Mini 969 - Smalltown: Stardust Mafia (Game Over)

[Kdub]

I will pick Dunstan Thorne (Motivator).

[Kdub]

Vote: Mr. Bean

for driving that ridiculous mini

[Kdub]

Never played in a game with a motivator before, sounded interesting so I took it. Any thoughts on who to target? I was thinking maybe the tracker since it will help them find the SK, even if the tracker is scum. Maybe the bodyguard would be an OK choice too.

[Kdub]

Thanks for the suggestions. Yeah I had forgotten that the SK can't be tracked, so I'll think about that a bit more.

I'm liking Jack's case on Magna at the moment. Even if Magna is telling the truth in post 98, the Billy the Goat role PM specifically refers to the SK as "Septimus" and not "Lord Septimus". The "lord" part is only mentioned in the setup section, but Magna only said he looked at the role PM for information.

Unvote
Vote: MagnaofIllusion

[Kdub]

I'm liking Jack's case on Magna at the moment. Even if Magna is telling the truth in post 98, the Billy the Goat role PM specifically refers to the SK as "Septimus" and not "Lord Septimus". The "lord" part is only mentioned in the setup section, but Magna only said he looked at the role PM for information.

So you both find it odd that I might remember flavor from the source material more clearly than a game mechanic point from a role I didn’t even want to chose? Just want to be clear on this.

Are you claiming you said "Lord Septimus" instead of just "Septimus" because that's what you remembered from the source material? If so, then yes I find that odd.

[Kdub]

Zang, what specifically do you feel is weak about the argument against Magna? You just said it without pointing out specific flaws you see in Jack's post.

[Kdub]

I will probably lay a vote down very soon if discussion progresses considerably in the next day or two. I had originally voted MoI but I changed it to also being an FoS due to Zang's point about this possibly being town v town (which is a completely legitimate caution) and I don't want to be voting and unvoting and stuff until I am more convinced of who is scum and who is not.

What about it makes you think it's town vs. town? You and Zang are just saying so without any evidence or analysis to back that up. Also, your FoS on Zang makes no sense because you were agreeing with him about the town vs. town thing, but said nothing else about him. Huh? How does that earn him an FoS?

FoS: Charlie

[Kdub]

Charlie:

Posts 110, 114, and 115 somewhat de-escalates the intensity at which my scumdar was bloopin', because as Zang points out, this DOES begin to look like town vs town.

My opinion is that the Magna/Jack thing may very well be town vs town, and Zang was stating that, so that the Magna vote didn't progress to a quicklynch. That does not appear scummy to me at all that he said that. I will read his posts more later today to see if there is a legitimate underlying scummy tone in his posts.

I will probably lay a vote down very soon if discussion progresses considerably in the next day or two. I had originally voted MoI but I changed it to also being an FoS due to Zang's point about this possibly being town v town (which is a completely legitimate caution) and I don't want to be voting and unvoting and stuff until I am more convinced of who is scum and who is not.

These were your only mentions of Zang in 143. Given this, I want to know:
1) How am I misrepresenting you about agreeing with Zang when these quotes show that you think Zang's town vs. town point is a "legitimate caution"?
2) Why did you FoS Zang if he "does not appear scummy to me at all"?

[Kdub]

Observe: I

never

said that Zang

himself

wasn't scummy. I said that

pointing out that something may be town vs town

isn't scummy. When you try to point out that

I don't know if you're doing this on purpose, or if I am really writing things in a hard-to-understand manner.

If you do it again though, I am switching my vote to you because you are obviously trying to twist the words I am saying to mean something else, to mean whatever fits what you want others to believe. Doing that often means someone has a hidden agenda.

Regarding your quote on Zang's town vs. town thing, yes you are technically correct in that you were saying that it was his action that was not scummy, not him specifically. However, since you do not indicate any suspicion of him at all in the rest of your post, it is pretty strongly implied that since you think his action was not scummy, you therefore think he is not scummy. I don't think that's a misrepresentation at all, I think it's a perfectly logical conclusion to draw from your post, and that is why I thought it was strange that you subsequently FoSed him.

BTW, I haven't forgotten about Magna. He has yet to come up with a satisfactory explanation for the Septimus thing. If he is claiming that his knowledge of the source material is what made him refer to the SK as "Lord Septimus", I have to disagree. My memory (and others should point out if I am wrong here) is that he was simply referred to as "Septimus" most of the time in both the book and the movie. The role PM that he supposedly checked also said "Septimus".

[Kdub]

1. Is not directly remembering the mechanics of a role I had no interest in personally as it applied specifically to another role scummy?
2. Please indicate why remembering he is called Lord Septimus is scummy. You acknowledge he is referred to in this way in both source materials, even if it is not the majority of the time.

1. No, and I have not argued that you are scummy solely because of this.
2. Because when you were supposedly checking the Billy role PM for the tracker-SK info (again, not inherently scummy), you should have seen that the PM said "Septimus" and referred to the SK as such. I mean, if we were playing Star Wars mafia (which I need a replacement for BTW [/shamelessplug]), you wouldn't normally refer to Vader as "Lord Vader" even though he is sometimes called that in the movie, would you?

I just skimmed the last couple of Charlie's walls of text. I'll go back and read them again later to see if there's anything that needs addressing.

[Kdub]

I'm having a hard time getting a lot out of Charlie's recent posts. Since attention has been turned on him, he's been extremely defensive about everything. In general, I find over-defensiveness to be a slight town tell, and it's good from an information standpoint that he is at least making an effort to respond to every point, but it's hard to see his underlying motivations and suspicions through the walls of text. I'm still feeling that his earlier play was erratic, but maybe it's a playstyle thing.

Charlie:
One thing I do not understand is why you feel so strongly that peanutman is town. Looking at his two game posts, I don't think he's said anything scummy, but I definitely wouldn't confidently say he's town. I am puzzled by the level of your conviction about him.

Magna:
You being familiar with the source material is actually a point against you, because I would expect someone with familiarity with the source to think of the character's name simply as "Septimus". I don't know that I am making any progress in making you see why I find that suspicious, but I think I've made my opinion clear and think you are the best place to put my vote for now.

Liam:
Who are your main suspects at the moment?

[Kdub]

Mod: I will have limited access through Thursday. I am not sure how much I will be able to read or post, but just letting you know to not replace me.

[Kdub]

Jack, I don't understand what possible pro-town motivation you would have for not responding to Charlie's case on you.

charter raises a good point regarding roles. If Jack is scum, he can get an extra kill at night, which is potentially dangerous. Also, if Charlie is scum, we won't find out his alignment by lynching him because he is a reviver. That would be bad on D1 when we have nothing else to go on.

Magna seems like he is fence-sitting with regard to Jack, but I actually am feeling pretty good about his recent posts. If Magna is an SK, I would have expected him to quickly get on board the Jack wagon given Jack's uncooperative attitude.

Unvote

Jack needs to explain himself. I'm also interested to hear what Liam comes up with regarding Charlie.

Will have more time to post starting Friday.

[Kdub]

I motivated Faraday.

Since both the mafia and SK kills went through, that means either Jack was roleblocked by Magna, or Jack is lying. No other role could have interfered with Jack's action in a way that would have stopped it altogether. Magna was voting RC yesterday and sided with Jack, so I see no reason why he would have blocked Jack.

Vote: Jack

[Kdub]

While we should definitely wait to hear from everyone, this seems like a pretty straightforward situation. If we believe that Magna would not have blocked Jack (and even Jack doesn't think he would have), then clearly one of Jack/Starbuck are lying. If Jack is town (or even if he is the SK, who wouldn't be lying here), then Starbuck is almost certainly scum, and there's a good chance that Charlie is scum as well.

[Kdub]

Now, I would like someone (preferably someone voting me) to argue that it is better to lynch me because it is dangerous to give the mafia another kill.

I think it's a fair argument to make. Suppose you are scum and Starbuck is town, and we lynch Starbuck today. Then she would flip town, revealing you as scum. With Starbuck gone, there are absolutely no roles that could prevent you from using your ability on whoever you want, and you will be lynched tomorrow anyway. So it does give the mafia another kill. The reverse situation (you town, Starbuck scum, we lynch you today) isn't nearly as bad for the town. Now, that argument has nothing to do with how likely you are to be scum, which needs to be taken into account as well. I think it's entirely fair to consider the risk/reward aspect though when deciding who to lynch.

Zang:
Do you think the fact that Jack doesn't suspect you somehow makes him more likely to be town? I'm interested to see what case you come up with against Starbuck considering she's barely posted in the game so far.

TNM:
Your Jack-Charlie mafia pairing idea is interesting. I could maybe see some elaborate bussing of Charlie on D1, knowing that he is a reviver and would not be killed. It's possible that he was planning to claim being blocked and trying to push a Magna lynch, but didn't count on the SK killing Magna and having him flip town. We should keep it in mind once we see some flips. If Jack is mafia, I wouldn't entirely clear Charlie from being mafia as well.

[Kdub]

But the reason I said that was because I now want you to say why you think I didn't kill last night--since having an extra kill is so good for mafia.

It's a bit of a different situation because you weren't obviously scum yesterday, which you would be if we lynched Starbuck and saw her flip town. If you had killed anyone else last night, you would be auto-lynched today. You could have wanted to keep Charlie alive for a mislynch today (either because he is your buddy or because you would have looked bad if he flipped town) and were planning to claim being blocked, but didn't expect the SK to kill Magna.

Liam, who did you target last night?

[Kdub]

Jack:
My point about you not killing Charlie wasn't put in the best way. I wanted to say that either you kept him alive because he is your buddy (this is probably the less likely scenario), OR that keeping him alive and claiming roleblocked would allow you to set up Charlie for another lynch today while also pushing a case on Magna. The fact that you did not kill Charlie last night certainly makes you look bad, but a big part of that is the fact that we know Magna was town. If Magna were still alive and unconfirmed, I think you would have a much more convincing argument.

TNM:
I think one idea if we lynch Jack is to have all of his scum suspects (Starbuck, Charlie, charter) in the same group, either voting or not voting him. If they are all scum, we can catch all of them. If only some of them are scum, we can start lynching the ones we think are most likely to be scum, and if we are right, we can clear the others who would otherwise be good mislynch candidates. What do you think?

Liam:
We are claiming targets to see if we can catch anyone in an inconsistency based on other players actions. Given what everyone else has claimed so far, I guess it's probably not critical that you claim at this point since we are unlikely to learn anything. Unless of course you protected one of the players who died last night. Then you absolutely should claim now.

[Kdub]

@kdub: unless someone had claimed to be blocked. There would be no way for me to count on someone not having a claim to back them. Either starbuck or magna's targets could have counterclaimed in the case of a no kill.

This is a fair point, although I claim that if you knew Magna was town, then it would have been a pretty good bet that Magna would not have roleblocked someone who could claim being blocked. According to the rules, players are not told they are roleblocked unless they have an investigative role.

GroupThink:
Please share your opinions on Jack/Starbuck. I find it strange that you would not use your ability during N1 (why not?), and you haven't said a word about anything else that is going on.

[Kdub]

Let's figure out who were gonna have voting him, and lynch him. Personally, I think we should have Zang, fitz, Liam not voting him. Since those three are, in my opinion, extremely likely to contain the last two scum.

I think this is a pretty good idea. If Jack is scum, we should try to get his likely partners in the same group. If Jack is town, we should try to get the likely scum (Starbuck, Charlie) in the other group. That way we can hopefully clear a whole group of people at once.

Nobody should be voting for anyone other than Jack or Starbuck at this point. One of them has to be scum.

[Kdub]

kdub. You know that I know you are the SK. But I'm more interested in wiping out the mafia, kind of a personal grudge. How about we lynch starbuck, I kill reaper, you kill me, and the sensor helps nail the remaining mafia. And then you can talk your way to the endgame, at that point you will probably be the only person talking.

Aside from you being wrong, this post is particularly anti-town. The fact that you claim to be putting a personal grudge ahead of your supposed town win condition reeks of desperation tactics since it appears popular opinion is against you. Maybe you honestly do think that I am the SK, but you offering this "deal" to help the town lose to a particular faction is not something a town player would be doing.

[Kdub]

Jack:
Under your hypothetical scenario where I am the SK and you are town, you were offering me a deal in which we lynch Starbuck, you kill Charlie, and I kill you just to spite the mafia because of some personal grudge. How is that deal pro-town in any way?

And one thing I didn't think of earlier, you were asking why you, as scum, would not have killed someone last night. The question could easily be asked as to why scum-Starbuck would not simply have redirected YOU to another player last night to get an extra death. It would still set up a 1v1 today, except with (likely) an extra player dead.

You have a point with Starbuck=scum means that the sensor can be killed. There is still the possible WIFOM factor of Starbuck leaving Groupthink alive though because of the mere possibility that Groupthink is scum. I'll have to think about that a bit more, but we shouldn't automatically assume the loss of the sensor if you are town and Starbuck is not.

[Kdub]

Fine, I'll just be direct and ask Jack the question then. If you are town and Starbuck is scum, why do you think she did not simply redirect you to another player last night?

I agree with Charlie in post 395. My past experience with Starbuck tells me that she would not lie about V/LA, and definitely wouldn't fake RL issues.

3. Jack (as scum) used his ability on you but was roleblocked.

This is unlikely. It makes no sense for Magna to have targeted Jack because Jack claimed he was killing Charlie, who Magna was voting for and wanted dead. The only possible explanation I could think of is that Magna thought Jack was the SK and Charlie was mafia or vice versa, but I don't see anything in his posts that would indicate he was thinking that.

[Kdub]

I can understand the logic behind lynching Starbuck in that if she is scum, we might lose our sensor tonight to the mafia kill. However, if Jack is scum and we don't lynch him, the mafia will get an extra kill tonight

in addition

to their regular kill, which could put us into a scenario tomorrow where there are 6 players alive, of which 3 are mafia. That is an auto-loss for the town, regardless of whether the SK is still alive or not. Aside from that risk, I think Jack is just flat-out more likely to be lying here. Starbuck is not the type of player to lie about personal issues and V/LA, and despite Jack's insistence that she was lying about not having time for this game, it seems reasonable to me that she focused on catching up entirely in another game first before doing so in this game.

The Jack-Charlie scum pairing idea is not crazy, but probably on the less likely side. The crazy idea is lynching anyone other than Jack or Starbuck today. Even if we thought Charlie was most likely to be scum, putting off a 1v1 (in which both players have night actions that could hurt the town in the hands of scum) until tomorrow is dumb because it could potentially be lylo.

The only players in the game who I can still motivate are Zang and havingfitz. Motivating Zang is a pretty safe move regardless of his alignment since networking twice either gives scum-Zang more chances to slip up or gives town-Zang more chances to get information on other players. I'll leave it up to havingfitz as to whether he wants to reveal any learned bility last night that I could motivate. If not, I'll probably just pick one of them randomly.

I have no idea what to make of GroupThink's posting, just as long as he knows to use his ability tonight. I think the current group of people voting Jack is a good group to keep together since we represent Jack's top suspects. I think Zang, havingfitz, and either Liam or TNM should stay off the lynch since they would be decent scum candidates if Jack is scum. I don't know if we could organize that in time given GroupThink's lurking though.

[Kdub]

Vote: Starbuck

Charlie is next up tomorrow.

I motivated Zang during the night. GroupThink, what were your results?

[Kdub]

I thought redirectors typically aren't allowed to redirect actions to themselves? Granted, the rules don't explicitly say this. Still, redirecting the bodyguard to yourself is suspicious. If you were town, there is no way the mafia would have killed you last night anyway. If GroupThink is town and not your scumbuddy, then you also risked having him killed since he would no longer have protection (assuming Liam protected him as we said he should).

It's been discussed (most recently by Charlie) why it's extremely unlikely that Magna would have blocked Jack on his own. With that said, Charlie is pretty obviously bussing Starbuck because he knows she is caught. Starbuck redirected the roleblock to Jack because Jack was going to kill Charlie. That's the only reasonable motivation here. I have no idea why Charlie thinks he should get town credit for going after Starbuck when he really has no other choice right now.

The 1v1 between GroupThink and Zang is interesting. It's hard to get a read on GroupThink because he's been quiet for most of the game. I should note that it is odd that GroupThink did not immediately call out Zang as scum when giving his result.

[Kdub]

Charlie:
If I were making a decision based solely on day interactions, I could probably buy your case on charter. At the very least, the two of you would be about equally suspicious. However, Starbuck must have redirected Magna to Jack for a reason. What reason would that be, given that Jack announced he was going to kill you? As scum, she has no motivation to save a town player. I said yesterday that if Jack was town, you are extremely likely to be Starbuck's partner, and I maintain that opinion. Your SK case on me is questionable as well. I don't get how you can say I've been staying out of confrontations, I was against Jack fairly strongly yesterday, and I am against you and Starbuck today. I realize that you need to do whatever you can to distance from each other and try to throw dirt on other players at this point, but this is about as clear a case as we could hope for today. A 1v1 yesterday, one player flips town and the other has very strong ties to you, doesn't get much more obvious than that.

Starbuck:
I don't think you are the type of person to lie about RL issues, but I think you are lying about not submitting an action N1. Maybe you were occupied and all you did at night was read the scum quicktopic and do whatever action your partners told you to, but you still performed it.

[Kdub]

Do I really need to answer that? I think everyone else knows how to interpret that statement.

But to get technical about it, I do in fact have night interactions since I motivated Faraday and Zang .

[Kdub]

And... what night interactions have you had with charter? *waits for reply*

Uh, none. You were expecting some other answer?

Anyway, this SK gambit by you and Starbuck is clever, but it's not going to work. You might have been hoping that once we lynch Starbuck, you would get a temporary pass as the "confirmed" SK. Looks like pure desperation tactics to me. If Starbuck were really the SK, she would have claimed right when she was put at L-1 because she would have realized instantly that it was her only chance at survival instead of waiting for TNM to plant the idea of claiming SK in her mind.

[Kdub]

Since we NEED to lynch mafia today, I think it's wise to lynch Zang.

I really don't like the idea of leaving both of these caught scum alive, but if we lynch the SK today then we're 3 vs 3 tomorrow and it's game over for the town.

If Zang isn't going down, then I buy Starbuck as mafia over RC, but I'm far from certain.

This is a pretty bad idea. Zang is not confirmed scum, while Starbuck and Charlie definitely are, and I don't believe for a second that either one of them is the SK. If Starbuck were the SK, it would have made no sense for her to redirect Magna on N1. She would have just let Jack kill Charlie. Her only possible motivation is as mafia trying to save her partner. They are mafia and trying to bus each other, maybe trying to out the real SK in the process. We can deal with the GT vs. Zang thing after we lynch these two.

[Kdub]

As if it weren't obvious enough that Starbuck and Charlie are mafia...

Claiming that Jack's kill flavor didn't show up is irrelevant because Jack would have SAVED Faraday if he were redirected to him.

There is no way SK-Charlie would have killed anyone other than Starbuck last night since she was as good as confirmed scum when Jack flipped town.

I'm ready for a lynch. Someone drop the hammer.

[Kdub]

Guess we just wait for the mod, but I will be shocked if Starbuck and Charlie are not mafia given their exchange the past couple pages.

[Kdub]

GG

I'm fine with posting the mafia QT if Zang and Charlie agree.

I really thought Starbuck was town the whole time until she started changing her story about her N1 action. I was actually thinking charter or GT was the SK during the last day and we would have to kill them off at night.

Yeah, the roleblock on Jack screwed Starbuck pretty bad. At one point, we were considering killing Charlie ourselves to cancel out Jack, but decided that Jack might gambit and not kill Charlie. Good thing we decided that

I don't see how claiming to motivate Zang on N2 was suspicious. The only players I could motivate who were still alive were Zang and havingfitz, and there was no guarantee that havingfitz even had a night action at that point. If I were town, I'd be gambling on whether fitz had learned an ability on N1 and whether he was even town or not, so I think I might have still motivated Zang in that case since networking is a fairly neutral power, regardless of the networker's alignment.

Nice setup ooba, I've never played a smalltown game before but it was fun. Must have been a huge pain to balance though with all the power roles and the completely open setup, but you did a good job.

[Kdub]

Yeah we killed you because you could have tracked one of us making the kill, and I pretty much had to motivate you since that's what everyone was suggesting.

I'm not sure the town played as badly as people are saying. The lurkers didn't help, but Starbuck looked so bad that she was going to be auto-lynched on D3, regardless of what she did at night. If the dead players didn't have the inside knowledge that Magna actually did block Jack on N1, I suspect they would have thought that Starbuck and Charlie were mafia and that I was the SK on the last day.