Mini 388: DOOMsville II {Game Over!}

[Norinel]

I'm here, Mystery Hunt sucked my weekend away. I've also done a quick read but not had a chance to form solid opinions on scumness. The one comment I'd like to make is that scum unlynchable exactly once is a not entirely broken (But still somewhat bastardly) role, so while I wouldn't advise lynching Ozy until he dies, I wouldn't write him off completely just yet.

Why are people advocating for a mass claim, exactly?

[Norinel]

The order is fine, but I don't see a consensus on massclaiming at all. It seems like you're trying to make it seem as if we agreed on a massclaim without anyone else saying they wanted to.

Well Patrick and kilmenator did not raise any objects, we've gotten a partial claim from MBL and kilmeantor already. Do you object to one? If you don't, the only objecting people might be Turbovolver who's 2nd to last and geraintm, who hasn't been making any contribution at all.

There's an enormous difference between posting without objecting and not having a problem to a mass claim. (And I'd class my "Why are people suggesting this?" as a partial objection)

Right now, i'd like to to just plain lynch up Ozy again and let all the cops keep on going.

I know I was the first one to even mention it as a possibility, but I still don't think that's anything close to the play right now.

I still would like ppl to comment on whether or not a second cop should come out if there is one. I would like to confirm Shadowlurker's sanity.

I'm against it, because it reeks way too much of trying to outguess the setup balance even if it "works" and nobody else comes forward.

[Norinel]

I'm a little surprised nobody's going after me for not posting thoughts on specific people, since klebian and I replaced in to the exact same situation. I'm working on a read right now, will have stuff to say about Day 1 over the weekend, if not sooner.

[Norinel]

I'm only up to page 9 in my in-depth read right now, but the two that stuck out a lot so far are ShadowLurker and Turbovolver. SL took the first couple pages with the "I'm just being stupid to spark discussion" card, which isn't inherently scummy but is just as easy to do as scum or town. His response to being called on it struck me as a little more directly scummy, but I couldn't quite put a finger on why. It's probably partially due to how much Turbo was defending him pages 6 and 7. Turbo's also had multiple posts of just switching votes between friday-13th and kilmenator, the two easiest targets for a Day 1 lynch just because of their playstyles, for whatever reason he can find.

[Norinel]

I'm not sure, but I only have one theory about why there was no NK last night and kil's story jives with that. It's entirely possible that someone else is (wisely) staying quiet.

Just one? I can think of three (doc protection, blocked scum, NK-immune target) off the top of my head using standard roles, two of which a tracker could partially confirm.

Well, anyone can be scum. My question is, is pressuring people who've shown a history of reacting badly to pressure in past games a pro-town action on day 1? I mean, the "easy target" accusation makes some kind of sense to me. I'm not making that accusation, Turbo, I'll need to look back at Day 1, but I'm saying that a pattern of focusing unduly on players known to act scummy when not scum early on might be a scumtell.

That's about what I was going to say about that.

[Norinel]

I'm sorry; as I've posted a few other places, thing have been ridiculous. It doesn't help that I'm not really seeing a decent case against anyone with a vote at the moment.

[Norinel]

He was another one who said I picked the two easiest targets by playstyle. Have you encountered them before, Norinel? Or are you just assuming they play this way as town?

kilmenator I've played with before in Newbies. I replaced friday-13th in (the now-finished) Jungle Republic, where she was town.

People's grammar, writing style, and strategic approach don't get significantly worse when they're scum. If they did, it'd be way too easy.

[Norinel]

Do you have some thoughts than who you think are scum then? If you're not happy where everyone is going, an alternative is always nice.

I've taken a lot of my Mafia time the last few days to finish a read of this game. I'm still not really seeing the geraint thing or the kleb thing without a little more looking over, but here are some comments about other people:

Turbo: There's the easy target thing, which has been discussed a lot today already. He's very explicitly shifted the burden of metagame research to the people who want to use the argument against him, which I could either see as reasonable or saying that the argument has no bearing unless you're willing to spend a lot of time poring through other games. Other than that, I didn't see too much that caught my eye.

kilme and MBL: On the one hand, coming out with something like nightgame info right at the beginning of Day 2 is a bold thing to do if scum and a potentially powerful thing to do if town. On the other hand, that's WIFOM, and the slow back and forth between them revealing half-bits of info either has already revealed a lot of info if they're telling the truth or could be one or the other as scum cold reading the other. I have a pretty good guess about what's going on between the two of them just reading it, and I wouldn't be suprised if the scum (Supposing they were both town) had an even better guess.

I've also seen some things from kilme later on in the game that are a bit troubling irrespective of style. He has been spreading a fair bit of FUD Day 2, like being the main one to take up my possibility that Ozy was scum with limited lynch immunity.

Also, am I right in saying this is a decent summary of role-related info that's been claimed so far?

SL: Daycop
Ozy: Unlynchable townie, ability confirmed Day 1
Kilme: Tracker/info role, probably targeted MBL Night 1.
MBL: Has claimed a night action
Norinel: unclaimed, Innocent by SL
Adele: unclaimed, Innocent by SL
Turbovolver: unclaimed
Colonel Kurz: unclaimed
geraintm: unclaimed

[Norinel]

If not, then it's either a throw-away comment (geraintm townie) or feigning incomplete knowledge (geraintm scum). I don't really see a way to discern from the two, so yeah, I guess I agree geraintm doesn't have anything to explain.

I'd kind of like to think scum go out of their way to make those kinds of throwaway comments. If it becomes a pattern, we can get somewhere. But looking back at the context:

if ozy does end up getting lynched, it will be one of the worst lynches i have seen. just a truly poor game to try and get a 'fair' lynch from, if that makes sense. i'll be very disappointed if ozy goes (unless he turns up scum of course)

I don't even think the paranthesized bit goes far enough to make up for the sentence before it. Plus, this all only makes any sense if geraint and Ozy are scum together, which could very well be half confirmed or half busted by the time the case against either is much stronger.

[Norinel]

Autoload, could you please tell me why you voted Klebian, you did not explain your vote. And, did you know you were dropping them hammer on him?

*seconds both questions*

Honestly, I think a mass claim would be a good play right now, we have 8 people left and I would bet that most of us have power roles (based on those killed thus far and the other game), so we should have some pretty good information about how nights worked, and turned up no night kills. I would like to hear everyone else's opinon first, but I think that might be the best way to proceed. Again, this is just my opinion and if you guys think it is a bad idea, I can leave it alone.

I see it as a little more of an option now. On the other hand, we already have two claimed abilities that trigger during the day, so any more claims might narrow down who's keeping the nights kill-free a lot more than usual. And a mass claim would probably give the scum a good shot at getting their kills unblocked.

[Norinel]

Zebra is a slang medical term for an obscure and unlikely diagnosis from ordinary symptoms.

It derives from the aphorism "When you hear hoofbeats behind you, don't expect to see a zebra," which was probably coined by Dr. Theodore Woodward, a former professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, School of Medicine.[1] It is also phrased as "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras."[2]

I guess "improbable role" would've been better, but it foolishly didn't occur to me that you'd be unfamiliar with it, since I've some across it several times in Scrubs, ER and (I think) Casualty, and have used it in casual discussion without trouble.

Having been on the receiving end of something that actually turned out to be a zebra (Designer Mafia I, all but cleared and confirmed sane cop with a N1 guilty result on me; good old mafia framer actually hit for once) I for one try to avoid writing the possibility off entirely, especially when doing so can cost the town the game.

"Confirmed innocent" by SL:

SL, Norinel, Adele, geraint

Remaining: turbo, autoload, kilmenator

I'll roll with turbovolver and kilmenator as the final two scum. I just don't see Ozy's claim and role as scummy in the least.

We get another result from SL tomorrow. I say we lynch turbo or kil, if they turn up town we lynch the other one tomorrow. If we hit 1/2 we're at lynch or lose: 4 remaining, one scum, and we decide between SL and his guilty result. The only way this plan fails is if the scumteam is ShadowLurker+autoload. If both kil+turbo are scum, we win.

I'm not sure we should trust SL in particular and the other claimed but unconfirmed roles in general all that much farther without something a little stronger to go on. If everyone is what they've claimed and scum are paying any attention at all, we almost certainly would've woken up to a dead doc this morning.

Also, Day 2 you kind of confirmed kilme as having a tracking ability. Do you think he's a scum tracker, or made a lucky guess, or what?

[Norinel]

Well, I could see MBL being a doc who protected Ozy or scum who tried to kill (Or successfully recruited) Ozy. I'm not sure what else MBL could possibly claim here. I kind of feel that the Day 2 exchange between them had kilme let on too much info if MBL had to lie, especially since he'd known he targetted Ozy.

[Norinel]

Well, I certainly haven't checked in in a while. But I have no intention on hammering MBL at this time; at the very least, I'd like to look over the Day 2 kilme/MBL exchange to decide who's cold reading who.

I didn't daykill nobody. And I thought autoload was a modkill because he wasn't posting. I'll have to go reread that.

Is that double negative deliberate?

[Norinel]

Norinel, can you please summarize your thoughts on the gamestate and various alignments? What's your take on SL and his three cleared individuals? What's your take on the daykills? If I get lynched and turn up town, do you think you have a chance to salvage the game at that point, and if not, why aren't you trying harder to get today's lynch right?

ShadowLurker I'm not entirely sold on. Early on, he pretty much did the whole play deliberately annoying to spark discussion strategy, which I personally can't stand but doesn't inform too much about alignment. I think it's less likely that scum could've plotted out a daycop gambit so early and not have something ridiculous come out against him yet, so I'm slightly leaning towards him being what he says he is, but naive is a strong possibility too. I've been thinking that we can write off his innocents for today's lynch, but not give anyone a free pass tomorrow.

With regards to the daykills, if I were a day vig, which I'm not, I'd be a lot more receptive to what people are saying to inform my kill choice. If possible, I'd even daykill the person the town would be about to lynch, in order to basically give the town a bonus lynch every day. The autoload kill in particular I don't see as anything close to that, and I don't know why a dayvig would do so unless they had a very peculiar restriction.

And even though you didn't ask, my take on you is that you're either puting off a doc claim as long as possible in hopes the scum might not hit you tonight or trying to figure out how much other people might know to fake a slightly twisted doc. Starting with two scum that can recruit once instead of kill isn't too out of whack, and recruiting the most cleared person on the first Night is a reasonable strategy when you lost the GF at random Day 1.

I'll admit I haven't been putting as much into this game as should be, which is largely a result of out-of-game factors. It didn't help when my first full read after replacing in gave me no context at all about why the current bandwagons were as they were, but there's nothing I can do about that except try to invest more going forward.

[Norinel]

To me, MBL's claim hurt his case more than helped it. The paranoid part of me wants to see all of his daykill speculation as a pretty nice setup to make sure nobody was going to counterclaim, if he weren't really the one killing. Plus part of his story includes him thinking that there was a doc that could protect against multiple nightkill attempts on one person, which is a bit stronger than average. Not to mention the whole "give me time and I'll prove I am who I say I am" thing when there's a very good chance we don't have the time to give.

[Norinel]

The only good news is, and remember this in case I die and become confirmed:

you'll be able to figure out who scum is based on the proportionality of how they're questioning me, most likely.

Oh, yuck. You do realise how this looks to me, MBL? Like, "stop asking questions or you'll be a likely lynched tomorrow (if you're wrong)". Well, I'm sorry, I have concerns. What happens if we're in LyLo tomorrow and we know you can kill but not your alignment? What if we have to bet the game on a guess of whether you're scum or not?

I see this. It reads just like scum trying to scare townies off of putting in the last few votes for a lynch.

I'm almost certainly not going to vote MBL today. I think he's a bad lynch, who can be either disproven tomorrow, add a kill to the town's balance, or disobey the town's dictates and show himself a Bad Guy making tomorrow's lynch easy/safe. His answers have their problems, but a test is a better solution to that problem than a lynch.

I'm not sure I agree here. A lynch on MBL will give a lot of information on the killing group dynamic, which we still don't know about for sure, and probably a decent amount of daygame stuff from today. If there is an SK (Whether it's MBL, someone else doing the daykills, or something completely different), giving two killing groups another day when we don't even know what's out there starts to hurt right about now.

[Norinel]

So yeah, I'm back. And I do apologize that my contributions to the entire game have been minimal, but we're definitely on the road to clinch this now.

You continue to fail to comment on the crux of my argument... why would Norinel doubt that I was the daykiller when I claimed the daykills? What sane person would claim kills they didn't commit? And what person would know they were lying?

Well, I'm not in Norinel's head, so I can't say with 100% certainty, but my gut is...

Someone who can

smell a rat

. You claim were lying. You said yourself you were clutching at crazy straws; if anything, it's damning on the rest of us that we didn't realise you were spouting such absolute bullshit. You pretty much pushed the "if anyone dares query me, they're scum" card to scare people off, so only one or two people would - (a) be involved enough in the game to, and (b) dare to - ask the questions that needed asking. If you aren't the daykiller, Norinel nailed you. He got you fair and square, asked questions you didn't have answers to because (you said yourself) the dayvig scenario

didn't make sense

.

This is basically what I'd say about this myself. I'm always paranoid about the night game, especially when we have so many indications that it's really really weird. I'll almost never rule out a possibility until the mod says it's impossible, even more so when I just came out of Jungle Republic, where the town did get burned by scum claiming other killing scum and not getting disproven. And no, I'm not the daykiller.

Lynching me without a claim at this point is even more foolish and irresponsible than usual. If a majority of the town requests a full claim (And I don't think they have, correct me if I'm wrong), I'll gladly do so, and this statement will make perfect sense.

[Norinel]

Only once Norinel suspected me of lying about the daykills did I change my mind on the identity of the SK.

As I've said before, I'll speculate about nightgame possibilities that seem next to impossible until they're proven to be impossible. I've done it before in this very game, remember?

The one comment I'd like to make is that scum unlynchable exactly once is a not entirely broken (But still somewhat bastardly) role, so while I wouldn't advise lynching Ozy until he dies, I wouldn't write him off completely just yet.

I count two people asking for a claim from me- geraint and MBL.

vote: MBL

. It's growing more and more obvious that he's

something

not pro-town trying to stall for time, and even if he's a jester or whatever, there should only be one scum left we can deal with tomorrow.

[Norinel]

Let's get a full claim out of Norinel at the very least.

This game is honestly very convoluted even if the roles aren't that much individually and I'm trying to decipher what the hell is going on half the time

All right, that's what I was missing.

I'm the Kamikaze. I have no night or day actions, so I haven't had anything to do with the night game thus far. However, if I'm lynched, the person casting the lynching vote for me will die as well.

Norinel's and Adele's behavior should give everything away to you... if they really believed I was the SK and the final threat to town, they'd be happy to claim in order to clarify the game's events. But they realize they have to lynch me AND survive tomorrow in order to win, so they're playing it close to the chest.

If that's true, then what's (what was, for me now) whichever one of Adele and I that

isn't

the SK thinking?

[Norinel]

Well, as much as I'd like to say being uncommitted was part of my clever plan to save the bomb to clinch endgame, but it really has been a hard several weeks in many ways.

And if you all do decide to lynch me, we should decide carefully who the second most likely person is and force them to place the deciding vote as all but a second lynch. And so Adele looks a whole lot more suspicious in my eyes for being quick to cast the first vote, since that makes it impossible for her to die in the event of my lynch unless she unvotes first. Why else would you be so quick to cast a vote when we're one daykill away from lynch or lose?

[Norinel]

Norinel: given that you clearly aren't voteless, why didn't you ever vote in the game until late on yesterday?

Lack of investment in the game/time to commit to it, to be honest. My impressions almost never lined up with where the votes were at any particular time, and I never had a good opportunity to make the case for someone where they weren't. It doesn't help that I'm relatively cautious with my vote in general in the mid-to-late game.

Are we all giving SL a free pass now?

[Norinel]

Well, this game is high-chaos, right? Could the exact wording of your PM be interpreted in such a way that there could be no cop?

[Norinel]

And to think I just blasted Adele for going out of her way to get an early vote on me. I suppose you two are equal in that respect now.

I think the best strategy here if you both think I'm more worth lynching is first for me to decide on the second choice, then have that person place the second vote on me under threat of lynch.

I'll do a full analysis on the history here as soon as I can; don't know that I'll be able to convince either of you on not lynching me, but I need to make a decision on who's going to survive.

For starters, you all understand why I held off claiming as long as possible, right? It both wouldn't tell us anything about the night game since I haven't affected it and would have left open the possibility of a trap today.

[Norinel]

I'm not going to swoop in and vote for either of you right now. Real post from me today, I sincerely hope.

[Norinel]

That certainly seems reasonable. On the other hand, it could very well be possible that it's easier to wrap your head around strange deliberately lynching me plans

if you know my claim is true

.

By the way, where have all the nightkills gone? The only ways I can see that working out is if the scum can't nightkill for some reason, the scum didn't nightkill most nights for some reason (To give someone a doc claim, maybe), or if geraint got lucky and hit successfully both times the scum got a chance. (Hopefully they were gone by Night 4, and recruited Night 1 instead of killing)

Let's suppose Mert/Turbo/autoload were the nightkilling scum, and geraint got some successful protects. We already know that they didn't nightkill N1, since they were recruting Ozy. But they went for the claimed cop Night 2, perhaps because nobody objected to MBL's not-quite-claim of doc. Night 3, they would've had to attack me, which is really unusual since I at that time made a lot of sense as a potential lynch target. Maybe MBL went so hard on me yesterday because he thought I was NK-immune?

Geraint's reactions to the Day 2 MBL/kilme exchange were more confused than anything else, which I could read as either sincerely not understanding because he hadn't decided on a doc claim or maybe newbieness.

[Norinel]

This is getting tiresome. ger and I will shout each other round in a circle. Perhaps it would be better if Norinel asked us what he considers to be the important questions.

Here are a few that come to mind:

Geraint, why do you think scum (MBL, by that point) attacked me Night 3, given that he used me as the main person to lynch?

Adele, if there's no doc or anyone with nightkill immunity except klebian or maybe the SK, why have there been no nightkills?

Both of you, if there's anything that you can point me to from the thread that shows you haven't been playing to survive, or the other one has, that'd expedite things as well.

[Norinel]

And Norninel, do you think with mine and adele's role claims which is more believable. mine as doc, when there has been no nightkills in the game at all, or "back-up cop", which is always the easiest claim for a bad guy, being so hard to disprove.

That's a point in your favor, yes, but as far as I can tell it's the biggest one. If the daygame factors were similar, than that might tip the scales in your favor, but so far Adele's doing better on that front.