Mini 1558 - VisCon: Crossroads [Game Over]

[Kalimar]

vote: pieguyn

[Kalimar]

Unvote
Vote: Konowa

50% having the same reaction to #24 that Miffy did
30% flowchart
10% Counterwagoning Pie

because he's probably town

10% Who couldn't even be bothered to grace our RVS wagon with a reaction and it was time to move on

Why's that?

[Kalimar]

Gut. Why is he scum?

I didn't like 20. He was content to joke around with that sort of RVS scumclaim-esque joke in Ace Attorney Mafia, but here he goes on the offensive on it. If it was a reaction test, it didn't feel like it.

The rest of his posting feels a little lethargic tone-wise, and I'm not quite sure what made him transition from GiF scum to GiF town.

[Kalimar]

This is boring.
I'll give all of you 3 RL days to town up or at least post something decent.
After 3 RL days, I will destroy one of you who is the scummiest.
Go.

'something decent.'

[Kalimar]

what the fuck? that wasn't even a serious post. it was an RVS joke and I was trying to get reactions

this doesn't make any sense. you think I'm scum bc I did one thing different from one of my towngames? why do I need to do the same exact thing every time? rather than comparing to my scumgames, this feels like you're selectively applying meta to get whatever result you want

I have practically no time or energy for mafia atm, so if my tone feels lethargic that's probably why. plus this game is too fking inactive and I don't have enough energy to make anything happen. why is this alignment indicative?

I'm very good at reading GIF. I couldn't get a concrete read on him so I wanted to push him for more content so I could read him. if you weren't sure of my reasoning, why didn't you ask about it?

The RVS post didn't feel jokey to me, but I suppose we won't agree there.

The lethargic observation was of note as I recall reading somewhere a while back that you're less confident and engaged with your scumgame than your towngame -- correct me if this is in error. The general gamestate is a little stale, which could explain your prior lack of tonal verve here in a non-alignment specific fashion, but I wanted to feel out the potential alternative some.

Ok. What did you see between 36 and 59 to change your mind on GiF?

[Kalimar]

konowa seems like a good fellow to me

VOTE: konowa

i've learned to always sheep majiffy always

Explain why your earlier read became outdated and why you didn't choose to sheep Majiffy from the get-go.

[Kalimar]

@pie: Silver Star townread on GiF, Hint of Townread on Bait (but only if I extrapolate a little past the basic written word).

[Kalimar]

tomorrow.

[Kalimar]

So I heard that Who-scum is a lurker and a passive guy.
Discuss.

I can now.

UPick. tl;dr is that town had a bunch of Role Cops and Who was able to pick a generically town role (1s vig) as an investigation mask that people wrote off as town. His dayplay was pretty much nonexistent.

He didn't place a serious vote until around day 5 or 6. He hasn't yet placed a serious vote here, which does give me cause for concern.

It's a sample size of one, so take it with whatever grains of salt you wish.

[Kalimar]

Original Roll String: 1d4

1 4-Sided Dice: (3) = 3

[Kalimar]

Vote: Who

[Kalimar]

The die roll was somewhat of a metaphor for how I feel about this game. I had four suspects in mind but didn't really feel strongly about them.

Who vote was a fixed outcome, though. I didn't like that he critiqued the Konowa wagon but didn't propose an alternative - which he never explained - until the nth hour. The stance-giving on Bait/Desp/Neil near end day 1 felt arbitrary and I couldn't tell why he felt that way, and his play generally comes off as being opaque and generic. I'm biased here a little because of UPick, but generally unimpressed.

[Kalimar]

For the sake of etc:

Hiplop's almost hitting the 'too blatant to be scum' lines, but I know that's a fallacious line of reasoning. I didn't like that he plied RVS reasoning into his seemingly serious pie vote, that he didn't just sheep Majiffy from the offset if that's what he was going to do, and the survivalistic 324 pings. He's also been posting more 'elsewhere'.

I think it's going to be very likely to find scum in the Who/hiplop pair. They may not be together just because of the similarity of the read degradation on Konowa-slot, though (dispersion heuristic).

Gaiden's ISO is a barren wasteland and I don't really like the unvotes without revotes. The repartee with GiF felt a little reactive and odd too. This is fairly generic stuff, granted; I'll admit it's more that I'd like to see useless die than really believing in him being scum here (though he could be; he's at least above statistical chance).

And, pie has residual suspicion from day 1. I want to observe him for a while, though that's hard when he doesn't post.

[Kalimar]

@Brian

: The dispersion heuristic may have another more 'in-vogue' term, but the basic idea is that scum tend to divide and conquer rather than block together as one cohesive unit that moves in lockstep with one another. This can manifest in voting patterns, displayed thought processes, read acquisitions and pushes. I think it tends to apply better to more distinct, idiosyncratic or unusual points of view.

It's a rule of thumb, and so has general applicability but can be outmanoeuvred. For example, if I knew a scum team had daytalk, I'd be a little warier applying it, although that's contingent on them being able to use it.

The hiplop activity marker was more of an observation than a tell. I often get a little concerned when I see people post significantly elsewhere in case they're strategically avoiding the game. I generally feel scum do that more than town... but I've got to admit, this game is pretty easy to want to avoid.

[Kalimar]

I, too, was a little underwhelmed by fitz's padded out catchup posts.

Hiplop looks a little better for actually checking the meta bork posted. He's right; the Aircraft Madness catchup wall is more padded with filler and superficiality like the ones this game as compared with the ones in the towngames listed. Admittedly, not a vast sample size, but an interesting observation nonetheless. One that has downgraded my read on fitz too.

Fitz, I don't really want to vote Desperado today. Who else interests you and why?

[Kalimar]

Pie, what flavour (if any) accompanies your role? Do you get a message saying 'x number of players on y wagon are not town-aligned' or 'x number of players on y wagon ARE town-aligned' or does it mention any faction in specific? Is there any way you know of that the results could be inaccurate?

I'm fine with hiplop lynch, but I arbitrarily want the hammer vote.

[Kalimar]

.

[Kalimar]

Why are we mass-claiming?

Desperado thinks he can break the setup with a mass-claim.

I don't think it'll be fully breakable. Maybe partially.

Can you/Gaiden/NS state disagreement with the MC or just claim? We're waiting on you guys and nothing else of interest is happening in the meantime. The alternative is that Desp just outs whatever he's got (lest he die a death most unfortunate before the morrow) and we move on, and I'm actually very fine with that alternative if we just get to move on with our lives.

[Kalimar]

I'll hammer when he's at L-1 like I said. NS/Pie/Fitz/Gaiden/Who, the floor is yours...

(or even hiplop if you want to be set free from this abomination. wouldn't blame you.)

[Kalimar]

why is he not at l-1 yet

[Kalimar]

I've succumbed to boredom. Fine, someone else can hammer. BLAH.

Vote: Hiplop

[Kalimar]

he's already said he's not going to and he'll have to whenever we massclaim anyway. which is probably tomorrow depending on how this lynch goes.

hammer for justice, fitz!

[Kalimar]

please just hammer hiplop.

[Kalimar]

I'll support massclaim at this juncture too.

[Kalimar]

Pie, what flavour (if any) accompanies your role? Do you get a message saying 'x number of players on y wagon are not town-aligned' or 'x number of players on y wagon ARE town-aligned' or does it mention any faction in specific? Is there any way you know of that the results could be inaccurate?

Also, pie, still want these answered.

[Kalimar]

Let's try something new and original:

Notscience Notscience Notscience

[Kalimar]

Vote: notscience

There's only so much game-avoidance I can tolerate.

[Kalimar]

I really thought we were on track to win the newly instated Game of the Year scummy award.

[Kalimar]

I'm Jack. Neighbour with GiF.

:flavour interlude:

Initially, I lived in my hometown contemplating how my life would be as lived with my childhood romance.
Three years ago, a blast of energy created a dimensional rift, changing natural laws themselves. This is the scenario mentioned in the cult portion of the opening flavour post.

Aetel, who I love dearly (I assume this is my childhood romance -- although I suppose it could be a platonic love with a separate friend, I doubt that), fell through a portal in some city ruins we were looking around and subsequently disappeared. She is Aetis' sister and Aetis is termed as 'my friend'.

After failing to locate her, I returned home to find my house was destroyed, as if a large avian creature had raptured it with its talons. My nameless uncle who had brought me up in my youth had also disappeared at this point.

I journeyed around to find out more about this disastrous event, but failed to find many leads. However, rumours of witches, who are complete encapsulations of a single given quality, were a possible avenue of information. A given example is that the current Witch of Death participated as his own faction in a great war over a century ago. By himself he killed more people than any known other.

Whilst on my travels I met Beta. She was termed as a quirky girl who needed to get to 'this town' (presume current location/game setting), and since I was good at travelling I decided to go with her. It was rumoured the Witch of Truth had been seen near this town; this was the closest I'd been to the truth and that nothing would stand in the way of me getting my answers.

~

So, what does the above mean? I have a theory about Aetel but I would like everyone to have claimed first before discussing it. The Witch of Truth rumour turned out to be accurate, and it's heavily implying that if Witch of Death is in this game it's a self-aligned killing faction (i.e. SK). The way the house was destroyed, the portal and the missing uncle might mean something to someone else, or could just be expositional filler. Or, if I'm feeling charitable, enrichment of the fictional setting.

I wanted to talk flavour with GiF to see if it meant anything to him but he didn't seem interested. We didn't talk much, except he asked if I wanted to claim masons pregame. Having checked the flip format FakeGod uses, I declined, thinking it could be very harmful if GiF were scum. We shared some scum reads on n1 - the QT was only active at night - and that was about it.

[Kalimar]

I'll admit that this game doesn't feel very broken. I just come away from it with mixed feelings. :/

Here are my thoughts on, well, everything. It's a bit of a superwall, but you'll probably like it anyway, because transparency. I don't feel very decided on things, but I think that a scumflip today is important and should lay things out far more clearly.

One thing's for sure: town does not have 6 (+?) power roles. Two flipped witches of unknown powers - energy could be redirector, motivator, rolestopper, or even roleblock immuniser? though he was said he was lynchproof, I'm not sure how serious that was. truth/lies screams alignment investigative but then why would Who claim to be alignment investigation immune? (and on that note, the Who kill is a pretty bizarre one, but I'm not sure how to interpret it.)
+
witch of perception, 1-shot sensor
medic
flavour cop
modified vig
(+ arguably my neighbour if you consider that a PR, plus notscience's whatever.)

I wish I knew what Who's role was most of all. The role looks investigative and so that means I think that one, but probably not both, of {pieguyn, BrianSkies} is scum, because maybe three investigative roles is overkill. That's nothing new, given pie's role claim, except it probably just shows pie was telling the truth regardless of alignment, given I really think bork's play has been strongly town oriented. I did have some slight worries about a pieguy-Brian team, but the odds of that have gone down a little, both with the claims and with pie's townreading me/bork. Still not certain - if Who's PR was alignment cop, that'd be strong enough to trump any other investigative... but we just don't know. Between pieguyn and Brian, I'm not at all sure - more on this later.

Other role spec: Scum medic makes a very nice hypothetical counter to SKvig, though probably nicer if there doesn't turn out to be a scum RB. Brian's negative result on notscience, if Brian's town, means notscience's either ascetic/'immune to that type of investigation' scum or scum have an RB. I'd wager we'll know after tonight the odds of a scumdoc or RB, if the game's still in play then. I don't know if there's a lot of other setup spec I can usefully do right now; symmetrically pie's the odd witch out in that he doesn't have a connection with another character - I'm connected to Beta, notscience is connected to Veris (somehow) and pie's just disconnected. If you like Rule of Three, pie's witchclaim would have increased odds of scum just by being so, given the others are conftown. Wouldn't lean on that as an isolated factor, though. You also kind of have to assume a neighbour somewhere is scum, though there's an awful lot of choice there so that's not observation of the century. :/

So, on the wagon... Majiffy's either vig or SK. But, not for lynching. Chances of groupscum very low; would require probably a two-man scumteam, since a three scumteam getting extra kills is kinda borked even if the rest of the power is true. And, that would make pie's role very unfair, unless Majiffy-pie scumteam; in that case pie'd have to be a roleblocker who'd RB'd Brian. Seems really unlikely. Majiffy SK vs. townvig isn't a call I can solidly make atm but I'd lean town; claiming actual vig does earn some townpoints, since I wouldn't ever claim vig as SK (see what happened to pie in Gundam when he did - admittedly in a smaller game it's more viable but...) but depending on the actual power balance here either's technically possible. Witch of Death flavour could be a red herring; it's used as an example of a witch but isn't necessarily contextualised within this current plot. (only other possibility is if Majiffy is groupscum trying to bait SK... but whatever, that resolves itself.)

Desp being town would pretty much make it notscience/Gaiden given the suppositions that there's exactly one scum off-wagon and Majiffy's not groupscum. This just feels a bit too easy, although I have quite a few problems with notscience at the moment. I need to spend some time to actually properly read Desp; I put him on the backburner because I thought his claim would be strong. It's not a bad claim, but it's not incontrovertible; if we're talking setup meta the Wingates were used as antagonists in one setup and protagonists in the next. Also, there'd be a nice mirror with the spy-in-cult opening flavour if a typical protagonist was a spy FOR the cult. Expectations are there to be violated, so yeah I don't think those claims are enough for me to write either of you off as obvtown. I'll say that if both or either of you'd (Desp + Brian) fakeclaimed, you'd planned your game around it from the offset, because there were hints from both of you fairly early. Which is a consideration. As well as Desp being very in-your-face with the claim, whereas Brian was more subtle with his hints, though I need to think about how alignment indicative that is. Right now I'm not at all sure if we have 2 town, 1 town 1 scum, or 2 scum there, and it's something I want to be sure about, or at least have a leaning. If they're both town, then pie-gaiden-NS gg? But then they'd have been double-bussing Gaiden last day phase which... kinda makes no sense at all? Or I'm wrong about bork and I'll never let go of this read Rose I'll never let go. (because borktown is about the only confident read I've had all game, so fuck that if I'm wrong.)

On the topic of notscience - notscience's claim was vague and fuzzy. Yesterday he used the justification that he needed his flavour before he could claim, but he hasn't really given us any flavour in his claim here. I'd actually like to know the flavour justification for him looking for 'V', the exact name of who he's searching for (which is probably going to end up being the obvious one, but let's hear it anyway) and his character name. And why the claim he gave was as patchy as it was. :/

So, anyway, notscience-Gaiden
Gaiden-Desp
Desp-notscience.
... if I can rule out one of these pairs, I'll actually be happy in lynching the common factor between the others. I don't have time now, but I'll probably go interaction reading later unless I get lazy.

So, the big theory that may be a wild goose chase. Either Aetel's a complete red herring or she's the girl at the start of the opening flavour post (me being the lover). That suggests she knew she was going to be whisked away (hence the knowing that 'I will always be yours' is false). I'd wondered if Aetel could have become the Witch of Truth, since the obvious buzzword in that little segment caught my eye, but Beta was just Beta, so why wouldn't Veris just be Veris? Anyway, if we ever see an Aetel scumflip, I'm virtually confirmed town because of that segment because it'll almost certainly be referring to my character and hers. It's possible she did just become Veris, though, after portalhopping to wherever. I just prefer the other theory. We don't know a lot about our 'Hanged' cohort - presumably we'll have a scum called 'The Hangman', plus maybe Aetel and then some unknown factor maybe. Oh, and if the groupscum faction somehow isn't actually called 'Hanged', then pieguy's scum, just for reference. Getting a groupscum flip today would help with a lot of these uncertainties.

The bottom line? Unless notscience seriously steps up, I'm happy lynching him. I still have no strong opinion on Gaiden; he's a metronomic null who ends in the slightly scummy pile more than the slight townie pile. Between pie and Brian, I don't know. Both have threads that would support their claim, pie fewer but he did crumb at the start of d2 and then followed it up. So, if one's fake, they did think about it somewhat. Ultimately, I just look over the posts and think pie's scum on a gut level (but meh, gut). There are some niggles in Brian's posting, though - lack of meaningful followup is a major one, the townread on Who felt too easy as well, and I feel like you could have taken him out of the game and very little would have changed... but I'll concede that applies to several people. I just find Brian very null, really. I need to think about it some more. If one of you could obvtown it up, that'd be great.

[Kalimar]

While I'm here, questions:

@notscience: What is your character name, who exactly are you looking for (answer's obvious but eh surprise me), what is your flavour justification for doing this?
Given you believe Desp/Majiffy claims, who's scum?
(and why are you still avoiding this game, it needs love.)

@Brian: Why'd you investigate the people you did, especially a guy you believed to be ascetic?

@Majiffy: Who'd you target and why?

@Gaiden: Who's scum & why?

[Kalimar]

Oh actually, Brian - would you mutually bet the game on Desperado being town?

[Kalimar]

heh. i actually felt inspired to read through and see if i could figure the game out. i shook the apathy for a brief moment, had a burst of energy and now i've relapsed into meh again.

anyway, lynch notscience or offer a counter-proposal. just assume if it's a townlynch it's already game over.

[Kalimar]

that bit was to everyone.

[Kalimar]

boom boom boom

[Kalimar]

what's the sticking point for you, bork?

[Kalimar]

Ugh.

I seriously don't fucking know what to do here.

i don't think they're scum together. desp going about the ns push like this in mylo seems strange when there would be presumably at least one other accessible route to a more efficient victory.

and i think ns's last post was akin to a scumclaim - it's mylo and he says he's ok with his lynch and nothing else - which in itself makes desp more likely town.

my individual read on desp is mixed - which is still better than my read on most of the rest. at least i saw some sparks of town, which is better than i've seen in many. there's some bluster in the iso and i was a bit iffy on his early day1 play, but i thought the way he went about calling himself conftown on claim felt legitimate regardless of its rational foundations in reality. like, scum generally find it hard to fake that stuff on a consistent basis since they know in their hearts it's not true.

[Kalimar]

prod dodge

[Kalimar]

It's probably a delayed kill mechanism of some description.

I don't know what I want to do with my vote right now.

[Kalimar]

easter prod dodge.

[Kalimar]

Another episode of 'Apathy Kills Towns' concludes. I think that other than Death's Diner all of my townlosses have been built on apathy.

I'm a part of it. I take my blame in that regard. I'm not an energising player, even though I'd like to think I'm a thoughtful one... when I'm motivated to do the thinking. I can't turn it on tap, though.

I had reasonable reads on the whole - although I had far too many false positive scumreads, everyone I townread at some point did end up to be town. Even though I wavered on my Bait/fitz one a little.

Earlier today I'd been running through all the possible scumteams in my head and eliminating the ones I didn't like, although I hadn't finished. I'd got down to thinking there was exactly one scum in Brian-Desp, that Brian-Gaiden weren't partnered because of the vote and interactions, and that Desp-pie didn't feel right intuitively. I'd settled on my pie scum read, and was half tempted to yolovote him like I did with notscience, but I thought that everyone believed his claim and him to be town so I didn't have a lot of confidence that I would be able to convince people to vote that way. I thought that it was either pie and gaiden or brian and pie. So pie was the common factor.

But, I felt alone (mostly) in finding pie suspicious, so I kept a lot of those thoughts to myself. I didn't feel as though I would be successful in trying to lynch him. I kept most of my doubts about his claim to myself, because everyone else seemed to just buy into it. It's a flawed way of thinking, but it is a bias that affects me. I'm often not confident in going against the tide publically, even if I might in private. This happened in UPick too; roleclaim I was skeptical of won that game too. Two games in a row. heh.

[Kalimar]

Any flavour benefits for town were mostly offset by the Aetis fakeclaim, and the town-roles couldn't be intuited from their names. Vengeful/supersaint, vig and suicide votal bomber are not a very protown trio (swingy, admittedly). The medic was unlikely to have a successful action; it would tie up in self-saving when it couldn't be shot, or likely saving Aetisclaim, which generally happened here. So town had no real definitively useful power. And the notion of witches being true representations of their qualities was misleading; if you surveyed 100 people on what intuitive roles you'd associate with the terms 'Energy' and 'Truth (and Lies)' I'm not even sure the Witch of Truth would get any hits, and Energy might get just a couple in the right ballpark.

Although scum lose the ability to kill who they want, only the vig lategame is particularly one you'd want gone. Anyone obvtown but unthreatening can be marked, making only higher-accuracy/threatening scumhunters a big worry. Marked wouldn't equate to conftown for a while, necessarily; it would be easy to peddle the witch of death as a third party who needed to mark people for some mass kill or something, and I'm sure others could come up with more creative misdirections. The gladiator shot would likely backfire if used but requires such specific circumstances that it would be very unlikely to even be used.

I think it's slightly scumsided just because of the extent to which town is misinformed/misinformable and how informed the informed minority really is here. A bizarre setup, for sure. Different.

Thanks for running it, in any case, and congrats to the scum.