO, there is little chance the BM is mafia. Yes, it does seem like he led the charge against Winston, with little explanation as to why he suspected him. However Winston didn’t exactly help himself out.
The main reason I don’t think BM is mafia is because how could the Mafia have known what would happen on day 2? How could they have seen the giant mess that it was? They don’t get to strategize during the day. It would have taken a brilliant piece of on the fly thinking for BM to do what he did, as the mafia. If that happened, well then he and they deserve to win.
Yes, we have killed a lot of citizens. Yes blood is on BM’s hands. He has to kill, he can’t not kill. The first day chances are he would have killed a townie. The second night, well I never found CaerieD suspicious, but I suppose he did. Regardless we all still had very little to go on. The 3rd night we all agreed, sort of, to kill Winston (or me).
BM can only do what we say. Even if we did follow your suggestion, BM’s only hope would be to do what we tell him to do. For what its worth, I find this discussion on what BM needs to do suspicious. I think it is a decided issue, and further discussion of it seems, to me, to be an attempt to ignite some more anger, and bury this thread in more crap.
Nor do I think we should be worried about the VIG kill yet. Lets get the lynch down, and then go for the vig kill. I realize that the 12 hour window makes this somewhat problematic, and I don’t mean to suggest people should not say anything about whom they want to VIG, but lynching a mobster is our first priority.
Trying to get them in while I can still keep up.
3- Suburban Plankton - (StarvingButStrong, JSexton, Autolycus)
2- JSexton - (FCoD, Suburban Plankton)
2- MonkeyMensch - (Aguecheek, hocow)
2 -pimaspinner (Lakai, Pygmy Rugger)
1- Fern Forest - (brewha)
1- Flying Cow of Doom - (Storyteller0910)
1- kivvik - (Fretful Porpentine)
That is probably the main weak point of my theory, and it’s why I think the town should approach with caution. I do think, however, that there could have been some pre-strategizing to the effect of “if one of us is on the chopping block, he or she will claim to be the Vigilante and offer to kill a player of the town’s choice to prove it, and the other players will steer things to make sure he kills a townie.” That much, I think, is foreseeable – even if the spectacular effectiveness of the ploy must have been beyond the Mafia’s wildest dreams.
A point against this, of course, is that the fake Vigilante has to throw himself on the Doctor’s protection, or else the real Vigilante will take him out the first night – but if a Mafia member were in danger of immediate lynching, I can see how they’d think it was a risk worth taking.
This was actually the point I was trying to make when I first started down this road. We have been too busy working out “scenarios” of who the Vigilante should kill if our lynch target is or is not Mafia, who we should target tomorrow if this or that happens tonight, etc.; we seem to have lost focus on our primary task, which is to lynch Mafia members.
All of this other talk is just that much more smoke. It started on Day 1 with chrisk’s “let’s all pretend to be cops”, then continued with the “trust/mistrust lists”. Day 2 consisted primarily of about half a dozen people making 20 pages of posts, about 1% of which probably had anything useful in them. We’re doing the same thing here on Day 3, arguing about how the Vigilante kill should be decided, instead of discussing who should be lynched (except, of course, for those of you who have combined the two topics and voted for me).
So, back to business…
Although I voiced the theory that Blaster Master *might *be Mafia, I do think (and I said at the time) that it is most likely that he is actually the Vigilante. I can understand why the “real” Vigilante (if there is one) would remain silent at this point; he might not want to put a target on his back by coming out while the town is so far in the whole. But that theory only holds water for so long.
I’d say that we can probably establish Blaster Master’s identity with a fair amount of certainty tonight. If he kills a Mafia member, then he’s OK. If he kills a Citizen then the town is down 9 bodies (at least), and any counter-claim would have to be made tomorrow, or it would be too late. If nobody counter-claims by the end of Day 4, then Blaster Master is “confirmed”. And if someone does counter-claim, they 'd better be able to back it up.
I’ve stated already that I think we should lynch JSexton. this was based both on suspicious behavior by chrisk, and also on the voting strategy (or lack thereof) by JSexton. I stand by that vote.
Now, I think I’m going to try to shut up for a while.
Okay, people have seemed to claim there isn’t much as far as clues go in nesta’s posts to draw some information on. I disagree, but before I get into my reasoning, it is based on the following premises, some of which are facts of the game, some of which are lessons I’ve learned from the bad lynchings, and some of which I assume are simply good strategy:
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The mafia know who is definitely not mafia, but are unsure of the SK.
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The mafia are loathe to draw attention to themselves either, either positive or negative, because negative attention risks lynching and positive attention risks “too helpful” and “why haven’t the mafia taken you out yet?” questions.
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Bad logic does not necessarily a mafia make.
3b. Defending bad logic draws negative attention. -
Mafia are loathe to draw more than weak connections amongst themselves, in case they get found out.
4b. Mafia DO want to draw connections among the trusted and “soon-to-be-lynched” townies to get “innocent by association” thought process. -
Unlike the previous mafia game, this one started with night which means the mafia went into day one with a plan.
Based on these thoughts, I have looked over nesta’s posts and picked what look like could be key clues to the trends the mafia may have strategized. Fortunately, he didn’t have that many posts (otherwise this would have been much hard).
Before the game:
Throws out a jestful random vote.. (pointed out for day one contrast).
No night posts!
Day 1:
Afraid to make a random intial vote and warns about making an early bandwagon.
Infact, FAILED to make an initial vote AT ALL.
Said nothing else the rest of the day.
No night posts!
Day 2:
Points FoS at chrisk, going seemingly unnoticed.
Offers a non-defensive defense when sturmhauke votes for him.
Has a “bad feeling” about the bandwagon that was building against me. Votes for another leading bandwagon instead (Queuing).
Similarly, is reluctant to point FoS at Gadarene.
Posts seemingly helpful thoughts about why there were only two deaths on night one.
Again advises for slow voting.
Defends Autolycus from lynching, but proposes a VIG hit.
Posts a lucid defense of the CaerieD breadcrumb being for Menocchio and not against me.
Again expresses discontent with the bandwagon against me and finally FOSs Gadarene.
Changes votes to a “safer” Gadarene.
Expresses surprise in my VIG role-claim and seemingly helpful analysis of what that may entail and then is quick to agree
with Rysto’s suggestion.
Agrees with StarvingButStrong on the idea for me to VIG whichever between Gadarene and Queuing doesn’t get lynched.
Agrees with idea to VIG Queuing. Not quite points FOS at Winston Smith.
Seemingly helpful post explaining reasons for Gadarene’s suspiciousness.
Supports Conditional Vigging Queuing/Winston Smith.
1 Night post expressing exceeding surprise that Gadarene was, in fact, a townie.
Now, here’s some hypotheses I have drawn from nesta’s posts:
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Mafia are likely to have little or no night posting. Probably due to voting and plotting in the mafia board.
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Mafia are likely to endorse “safe” and/or popular ideas. Bandwagoning isn’t necessarily in votes, but also in which ideas they do and do not support. That is, you’re less likely to see crazy off-the-wall ideas and theories.
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Mafia are likely to over compensate when feigning surprise at discovering things (eg, me having a killing role, and Gadarene being a townie). I find it all but impossible to believe the mafia didn’t know I had a killing role during the first night being that several other players mentioned it; one of them must have also keyed it.
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The mafia are more likely to protest bandwagons when they know they will end prior to lynching. Again, on the assumption the mafia knew I had a power-role and would claim prior to being lynched.
Here’s some theories on the mafia’s strategies I have derived from the nesta’s posts:
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Knowing mafia had a plan going into day one; knowing that bandwagoning is a mafia tell; knowing that wild paranoia will likely lead lynching of the louder posters, the mafia were less likely to vote and participate on the first day. That is, “give someone enough rope…”
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Mafia will only provide in depth analysis and outstanding endorsement on indisputably correct ideas.
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The mafia will want to cozy up to the most trusted and accepted townies and generally ignore the untrusted and mafia.
Assuming there is some grain of truth in my theories. I will now have to point the FOS at kivvik, sturmhauke, storyteller0910, Rysto, and Lakai in particular. This may also implicate ArizonaTeach, hocow, and, smitty. I will have to go through their posts more and see how many of this applies to some of them.
Similarly, this would SEEM to vindicate some of the popular targets like JSexton, Suburban Plankton, but obviously, they can’t ALL follow the same strategy.
Oh, Blaster Master, I have some bad news for you. You’re going to have to redo all of those links – they all point to the same post.
I’m about to re-read for the umpteenth time, but I’m not hopeful of picking up anything new. The Mafia thus far have been devilishly clever at covering their tracks.
Most of those links all point to the 1st one, just so you know Blaster Master.
Not for me…
–FCOD
Interesting ideas, Blaster Master.
Hypothesis #2 - Naturally. But so will citizens, although they are more likely to be the ones proposing the ideas.
On Theory #1 - Well, this is more of a question about bandwagoning more than anything. At what point does a vote become a ‘bandwagon’ vote? At some point to lynch someone the vote count needs to get kinda high. I understand that if the vote is the ‘Uh, I’ll vote SoAndSo too!’ kind that pops up after 5-6 people have voted, then that would qualify. But if they say ‘I shall also vote for SoAndSo, and here’s why…<insert lines of reasoning that may or may not be repeats of earlier people’s>’ at the same point, is that also ‘bandwagoning’? Multiple people can have the same reasons to vote for someone, and I don’t just mean Mafia.
On Theory #2 - What about people who miss all of the idea building, but chime in to give approval later on and give their reasons why they support it? Scum? Or people with different schedules? Not a common happening, but possible.
On Theory #3 - More or less true, so not much to say here. Although in my defense, I’ve mainly associated myself (one-way, he’s not mentioned me more than to say ???) with Autolycus. Not the highest on most people’s list. I’ve identified somewhat with JSexton due to his report on Autolycus, but he’s not really popular either. Sorry, but it’s true 
I can’t remember if I’ve sided with anyone else.
Just some quick questions for you. I worry that it seems overly defensive, but if people point at me, I’ve got to respond. But frankly, in this game, it seems that -anything- is a scum tell.
Pretty much not. I went into the research with a theory that someone who spent a lot of posts arguing with zuma and then posted after Blaster Master’s suggestion without any objection to it might be Mafia.
Unfortunately, the two at the top of the list are you (Queuing) and Gadarene. Queuing posted the highest number of argumentative posts, and Gadarene posted the highest number of posts after Blaster’s suggestion. Gadarene, obviously, has been confirmed town. Queuing, for various reasons mentioned elsewhere in the thread, that I am not going to look up at this time, is not currently high on my suspicion list, although he is still on it, and this theory is one reason why.
The others only posted once or twice in the argument, and may have just been sick of re-reading it over and over. Lakai, especially, I believe this of, based on his response to my pointing out the discrepency of Blaster making the suggestion after this argument.
When does this day end again? Since it’s the weekend now and I actually have a bit of free time, I’d like to go through the thread again, and want to know how long I have to do it.
Monday. I don’t remember the time, but I’m sure of the day.
While I’m typing – I realize that part of my problem is I keep ‘forgetting’ that there are a LOT of scum out there. (6? 7? 8? MORE? :eek: ) I’ll read a post accusing, say, PimaSpinner and think Hmmm. And then the next post accuses, say, MonkeyMensch, and I think Hmmm.
Which is okay, except then I start trying to decide which of the two accusing posters is ‘right,’ and therefore the other is 'wrong – and if they are wrong, mightn’t that be a scum tell in itself? Which is stupid. The fact is that BOTH accusers might very well be right. Or neither.
I’m trying to remember that I don’t really have to find THE MOST ABSOLUTELY SCUMMIEST PLAY IN THE ENTIRE GAME. Just voting for ANY of the scummy ones is good enough.
And if it takes a long time for the town to settle on a lynchee, fine. Right now, it’s good to have a second and even a third favorite for the vig and sk to possibly use.