Kingmaker II-Game Over

[Cavane]

Hello all. Obviously I've got some reading to do, so I'll see you all when that's done.

[Cavane]

Well, that was quite a journey. Admittedly, I scanned over much of first half of the game. I didn't really think stuff that happened 3-4 months ago would be all that pertinant to what's going on now. I'll start compiling a list of things I have something to comment about from this Day. I have a feeling this post is going to be pretty long...

I've been attacked many times in the past, and to date, I've responded adequately to every reason brought against me. Had I not, I would not be living right now

It was already addressed and answered, but I have taken note of this and I didn't really care for MoS' response either.

X - Tries to have his cake and eat it too

What do you mean by that, Thok?

it looks like he must have had a good running knowledge of the game at the time he was making these posts, instead of simply relying on the latest posts to come to opinions (which I think scum are more likely to do).

I disagree with this. In my experience, town players are no more likely to pay close attention to a game than scum players. I consider attentiveness, or lack thereof, to be a non-tell, though admittedly the lack thereof is generally detrimental to the town.

Am I unqualified to think of you as scum if I've not read a game with you as scum? Am I privy to special and helpful information if I have?

Yes to the second question.

I hate it when people A) Ask players to check their other games and use meta knowledge. And B) Assert that doing so is a good strategy. Because it's not. Especially when it's induced by the player in question, as in this case. "Well, since I'm scum, I'll play my usual town playstyle this time and tell people to check my other threads." Also, despite that you didn't address the first question, MoS, you are implying that the opinions of those who haven't played with you are less valid than the opinions of those who have.

So, you're asserting that I haven't been clear in who I wanted executed, I haven't ever said something to the effect of "we should execute x", and I haven't ever proclaimed that I thought someone was protown? Votes are not the only way to indicate how you feel about someone. If you can prove that I've done none of the above (

all of which are just as tangible as a vote

or FoS), then maybe you have a case.

Not true. Your stated suspicions, however crystal clear they might be, still do not show up in a votecount, which is what most players use as a tool to see how the rest of the players are thinking. Expecting every player in this large game to keep track of who you are, were, might be suspicious of is unreasonable.

OMG PJ is a genius too. I am sorry but I must defer to brains that are so much more sophisticated and better irrigated than the bean-sized, oxygen-starved bit of grey matter tightly housed in my thick skull.

Is this not the same kind of 'buddying up' that cbox was condemned for D1? The first time you did it, I wrote it off as a joke, but to actually change your voting simply to follow other players, I think is irresponsible at the least.

I'll execute someone when I feel the game isn't advancing anymore.

Que for scum to start dragging down the discussion... Meanwhile, I'd also like to see a real LoE.

The problem is, there is always going to be at least one instance of where something scum would do has been done by a protown person. That doesn't change the fact that doing so is detrimental to the town and scummy in general.

QFT

89 pages, still 16 players.

EXECUTE SOMEONE ALREADY!!!!

There have been other posts like this, but this is the most recent. These posts kinda suck. They aren't scumtells, but they also don't help anyone except scum. It may be because I'm a newcomer and I'm reading all this back-to-back, but it doesn't seem to me like a whole lot has happened yet Today.

So you consider votes to be the only form of "formal suspicion"?

Yes. It's the very reason that terms like FoS, HoS, IGMEOY, etc. were coined. Votes are formal, anything else is informal, or just a statement.

I'm not prepared to cast any votes yet, as I'd like to get a bit more into this game first. Howver, as for the sort-of LoE, here's how I feel off the bat: SV would be fine, Fritzler I'd like to hear from before formin an opinion, VitR, although I've disagreed with some of his thinking (esp. the big fallacy post) seems townish to me. SV would be my choice right now.

PHEW

[Cavane]

Sorry about the lack of who was being quoted. My quote tags break whenever I include a name. In any case, I wasn't necessarily expecting responses from each of the people concerned. That was more for the benefit of the rest of the players, to know where I stand on recent events.

RafK: To begin recieving my newsletter, place $200 (A 20 year subscription) beneath the dumpster on Fourth and Main. You'll find your new issue in the same place bimonthly. Ask about our Gaurantee! Also, who do you think would be the most informative execution, not limiting yourself to the LoE?

mnowax and ThAdmiral: Listen to Yos.

[Cavane]

Also, lynching someone because it will give us information is a terrible reason to lynch someone.

And I disagree with that, in any case. Especially in a game with no investigative roles, lynching for information is perfectly valid.

[Cavane]

Ack, sorry about that. That was Thesp's quote, obv. You can fix it, if you like Thok.

[Cavane]

Agreed. It's not an unreasonable question. On VitR's part, I mean. I'm not certain what the case on him is, myself.

[Cavane]

You're talking about me like I'm not in the room.

[Cavane]

Like I said when I came in, I scanned through a good portion of the earlier portions of the game. I went back and found PJ's case against him, however, so I'm more informed now on that point. I'm sure you'll understand that there was a lot of information to disgest coming into this thread when I did.

[Cavane]

2306, 2307, 2308 are all great posts.

[Cavane]

I find it amazing that anyone would adopt such an attitude after coming so far in a game.

[Cavane]

I haven't played with Fritz before, but I have seen a few of his games. As I recall, he doesn't really respond to pressure.

[Cavane]

Nobody said lynch

only

for information. I don't understand why you seem to think that how much information is derived from a lynch should not be part of the consideration. As I said, it's not the only factor, but it's not an invalid one, either.

[Cavane]

I don't see the point in claims at all in this setup. If the Kingmaker dies, someone else becomes it again, and they'll always be town. The Hero is more of a wildcard that just kills the king. If the King was scum, great. Either way, the hero will almost certainly die that night for being confirmed town. Everyone else is scum or townie. So yeah, what's the point?

[Cavane]

Was I lurking? I tend not to post when there's nothing to say and nothing being said. By the time I replaced in, it was just everyone asking for an LoE, and then posting their thoughts on said LoE when it came, both of which I did.

Oh, and then we argued about whether it's right to lynch for information. Be a good thread in Mafia Discussion when this game is over, but anyway... a few thoughts.

I don't like TS's lurking in plain sight of late.

I don't understand VitR's last comment. Those are all people who said yes to killing SV. If you're thinking bus,

A) That's a lot of poeple on the bus.

B) There were many others that supoorted an SV execution, why did you pick these three?

And I'd like Fritz to answer that eloquent question, as well, and I might add 'and why?' to the end of it.

[Cavane]

I'm waiting on Fritz, really. I think he's the center of attention today. Or at least right now.

[Cavane]

I'd make it three people, not two. Mainly because being forced to choose between just two people is kinda bogus, esp. if both of them have been pretty pro-town. I think we'll see more definate patterns if people are allowed to choose between three. I think it's a good idea, nonetheless.

[Cavane]

I'm here and have been watching the thread. I'll have my assignment done before PJ gets back, just haven't had much to comment on, I'm afraid.

[Cavane]

Likewise. Thanks, Thok.

[Cavane]

The case of DR/Smashy/BM/mnowax2.

DR didn't have a lot to say early on. He focused heavily on pablito (Thesp) for reasoning I thought was pretty weak. This doesn't help his case, since I consider Thesp to be pretty town. He pretty much spent the rest of the game as King telling people to post top 3, followed by the massive fluff post before vanishing. Leaning slightly toward scum at this point.

Smashy takes over. In his first post he says:

Seeing as I'm going through a 65 page game with plenty of replacements and all those issues with the crash, I appreciate all the help I can get.

Not saying I'm just going to blindly follow the town, though.

Bolding added. I really don't like that remark. It makes me think he's setting himself up to go against the town, if necessary.

He executes Luckay over SV, not good, and that's it from Smashy. Looking scummier now.

BM takes over. Doesn't do much for his short stint. Defends SV weakly, defends mnowax1 and attacks MoS. IMO, these are non-telling. The strongest things he said were attacks on MoS, who I'm not currently sure about.

Finally, mnowax2.

Defends SV... I'm seeing a running theme here. Couple posts later (which took place over a week's time, admittedly) switches gears and supports an SV execution. Changing to bus mode? Bunch of useless stuff follows, up to his assignment post.

I'll do my next subject, K-scope soon, but I have to say he's going to have to look pretty bad for me to pick him over these folks. And, apologies for taking so long with this.

[Cavane]

Make a paste of water and meat tenderizer and put that on it. It'll sooth it and bring the swelling down a bit.

[Cavane]

PJ's point that if he had stated his intentions to execute VR, it would have shut the game down while he was away, I think is valid. But Raf also has a valid point that it spread discussion out and took the focus

off

VR. Whether or not this was an intentional tactic on PJ's part, is the question here. I can definately see a scum PJ employing such a move, but I can also see town PJ trying to encourage discussion. Overall, however, it's a bad mark against him in that a townie was executed, and while I had PJ pegged as town, I'm definitely going to rethink my position.

[Cavane]

I know it's not the greatest in the world, but I thought I did better than TS.

[Cavane]

In fact, Der Hammer was

replaced by

Cavane

...

I hope that doesn't mean I got two votes...

Seriosuly, though, I know I didn't bring much, if anything to the table on that post. I felt the need to say something, since I hadn't posted in some time. (I am closely watching the game, however.) I could have simply said "I am unsure of PJ's alignment right now.", but I wanted to explain my thinking.

Uh. I think Thesp is referring to the fact that MoS is seemingly showing confidence in multiple people's alignments who Thesp suspects by saying "you'll be surprised" - instead of a qualifier like "I expect you'll be surprised [since I think X, Y, Z are town]".

Except he did say 'I

think

you'll be surprised.'

[Cavane]

i don't think he's good enough to perfectly slip under the radar like that as scum

i would guess on the side of pro town

I'm pleased your opinion is that I'm town, but I'm curious what you're basing my skill level on. I don't think I've ever played a game with you.

P.S. PBP of PJ should be finished tomorrow. Finally got a day off from work.

[Cavane]

This has turned out to be less a PBP and more a stream of consciousness as I review PJ's posts. Originally I had been quoting quite a bit, but the sheer amount of material PJ has posted in this game made me change gears and take them out.

Early on, I was struck by two things about PJ. His posts were nearly always quite long, which is generally a good sign to me. However, his overt town claims gave me pause. He claimed that he usually did such things, but I've never played with PJ, and I don't care to go looking at other games to gain info on a player. In any case, the fact that he defended that action so staunchly and later in the game stopped doing it result in scummy mark.

Next thing that pops out at me is that during his first kingship, he doesn't cave to peasant pressure regarding LoE issues. That looks more townie to me, I would think a scum king would be more eager to please and eager for a quick end to the day. Could be WIFOM of course, but honestly, anything can be WIFOM if you put enough backspin on it.

He did a summary later on with his thoughts on each player. I mainly looked at the two confirmed scum. It looks to me with Pooky, PJ tried not to take a stand, saying he was never able to get a read on him. SV, however, he expressed some slight suspicion of, but it was weak. Overall, not good.

Of course, he executes a townie, but it was D1. I can give benefit of the doubt there. Any town king would be hard pressed to nab scum on the first go.

Next day, he puts up a decently strong case against Pooky, but abandons it. Overall no tell there, I think. It's quite easy to get legitimately distracted in such a big game.

I'm really liking his defense of his D1 actions, particularly here. A lot of scum defenses I have seen consisted of smoke and mirrors, but PJ is quite logical there. Townie points.

He also renews his case on SV from D1, not backing down when he is later scrutinized for it.

...and the search function just went down. Or something. At any rate, I don't have it in me tonight to start reading the whole thread from Day 2. I'm going to post this for now and beg your collective forgiveness for not finishing as I promised. I'll try to finish this tomorrow. At the very least, I

will

get some more of it posted up. Again, apologies.

[Cavane]

Sure. I need Cavane's response, first.

Sorry, I thought you said earlier that the question had been invalidated.

At any rate, in the post that offended everybody, I thought I was pretty clear that I was planning on looking closer at PJ. At the time, I wasn't sure whether I was going to do an entire re-read of him, or just look his stuff from the past couple days. (Game days.) The complaints against my (admittedly vague) post kinda led me to go the whole hog on my review.

But to answer your question, why all the attention on PJ? Because I think his kingship yesterday earned him some scrutiny, which I hadn't been paying him, as I had him pegged town. I'm not ignoring the rest of the game, I just haven't had much to add so far today.

[Cavane]

I am primarily waiting on Cavane to finish his analysis on me.

I'm very sorry it's taking me so long. I had to work late tonight, but I promise promise promise I'll have it done tomorrow night.

[Cavane]

Day 3 he's immediately back on SV's case. Good sign, I would tend to expect bussing scum to wait and see if heat had died down. Plus townie.

Not seeing anything stand out over the next several posts. He's making some good points against Townz and SV, and I agree with his logic.

He attacks my predecessor for lurking. Normally, I would consider it a no tell, but the time between his prior and next posts (5 days and 2, respectively) makes me wonder. Add to that the fact that he does nothing else with that post, and I consider it slightly scummy. I'm used to seeing much more out of PJ.

More pressure on SV, yadda yadda.

Posts are getting shorter and farther between. Not ready to call it a tell at this point, but am noting it for possible use later.

Really pushing hard on SV as D3 winds to a close. Good stuff.

Quite a few pages go by with nothing of note from PJ. Finally, I got to a series of re-reads he did on people. He basically mirrors my thoughts on MoS: Don't agree with his playstyle, but town. Although, his playstyle doesn't bother me as much as it seems to bug PJ.

The second one is on VR. He had stated some slight suspicion on VR earlier, based on predecessors. IIRC, PJ and VR are due to have quite a face-off in the near future. But here, his complaints against VR are mostly lack of reasoning for his thoughts. I think he's quoting conveniently here to help make his case, as I don't recall having the same impressions.

Still going after SV. I'm really doubting a bus at this point. PJ's been very consistent with his suspicions, even when they were unpopular.

And I'm up to the point where I replaced in. I don't see much point in finishing out. As I said, I had PJ pegged pretty firmly as town. The result of my review does not change that. I found a few scummy-ish things, but they were heavily outweighed by townie points.

So, bottom line: PJ's town.

My head hurts.

[Cavane]

I find it fairly damning as the game wears on that you don't doubt yourself and PJ doesn't doubt you either.

I think your case on Yos has some substance, but that line is a bit silly. Is he really expected to speculate on his own role? Why would he portray doubt as to his own alignment in this setup?

[Cavane]

Could you perhaps give a brief explanation of why each person is on your LoE? You can exclude Kscope, but the list really is quite long. I personally could use a quick refresher on where we stand.

[Cavane]

...

mnowax is probably scum. However, MoS is correct that Kscope's death would bring in more information. I could get behind either. If my count and my guess are correct, we're starting to run short on mis-executions, however. In that light, I think I would prefer Kscope. I don't think he's as scummy as mnowax, but we do need some info.

Fritz I prefer to wait on. He may be scum, or may not be. We really aren't going to get any tells out of him at this rate.

TS is pretty scumy to me. I put him in basically the same category as mnowax. Probably scum, but we won't get much info from his death.

ThAdmiral has been more lurky than scummy, if you ask me. I could see him going either way, just like Fritz. There are better choices, I think.

Now for you, King. I really really don't like this Russian Roulette business. Even though I do support a Kscope kill, the way you're so cavalier about it disturbs me. I can imagine him coming up town and you blaming it on the random number generator and saying 'I warned him! Not my fault!'. Please, especially at this stage of the game, be less careless about your execution.

[Cavane]

I'm not sure how I'm "hedging my bets", as you say. I clearly stated who my top execution choice was, said I could support two others, and did not support another two. 3 out of 12 players is hardly "all over the place".

I wonder at your change of pace as well. Hardly anyone's been saluting your MoS flag all game long, so did you decide I might be a more popular target?

I can understand you jumping on me for that post a few pages back, I admitted it was buying time, yet I paid it off later. I don't understand what you mean by treating the symptom. If you mean to say that my analysis of PJ was to appease you, you're quite wrong. I pretty clearly said in the original problem post that I was going to reread PJ. Since the rest of your case on me is clearly exaggerated, I have to ask what your rationale is for pushing me so hard, so suddenly?

Lowell: Could you comment on the LoE, or at the very least state a preference?

[Cavane]

It wasn't terribly clear that a re-read of PJ was the inevitable result of your post - it seemed like an out, and an excuse to throw suspicion on PJ.

I'm sorry I didn't make myself clear to you. As I stated earlier, I wasn't completely sure of what my intentions for PJ were at that point. In any case, others seemed to get the message that I was going to be looking closer at PJ after that. And if I was really looking for an excuse to throw suspicion on him, why would I have presented an analysis that concluded townie?

I also note in your last post, you threw in a throwaway line of suspicion at me. ("I wonder at your change of pace as well. Hardly anyone's been saluting your MoS flag all game long, so did you decide I might be a more popular target?")

How is that a line of suspicion? I'm simply asking you a question, because I'm very puzzled why you're after me so hard based on that fact that I don't claim to know people's alignments. If I say someone is probably scum, I say it because that's what I find likely. I'm not going to out-and-out state that someone is scum unless I have hard evidence to that fact.

(One more thing - his note about "If my count and my guess are correct, we're starting to run short on mis-executions" reeks of scum who actually knows how many mis-lynches are left.)

Oh please. I really feel like you're reaching now. It doesn't take any special knowledge to reach that conclusion. This setup is quite simple, and assuming 20%-25% scum, that leaves us only two or three misses. Not rocket science.

[Cavane]

We should execute one of Mnowax/Fritzler, then

Eh, I'm not sure I like the idea of forcing a choice between those two based on mnowax's odd logic. I'm not saying there's no logic to it, it's just... odd logic.

[Cavane]

I guess I simply disagree with you here, as I'm unsure how the mountainous aspect for other players would make a townie more unsure than if he's without role info in other games.

Because in other games vanilla townies can garner information from other role when they claim. In this game, no one's claimed anything but Townie. Basically every day is played like D1 (with the exception of having earlier days to refer to), and I've never played a game like that, on MS or otherwise.

Aside from that, the fact is that it's in my nature to put proviso's on myself whenever I have anything less than solid factual evidence. I actually play a much surer game as scum than I do as town, because as scum I know the score, to some extent.

[Cavane]

I anyone else here amused that mnowax accuses me of making "few votes"?

I found that very amusing, indeed. I'm going back through Kscope's stuff soon. For now, I think mnowax and Fritz are good choices for today.

[Cavane]

Scum just got executed and you want to end the day without looking back at him?

[Cavane]

Apologies for my away-ness. I've been quite busy the past few days with life-related stuff. I'm working on my Kscope review still, I'll have it up ASAP, as well as answer MoS' question.