Mini 545 - The Final Stand Mafia - Dramatic Finish!

[Erg0]

Huzzah!

This is one occasion where I can be almost sure my play will improve on that of my predecessor.

[Erg0]

Oh yeah:

Vote: Trebis

He's got newbscum written all over him.

[Erg0]

Stated succinctly: all talk, no action.

[Erg0]

It's not really a factor at all, as the reasons for it could go either way - caught scum or disinterested town would explain it equally well. Trying to meta replacements generally doesn't work in my experience.

[Erg0]

Well, I suppose there's such a thing as disinterested scum too. This is exactly why I never meta replacements.

[Erg0]

No need, just read his posts in isolation and you'll see what I mean. After his first vote he makes several two-line posts on metas and game theory, then writes off your argument with RetroDucts as townie vs townie, unvotes and asks to be replaced. "Information in place of analysis" sums him up pretty well, I think.

[Erg0]

Fair enough, I suppose I have some ground to make up given my predecessor's inactivity.

Here are Trebis' posts from after his random vote through to his replacement request:

I don't think I want to random vote this time. I actually think Tarhalindur could be onto something.

Vote: Khelvaster

I wouldn't try to deduce much from this. I've played with Khelvaster before, and he has a tendency to do things like that.

Meta on Khelvaster, but no particular opinion beyond "no read".

You gotta admit, a wagon now is a bit...well...fast?

It is a wagon, but not a very strong one. It still takes 7 to lynch. Also, sometimes people will create a weak wagon just to get conversation started.

Also: Someone's going to say this is a scummy question to ask, but are we supposed to know how many mafia there are? What about other roles? By not mentioning them should I assume they don't exist, or is it just a mystery?

Kind of defends the wagon, but really just an explanation of a generally accepted game principle.

I don't see the rolefishing either. Explain please.

Piggybacking on someone else's question.

Unvote since random votes don't seem to be doing much now.

Subtle attempt at looking more pro-town? No way to prove it one way or the other, but I'm just throwing that out there.

Again, no particular opinion offered.

I seriously doubt the scum would try to get a claim out of a townie THIS early in the game.

Pretty obvious point.

I'm bored with this - it continues in this vein until the unvote:

I'm gonna agree too with Mizzy. This whole encounter between Khelvaster and Retro Ducts just confused me and turned me off to the game more than anything. I don't know what it was about it, but I had a hard time following everyones arguments without my eyes glazing over.

All-in-all right now I feel like it's a case of two townies arguing with eachother, which is never a good precedent to set in a game. I've seen too many games where Day 1 gets stuck between two townies duking it out, and at the end of the day the only logical conclusion is to lynch one of the two of them. And of course in the end, you learn they're both town.

Still happy with my Trebis-vote.

I had assumed it was still mostly random, but if you're happy with it, care to explain why exactly?

Also,

Unvote

whoever I was voting for.

So basically he sees no conclusions to be drawn from the first five pages other than that everyone is town. He hasn't actually pushed anyone or really made any effort to find scum, despite the fact that he is apparently gaining nothing from the discussion that's been occurring. Essentially, he's sitting back and keeping his options open while waiting for someone else to start a wagon that he can jump on.

[Erg0]

Realised that I should have unvoted when I came in, so just in case:

Unvote, Vote: Trebis

[Erg0]

What was the purpose of questioning me on my case on Trebis? What (if anything) did you glean from my responses?

[Erg0]

I feel erg0 is town, Glork. He is showing all the hallmarks of a somewhat lazy town, not a scum trying to cover up lack of evidence.

Pfft.

[Erg0]

I'm seeing a lot of similarities between Mizzy and Trebis so far. Their defences seem to be quite different, however - Mizzy is claiming playstyle and Trebis is claiming disinterest. That was a very strident response from Mizzy, probably over-defensive in my view since nobody seems to care much about my similar case on Trebis.

shaka!!, do you agree on the similarities between the two? How do you feel about Mizzy's response compared to Trebis'?

[Erg0]

If there's one thing this game needs, it's more hullabaloos.

Mizzy: This may have already been raised, but it was a single sentence in the middle of a long post by Trebis so you shouldn't assume that it's foremost in people's minds. I still feel its a valid point against both of you, as "information without analysis" is a very valid scumtell in my experience. It's not the length of your posts I have an issue with, it's the general lack of substance. I'm not exactly campaigning for your lynch here, so a proportionate response would serve you better.

Glork: In light of this discussion, I'm curious as to why you included Mizzy in your tentative pro-town list in post 92?

[Erg0]

Mizzy: This may have already been raised, but it was a single sentence in the middle of a long post by Trebis so you shouldn't assume that it's foremost in people's minds.

By the way, this bothers me. No, maybe it's not right in the front of everyone's minds, but as soon as I brought it up, it should have been. This game is about keeping past actions in mind for future reference and while yes, it was in the middle of a long post, I can expect that people would have read the entire thing and put the case he made into the back of their minds, at least, for later recall. Not to mention the ability to re-read.

I generally agree, but it's difficult to keep track of every single vague aspersion that's been cast in the course of the game. Once you raised it I was certainly aware of it, but you seem to be implying that shaka and I deliberately ignored Trebis' earlier comment and pretended we were talking about something new.

[Erg0]

Um, no. We shan't be doing that, a no-lynch on day 1 is almost never the correct play. You've played a couple of newbie games, you should have beaten this out of you already.

Mizzy, I do see your point but again I think you expect too much. I certainly don't re-read the entire thread in detail every time I bring up a new point - if it's something that's already discussed and I don't remember it or have notes on it then it obviously wasn't discussed in much detail and there may be validity in raising it again. I really feel like this is basically a playstyle argument - I can see it from your point of view but I just don't think it's a particularly big deal.

[Erg0]

Glork, I take it you're feeling the wagon again?

[Erg0]

Unvote

, mostly because Glork could be Jester.

With the way that some people in this game are playing, how on earth did you come to the conclusion that Glork, of all people, is likely to be a jester?

[Erg0]

Must... not... discuss... ongoing... game...

Having said that, I think I can now see where Joubert has got some of his ideas. Retro is right in saying that those principles do not apply equally in this game. I'm interested in seeing Joubert answer Glork's questions from the previous page prior to deciding where to go with this.

[Erg0]

1. You still didn't answer my question.

2. I think that you think you have a meta on me. You need to expand your sample.

[Erg0]

I'm not really feeling the Joubert thing any more either - his entrance was weird, but I think I understand where he's getting his ideas from now.

Unvote

while I re-read.

[Erg0]

Mod:

Can we please have a vote count?

[Erg0]

killa seven, your predecessor was either very scummy or not really reading the game. Some analysis of the game so far would be very welcome from you at this stage, since he gave us very little.

[Erg0]

This game may not be the most exciting re-read in the world, but that doesn't mean that we should just give up and go home. If you can't get anything from what's been said, then you should be promoting discussion that will help you out. Sitting idly by doesn't help anyone.

[Erg0]

Is that because it makes you look bad?

[Erg0]

Unvote

while I re-read.

Erg0, you posted this seven days ago. How has that re-read coming along, and what have you learned from doing it? Why aren't you doing more to help weed out people who are being shifty?

Sorry, been a bit distracted with moving house the last week or so - I'll catch up with things at work tomorrow.

[Erg0]

Vote: shaka!!

That Glork is a smart cookie.

[Erg0]

Glork was highly suspicious of you. Glork is now dead. Seems like as good a place as any to start.

[Erg0]

Unvote, Vote: TheJiveMachine

I mainly voted shaka to see if anyone would bite, and Mizzy seems to have done much the same. Glork's opinion is notable since we now know he was town, but his death tells us little beyond the scum being smart enough to kill him.

TJM just committed one of my favourite scumtells ("sucks that we lost the doc"), so he can have my vote.

[Erg0]

I think it's a silly attack

Really there isn't a lot to say in response

I agree, I don't find it a scumtell, but I did find your lack of at least a non-retarded response interesting. It's one thing to have not much of a response to what you believe is a silly attack, but it would have been more helpful to have said that in so many words.

Ah, but it is a scumtell. Unlike the "dead Glork" case (which I absolutely do not believe in, as you'll see if you read some other games of mine where that tell has come up), the "what a great night"/"what a terrible night" tell is surprisingly reliable.

OGML: as a general rule, cases which rely on me being a complete idiot don't tend to work out very well.

[Erg0]

Au contraire, it's a very important tenet of scumhunting, and a question that I always ask myself when I'm trying to build a case. What do you believe was my motivation in voting shaka?

[Erg0]

Follow-up question: Do you think that I would actually expect that to work?

[Erg0]

Well apparently you are seen as a complete idiot often enough to need to caution me about it. Mizzy certainly followed up the post where you voted shaka by shining the light of suspicion on him some more, which went right along with you.

I tend to get annoyed when people accuse me of hatching incredibly transparent schemes - give me a little credit for cryin' out loud. Underestimating the intelligence of your fellow players is a major impediment to successful scumhunting (of course, there are exceptions).

Mizzy did catch my attention with her FoS after my first post, but she dropped it quickly enough that I figured she was just doing the same thing as me. I didn't really expect to catch anyone, but it was worth a shot.

[Erg0]

Mizzy wins the prize.

[Erg0]

Eh.. I'm pretty surebackpedalling implies being dishonest about your intentions. I think the pro-town reaction to having a slip-up pointed out is not lying about it, AKA backpedalling, but accepting the mistake.

Perhaps, IF you remove the "human" and "ego" elements from the equation. I think, though, that this scenario contains both.

Once again: your theory is that I was unaware that nightkill WIFOM is a bad idea? I'll find a game where I specifically argue against drawing conclusions from nightkills if that helps.

[Erg0]

Hmm... yes and no. Glork can be a bit scary, but the main thing that I drew from the nightkill was that at least one of the scum is aware of Glork's reputation as a scumhunter.

[Erg0]

True enough, it doesn't really narrow the field of suspects very much. As such, his death doesn't really give any helpful information. Jive's reaction, on the other hand, is quite revealing.

[Erg0]

I will find time to respond to Mizzy's points later today or tomorrow. In the meantime, note that I am getting cold feet about Mizzy. Shaka!! and Khelvaster are focusing exclusively on Mizzy and ignoring OGML, when I consider the OGML case the stronger case of the two (please note who I am voting, and it's not Mizzy).

I'd noticed this too, but it might be partially due to Mizzy responding immediately, thus drawing attention to herself.

I'm halfway through writing notes for the whole thread, I'll have a decent post tomorrow.

[Erg0]

It seemed to me like you were using an incredibly WIFOM argument to try and get a misguided bandwagon started and keep the attention off of the questions that had been raised about you on day one.

Follow-up question: Do you think that I would actually expect that to work?

Well apparently you are seen as a complete idiot often enough to need to caution me about it. Mizzy certainly followed up the post where you voted shaka by shining the light of suspicion on him some more, which went right along with you.

Just realised I never responded to this.

The problem with that response is that Mizzy had already made it clear that she was also testing for reactions, so it was not genuine support. There's no way that I could ever expect to get a decent wagon going with based on a provably fallacious argument.

Also, I think you're missing my point. Objectively, there are two possible explanations for my vote:

1. I was attempting a gambit to get shaka speedlynched, and was too dimwitted to realise that it wasn't going to work.

2. I was deliberately advocating a fallacious argument in order to gauge the reactions of the other players.

What I'm asking you to do is to follow your argument through to its logical conclusion, and then consider whether that solution is supported by the facts.

[Erg0]

It seems this post of mine was almost entirely ignored.

I'm not thrilled about Erg0's vote for TJM if all it's based on is an apparent scumtell. And there's this as well -

OGML: as a general rule, cases which rely on me being a complete idiot don't tend to work out very well.

And gambits that rely on the players of a game being idiots are likely to work well?

What sort of a reaction were you expecting when you voted for shaka? Didn't you think that town or scum were equally likely to call it for WIFOM? Where was the gain and how likely was it to be useful anyway?

Sorry, I did miss this post before.

Regarding the quick vote, let's just say that I wasn't steepling my fingers and cackling maniacally at the time. I'm aware that there wasn't a particularly high chance of someone completely screwing up and outing themselves as scum, but it didn't really hurt to try. It's risk/reward: there was only a small chance that it would achieve anything much, but I felt that the risk (to the town) of trying it was very low. In any case, there are degrees of usefulness - reactions don't have to be extreme in order to be useful.

Regarding the tell on TJM - it's pure statistics. I'm relying on my experience here, but I can give you the long-winded theory explanation if you'd prefer.

[Erg0]

shaka!! - He made sense in his posting, but never really said anything memorable. At the end of my read I had a pro-town feel of him, but on the other hand I didn't make a single note next to his name. He seems to be mostly agreeing or disagreeing with others, instead of starting accusations himself. My take on him remains

neutral

.

I don't mean to cherrypick your post, but this just kinda grabbed me as I was reading through. I would usually consider the type of following that you describe as a pretty serious scumtell. I had shaka down more as non-commital than sheepish myself, but I'm interested in hearing more of your rationale for considering him neutral rather than scummy.

[Erg0]

Reading shaka in isolation, he might not be a bad bet after all. He does spend a lot of time saying "scum do this, scum do that", which fits with what Tar says above. I also found the following post from day 2 interesting:

And as for admitting your post was WIFOM and such, doesn't really matter if you ask my opinion. That's like doing something scummy and then at the end of the post admitting it is a scummy thing to do. It doesn't clear your name.

The last part of that paragraph pretty much reflects what shaka did with his hammer on day 1:

Because I can't see Killa being anything but distracting to us in day 2, same goes with Joubert. I've lynched people for the same reason before if you think that saying this is scummy and you'd like a meta. I'll link you if I have to.

Protip: raising a meta defence unprompted makes it look like you're a little

too

concerned about not appearing at all scummy.

His apparent inability to find anyone at all scummy for pretty much the entire game is a worry as well.

I kind of need to get my head back into this game, so I'll withold a vote until I've done some more re-reading. I just died in a large game so that's freed me up a bit.

[Erg0]

Firstly, a quick clarification:

Glork, I take it you're feeling the wagon again?

This was intended to be sarcastic. I was kind of surprised that my initial vote on Trebis was taken so seriously, and frankly thought that Glork's claim to not like the wagon any more because of my vote was pretty weak. When he jumped back on as soon as Joubert came in I was like "oh, so

now

you think there's a valid case?"

As for the rest - the tell I was using on Trebis was one that I learned from Glork when he spanked me with it in Methodical Mafia. I'm not surprised that we ended up having the same opinion on Trebis/Joubert.

I'd like you to clarify why my entry onto the Trebis bandwagon was scummy. Is it because I voted without a case? Is it because it was the most popular wagon at the time? If the former, note that I provided a case when asked. If the latter, consider that there's a reason why the wagon was popular - namely that Trebis was behaving in a very scummy way.

Also, I'm well aware that following Glork around is not a good way to get him onside - I knew that my unvote would likely appear to him as if I was following him, thus making him suspicious, but I did it anyway because I didn't believe by then that Joubert was scum.

[Erg0]

I think we're getting somewhere now.

3. Your day one play was under scrutiny because it was scummy, so you tried to redirect focus elsewhere. If Shaka were somehow run up for what you said, bonus for you, but this was not necessarily your intention.

If I wanted to keep attention off me wouldn't I have been better off just keeping my mouth shut? The actual reason that I did what I did was that I realised I had been too passive for the latter part of day 1 and wanted to start playing a little more aggressively. Voting shaka seemed like a good way to insert myself back into things quickly while I finished re-reading.

And you did accomplish this third objective, for until I reread day one and posted about it, nobody had gone back and looked at what it was about your play day one that was pinging scumdars.

I only remember pinging Glork's scumdar (correct me if I'm wrong). It interests me that you find me scummy for

unvoting

Joubert long before he became the likely lynch, and have completely ignored a number of people who put dubious votes on that wagon at the end of the day.

You should have provided a case to begin with

Why? An immediate case is not necessary for a third vote early in the game, and you often get a more genuine reaction without one.

instead you took time to formulate one that would jive with popular opinion of trebis.

Are you saying that you don't think I read the thread before voting?

Instead it put him on the defensive in a bad way, but that was Trebis's poor play under pressure which you exploited to join a bandwagon on a townie.

Isn't bad play under pressure a scumtell?

[Erg0]

That post does not fill me with a desire to move my vote. I'd say that TJM is either scum that's out of ideas or he hasn't actually read any of day 2.

[Erg0]

Incidentally, I'm wary of this tendency to write killa off as noobtown based on such a shaky meta. I do agree that he's probably not today's lynch, but I don't want to see this conclusion drawn through the rest of the game.

I'm particularly not loving the fact that he was just pointed out as a townie, which is not something that a pro-town player should

ever

do in-thread.

[Erg0]

I approve of this wagon.

[Erg0]

Ideally we'd get a roleclaim from him prior to the lynch, but I'm not sure how realistic it is to expect that to happen. I'd suggest making a call closer to the time.

[Erg0]

Told ya that tell was valid.

This should provide some good re-read fodder.

[Erg0]

One thing stood out - a player who TJM mentioned more than just about anyone else but never actually attacked. This player also was pinging my scumdar yesterday, albeit not to the extent that shaka!!/TJM/OGML were.

Vote: Khelvaster

I'm not so sure about this, I just read through TJM contributions to the game and he only really talks about Khel on day 1 when he was a hot topic of conversation. I did find this interesting, though:

As for suspecting people based on the fact that Glork was the one killed, I don't think it is a wise strategy to go on that alone, as it is obvious WIFOM, and, as mentioned, Glork is an excellent scumhunter and high-profile target no matter who the scum are.

I didn't get too much from looking at Jive's posts, he wasn't really active enough to give much of an impression. OGML does look slightly townish based on Jive hopping on that wagon yesterday without giving his own reasons. I'll have a look through others' posts about him later on, but that will take a bit longer.

My issue is that it seems like your vote just happened to be on the wagon that had grown too large close to deadline for you as scum to take it off. You didn't attempt to get a better read of him, placing a vote that seemed almost completely harmless when made, and never really contribute to a case against him besides bringing that scumtell up, which I disagree with.

As far as my vote yesterday, for a good part of the day Jive's early comment on losing the doc was literally the only reason I had for voting him. My intent in leaving the vote there was to keep Jive in the foreground as a possible lynch candidate, as I felt there was a decent chance that he actually was scum. I absolutely believe in this tell in certain contexts, but I know from experience that getting others onto a wagon based on that alone is impossible, so this seemed like a good way to encourage a wagon to start without having to beat my head against a brick wall. I don't see how your disagreement with the tell is relevant to your case on me, however.

Jive's OGML hop was very scummy, doubly so due to his very last post where he obviously couldn't fake a good case on anyone else, so at that point I was happy to lynch him. I wanted to see how much of a push the wagon would need so I left it a little while to see what would happen, and it built on its own. I had plenty of opportunities to pull my vote earlier in the day if I didn't want Jive lynched, but I didn't - it was sitting there for almost a month before the wagon actually started building.

Addition on re-read: I note that your early vote on Jive (before mine, even) was because he was "too silent in Day 1 for my liking", and you pretty much continued in this vein for the remainder of the day. You certainly never pushed the wagon, and never talked about actually lynching Jive until the wagon had grown to a decent size. You even raised a few good reasons to suspect others in the middle of the day, but maintained your vote on Jive for nothing more than lurking and failure to answer questions. I wouldn't say that lurking qualifies as a Grade A scumtell. Frankly, it looks to me like you're very much guilty of the same thing that you're accusing me of.

[Erg0]

To paraphrase: "I haven't read the thread so I'll just go back to what I was doing at the start of day 2, because consistency is a towntell."

That vote reminds me a lot of the way that Jive was playing right before he was lynched. Sadly, I can attest to having made practically the same post as scum when I haven't got a good wagon to push.

[Erg0]

Khelv's at lynch -1, yes?

Survivor <> town. Even if Khelv's claimed truthfully he's a good lynch. Unless someone gives me a good reason not to, I'll be hammering in 24 hours.

[Erg0]

I'm concerned that killa seven's reasons for suspecting Khel look a little weak.

vote khelv

i wanna see a decent defense from him, the way him and tjm interacted makes me suspicious.[/b]

This is a very non-specific case for a lynch-1 vote.

i agree with tar, ive never seen a survivor role in any games im in.. and the whole "survivor" role seems like your tryna survive and not hunt scum which has been your play the whole game.

I agree with the second part, but the first part is off-base. Nobody's questioning the existence of the survivor role itself, only whether Khel has the role here.

I haven't posted for the past two weeks. I forgot I was in this game. Let me catch up.

Most of that time was night...not so much to catch up on.

this sticks out alot 2 me as tar pointed out, likea scum buddy tryna direct another buddy.

This applies to Tar as well: I see this as a highly circumstantial piece of buddying evidence. A general comment on the state of the game could just as easily be an attempt to appear helpful without adding anything much content-wise.

Notwithstanding all that, I still think we need to lynch Khel. If he's mafia, the reasons are obvious. If he's a survivor then the mafia aren't going to kill him for us, and he'll be a pain in the ass in endgame. I also think that the speed of this wagon is such that if he is mafia then he is probably being bussed, and if he's a survivor then the mafia are probably voting for an easy non-mafia lynch.

[Erg0]

Also, with regard to Sierra: OGML's FoS above looks valid, though I haven't factchecked his assertion yet. I find Sierra's vote today a little dubious, as I'm about 75% sure that shaka!! is town at this point.

[Erg0]

I think Retro had another post coming, let's wait for that before hammering.

[Erg0]

I'm not so sure about this, I just read through TJM contributions to the game and he only really talks about Khel on day 1 when he was a hot topic of conversation. I did find this interesting, though:

As for suspecting people based on the fact that Glork was the one killed, I don't think it is a wise strategy to go on that alone, as it is obvious WIFOM, and, as mentioned, Glork is an excellent scumhunter and high-profile target no matter who the scum are.

Why did you bring this post up? I'm not sure what you're reading from it.

I'm not sure what I'm reading from it either, but I found it interesting because Khel actually

did

know why the scum killed Glork. In truth, it's probably only interesting in contrast to the remainder of Khel's posts.

As for shaka, it's mostly because there are others that I find much scummier. The case against shaka is based more on what he didn't do than what he did do, and unfortunately that comes back somewhat to the lurker meta.

[Erg0]

In other news, while conversation may be a good thing, my scumdar is pinging RetroDucts for the way in which he is asking for us not to lynch Khel yet. I've seen scum use a similar defense before: see Stargate SG-1, where the Gou'Ald scum tried to stop a lynch on a newb scum by stalling until the storm blew over.

FoS: RetroDucts

This is interesting, as Retro unvoted for a reread, then didn't revote when he decided not to post the results of said reread. I suppose he could be scum hoping for some kind of hint on the nightkill. I think this may be a little premature, though.

I want to see Khel put back at L-1 in the near future.

I'll be happy to oblige once the vote count has been addressed.

[Erg0]

Bah. Substitute TJM for Khel in that sentence.

[Erg0]

In which case,

vote: Khelvaster

Given that Khelvaster has already shown that he's willing to self-hammer, I don't think this is such a good idea.

I hate to say this, but Khel seems too keen to be lynched - he had to know that the survivor claim wouldn't fly, and death_omen's nullification of his vote was a little odd. I'm thinking possible jester, but I still think we're better off with him out of the way no matter what. There's no way he's a townie, and if he is a jester the his win condition doesn't affect ours.

[Erg0]

I'll comment on Retro's post and the shaka thing on day 3 if I'm still around. I don't have anything to say that's important enough to need to be out before the lynch.

Vote: Khelvaster

[Erg0]

Bahgotown.

[Erg0]

Wow.

For your enlightenment: I was a 75% accurate cop. I investigated Glork night 1 (he died) and shaka!! night 2 (got an innocent). The second result is presumably because my dice roll failed.

I had kind of a tough role because I couldn't be sure that my results were accurate. The best solution that I could think of was to obviously breadcrumb my shaka result and see if the mafia nightkilled me. I figured that they weren't likely to kill someone who was "75% sure" that one of the scum was innocent. Thus, if I died without explaining my role then my result was probably valid and thus useful as a breadcrumb. I was also kind of hoping that someone else in the town would have a 75% role and recognise what my use of that number signified.

Of course, I was wrong about not getting killed by the mafia, and my breadcrumb was taken as confirmation of shaka's innocence. I had a (mod-approved) chat with Retro after we were both dead and discovered that shaka actually was scum as I'd originally suspected, so I pretty much thought the town was screwed. I never would have guessed that the game would end the way it did!

[Erg0]

Incidentally, this game is proof that one should not underestimate the power of simplistic tells, such as those I raised at the start of day 2 against shaka!! and TJM. Even I didn't really believe the case against shaka!! at first, but dead Glork is rarely

completely

wrong and I knew that he was off-track in accusing me. He told me afterwards that he was sure I was either scum or a cop, so I'm obviously not incredibly subtle.

I am curious about the rationale behind the kills on the final night. Shaka's choice was pretty obvious, but I'm not sure if Tar thought that he was killing town or scum when he targeted shaka.

[Erg0]

Makes sense to me. It's kind of funny that the false information I thought would cost the town the game ended up winning it for us instead.

[Erg0]

What happened to us after Erg0's death is why I disagree with the use of random chance based roles.

I wouldn't put a random role into a game I'm modding, but I figure each mod can use whichever roles they like. The thing I don't like about them is that there's a danger of the game's outcome being determined based on a dice roll. It's probably true that a correct result on my shaka investigation would have put the town in a very strong position, but I don't think that the breadcrumb alone should have been enough to dismiss him as a suspect entirely - I could just as easily have been naive or paranoid, and my result would have been incorrect then as well. Cop results are certainly influential, but there's always a chance that they're wrong so you shouldn't rely on them 100%.

I will admit that I wasn't especially thrilled when I got my PM, simply because the random aspect neuters the cop's usefulness somewhat. However, on further thought I started to look at it as being a townie with the bonus of a 75% chance of being able to find a scum at night. I wasn't planning to rely on any of my investigations to drive lynches later in the game, though I probably would have pushed someone's wagon if I'd had an early guilty result on them. The shaka breadcrumb was an attempt to get at least one confirmed result while it was still useful, but obviously that didn't work out quite as I planned. I had hoped that the "75%" qualifier would keep shaka from being seen as confirmed, but it didn't seem to make much of an impression on anyone.

[Erg0]

Erg0, in a mini normal I really wasn't expecting a cop with sanity issues, and I looked at your 75% thing as the hint you were leaving us just in case you died but that wouldn't be so obvious as to get you killed. Guess I'll be a little more skeptical of cop results in future mini normals

You'd be amazed at what some mods consider "normal" - a random cop is pretty tame compared to some roles that I've seen. I prefer my normals to be truly normal, but that's another discussion.

d_o: the reason that I didn't claim outright was that I really didn't have any useful information at that point. I thought I'd try and leverage what I did have into something I could rely on, and then claim the next day if I was still alive. I'm still a little surprised that I got killed, I thought that the breadcrumb was obvious enough that the scum would think that I wasn't the cop if my result was wrong.

I liked the flavour text, the last couple of posts in particular. With regard to balance, it probably was a little weighted towards the scum but the nightkills definitely worked in our favour here. I'd say that you could probably drop the GF and make him a regular goon, since the cop already has a handicap. Overall it worked pretty well, you can never really be sure how things will work out.