Minvitational 8 - OVER before 611

[Jitsu]

I am going to

Vote: Vollkan

because he's not getting any love, and I had a great time in Vollville.

[Jitsu]

Cool! Erg0 is back to his creepy skull avatar!

[Jitsu]

It's an album cover.

I've led a sheltered life. It looks like some creepy skulls to me.


I too am very glad to be here. I consider being chosen a tremendous honor, knowing how many players out there are deserving of a spot. I look forward to a good game.

[Jitsu]

jitsu, how many games have you played now?....

Sorry guys, I was tied up with work Thursday and Friday. I'll catch up and post tonight.

To answer CKD's question, I'm a bit embarrassed to say that I've only completed two games. I would have played more, but I survived to the end in both.

I took a few weeks off to deal with some work deadlines, and I was ready to start a third one, when someone told me to wait to sign up for my next game (apparently, because of the invitational).

After our win together in Underground Mafia, I played with Adel, Erg0, and Oman in Vollkan's Mafia in Vollville. I survived to endgame, and all three of us won as town.

I didn't want to mention it, because I think someone could (legitimately) gripe that they should have been chosen over someone that's only played two mafia games ever.

[Jitsu]

My apologies to everyone. I wasn't intending to be gone so long, but work intervened and I had little choice.

I'll post my thoughts on what has happened so far.

There are are a few interesting things about the Cicero wagon. When the wagon was starting to build, it occurred to me pretty quickly that Simenon was just trolling for a reaction. (Guardian and Oman did this to an extent in Mafia in Vollville on Day 1.) Cicero's response in 40 arouses my curiosity, particularly in how he declared Simenon's act a weak town tell (and not just "I don't find it scummy"). I can think of a number of interesting interpretations of this. Maybe it's a subtle scum attempt at buddying up a bit to help derail the wagon. Maybe it's a calculated gambit to see if Simenon and/or Oman will press too hard and overcommit on their case against him. Maybe it's just a simple attempt to feel Simenon out. The wording here does sound a bit funny -- it's enough to raise my eyebrow and wonder about his intentions though, but I'm not going to jump on him for this alone.

Simenon is clearly still pushing buttons in 43, and Adel and Oman quickly follow suit, maybe because they smell a little blood in the water?

Apparently it worked, because in 47 Cicero seems to retaliate in a relatively serious tone, as opposed to the subtle jabs in the previous posts. Cicero generally looks frustrated here, almost as if the bringing up of the town tell hit a nerve. Given that only 6 minutes elapsed between Oman's shit-stirring post 44 and Cicero's rebuttal in 47, I kind of doubt that Cicero had a lot of time to plan something elaborate in that interval, though. While his answer could have been previously rehearsed, that would have taken a decent amount of foresight. I'm guessing that Cicero's reaction here is more likely to be genuine, either "You numbnuts have the wrong man!" or "Damnit, those meddling townies are turning up the pressure on me with a completly lucky crapwagon!"

And the vote in 47 is odd. Why single out Adel, when everyone else is stirring up the crap? Cicero's earlier rebuttals seem to be saying the wagon against him is baseless, so why does he keep reacting to it? I like Oman's response in 49, but I disagree with Oman's dislike of Cicero proclaiming himself as town. I see this as a legitimate tactic -- I think it could help reduce slips if you always refer to yourself as town, regardless of your alignment. Personally, I see it as a null tell, because that's my style too (OK, maybe I'm a little biased on that one).

With Cicero's 51, there is a bit more inconsistency. If Cicero thinks Simenon is a possible townie (weak town tell), why is he suggesting Oman vote for him? Isn't the point here that Simenon could have done what he did as either town or scum? The rest of this post is decidedly wishy-washy and ineffective. (I did notice that this was covered later on.)

Cicero's 56 and 57 though are better posts. These seem to be constructive and more focused -- and that's only 10 minutes after his less than stellar 51. After Adel's good point in 60, Cicero's 61 seems a bit off the mark. We should see flippant people as town because they have more of a luxury to do so? Sorry, but this seems like a one-sided analysis to me. I think you have to consider all the situational factors behind someone's actions to understand them. In a vacuum by itself, I don't think flippancy means much.

Up until this point, I've found Simenon's tactics fairly legit, but I'm wondering why he reversed himself in 62 about the wagon never really being a joke, just after he said it started out as one? Then in the next paragraph, he talks about how he said it stopped being a joke. So which is it? If the Cicero wagon was simply a means of advancing the game and getting a read on Cicero, it should have been easy to keep a consistent story ("I was only half-serious at first, trolling for a reaction, but then I saw something in Cicero's responses..."). I don't know if this is significant or not, but I'll remember it. This post seems a bit evasive.

Shaft.ed's 64 is odd. First he takes a parting shot at Oman for shifting the wagon to Cicero. Um, right, Oman did have three votes on him and Cicero only two at the end of page one, but you're really upset at Oman trying to "derail" a page 1 joke wagon by voting for Cicero? (This comes up later in 92 and other posts.) Also, Shaft.ed seems to jump into the "flippant" argument. Oddly, he seems to treat the "flippant" agrument at least semi-seriously, even though he disagrees with the town tell on Simenon. If Cicero thinks Simenon is town because he is flippant, and Shaft.ed disagrees it's a town tell, why the hell is being flippant relevant at all? I see the smiley after the last bit, but it still sounds like he's being half-serious here.

I agree with Vollkan's 76. Being silly by itself, especially early on Day 1, is a null tell until it can be put into context later.

In Cicero's 83, we finally get a sensible explanation for his town tell (that's really was I was expecting to hear all along). I don't think his attack on Adel's statement quite hits the mark though. Maybe a weak town tell and a null tell are not really that different, but saying something is a tell gives us information on your thought process ("I generally use this as a way to find scum") versus Adel's less committal statement that she simply found one scenario more likely than the other. Interesting possible connection mentioned by Cicero between Adel and Simenon, but I think it also raises the specter of a Cicero/Simenon pair also (as Adel points out later). Isn't Cicero here kind of defending his own WIFOM while denouncing Adel's?

Simenon's 93 is a bit snarky and evasive, but even thought he has a good question in there, but I'm puzzled why in 95 he gave up on the Cicero wagon before some of the other players weigh in -- and what is the reason for switching to Erg0 (as opposed to unvoting or choosing someone else). (After reading a bit more, I see Adel said basically said the same thing in 100.)

Shanba's 96 lacks a lot of reason. He's voting for Oman because he doesn't like how Shanba is defending himself? Huh?? Shaft.ed calls him out on this in the next post, and Oman mentions it again in 105. Both good points. I also like The Fonz's 106-7. Vollkan's reply is correct, but I happen to strongly agree with The Fonz as a matter of policy -- decent townies should not act anti-town. That's what my playstyle is all about.

Regarding Shaft.ed's 117, I did get two town wins in two tries, but part of it was luck of the draw. In all fairness, I think I did do my part as a vanilla townie in both games, but I also played with an impressive cast of townies in both games, which certainly helped.

Hmmm, so in Shaft.ed's 124, we find that the allegation that Oman pushing the wagon was a joke. This seems in contrast to the serious sounding explanation he gave in 92. How does 131 fit into this? Was this an honest joke or an attempt to cast suspicion that failed? I'm not sure.

As for CKD's 137, here is your mountain. I do apologize for being away longer than I expected, but I'll be able to post more regularly now, I think. And it does take time to write my mountains.

As for Adel's playstyle, I agree with Vollkan. Adel being totally honest and not acting scummy would tend to mess with my head. My problem with Adel is that I get paralyzed by analyzing to try to figure out what she is really thinking. By her own admission, what she says is often very different from what she is thinking. This makes her incredibly hard to read (and lynch), as she tends to be a few steps away from where she appears. I have tried to combat this by being patient and look for larger trends with her instead of reacting to every little thing she says. But in this game, so far, she definitely seems to have dialed down the level of obfuscation.

Now that I've written this mountain, I need to go over and try to analyze my analysis.

But in any case, it seems clear I should change my vote. While I sort out where I am on the others, I want to hear more from Shanba and his reasons for post 96.

Unvote: Vollkan, Vote: Shanba

[Jitsu]

Jesus, I'm awesome at mafia.

Unvote: Vollkan, Vote: Shanba

TL;DR version.

I'm sorry, I don't understand your abbreviations.

[Jitsu]

"Too long; Didn't Read."

In other words, Oman didn't read your post, but assumed your subsequent vote must be correct.

I'll get to your post in a bit, Jitsu.

Got it, thanks. Maybe I would be a good idea to add those terms should be in the wiki in the abbreviations/acronyms section?

[Jitsu]

OK so the consensus seems to be that Adel hasn't played this conservative before. I don't know what that means, but it obviously has my attention.

I also agree Shanba, Jitsu, Billy and Erg0 are not contributing enough.

Holy crap, can we please lynch him already?

So it doesn't bother you when a player's style changes 180 degrees from their norm?

Bother is a pretty strong word here, Shaft.ed. Adel's different style in this game is definitely something to keep an eye on, but if Adel's not doing anything scummy, where's the problem? I value meta as much as the next guy, but it sounds like you are saying we should find Adel suspicious simply because she is behaving differently from her meta. Has Adel done anything so far in this game that has triggered your scumdar?

Given the level of competition here and people's general familiarity with each other's meta, I'm not surprised that some people are changing their playstyles.

[Jitsu]

I still don't get what is so "conservative" about Adel's play. It feels a bit similar to the way she played when I was scum with her in Guardian's IPick. She posts less than she does as town and her posting feels cautious. As I've said before, I'm not a fan of the Adel school of mafia play. I dont like dishonest townies. People should quit doing disingenuous things in order to "gauge for reactions". If you play honestly, people will eventually smell the honest. That's how townies win. At the moment Adel smells scummy to me. Note my vote hasnt moved. Maybe it is just because she is, yet again, playing in a manner that attempts to confound. But I don't really care. If it feels and smells scummy to me, I'm voting for it. More often than not I'm correct.

Look, for what it's worth, Adel's "normal" style is not really for me either. If a lot of people played that way, I'd probably not want to play here, because the games would probably be total chaos. But to be fair to her, Adel's style often gets results and can win games. In both my games with her (and in several more I've read), her self-sacrificing style helped out one or more scum pretty early.

But I think the correct townie move in the case where someone shows a different playstyle is to keep an open mind and evaluate the player based on their activities in the current game in light of the meta (don't forget the meta, just try not to let it dominate your scumdar). I think meta is a useful tool, but IMHO, I think that too often players use it to jump to conclusions. "Player X did Y when her meta says she normally does Z! She must be scum!!" What incentive do people have to improve by changing their playstyles or trying different strategies then? I firmly believe that a townie's most important obligation is to help their team win, within the bounds of ethical play.

Back to the matter at hand. So you say Adel smells scummy here. Is that statement based totally on her acting similarly here as she did (as scum) in Guardian's IPick game, or is there something else factoring in?

[Jitsu]

This makes sense, except for the bit I have bolded. I don't see how Cicero saying it was a weak town tell can be read as a gambit to cause Simenon and Oman to potentially overcommit themselves. Maybe you could clarify this?

I probably didn't explain it very well. Gambit was probably too strong of a word.

I think that sometimes, when someone is pushing a case on you, one way to help disrupt it is to agree with them about something (legitimately or not). For example, you may agree with some of the points against you, if they are valid. If done genuinely as town, it shows you are level-headed and fair, and as scum, I think it might help you

look as if

you were level-headed and fair.

Either way, I think in some cases, it can throw a bit of an obstacle in the path of the person pushing the case against you. And I think how the person pushing the case gets around that obstacle has the potential to be telling. A desperate scum sensing his/her mislynch prey getting away could be tempted to oversell the case.

Perhaps in this game, we are less likely to have desperate scum (since many of the players here are seasoned veterans), but I think the general observation still holds water.

[Jitsu]

I hate Day 1s without a Night 0, or maybe I am just insecure about my scum hunting abilities day 1 with little to go on. not sure why the wagon is shifting to Shanba if he is not even posting at this site.

unvote

my last question to shanba still stands though..and you should consider my vote still there.

I'll tell you why I think the wagon is shifting to Shanba. At a time when there was discussion going on between Simenon and Cicero, Shanba quietly put a fourth vote on

Oman

, who hasn't acted very scummy so far this game, for the alleged reason that

Shanba didn't like Cicero's defense of himself

. That's so bizarre that I want to hear what Shanba's reasoning is for that, and I think he needs some pressure. I'll be more than happy to unvote if he can explain his logic to us.

So you still want to hear his reason, but you are unvoting and saying that Shanba should still consider your vote still there? What's up with that? He was only at four votes by my count. I highly doubt that he was in any danger of being quicklynched.

I can understand if someone needs to be away for a bit (heck, I just was), but Shanba hasn't even said much when he

has

posted.

[Jitsu]

Jitsu, your posts thus far seem to have a lot of "it could be this" or it "could be that". Would you say that's a fair assessment?

Yes, it is.

First, I have far less experience playing mafia than most other people here, and because of that, I tend to doubt myself, even in cases when I should not. I don't think I have the track record yet to establish confidence in my scumhunting ability. And even then, I will probably remain the "judging" type that weighs evidence carefully and comes to a decision more slowly than others.

Second, my playstyle is to be honest and open, and a bit conservative. If I'm not sure something is scummy, I'll say so. But if I am really sure (which admittedly is rare), I'll attack hard. I don't like to say or imply I'm sure of something when I really am not. By understating my certainty a little bit, I still get my opinons out there and on record to help the town, and I make fewer enemies in the bargain. I've found it's a lot easier to get information from people if they don't perceive you as an enemy.

So far, I think this style has worked well for me.

[Jitsu]

So you were town in both games. No experience as scum, right?

Correct. I was a vanilla townie in both.

[Jitsu]

Well, it is early days so take it with a grain of salt, but yes. It's because her play feels like her play in that game thus far. So I dont find her play incredibly "unusual for Adel" as others seem to. I also think her vote for me was opportunistic, and she clings on to it with poor reasoning, which I believe (but obviously cannot prove) was reasoning she came up with

post hoc

.

Can you explain more how she is clinging to her vote with poor reasoning? Is there something specific she said?

[Jitsu]

who knows what could happen. I agree with you that I seriously doubt that anyone will be quick lynched here with the caliber of players we have here, but it is a habit. The quickness of the shift startled me enough to make me to want to remove my vote until Shanba returns. I can understand a BW to pressure someone who is here, but this BW seems off or disingenuous. That being said I want my vote to still be considered there (for the time being) but I don’t like the company of voters I am voting with atm to actually keep it there.

(laughing) so my unvote at L-3 was scummy or just odd (in your opinion)? Why did it warrant a vote? Something about Sime and Oman’s quick votes for little reason bothered me enough too not like my vote there. Noted, you felt Oman was scummy, and his quick vote (following Sime) for little reason makes him less scummy then my cautious unvote.

Fair enough, this seems like a reasonable explanation to me.

[Jitsu]

CKD unvotes Shanba because Shanba is absent from the site but still puts a placeholder comment that is basically still an IGMEOY on Shanba, and that makes CKD scummy? I thought it was perfectly sensible and don't agree with Jitsu's point at all.

Excuse me, but I never said what CKD did was scummy. Why did you come to that conclusion?

I was looking for an explanation why he did what he did and trying to gauge his motives. I did decide to turn up the pressure on him just a notch to see how he would react, because he really hasn't been tested much yet.

He didn't overreact and gave a logical reason why he did what he did, so I find his reaction more likely to be townish.

[Jitsu]

for the record, "not overreacting" has little with being town. Some of the most calm and collected players I have seen are scum.

A fair point, but your explanation still sounded genuine to me.

[Jitsu]

so I'm not the only one who inferred that you saw it as a point *against* CKD. Shaft.ed jumped right on. Why did you not correct him when he said it? Why only me?

Jitsu, you are now satisfied with CKD's answer. Shaft.ed is not. What do you make of that? Is Shaft.ed wrong?

I've seen a few sparks of scumhunting and good posts from you in this game, and also some posts that have just seemed forced and really off the mark. I'm trying to figure out which is the real Cicero in this game. It looked to me like you might have overreacted to my questions to CKD, and you made a specific point to clearly state your disagreement with me, as if you were polarizing my opinion, so I wanted to probe that.

I haven't liked Shaft.ed's logic much, and I don't like his vote on CKD after CKD gave a reasonable explanation. I think there might be some merit to the allegations that he is making something out of nothing (in order to plant suspicion) and echoing other's comments. I didn't attack him because I wanted to see how his interaction with CKD was going to play out, because CKD was already engaged with him. Nobody else responded to what you said, so I chose to do so.

[Jitsu]

I think Jitsu is splitting hairs with his post. He obviously had concerns about CKD, and in my opinion I don't think they were adequately addressed, but he backs down rather quickly without a single follow up question. He keeps his opinion of CKD rather close to his chest by asking the question with no indication of his opinion of CKD so he could react to it just about any way he wants and argue accordingly. However, you may be conflating my suspicion with Jitsu's.

I did have concerns, obviously, or I would not have asked the question. But in my mind, being suspicious of someone, and thinking they are scummy are not the same. To me, the former implies that I am still making up my mind about something. The latter implies that I already have, to some degree. If you consider that splitting hairs, that's your prerogative.

And naturally, I had to keep my opinion of CKD close to my chest, or I would not have been able to trust the answer. I did say that I have an honest and open playstyle, but I'm not above withholding a bit of information to pull a little gambit or set a trap, if I see an opportunity and think it's in the town's interest. That's not a big part of my playstyle, though. I leave the major gambits to the professionals.

What reason would you have found illogical? Besides his answer what result would have made you suspicious? I don't see a way for him to have answered your question "wrong."

I didn't have a "right" or "wrong" answer in mind when I asked the question, but if he started to get defensive, said he was scared of a quicklynch, or said something something else that didn't make sense to me, I would have probed further. I didn't see any openings in his answer to exploit further.

[Jitsu]

I didn't see any

openings

in his answer to

exploit

further .

Excuse me?

unvote vote: Jitsu

Exploit further, as in, to make use of in order to continue to probe him, though I can't say I'm surprised you reached the other conclusion.

[Jitsu]

I'm hardly misrepresenting you. If you decide to turn up the pressure you are asserting that what has happened is potentially suspicious. ie scummy. Its early game so obviously we are chasing after fumes here. That is understood. No one is saying you have came to the hell bent conclusion that CKD is obviously scum. But it seems to me that you inferred his action was potentially scummy and I wasnt the only one:

I reacted this post because I thought you might have been overstating my opinion somewhat (intentionally or unintentionally). The specific wording I disagreed with was "CKD unvotes Shanba because Shanba is absent from the site but still puts a placeholder comment that is basically still an IGMEOY on Shanba,

and that makes CKD scummy

?" If I wanted to say that that made him scummy, I would have said that, but I was not ready to make that strong of a statement.

In 210, where you say that I inferred that his action was potentially scummy, I feel that is a fair statement. I did find it *potentially* scummy. Adding the word "potentially" does make a difference, IMHO. Again, maybe this is splitting hairs, but I tend to understate things, and I don't like it when people try to overstate my understatement. However, I am not saying I think you did that maliciously here. I just think there is a bit of a disconnect in communication because of my relative newness and I don't approach the game like a lot of other players on the site.

That said, I think you need to distinguish between weighing the evidence carefully, and speculation. I can think of a multitude of explanations for many posts, some of which may be scummy, but I don't see any utility in listing those possibilities (as you did). This is especially so given the potentially manipulative effect of only planting scummy possibilities. Also, giving such speculation can't be justified by being "open".

Part of it was due to the fact that I was making a catch up post, and I had not fully analyzed all the information to draw conclusions at that point. I just listed what I was thinking at the time. I admit it was speculative. You have a fair point here, and I understand the value of not spreading speculative scumclaims. I understand the potential it has for deception, but I want to make note of the fact that I did not mention only scummy possibilities.

Distinguishing "scummy" from "suspicious" is splitting hairs. And, from what I've seen here, you appear to be doing so in order to shirk culpability for accusations and insinuations because you hadn't made your mind up.

It's been my understanding that "scummy" is a stronger statement than "suspicious", but if that is really not the case and the two terms really are interchangable, then that is my mistake. I do believe I overreacted to Shaft.ed a bit, because I think he was already trying to paint me as scummy at the time.

Having reread what I said though, I can see how my tone with him may have come across as skirting culpability for my assertion, and that's not what I intended.

I love secret traps. Since you've admitted that you had a trap, and since the moment has passed, how about being open and accountable about your gambit/trap?

I'm not sure I understand what you are looking for here (and it does sound like you are looking for something). As far as accountability, nobody needs my permission to hold me accountable for something I said. I assume that the basic fundamentals of mafia dictate that. To call it a secret trap is probably giving it way too much credit. I simply wanted to test the waters of CKD's opinion, and to do that, I did have to sell it a bit and apply some pressure.

Another reason I attacked Cicero is that after I asked the questions of CKD in 190, Cicero seemed quick to defend CKD there against me, and he clearly stated that he didn't agree with my point at all. I got the impression that Cicero might have been more interested in being on the record as disagreeing with me, than he was in hearing CKD's unbiased explanation for the unvote. Later on, in 210, Cicero attacks me for splitting hairs (which I've just admitted is valid), but does not attack Shaft.ed even though Shaft.ed *voted* for CKD and continued to express suspicion even after I had come to the conclusion that I reached a dead end. I understand that Cicero was focused on me at that point, but if Cicero disagreed completely with my point against CKD, why did he not query Shaft.ed for voting CKD? When I heard CKD's reaction, it sounded okay to me. I did say it sounded townish, but that hardly clears him to me either.

Shaft.ed, you said you are waiting for a reply from me 237. To which questions are you referring?

also, my vote on shanba was not a pressure to post wagon..though I guess it is turning into one.

Why do you think that? Oman voted him for the reason that he wanted to get out of the deadline lynch spot, and Simenon spelled out his reasons for wanting to vote him. I clearly said that I thought Shanba's reasoning for his vote on Oman was horrible (because he disliked *Cicero's* defense of himself?). I am keeping my vote there at the moment because I want to hear his answer, but the notion that the wagon "turned into" a pressure to post wagon seems inaccurate to me.

No. Not really. You did a little Shanba push and then you jumped off in a sensible way that others tried to make seem unsensible. You are engaged.

CKD's unvote could have been town-motivated or scum-motivated -- that's part of what I was trying to figure out. CKD's response sounded OK to me at the time. Others though, have stated it would have been easy to fake as scum. You seemed to be pretty sure (both before and after CKD answered my questions) that it was a townie move. Why?

You and CKD both seem to be subtly trying to discredit the Shanba wagon, because he isn't posting and saying that it is becoming a pressure wagon. My question is, why should we let Shanba off the hook for an awful vote on Oman and then disappearing? Sure, if Shanba gets replaced, things will be different, but we haven't reached that point yet.

You aren't the only one. Cicero (That's Me!) is confused too. Basically a lot of good points are being made against a lot of players. So that's the point where I need to pick a horse and bet on it. But I haven't yet. I got a similar vibe from Vollkan's post as Adel did and am surprised other's didn't. But that doesn't mean I'm right, because in terms of "vibe" I'm also getting a scummy vibe off of Adel that predates the Vollkan one. Jitsu is indeed a waffler. And your use of exploit did indeed seem opportunistic. At the same time, in this stage people are looking for things to jump on and those things are generally things of tiny merit.

You've asserted many times now that I'm a waffler. I admit to splitting hairs on the "suspicious" vs. "scummy" issue because I misunderstood how the terms are used by other players, and I also agree that I've made observations that can go either way. I even admitted I've played conservatively, but that is my style. Calling it waffling seems to paint it in a scummy light and seems to be a cop-out, when you, yourself admitted that you are confused and avoiding picking a side.

The stakes are higher here. The players here are super-talented, and it seems unlikely that the scum are just going to fold. So far, there have not been a lot of big moves and the game has consisted of subtle probes to test the waters and trying to pick up on very, very subtle tells. I admittedly am not very good at that. I think that everyone here is being a little extra cautious due to the level of talent involved here, and I certainly admit to that.

As for Billy's assertion that I dissappeared after being accused of waffling, I'd like to point out that that occured just before the weekend, and I tend to largely take weekends off to spend with my family.

[Jitsu]

I have a qualm with your explanation here. Whilst lack of full analysis is a legitimate reason for not drawing a solid conclusion, I don't see its relevance to what you did. The speculation you engaged in was over things which, realistically, no player other than Cicero (the subject of your speculation) could possibly form any concrete opinion upon, absent some truly enormous input of further information.

I don't deny that the speculation I engaged in could be seen as scummy, but I honestly wasn't thinking about that at the time. I also disagree with some of this premise.

First of all, my foremost thought was not determining whether someone else could possibly form any concrete opinions on my speculation. My goal was to get my thoughts down for the record, since I was making a catch-up post. I realize that it was probably a bit early to speculate to that degree about Cicero's motivations, but the Cicero/Simenon feud was the scummiest thing that had happened at that point, and I honestly was brainstorming ideas for Cicero's reaction to Simenon since I found it a little odd.

Second, why isn't it enough that Cicero would be able to react to it? If I accuse someone of acting a certain way, isn't it possible that said person could alter their behavior slightly to compensate? And that such a change could be detected by others? I think I can guess what your rebuttal to that would be: over the long term, couldn't that negatively bias others' opinions of that person? Yes, I can see that possibility, but in the short term, I still think it's possible to induce a scum slip that way.

It may have worked for me in Underground Mafia. In that game, I thought I caught whiff of an attempt to misrepresent me by Anata112 early on Day 1. I voiced my speculation in the thread and her initial reaction didn't satisfy my concerns. So I attacked her with a case with a few good points, but was mostly speculation (it was early on Day 1, mind you). Her response was to grow more and more defensive and OMGUSy. I attacked her defense, but she quietly dropped out of the game by PMing the mod. After that, I tried to push for her lynch, but most of the town was not interested in lynching her replacement (Setael). I continued to hound Setael for most of the rest of the game after not liking some of her posts. As it turns out, she did flip as scum on Day 4 after a failed cop claim that CKD counterclaimed. While I can't really claim the credit for catching her (CKD deserves that), I can at least say that I helped to flush her out and keep her in the spotlight. I can't be sure if I read the original post by Anata correctly or whether I just plain got lucky with a wild guess.

Even that was enough to tell me that sometimes getting a dead-on read (even by a lucky guess) on a scum (especially early) can cause them to do some funny things when they see someone is on to them, especially if it's because of totally crappy logic or a dumb guess.

And the fact that you didn't raise exclusively scummy motivations is pretty much irrelevant. The point I am trying to make is that sowing the seeds of doubt by mere assertion is only going to range from unhelpful to manipulative. Sure, if you had only given scummy motivations, then my problems with this would be exacerbated, but the inclusion of one non-scum motivation (" Maybe it's just a simple attempt to feel Simenon out") doesn't mitigate the problem I have with the speculation itself.

I agree it was not particularly relative to that point, but I disagree it was completely irrelevant at all. How can I be certain you weren't trying to make a veiled attack against me? I pointed out the inclusion of the non-scum motivation as a defense to a possible threat.

I was trying to ask (and my request was vague, I admit) what it was that you withheld and why. I mean that I was/am a bit confused by the rationale for withholding your opinion of CKD. As in, why does you expressing your opinion vitiate the trustworthiness of the answer?

I see. Was it your intention to be vague, or did you simply not express yourself how you intended?

I think you answered part of your own question. What I withheld was my opinion of CKD. I had no grand scheme in mind.

I think expressing one's opinion before asking a question does frame it for the recipient. I believe a player (town or scum) are somewhat less likely to give as much, and as useful information when they know they are being threatened. I wanted to ratchet up the pressure on CKD a notch so he'd take it seriously, but not so much that he felt threatened. A good scum, I think, will try to answer the same either way. But if you don't know the opinion of the person asking the question, isn't it harder to give them the answer they want to hear?


I need to study the recent Adel interaction with CKD some more. I'll post more tonight.

[Jitsu]

I'm more bothered by Shaft.ed than Vollkan so far, though I have to agree with Adel and Cicero a bit -- I do feel that Vollkan might have singled me out a bit and grilled me harder on my speculation than he has others when speculating in this game. The first part of Cicero's post 367 seems to be a fairly well thought out explanation of his earlier commentary on Vollkan's attack on me. I only wish I could have articulated my comments as well.

In specific, I think Vollkan attacking my focus on scummy interpretations over harmless ones was reasonable, but asking for specific info on why I think something is a tell might be a lot to ask. How sophisticated of a system of tells can I really be expected to have after playing two games? To be fair to Vollkan, I think I did give him a bit of an opening. I was only attacked hard once in the game he modded me, so I think he was trying to get more content out of me.

As for Shaft.ed, I get the impression that he is trying really hard to score townie points. The question I'm wondering about is, does he need them? He seems to be quite good at deflecting suspicion of him aside without going into a lot of words. I don't know if it's significant or not, but I find it a bit odd that he seems to be overeager to attack and has on a few occasions seemed quick to paint things in a scummier light than they really were. Hoewever, he does not seem to have overreacted once on his defense, being quite careful and guarded and showing a lot of discipline. I agree with Simenon that some of his answers have seemed kind of deadpan. I think I see what the Fonz sees, but I'm not ready to vote him just quite yet. Shaft.ed been a bit more cautious lately though -- I'd like a few more data points.

As for the CKD/Adel saga, I see parts of the case. I do think that CKD's stated reason for the unvote shifted. It looked to start out more as "I didn't like the company I was with on the reason-lite Shanba wagon", and then later on "the wagon is turning more into a pressure wagon, and I don't see the point anymore". I admit it's possible that CKD really did have all those reasons in mind the whole time, but his written reasons in thread aren't totally consistent. Cicero seemed to be getting that impression that it turned into a pressure wagon also. Let's face it, part of the purpose of every vote is some kind of pressure. But to say that the wagon was turning into a purely pressure wagon seems inaccurate, since it implies that someone changed reasons somewhere. And, as far as I can see, Oman, Simenon, and I did not change our reasoning.

Cicero was quick to defend CKD in a couple of cases (when I attacked CKD about the unvote originally, and then when Adel made a case against him). If Cicero is legitimately suspicious of Adel and mistrusts her, that explains the latter to some degree, but not the former. Cicero's defense of CKD just seems a little different to me than his interactions with other players. I tend to agree more with Simenon in 268 that Cicero is linking himself (or allowing himself to be linked) to CKD, rather than the other way around. CKD's not interacting with Cicero as much, and CKD's comments toward him are more low key, IMO.

On the other hand, I don't see Cicero leaving CKD's name out of the recap as significant, nor CKD's pointing it out. I've done that myself as town, and given that Cicero's been telling us all along about his opinions on CKD, there was probably no need to mention him. I think I would want to know what people thought of me regardless of my alignment -- maybe it is a little more important for scum to want to know this, but I don't have the experience to be able to comment on that. Also, the deal about the quote tags all being closed perfectly doesn't seem significant. If he's doing it through the GUI button in the editor and not typing them in himself, he could easily still be steamed and get that right.

I don't think any of the meta is really reliable at all, brought up by either party. Adel does often exude false confidence (especially on Day 1's), but I understand this, because it is ofent hard to lynch someone on Day 1. I (as town) tried my dardnest to get Setael-scum lynched in Underground Mafia, but I just couldn't convince the town to do it. I did see Adel get sucked into a postsplosion with Korlash in Underground Mafia and basically stop answering his questions (as town), and I also saw CKD (as town) get into a pretty heated discussion with Mexal (another strong townie) on Day 1, over practically nothing. Also, I think everyone here is very cognizant of their meta, and most are either intentionally acting close to it, or intentionally shaking things up to reduce its effectiveness. I think meta cues are going to be less telling here, and I'm going to be extra careful in how I use meta to judge this game.

The one part of the meta here I will consider is that CKD is no stranger to Adel's tactics. He's obviously seen Adel attack people hard before with questionable cases, but he let Adel get to him anyway. He made himself look worse by continuing to sling mud back at her (even after he'd promised he'd stop). Adel's did probably push her case as being stronger than it really was, but if I were pushing at CKD's buttons and he reacted like he did, I admit I probably would have thrown more oil on the fire too.

The tone of ckd's recent posts directed at me is typical of many of our generation (ABR, BM, ect). I think Jitsu's style is better, and I've tried to re-incorporate some of his into mine.

Wow.

Now, starting around 375, things definitely shift. This time Adel refuses to answer questions (might be she's trying to avoid CKD pulling her down with him, but I still don't like it when people avoid questions intentionally). Cicero votes in 378 to criticize Adel for this, which I happen to agree with. If Adel really thinks CKD is scum, why not keep him talking and let him hang himself? However, I can't quite shake the impression that Cicero is defending CKD again. Cicero makes a good point on Adel in 381 and asks specifically why Adel is after CKD like this, but I think Adel responds with a good counter in 384 about the defensiveness of CKD's response.

I agree with Billy's statement that CKD is looking more to discredit Adel than to try to scumhunt.

Why would behaviour alteration be a scumtell?

This seems like another vague question to me, but I'll try to answer. First, I already gave an example from Underground Mafia where I thought it was. Second, in the general sense, I admit it is pretty hard to construe a single instance of behavior change as a scumtell, but I think it is something you can look on later in the game to see if it stands out as being inconsistent. Within a larger body of information, it has the potential reveal something that the individual event does not.

[Jitsu]

My vote on Oman was not because I disliked cicero's defence. That would be pretty stupid. CKD - calm down, re-read Adel's posts, and stop getting wound up. Your OMGUS is emotional and doesn't really make much sense.

I reread 96. I think I interpreted that post wrong. I think Shanba just voted Oman (with no reason given), then then made a separate comment about Cicero's defense.

But even assuming that's true, you still didn't give a reason for the vote on Oman. So what was the reason?

[Jitsu]

point on vollkan, I feel his playstyle has been changing as of late...due to ongoing games I can not go into detail yet, but I am used to a different vollkan.

What do you think this means? I understand you can't comment on his behavior in ongoing games, but can't you still make comparisons between his behavior here in this game and his other completed games?

[Jitsu]

Also, vollkan I see your point re: the vollkan effect and the PBP's. I do think people will be using them as a cliff notes version of the game. I would not be terribly disappointed if you discontinued there use, or at least there publication in full.

What do you mean by "publication in full"?

So you would not be very disappointed if Vollkan discontinued his PBPA posts? Interesting.

Much of the content in Vollkan's PBPA posts are just one line summaries of the posts people made, like an index. Those lines don't really add much insight, so I don't see how it matters much if those lines are there or not. It's the line items where he adds real commentary that matters. And to prevent Vollkan (or anyone else) from posting that kind of content is denying information to the town.

And if people do rely too heavily on Vollkan's PBPA posts to catch up on the game and not read closely, that's being lazy and letting others do your work for you. If the scum are going to be lazy, let them be lazy. It should make them easier to catch, right? If the town are going to be lazy, that's just as bad. A town that wants to win shouldn't let people get away with continually polly-parroting someone else's good analysis and not offering any commentary or scumhunting of their own, anyway. IMO, if townie does this, s/he deserves it if someone votes him/her for it. If a scum does it, same deal.

So my question to you is, what are you worried about here? Why are you in favor of Vollkan either ceasing his PBPA posts or their "publication in full"?

[Jitsu]

Others should see no immediate reason to discount an Adel Cicero scumteam

even though Adel and I know this does not exist

. You get the idea, though. She also switched up her playstyle once people commented on it.

Obviously, you are asserting that you are town, which is fine -- you can certainly eliminate yourself as a member of any scumteam if you know you are innocent.

Unless you know something about Adel's alignment or role, how can you assert that *Adel knows* it is true?

[Jitsu]

To clarify:

How can you assert that *Adel knows* the two of you are not a scumteam?

[Jitsu]

Jitsu, it's quite obvious and your question doesn't make sense. Either he's lying and they are a scumteam or he's not and they aren't. If he's not then Adel is quite aware that they aren't teamscum together.

I see your logic, and I admit my mistake.

But something still sounds funny about the way he phrased that part of his post. He was advising the town not to discount an Adel/Cicero scumteam, but yet, at the same time he affirms that it is untrue and that he and Adel both know that.

Why would he connect himself (subtly or not) to someone he appears to distrust quite a bit, and then advise the town not to discount a case that he knows is untrue?

[Jitsu]

Especially considering that I'm pretty sure the CKD vote wasn't required to lynch him at that point.

The hammer did look suspicious, as was pointed out, but I think your assertion here is incorrect.

When you revoted, the situation was:

curiouskarmadog[6] (BillyTwilight, Adel, vollkan, Oman, Simenon, Erg0)
Adel[2] (curiouskarmadog, cicero)
Oman[1] (Shanba)
Shanba[1] (Jitsu)
shaft.ed[1] (The Fonz)
The Fonz[1] (shaft.ed)

If I read the rules correctly, all 12 players had cast a vote, and CKD had only 6 of them. Thus, if nothing else were done, a No Lynch would have occurred.

[Jitsu]

I'm answering my prod. I'll have a more substantive post later this morning.

[Jitsu]

What was weird to me about Shaft.ed's vote was the fact that he threw it down and didn't feel remotely compelled to say "Well, I'm doing this because...". It was just "I'm here." Bam. And it was after Erg0 speculated about him trying to cause a No Lynch. Not even "I know I said Adel but that isn't going to happen because..."

I dunno. Something about the way it went down tweaks me. Maybe that he felt pressured by Erg0. Maybe he just figured it was self evident. Not enough for a vote. But definitely worth my making a note.

I got the same impression about the tone of the hammer post. It just seemed way too casual for a hammer. Like Vollkan pointed out, I can't imagine what motivation a scum or townie would have for trying to No Lynch, given that CKD flipped town. The only possibility I can think of for someone wanting to do that is if Shaft.ed is a third party role with some weird power or win condition, but that possibility is very unlikely, I think.

I know admitting this is probably going to put my vote under more scrutiny than not, but when I posted that I hit submit instead of preview. I was checking the bold tags and was intending more comment. I didn't get my post up prior to Guardian locking the thread. But it was basically going to say how it was pretty much inevitable that CKD would be lynched. I might be away from thread, so in order to avoid a No Lynch I was hammering. I felt both CKD and Adel slightly scummy so they were better candidates than most.

As I said above, I agree with vollkan that the vote itself is a null tell. With time running out and a No Lynch on the horizon, voting CKD can't really be considered much of a scumtell. Actually, I had checked the thread and saw the first post on Page 24, and was preparing to vote CKD myself. When I went to submit, both Erg0 and Shaft.ed had already voted, and the thread was already locked.

However, I don't quite believe part of your explanation above. It is plausible, but something about this doesn't feel right to me. When you voted for CKD, the two posts immediately above yours were a vote count and Erg0's vote. So it should have been reasonably ovbious that your vote would be the hammer. And you don't appear to contest that you knew it was the hammer.

Now, I'm going to try to imagine what a logical flow of ideas would be. If I'm voting someone near the end of the day, and I'm going to be the hammer, and I've just typed in "hey, I'm here." and cast a vote for CKD, my next thought as a townie would be "Even though this hammer is a townie move, I need to give some kind of reason", so I'd write a quick paragraph with my reason and *then* check the quote tags when I'm done.

I just can't imagine a logical flow of thoughts where I cast a hammer vote and think, hey, you know, I better stop and check those tags before I write out my reason. I mean, sure, if it were a longer post, I could understand it, and hitting Preview would be like "taking a break" and checking out the post partway through, but that hammer post wasn't exactly the sort requiring a break halfway through.

I do think Shaft.ed probably did make a mistake and hit Send a bit too quickly and had some pangs of remorse. But I don't believe it was because he accidently hit Send while intending to check his quote tags on the vote. If I'm right about this, and he did lie, I think it's a little more likely that he is scum.

This, by itself, isn't quite worth a vote, as it is subjective and a pretty fine point, but I still find it a little suspicious. I will reread Fonz's case on Shaft.ed though.

FoS: Shaft.ed

I have some questions also.

@Cicero: How satisfied are you with Shaft.ed's answer I quoted above? Also, admittedly, you thought Adel to be scummy yesterday in part due to meta, and it seems to me that Adel being scum was more of a factor in your view on the game than it was for several other people. My question is, now that she's flipped town, how has that changed your view of things?

@Erg0: I agree with your point that Shaft.ed's vote on Fonz didn't help anything. If you thought Shaft.ed was engineering some plan try to force your vote on CKD, what do you think he was trying to accomplish with that?

@Oman: You seem to be saying that Cicero was not commenting on game issues much from early D1 to Late D1. Can you explain better what you mean by this? If he wasn't commenting on game issues, what do you think he was up to?

@Shaft.ed: In 556, you appeared to pretty much write off the possibility of a Fonz lynch. Yet, in 573, you change your mind and vote him when he had NO votes at that point. If you were honestly trying to get Fonz lynched, why didn't you present a real case? Did you really think that "Fonz has been reaching against me, casting suspicions that are hardly scummy and apply to almost half the players here, and being hypocritical." was going to get Fonz seven votes in 8 hours?

[Jitsu]

I have seen nothing scummier than cicero's change from posting a lot and being extremely defensive to hardly posting and not really comment on gme issues much (earlD1-Late D1) looks scummy scummy scummy.

I'm afraid I can't quite see this.

I'll give you that he was being defensive early, and that did change later in the day, but I'm having trouble seeing the rest.

As far as I could tell, Cicero was pretty active on Day 1 through most of the day. Can you cite examples when he is posting but not commenting on the issues much?

You're using fairly strong language here, and yet, you don't seem to be pushing his wagon. Is Cicero a good enough suspect to deserve a real case from you?

[Jitsu]

This seems like an odd thing to speculate on given the clear ruleset we are working with.

There will be either no third-party/independent roles, or exactly one third party/independent role whose win condition is "You win when you have assured that you will never be lynched or killed."
If such a role exists, that role will have an above average likelihood of not being "normal."

I reread the setup info. It does seem to rule out a strange third party win condition, but the rest of the setup isn't THAT cut and day. It doesn't rule out some funny business where a third party role could get some additional benefit from a No Lynch. The setup info above states that the potential third party role has an above average likelihood of not being normal. I've been wondering about that since the game started. Since people seemed to be saying that there is no logical reason why town or scum would have wanted to No Lynch with a nearly free CKD lynch on the table, I merely continued the thought exercise further to try to see if there was

any

reason at all for causing a mislynch. And I already qualified my statements by saying I didn't find that scenario likely -- but I wanted to pursue the logic to the conclusion.

I never contested knowing I was the hammer. Not sure where you got that idea from. Is it more scummy if it was a hammer?

I can't help but think you misread my statement here. I said "And you don't appear to contest that you knew it was the hammer. " In other words, you seemed to know you were the hammer and

didn't

contest it. Your question (which is kind of vague) seems to be a general query about whether hammer votes are more scummy than regular ones, which isn't the focus of my point, and I think is virtually impossible to answer without context. Plus, I already said that I didn't have a problem with the vote itself. I was very clear about that.

If it's that obviously a protown play to explain your hammer, wouldn't you think mescum would have provided a reason with the hammer?

I think you are missing the focus of my argument. I didn't say it was obviously a protown play to explain a hammer. I think explaining a hammer is a good move regardless of alignment, given the added scrutiny that always seems to be involved. I really wasn't attacking the lack of explanation for the hammer. I was attacking what I saw was a cover-up about your stated reason why you didn't explain your hammer.

Are you always this guarded with your votes? It feels very much like you want to test the waters on a reaching argument instead of just jumping in head first with your vote. It's not like I have a wagon on me or you have another suspect.

Yes, I am very guarded with my votes. This is something I acknowledge I need to work on for the future, as voting record helps the town identify other townies. I do have somewhat of a lack of confidence still, and I tend to doubt myself more than I should. I would much rather make a few good votes than a lot of mediocre ones.

Oh really? Why do you think I don't have any other suspects?

It was Fonz's 557 that made me think he was more likely scum. I should have voted him in my reply in 559. Thinking about the situation over the RL night, I felt the Fonz more likely scum than CKD or Adel. So I put the vote out there with the very clear disclaimer of where I stood on the CKD/Adel issue. Seeing as how both CKD and Adel flipped town, what point would there be in scumShaft.ed trying to derail a mislynch and have a possible No Lynch at deadline? I just wasn't very excited about lynching between CKD and Adel when I felt a better suspect existed.

You know, you've been using the "Why would Shaft.ed-scum do that?" defense a lot. I think this one thing the Fonz was jumping on. Plus, I already stated that it didn't make sense for town or scum, so why are you asking me this?

I'll ask you again. If you clearly thought that Fonz was more likely scum, why didn't you attempt to make some kind of case to convince people to go your way? You say you wanted to try to get your suspect lynched, but your actions weren't showing that. I know there wasn't a LOT of time left in D1, but you could have tried posting something more than that one sentence to try to build up steam on the Fonzwagon.

[Jitsu]

If I conceed will you not make me reread.

Grrr, Shaft.ed is right about this.

This is horrible. You are offering to concede the point in exchange for not having to reread?

You say that Cicero was "scummy, scummy, scummy", and "I have seen nothing scummier than cicero's change ... ". Those are pretty strong assertions, yet you can't be bothered to reread to make a stronger case?

If you are conceding the point, you seem to realize that your impression of Cicero's change D1 may have been somewhat inaccurate. Given that he seems to be your top suspect, why do you not want to reread to address this discrepancy? Even a reread of Cicero's posts in isolation, knowing what else has happened, would probably give you a clearer view.

Lurking is one thing, but I can't condone you actually admitting you're lazy and using that as an excuse not to do anything about it. That's like saying "I don't really care about this game" to me.

I would like to see your examples. I can wait until you can do a reread.

FoS: Oman

[Jitsu]

Fine, its 4am here, and I just aren't in the mood for rereading. I beleive what I say, and will reread later, but not at 0400.

As I said, I can wait.

[Jitsu]

Jitsu if you want a clear example of me hitting preview instead of submit please view my death via post restriction violation in iPick. I make this mistake not often but often enough.

Are you avoiding my points? It sounds here like you believe I am attacking you for making a mistake, which is ludicrous. Everyone makes mistakes, and I don't understand why you want to show me meta that says you do. All of us have posts that we really wish we could have back. That's not the point.

I'll say it again. I *do* believe you hit Preview instead of Send. I'm not really believing your explanation why (to check vote tags in the middle of a hammer post before typing your reason for the vote).

Let me try a different angle. Why did you want to check your vote tags in the middle of your post, before typing the reason for your vote that you said you meant to include?

My back and forth with the Fonz was on the same page as the vote. It should have been on the top of everyone's mind and easily visible.

I reread the post. Yes, there was a back and forth with the Fonz, but your long post on that page consisted of a lot of one and two line defenses against Fonz's points, with a few longer responses. There was hardly much in the way of citing any evidence for your Fonz vote. With only a few hours left until deadline, if you are going to vote for someone with NO votes on them and then say you are trying to get them lynched, I would have expected a bit more effort in constructing a case.

CKD had 5 votes at that point and while it wasn't certain he would be a lynch at that point, I can't imagine how you thought your comment of "Fonz has been reaching against me, casting suspicions that are hardly scummy and apply to almost half the players here, and being hypocritical." would convince people to change their votes to CKD. You said in 573 that you were making a last ditch effort to get Fonz lynched, but I fail to see the effort. There was never a strong movement against Fonz all day, and with a few hours to go until deadline, I would think it would have taken a fairly strong case to lynch Fonz in place of CKD or Adel.

Following up with that, is the Fonz still your top suspect? If you really think he's that scummy, why don't you summarize your case against him and cite your evidence. Cicero already asked Fonz to summarize his case on you, so I'd like to hear your side.

[Jitsu]

CKD and cicero were the only players who were actually voting Adel at deadline. Very interesting considering players were supposedly "taking sides" between Adel and CKD. On quick readthrough, those expressing suspicion of Adel towards the end of the day:

Fonz, Oman, shaft.ed, volkan, plus cicero, obviously.

As a side note, if we have a Vig they are probably in the above list. I don't see a Vig killing someone (Adel) that they hadn't expressed suspicion of before. Much less confident if a SK killed Adel; they might or might not have expressed suspicion of her at any point day 1.

Why are you commenting on who you think the potential Vig is? It may be that the scum have already concluded what you did above, but then again, it may not. If they haven't, you may have just improved their chances at targeting the Vig, especially since what you said can be interpreted as an assertion that you are not the Vig.

The fact that no town power roles have been eliminated is probably one of the only bright spots from Day 1. If we do have a Vig, the Vig needs to be protected, because he could potentially save us from defeat, especially if Day 2 goes like Day 1 did.

[Jitsu]

I don't know why you're saying you believe it was a mistake but you don't believe my reason. What other mistake are you trying to imply?

I don't really think that the preview/submit thing is relevant. What would be different if shaft.ed hadn't voted for ckd? Either we would have had a no lynch or someone else would have hammered him.

Or is it something specific about the hammer that bothers you?

The latter. I already said that I didn't have a problem with the fact he hammered (as I said, I considered it a null tell). There were strong motivations to do hammer either as scum or town. If Shaft.ed hadn't hammered CKD, I would have. I already was in the process of doing it, but the thread was closed before I could finish my post.

Cicero commented how casual the hammer post sounded, and while Cicero was satisfied with the subsequent explanation from Shaft.ed, I wasn't quite as satisfied. Like I said, the logical flow sounded kind funny. First Shaft.ed said that he was (indeed) around, then he typed in his vote *before* typing the reason, and then he wanted to check the bold tags before he added the rest of his content? I would have expected the vote to be at the end. There was almost 2 hours left as that point, so he didn't need to rush, if he knew he was the hammer.

When he said that he knew that admitting it would look suspicious and put the vote under more scrutiny, it sounded to me like he was trying to score a townie point. I got the impression that he had a bit of a guilty conscience and was trying to cover up something, but I couldn't figure out what it was, so I decided to probe to try to find out, though I still didn't know what I was looking for.

If Shaft.ed knew he was the hammer and hit Send too early, it doesn't make much sense, as town or scum, to admit to the premature hammer and then lie about the reason why.

Actually, as I typed that last sentence, something just occurred to me -- maybe I had it backwards from the beginning. Maybe Shaft.ed didn't realize he had hammered until it was too late and covered that up.

@Erg0: Can you please answer my question to you in 639?

[Jitsu]

OK so now you're saying you don't believe it was a mistake. Would you like to take a position on this at some point in time?

I just realized that my assumption that you knew you hammered may have been wrong. Either you did realize you were hammering and hit Send instead of Preview, as you said, or didn't realize you were hammering, and then seem to have lied about it. I'm leaning towards the latter. Either way, it would seem that you made a mistake and hit Send before you wanted to.

Cover what up? If I didn't realize I was hammering what's the big deal?

Accidental hammers where people don't realize what the vote count is seem to get a lot of attention in games I've read. Some people really hate accidental hammers. I've seen people characterize such play as sloppy and careless, and attack it as such. In the games I've read, I've seen many unvotes as a player gets close to lynch just to prevent accidental hammers.

In this particular case, not realizing you were hammering was not a big deal in itself, since it was unlikely to change the outcome, as was pointed out.

If you didn't realize that you hammered, the big deal is that you seem to have lied about it, because your answer to Cicero's question implied that you *did* know you were hammering. It's also distinctly possible you did lie about it even if you are a townie. I haven't disregarded that consideration. Granted, this wasn't a huge lie, but whenever someone lies in mafia, it makes me wonder why.

Actually, right now I am more concerned why BillyTwilight is trying to reason out in the thread who the potential Vig might be, but I didn't want to drop this line of questioning before it was fully played out.

[Jitsu]

Do you mind pointing out which response you're talking about? I'm not seeing where Shaft.ed implied that he didn't know he hammered.

Read my statement again, I think you have it backward. I said that Shaft.ed implied [earlier] that he DID know he hammered, but I later got the impression that that was untrue. I was referring to this post (607) when he answered Cicero earlier (bolding mine):

I know admitting this is probably going to put my vote under more scrutiny than not, but when I posted that I hit submit instead of preview. I was checking the bold tags and was intending more comment. I didn't get my post up prior to Guardian locking the thread. But it was basically going to say how it was pretty much inevitable that CKD would be lynched. I might be away from thread,

so in order to avoid a No Lynch I was hammering

. I felt both CKD and Adel slightly scummy so they were better candidates than most.

Shaft.ed says above that he was planning on saying at the end of Day 1 that to avoid a No Lynch, he was hammering.

Then in post 704, he says:

Cover what up? If I didn't realize I was hammering what's the big deal?

The phrasing of this post makes it sound to me like he really

didn't

realize he was hammering. It's in the vein of "so what if I did?" In my experience, both in mafia and in real life, if an innocent person is wrongly accused of something s/he

never

says "if I did do it, what's the big deal?". That, to me, is testing the waters to gauge the reaction to a confession, which is relatively strong circumstantial evidence of guilt.

Putting it into perspective though, it's true though that if he did lie, it isn't the kind of major lie that would prove he is scum. It would only indicate that he lied about knowing he hammered (which he could also have done as a townie to deflect suspicion for accidentally doing something that might be seen as scummy). However, I still don't like it when people lie.

I still plan to go back and look at Fonz's case against Shaft.ed, but I don't want to get tunnel-visioned on him like I think I did with Cicero for part of Day 1. As I said, I want to pursue other leads right now.

[Jitsu]

Jitsu, I still don't really get what your after. You're picking apart very minor pieces of what I say, and then stating you don't find them scummy or townie even though you accuse me of lying. It's like your just hanging ideas out there hoping someone will grab onto them and run with it for you. I also don't really remember you "tunneling on cicero" day 1 as I really don't remember you putting that much weight behind any suspects.

I thought I explained it clearly in 708. Perhaps you could clarify what about it you don't understand. What I said was "It doesn't prove you are scum", *not* that I didn't find it scummy. I did find it *somewhat* scummy, but I already conceded it wasn't a major lie.

Just to clear things up: Did you know you hammered CKD or not? Did you lie about it?

I probably would have voted you had BillyTwilight not leapfrogged you on my scumdar. I want to vote him now, but I am giving him the courtesy of responding to my question first.

[Jitsu]

First of all, I reread the last few pages, and I can see how badly I handled my attempt to discern a potential lie from Shaft.ed. To a point, I think Fonz is right. I have suspected Shaft.ed for most of the game and I think I got frustrated trying to find evidence to make a case against him. It reminds me a little of Setael in Underground Mafia, where I thought she was scum and I couldn't get anyone to vote with me to lynch her. I think it started out well enough, as Vollkan pointed out, I was probing on something awkward I perceived from Shaft.ed, but it quickly went downhill from there. I kept pushing because I thought he avoided my questions, but I can see now that he may have legitimately been pointing out the flaws in my reasoning. I do think I engaged in some confirmation bias, pushing after I should have stopped long ago.

To be honest, after not having a great day 1, I felt pressure to try to contribute more, and I thought I may have seen something that nobody else did, so I followed it more zealously than I should have and let it cloud my judgment. For that, I apologize to the town.

Meh. I'm completely intrigued by your take on this, Jitsu. Especially the fact that you're latching on to the vig side of things instead of the SK side of things. I don't think there is anything in the game that can differentiate one from the other, so I would make the argument that pointing out potential SK suspects would give mafia a good target to go after that helps town.

Secondly, I'm not a big believer in a vig being a huge help to town anyway. If we do have a vig, I'd much prefer they avoid making kills at night. We need this game to go as long as possible. Any misfires from an overzealous vig could put us even further behind the eight ball. If there is a vig in the game and he/she happens to be a forced vig I want them out of the game ASAP. The chances of a vig saving us are very slim, and if we let the game get to a point where we need a vig to save us then we probably deserve to lose anyway.

What exactly about me pointing this out do you find to be scummy? You've recently stated that I've jumped to the top of your scumlist over shaft.ed. It looks to me like you are trying to get as far away from a crappy case on shaft.ed as quickly as possible, especially considering no one in the game really seems to be buying your "preview vs. send" theories.

I disagree that your implication that the potential Vig is more harm to us than good. I was just in Vollkan's game where the Vig largely won us the game. Patrick missed several times with his kills, but when he targeted the NK immune GF, it failed, and basically gave us a scum, plus the fact that he survived to endgame, gave the town two chances to hit the final scum. Vigs can win games, and given that we are not in a great place right now, we might very well need the Vig, especially since there hasn't really been a lot of content to debate today. If the discussion doesn't pick up, traditional scumhunting may be tough.

Several people in the game pegged Adel as potential scum, so she wasn't a bad target, and her death last night as opposed to today may have saved the town from talking all day about her and really getting down the wrong track.

We know that there are 2-3 mafia, and there is strong evidence of a Vig/SK. Given that the town seems to have *at least* 2 power roles (and possibly as many as 5), I tend to doubt that we only have 2 scum. If we have a Vig, the ratio right now is likely to be 6 town:3 mafia (or maybe 5 town:3 mafia:1 independent). If we mislynch the Vig today and the mafia kill succeeds, we are almost certainly in LYLO then. Of course, you are right that if we mislynch today and don't hit the Vig, that we would be in a very bad place (the scum could win tonight if the Vig hits town and the Mafia kill succeeds).

If we have an SK instead, then the choice is a tough one, but it would be understandable to go after an SK to avoid unpleasant endgame scenarios (we, the town in Vollkan's game, came to exactly this conclusion when we lynched Guardian, who claimed SK).

I understand why you want to lengthen the game, but identifying and lynching a (possibly forced) vig seems wrong when we should be identifying and lynching the scum instead. If the town collectively agrees that we should out the vig and lynch him, that's a different matter, but I don't like how you seem to have taken the choice to expose the vig into your own hands here.

I also don't like how you've insinuated here that I am attacking you to distance myself from my Shaft.ed debacle. If you look back and reread the thread, you'll see that I attacked you in 696, well before things started going bad with my attack on Shaft.ed.

Vote: BillyTwilight

To answer Fonz's question, my top 3 right now are BillyTwilight and Shaft.ed, with Oman as a distant third. I'm also kind of disappointed that Erg0 and Vollkan haven't contributed more content.

[Jitsu]

Whoa, what? I've NEVER said that I want to lynch a vig. You again are completely ignoring the SK possibility here. I find that the best way to win a game of mafia is to identify and catalogue everyone in the game as much as possible. The fewer wildcards you have the harder it is for scum to hide. I saw a piece of relevant information that might point out a potentially anti-town faction, or at least help us clarify who and what wrt the players involved. Jitsu, if there is an SK and he/she is one of the players I mentioned above, would you not agree that it's very important that I point that out?

You said "If there is a vig in the game and he/she happens to be a forced vig I want them out of the game ASAP." How was I supposed to interpret that? I interpreted that sentence using the most straightforward, obvious meaning of the words. If you intended that sentence to mean something else due to context, then I think you could have worded that MUCH, MUCH better than you did.

I'm not ignoring the SK possibility, but I think that an Adel Vig-kill is also plausible. It would definitely make a lot of sense for a Vig to target her -- Adel looked scummy to a number of players (decent chance of hitting scum), and vigging her last night would be beneficial and generate a lot of information either way she flipped (due to the large number of players that commented on the Adel's CKD wagon). If she flipped town, it would certainly save the town from going way off track and mislynching her on D2. If she flipped scum, then the town would have its first scum revealed and could start to reread and look at connections to other players.

Pointing out who could be the SK is one thing -- I can't argue that the information isn't potentially useful, but if we need to risk outing a Vig to do it, I'd rather get a lot more return on that investment. Unless the information given provides a decent chance of catching the SK, I think it's a very poor play not to protect a potential Vig this early. The game is still fairly closed right now, with no scum or power roles revealed yet. I think attempting to speculate about game setup and who an SK may be from that information can lead to premature conclusions.

I have a really hard time seeing why a townie would intentionally want to mention who they thought the vig would be at this point in time. Potentially outing the Vig to the scum in exchange for a list of people you would believe Vig/SK claims from, but that may or may not even be the Vig/SK is an AWFUL trade in my book. I would rather not rely on a Vig either, but we are *already* in a fairly bad position. If we mislynch today, there is a high probability we will be in LYLO tomorrow even if the Vig does nothing tonight (assuming there is one). If that does happen, and if we do have a Vig, I want them around (unexposed, if possible) to attempt a game-saving kill should we need it. Talking about the who the Vig is doesn't help us lynch scum today and that's what we need to focus on.

Post 696 is is EQUIVOCALLY NOT an attack against me, and that you are trying to spin it as such is telling. The tone, the content, all point to you reprimanding me for what you think is bad play. There is NO HINT in that post that you find me scummy because of my play. As people start to question you on your shaft.ed stance you begin to distance away from that stance by pointing more at me, first in post #705, then in post #713, culminating in your vote of me above.. Post #713 is the first post where you actually imply that my "reasoning out who the vig might be" as scummy. You've yet to actually explain to me why you think my points are scummy. You've made a leap from originally implying that my play was bad play for town but not inherently scummy, to scummy play from your top mafia suspect. Please explain this thought progression and how you came to it. Furthermore, this thought progression coincides with you trying to get off of the shaft.ed attack while saving as much face as possible. I don't think the two are unconnected. Players were starting to question you for your stance on shaft.ed, and the harder the questions came the more you backed off and started pointing instead at me.

Why did I need to hint to you that I found it scummy? I like to ask questions without the recipient knowing where I'm going. That may be different from your normal experience, but I think it worked pretty well for me in my first two games as vanilla townie. I was thinking your post looked scummy, but I decided to wait and see what your response was. If you had made a mistake and owned up to it, I probably would have dropped it. Post 705 was hardly much different than 696 in tone. Post 713 did reflect more what I was really thinking -- Shaft.ed had accused me of not putting weight on my suspects, and I did slip up a bit and let out some of my actual thoughts about your post when I responded to him to explain why I wasn't voting. I'd like to point out that the harsh criticism of my attack on Shaft.ed didn't come until after Post 713 -- so I think this shows I started pointing at you before I started taking any serious heat for the Shaft.ed attack.

I think your play was scummy because outing a potential vig is an awful play right now -- especially for what I see is a meager benefit for town (but a pretty nice benefit for scum). Speculating about the setup at this point is not very reliable and could distract us from lynching scum (which we really need at this point). I see your post as a potential attempt to fish for reactions relating to power roles and/or distract the town from focusing on the Mafia.

To be fair to you though, can you point me to a previous game of yours where you have expressed a desire to talk about power roles early to gain information?

You basically apologized earlier in this post for your "shortsightedness" wrt shaft.ed. Yet you still have him as your second most likely scum. Please explain; if you have more misgivings about shaft.ed than the "Preview/Send" debacle, enough so that he is still your second highest suspect, why haven't you been focusing on those other things as well in your recent back and forth with him. Very rare to see a player basically admit a mistake about another player in a post and in that same post still have him listed as high on his scumlist as you do with shaft.ed.

I apologized for making a mistake about *that particular attack* on Shaft.ed, not about Shaft.ed himself. After rereading due the harsh criticism from Vollkan, Kison, and Fonz, I felt that they were probably right and that I reached on it way too far. Why should I exonerate him just for that? It doesn't invalidate my other concerns. I haven't mentioned the other concerns recently because I was focused on his hammer at the time. I was looking for a reaction from him and not making a general case on him at that point. If you think I should knock Shaft.ed a few slots down on my list, I'd listen to what you have to say.

[Jitsu]

Also, I did some extensive meta'ing of the Fonz and I am inclined to believe he is town at this point. Though I still think he is running a crap case against me.

When did you do this extensive meta work? In the last five hours since your previous post?

More importantly, why are you inclined to believe Fonz is town at this point? What did you find in your meta that led you to this conclusion? Surely to cause such a dramatic turnaround you must have seen something compelling that convinced you of his innocence. I'd like to know what that was.

[Jitsu]

Clarification: "In the last five hours since your previous post?" = In the 5 hours between the post quoted above and your post before that asking Fonz for game links.

If you did an extensive meta on Fonz in the ~2 hours between his post with the game links and post 775 quoted above, them I'm REALLY impressed, especially since it probably took you more than a few minutes to write 775.

[Jitsu]

I also agree with Jitsu in relation to BT's weird vig point. One question, Jitsu, the reasons you have for your BT vote are somewhat unclear in weighting. Is the allegation that you were distancing from a shafted wagon the main factor for you?

No. I admit it is a small part of the reason, but hardly the main factor.

The main factor is that he professed support for a horrendous strategy that has almost no benefit for the town and a lot of potential benefit for the scum, and even after that fact was pointed out to him, he did not back down from his opinion. I realize that the situation he speaks of is hypothetical, given that Adel's killer remains hidden, but I can't imagine a townie wanting to put more weight on wiping out a vig based on theoretical arguments at the expense of costing the town the game. *If* the hypothetical situation mentioned did occur (a forced Vig were outed), he's made it clear that he would advocate a strategy that I believe would harm the town instead of helping it. I have a firm belief that a townie should do what is necessary to help his or her team win within the bounds of ethical play, even if it means setting aside one's theories of how the game should be played or the usefulness of various roles to focus on the situation at hand.

I just don't see how discussing the Vig/SK right now is really going to help us. We need to hit scum today, by lynching the person we feel is scummiest. Discussing who the Vig/SK is only seems to distract from that.

BillyTwilight has accused me of arguing that he is trying to send the town on a Vig hunt. I don't think he was doing that. I think he was encouraging discussion of who the Vig and SK were, which could out the vig and could give a lot of information to the scum about the setup.

I admit that I'm not sure why a scum would stick to a theory argument here and not admit that the strategy is flawed. The only thing I can figure is that Billy-scum is counting on the fact that the Vig/SK will not be revealed and play up the fact that the situation is still hypothetical.

To address your point though, Billy did seem to latch on to the theory that I am scum desperately looking for a mislynch target, ramping up the pressure on him in a suspicious way after failing to do the same to Shaft.ed. I posted a pretty good counter to that (I mentioned suspicions of him before the scathing criticism of my Shaft.ed attack occurred), and he has, as of yet, not commented on that. He also has not seemed to acknowledge any of the reasons why lynching the vig would be a bad idea, and has instead stuck to his guns about the strategy. It looks to me that he is trying to attack me instead of directly debating me on the issue. I think he is so convinced I am scum for attacking him that he cannot see the possibility that I am a townie legitimately attacking him for a decidedly anti-town strategy. I'm not putting a lot of weight on that however, since CKD may have been lynched for the same thing earlier, and I pushed for Guardian's lynch D1 in your game, and he acted similarly as a townie there.

[Jitsu]

People tend to be quite stubborn about game theory.

Being stubborn about game theory is one thing, but he seems to be saying that if that situation did occur here, that he would stick to his theory, even though it could quite possibly cost us the game. I have a problem with that.

[Jitsu]

BillyTwilight and Shaft.ed are my top tier preferred lynch choices.

BillyTwilight: I already explained my reasons for my vote on him above.

Shaft.ed: I agree somewhat with the Fonz here, in the sense that Shaft.ed's reason for his turnaround on the Fonz was better than I was expecting. I was anticipating some lame reason manufactured to justify a turn to Vollkan. I didn't get a chance to meta the Fonz to see if the things Shaft.ed cited are really how things went down, but the Fonz really seems convinced. I'm not quite as convinced as Fonz seems to be though about the turnaround. I would have felt better about it if he didn't turn to Vollkan (who he hasn't focused much on this game) so suddenly, and if the turn had occurred earlier in the day. I'm still suspicious of Shaft.ed, but maybe a little less than before. I still don't like how he cast suspicion on Adel due only to meta on D1, and I still think his activity near the end of D1, particularly the Fonzvote was suspect. Also, I agree with some of the points of Fonz's case against him. I think Shaft.ed has been in a largely defensive, opportunistic mode most of the game, not taking the initiative to attack, but has made a lot of counterattacks when pushed by others, and I don't like how often has seemed used the "So what? / Why would I do that as scum?" defense. I still find the sudden turn on Fonz suspect.

The next group of five are much closer together and represent my middle tier. I'm really confused about this group, as I don't see a clear winner for who is scummiest, even though at least one should be, given that we probably have three mafia.

Oman: I thought he played pretty well early on D1, but I don't like how he seemed to slack off and get lazy near the end of the day. On D2, I also don't like how he still hasn't given much in the way of evidence at all of his case on Cicero even though he's stated that he was unusually certain (for him) who the scum were.

Vollkan: I still don't like he doesn't seem to be as engaged in this game. He seemed to really be flying low under the radar today before he became a viable lynch candidate, and for most of Day 2, I don't think he really added much content. I agree though, that to be fair that there has been a dearth of good content to really analyze this game. As for scumminess, I don't think he's done much that anybody could really make a strong case against. The most compelling points against him is that he has not seriously engaged a lot of people in the game (myself being a notable exception), and is instead hanging back, pointing out flaws in arguments, probing on a few points here or there, and doing his end of day analysis. I would like to have seen another end of day analysis today and seen if any of his opinions have changed (or what his opinions are now on people he didn't have much data on on D1). Even so, I would rather lynch someone that looks scummier. I also don't care for the information a Vollkan lynch gives right now. If Vollkan is scum, I fear for our chances if he limps into the endgame.

Fonz: I really did not suspect him at all until his turnaround on Shaft.ed. I do agree that doing legwork is more indicative of a townie, but given how dead-set Fonz was against Shaft.ed from the beginning, I have to wonder how Shaft.ed's "Fonz meta" explanation was that strong of a town tell that it largely washed out almost two days of what Fonz thinks was highly scummy behavior enough to drop Shaft.ed to at best, #3 on Fonz's suspicion list. I admit though that my suspicion of Fonz is largely tied to my suspicion of Shaft.ed, as I haven't seen anything that looked scummy in his interactions with other players. If it weren't for the Shaft.ed turnaround, he'd be down in the bottom tier with Cicero.

Erg0: More active than Vollkan overall, and seems to be contributing more, but he's definitely not the active townie champion I saw in Vollkan's game. I realize that he has admitted to not being able to devote as much time to this game, and he's apparently had similar lapses in other games. Even with that, his play here just doesn't seem to be as strong as I'm used to seeing from him. I would expect a longer post with more questions and good analysis whenever he caught up, but he hasn't really been doing that. I like his criticism on Shaft.ed though.

Kison: Nothing much has stood out to me on him as a tell either way. I'm worried about him because he REALLY seems to have flown under the radar. His predecessor Shanba survived to Day 2 even though he made only a handful (four I think) posts all day. And Kison hasn't been tested at all today.


My bottom tier is Cicero.

Cicero: After being tunneled on him on Day 1 for some suspicious behavior early, I reread N1 and my opinion of him softened. Cicero was not afraid to state opinions and I can't find a lot of flaws in his reasoning. He's been pretty active and has largely not avoided criticism directed at him, and I can't see that he distorted anything to make his cases. If I had to choose one player to trust right now, it would be him.


I don't see a move to either Billy or Shaft.ed right now, and they are my preferred choices. I am most happy voting for one of them, and I will gladly join a wagon on them if it happens.


The vote count right now seems to be:

Jitsu[3] (Kison, vollkan, Erg0)
vollkan[3] (The Fonz, cicero, Oman)
Oman[1] (shaft.ed)
BillyTwilight[1] (Jitsu)

Not Voting[1] (BillyTwilight)


But right now looking at the voting dynamics, I don't see a shift to Billy and I prefer we not flip a coin. I didn't vote soon enough at the end of Day 1, and I don't want to repeat the same mistake today and keep my vote on someone with one vote on them.

Shaft.ed seems more likely, but the Fonz doesn't appear to want him now, Vollkan's vote is on his preferred candidate, and I don't see Erg0 joining me to vote Shaft.ed without someone else doing likewise. Shaft.ed would vote Oman, but I don't see Oman getting lynched at this point. Shaft.ed other choices are me or Vollkan, and it seems obvious that Billy would rather join a wagon on me than on Vollkan.

I'm not really sold on Vollkan's guilt, but given the choice of having the town lynch me, who I know am town, and lynching Vollkan who may be scum, I have to choose him. This will put Vollkan at L-1, so I feel that I need to vote now, so if Vollkan does claim power, the town can discuss it before switching candidates.

Unvote, Vote: Vollkan

[Jitsu]

unvote

as my Oman vote is doing nothing but blocking a lynch at this point.

Your unvote has another effect, which you may or may not be aware of.

Now there are only 7 votes cast instead of 8, which means Vollkan, who now has 4 votes, will be lynched if nothing changes.

[Jitsu]

Don't worry I will hammer vollkan before deadline. I am not playing coy with avoiding responsibility. I am awaiting his claim.

Just making sure.

[Jitsu]

I am here.

[Jitsu]

My eyes!!

[Jitsu]

That was a pretty awesome night last night -- the Godfather is dead, and it appears that the mafia kill failed too.

Coming in to today, my opinions on others haven't changed much from my end of the day post yesterday. I'm hoping a thorough reread focused on Shaft.ed interactions will help me better figure out the people in the middle of the pack for me. I will definitely look at Fonz's case on Oman.

@Fonz: In post 877, you say "attempt to out a power role at the very least with a fake claim. " What were you referring to there? It looks like an incomplete sentence or cut/paste error.

@Billy: I don't have a big problem with role speculation at this point. As for the failed mafia kill, part of your theory seems off a little bit. I can't imagine why Shaft.ed's death could have resulted in the Mafia miss -- don't most night actions happen simultaneously? Have you been in any games where a mafia death caused a missed NK?

[Jitsu]

Time for some role speculation (gasp! have at me, Jitsu!). We have either a 2 or three player mafia, and perhaps an independent. I highly doubt that we have a "normal" SK (see Guardian's Setup post), so the "peaceful" deaths are either a vig or a SK with some unusual characteristics. This might be something we need to keep in mind when dealing with this endgame. The presence of a GF indicates a cop in the game; the lack of a nightkill means either a doc or that shaft.ed had to submit the NK for scum, and his death resulted in mafia missing their target.

You seem to have missed two other possibilities for the NK:

1) the mafia's target had temporary or permanent NK immunity
2) a townie roleblocked whoever submitted the mafia kill

[Jitsu]

Incidentally, I'm not ready to vote yet, but I think it might be dumb NOT to lynch Oman at this point. He's in the three suspicions of Shaft.ed, he was Shaft.ed's random vote and small focus at the beginning of day one (scum like to do that), his case on me was thoroughly artificial and he hasn't really demonstrated any hunger to scumhunt. Just the opposite. Maybe I've been thinking past the obvious too much in this game. Might be time to stop.

I'd like other people's thoughts on this plz.

It will be a bit longer before I finish a reread.

But, to speak to your case:

Shaft.ed random voting him: I don't really think this adds much weight to the case.

Mentioned as one of Shaft.ed's 3 suspects / Small focus at beginning of D1: Worth consideration. I think a reread that looks at whether Shaft.ed interacted differently with Oman than others could strengthen this point. There was also that weird statement by Shaft.ed that Oman was trying to shift the wagon on Cicero, which Shaft.ed later said was a joke, too.

His case on you was thoroughly artificial: Yes, I tend to agree with this. Given that he implied he was extraordinarily certain about his case on you, I was expecting to hear something pretty good from him (that's why I told him I'd wait to hear it). I was decidedly unimpressed by his case. I touched on this at the end of the day yesterday.

Hasn't really demonstrated any hunger to scumhunt: I tend to agree with this also. He was playing well early in D1, and it's trailed off from there. However, I don't really remember Oman having much of a "hunger" to scumhunt in either of our two previous games either (he was town in both). Maybe I should skim his posts there and see if there are any differences.

@Erg0: You said in Vollkan's game played with Oman a lot and know his style. Can shed some light on this?

[Jitsu]

What got me onto his wagon was his argument with shaft.ed - it looked to me like he was ignoring a perfectly good case (shaft.ed's Fonz vote near deadline) to pursue him over a spurious issue (the preview/submit thing).

Umm, I did mention the "perfectly good case" you cited in posts 657 and 695. I pressed him for some answers on exactly those points.

Please tell me that I didn't just see the "reverse congratulating the doc" tell.

What are you talking about? I didn't congratulate anyone, and I specifically did not mention a doc. I was happy because there was a dramatic turnaround last night that may have revived our chances of winning this game after a horrendous D1/N1. What's wrong with that?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I did a reread focused on Shaft.ed.

Shaft.ed and Billy have hardly said anything to each other all game. I actually like some of Billy's latest points on Kison/Shanba, and after reread, I tend to agree with him on the Fonz. However, I wonder a bit why Billy is singling out Cicero for subscribing to the "one in three" theory. Sure, Cicero mentioned it initially, but Fonz and Oman have expressed agreement with it also. I agree that part of Cicero's argument was somewhat weak, but it's not like Cicero's other main points on Oman are bad.

Shaft.ed didn't seem to attack Cicero much. He seemed to come to the conclusion that Cicero was town starting around the middle of D1 and didn't really deviate from that later on. His case on Oman has merit. I'm not sure what else to say about him, as he isn't bothering me much still.

Shaft.ed didn't say a lot to Erg0 either. There was a bit more activity in the other direction. Erg0 did press Shaft.ed about his "Oman's wagon shifting to Cicero" early and probed about his Fonzvote late D2. Erg0's reason for voting Shaft.ed on D2 was a bit vague. I'm not exactly sure what questions Erg0 asked of Shaft.ed that Shaft.ed didn't reply to, and I wonder a bit why Erg0 simply didn't restate them and demand an answer from him, rather than just vote. But still, I can't see much in the way of a tell from him.

Shaft.ed interacted a lot with the Fonz, but a lot of it was to try to counter Fonz's assertions against him. Rereading Fonz knowing that Shaft.ed was the godfather, Fonz' cases on him overall, looked pretty legit. Fonz's criticism was harsh, and Fonz did not waver on Shaft.ed for a very long time, until late D2. Plus, Shaft.ed's response to Fonz looked a lot like OMGUS, trying to discredit the Fonz directly instead of debate his case, and pointing out that other people acted the same way. If Fonz was bussing, I don't know why that Fonz would have turned on Shafted near the end of the day and make himself look vulnerable just to try to save a GF at a time like that. Fonz was on Shaft.ed's ass all game, and suddenly at the end of the day tries to save his GF? After a reread I don't quite buy the theory that Fonz acted in desperation to save his GF. I still wonder a bit why Fonz put his vote on Vollkan, and not me or Billy (who were in his top 3 earlier), but I'm still leaning town on the Fonz, and I believe his case on Oman has merit.

Shaft.ed did ask for prods on Shanba, but he did that for several other players also. I do believe though, that Shanba was the only player Shaft.ed specifically wanted to be replaced. It's a weak case, but Billy might have a point. If Shanba were lurker-scum, Shaft.ed would have a keen interest in getting him replaced, with a clean slate. If Shanba really were town, one would think that Shaft.ed would have wanted to keep him around as a possible lurker lynch. To be fair though, Shanba was looking destined for replacement anyway. Kison's criticism of Shaft.ed was more vocal near the end of D2, but Shaft.ed did not seem to be interested in returning fire. In Kison's 875, he FoS's Fonz for the vote drop on Shaft.ed, but then in 882, he specifically says that he was not bothered by the swap (1st sentence). That's somewhat of a contradiction, even if I do share some of Kison's concern in the 3rd sentence (not agreeing with the magnitude of townieness Fonz attributed to what Shaft.ed did).

Shaft.ed's behavior toward Oman seems to be the most puzzling to me. Shaft.ed seems to be after Oman early, with that comment about Oman's wagon quietly moving to Cicero, and I still don't like the explanation that it was a joke. I'm a bit bothers how in 131 and 132, Shaft.ed and Oman seem to agree that it was a joke. Shaft.ed was convinced that Oman knew it was a joke? Really? In 238, Oman says that Shaft.ed is bothering him more than Vollkan. Shaft.ed basically votes Oman in 405 for his laziness, and Oman doesn't seem to react right away. In fact, Oman's comment in 413 that Shaft.ed reacted well to the bullshit thrown on him seems odd, given the circumstances. He even felt the need to clarify it later on. In 514, Shaft.ed lambastes him again, and Oman finally starts to turn a bit in 562. He defends Shaft.ed a bit a first, but then sides with Fonz on some of his arguments. I agree that Shaft.ed did seem to criticise Oman without following up on it. I'm actually kind of surprised that Oman has not really responded to Shaft.ed much at all, when Shaft.ed seemed to be after him quite a bit from the beginning. I still admit that I really can't see Oman's case on Cicero. If there is something else to it, I'd still like to hear it.

The net result of my opinions after my focused reread of Shaft.ed and the last page or two of posts is that my suspicion of Billy and Fonz have dropped a bit, Oman and Kison have gone up a bit, and Erg0 and Cicero remain relatively unchanged. That puts Oman in the scumlead, Fonz and Cicero are at the back of the pack, and the others, Billy, Erg0, and Kison in the middle.

Since I have a favorite at this point, I will go ahead and

Vote: Oman

[Jitsu]

Basically, stating how happy you are at night actions benefitting the town can be a scumtell. The idea is that you're trying too hard to make it look like you're part of the town. The reverse also happens, moaning about how bad night actions were. So things like:

No NK last night...great job, doc!
Wow, didn't that work out well for us!
Fantastic, a scum died!
Aw crap, two power roles dead, that sucks.

Personally, I think it's a pile of crap, and any validity it might have only applies, I think, to new players to the site who are unaware of the JEEP tells.

I understand now, thank you. I assume that the JEEP tells are tells documented by the user of the same name that helps administer this site? Are these tells written down anywhere?

Just a point of clarification. Where did people get the idea that the one in three point was mine originally? It was Fonz's. I agreed that it was a good point.

I apologize, you are correct.

I don't have the experience to know how reliable of the one in three rule is. It seems to make sense as a rule of thumb (not naming any scum at all would tend to clear innocents over time, and naming two would tend to be self-destructive), but I wouldn't want to rely on that alone.


@Oman: How unreliable is the tell you mentioned? Is there anything else that caused you to suspect Kison?

[Jitsu]

Fonz, how much have you played with Shaft.ed before this game?

[Jitsu]

Kison is a very good person to be suspecting in my opinion. But *why*? And if so why aren't you pressing him?

Cicero, what are your reasons for suspecting Kison?

[Jitsu]

Oman, I take it you haven't figured out why you think I'm scummy.

I can't help but wonder why you are paying Oman's gut feeling so much attention. So far, Oman's suspicion of you boils down to two things: (1) the FoS vs. vote thing, which you've responded to, and (2) a "gut" feeling he hasn't explained. Oman's point about the FoS is rather weak but why are you continuing to push for Oman to characterize his gut feeling? It certainly doesn't seem like anyone is interested in voting you because of a gut feeling Oman has.

In other news, Cicero is looking yet worse. Don't get me wrong, he and Oman are my top two, but my levels of certainty are getting fairly close.

I have to say, Cicero's is starting to pique my interest.


@Cicero: Do you have a rebuttal against Billy's last post? Also, you asked for opinions on Oman and some people seem to have weighed in. What do you think now about Oman and recent events?

@Oman: Can you clarify what you mean in your previous post?

[Jitsu]

Oman's point about Kison is certainly worthy of consideration, but he's still my best suspect and lynch preference at this point. I think there's a fairly good chance he's scum, and a potential Oman lynch would provide good information.

Kison's latest responses haven't made me feel any better about him, and I'm still trying to figure out what to make of Cicero's play today. I'm interested in his final analysis and where his vote is going to go.

I'll try to reread Day 3 and see if anything else stands out.

@Oman: You sound as if you are not completely happy with your vote on Kison. What is causing that feeling?

@Erg0: Why is Cicero giving you a town vibe lately?

[Jitsu]

I think it's because his opinion of my play closely mirrors my own, which I suppose gives him an air of honesty in my eyes.

I see. What is your opinion of Cicero's play today, specifically?

Also, Fonz has also said that he is not interested in lynching you today, and it doesn't look like you are very high on Fonz's list, but Fonz is still in your top two. What is different about Fonz's play, compared to Cicero's?

I think that a claim from Oman would be a good idea at this point.

I agree, but I would like to see who is actually willing to vote for Oman to extract a claim. We've had only three votes cast all day, and I'd like to see people commit to something -- the deadline is tomorrow night.

[Jitsu]

Cicero, would you vote me?

Wait a minute, what are you asking here?

Are you simply asking Cicero's opinion about you, or are you actually asking him to vote you?

[Jitsu]

I am here. I am going over the scenarios in my head to decide whether I should claim or not.

[Jitsu]

I am weighing the value of denying information to the scum against helping the rest of the town figure out the setup.

I am still trying to analyze the setup, but for now, I can say this: I cannot counterclaim any of the existing power role claims.

[Jitsu]

Well deadline isnt far away and we've players from as far away as England and Australia. How long do you need?

I'm well aware of the deadline.

I'll tell you what. I'll post again in two hours, regardless of whether I've finished my analysis or not.

[Jitsu]

Well, my self-imposed deadline is up.

I wish I had a few more days to think about this, but we don't have that kind of time, so I've come to a decision based on the thinking that I've done.

I believe that it is in the town's best interest for me not to claim.

I also believe that Oman is the best lynch. Based on the scenarios I've considered, I believe Oman is likely to be the SK, and I agree with Fonz that we need to lynch Oman to prevent an auto-loss tonight.

[Jitsu]

Well, the situation is very simple now. With Cicero dead and confirmed Cop, Fonz is virtually confirmed since there can be no more third-party players (set-up said there were 0-1 third-party players and Oman was it). The outcome now is forced: assuming Cicero was not naive, and there are two mafia remaining, the last scum have to be Me/Kison or Erg0/Billy, from Fonz's persepctive, and he has to cast the deciding vote. Kison/I and Erg0/Billy are forced to vote for each other for the duration of the game.

I am vanilla. I wrestled with the decision yesterday, as I felt if I had claimed, that setup balance would almost certainly have confirmed Oman as an SK. But first, I felt that we would be able to get the lynch on Oman even without my claim. Second, like Billy did later on, I had guessed that Fonz had some kind of protective/blocking role and with his reluctance to claim, and I decided I had to protect him by not claiming vanilla (which would have let the scum virtually confirm his role by process of elimination). I agreed with Fonz because the obvious play was to protect Fonz, in the hopes that he could stop another kill (and possibly keep Cicero alive to boot).

It really puzzles me why Erg0 and Billy demanded that Fonz claim just to confirm that Oman was the right lynch. Cicero's early cop claim was highly likely genuine, and if they did think Fonz had a protective/blocking role, why make him claim it? With a cop, daytalking mason pair (way more powerful than regular masons), protective/blocking role, and vig claim, it was pretty obvious that either Cicero or Oman was lying, and it was very likely to be Oman, since lynching Cicero would have implicated the Fonz. As Fonz said, it should have been obvious that Oman was right play.

Their claim was obviously perfectly timed, and fits perfectly with their behavior this game. As for why they took the chance to claim mason, I can only suspect that they discussed claims the night before. They had to suspect a protective/blocking role before (especially with Fonz's "it's safe enough for me to claim vanilla townie" comment in post 1027), and when the cop (Cicero) claimed early, I think Erg0 took the chance, as it was going to be difficult for them win with an active cop around until Day 5, especially since Cicero had been quite suspicious of both of them for a while. Billy's analysis at the end of the day was just so off, given that Masons should have had a pretty good idea what the setup was knowing the claims and their own roles. It sounds to me like Billy was setting up the stage for a turnaround in case they guessed wrong, especially since Erg0 didn't seem to comment on Billy's analysis much. For being able to daytalk, it sure seemed like they were out of sync. Fonz was definitely right -- iIf Oman were the SK, Oman needed to be lynched before we got to LYLO, and I can't believe that Billy was trying to talk himself out of voting for him after he stated that Fonz had to have one of a small number of protective/blocking roles.

Erg0 and Billy have played a good game. They haven't given the rest of the players much ammo to use against them, and like Erg0 told me in vollkan's game, "they've done enough to win". They took a gamble and it paid off. Hats off to them.

I can't make a great case for my own innocence, but I have to try, as I believe there is LYLO, and there is no tomorrow if we miss. In order for me to be scum in my first game, I would have to have bussed both my partners (including my Godfather) from the get go, stubbornly stuck to a crappy case on my own Godfather that could easily have gotten us both lynched, and then

admitted

to not knowing the Jeep tells after Fonz told me that he only believed they applied to players that didn't know them. I may be inexperienced, but I would not make a mistake like that.

To be honest, I've had a tough time with this game. The players have been very careful, and there were really no big blunders by anyone. With pretty conservative play all around (Fonz being a notable exception of the remaining players) a noticeable lack of voting and three straight deadline lynches, there just hasn't been a lot of really good information for me to analyze, compared to my two previous games. This game, up until the claims, was based a lot on subtle tells and intuitions, and my skill in that area is definitely lacking, I admit. I'm sorry, town. I tried.

I can only hope at this point that Fonz takes a few moments to think about things and not quicklynch Kison and me, like Erg0 seems to want.

[Jitsu]

Since I believe that Cicero was NOT naive, and that there are not two scum left, Kison and I just have to choose one of Erg0/Billy to vote for. It doesn't matter which one, as the results of this lynch will decide the game.

Vote: Erg0

[Jitsu]

As for Billy and I discussing claims on night 2, I've been breadcrumbing mason since day 1, line 1, post 1:

who is BillyTwilight?

He's a friend of a friend.

I've been referring to him as probable town all the way through the game without ever giving a particularly good reason, I gave him a pass on his kill speculation at the start of day 2 (one of my pet scumtells, as Jitsu later discovered), and I questioned cicero on the "one in three" thing because he had me, Billy and vollkan as his top three on day 2 (I had a vague suspicion of a cicero/vollkan scumteam for a while there). This is not something that we just came up with on night 2.

I may be missing something, but I'm having a hard time seeing how your quoted sentence is a distinct mason tell. Your other "crumbs" are a little more convincing, but who's to say you weren't subtly distancing from each other since the end of day 1 or so and just never got caught? Did you actually leave any explicit crumbs like an acrostic or other hidden message or something? I'm kind of doubting you did, because if you had, you would have pointed it out earlier, when you first claimed. Why did you wait? I'm kicking myself now that I didn't think to ask this yesterday, before you could talk with your buddy about it.

Fonz: if there's anything that we need to know before we lynch then now would be the time to say it.

I really don't like the implication that the game is already over and that that a Jitsu/Kison lynch is a foregone conclusion. You seem to be forgetting one very important fact: the Fonz is in the driver's seat now, and he is the one with all the power. The Fonz should be checking with

you

to see if you have more information to add before a lynch, and not the other way around. It's 3 to lynch and 5 players left.

Nobody's lynching anyone until the Fonz is satisfied.

[Jitsu]

Contrary to Jitsu's post above, I don't believe that I ever expressed a desire for Fonz to claim or pressured him to do so.

You are right, I stand corrected. But you say you still feel that Fonz should not claim, and you seem to be implying you don't think he should have claimed yesterday (both of which I agree with), why did you not speak up yesterday when Billy asked for a claim from the Fonz?

[Jitsu]

Obviously I'm aware of that, but it pretty much

is

a foregone conclusion for me, unless The Fonz has something revelatory to share. A townie in your position would be wise to hold their vote a while longer - your only justification for a Billy/Erg0 scumpair being inevitable is your assumption that cicero wasn't naive, and you haven't provided any explanation of why you believe this to be the case. You didn't so much as glance at Kison in your first post today, you just went straight for Billy and me. If you only had the amount of information that a townie in your position should, I'd have expected at least a little uncertainty, especially considering that you apparently felt that we were acting like real masons. The whole thing pretty much reeks of desperation.

I'll get to the rest in a minute, but there's a good reason why I didn't finger Fonz/Kison:

My logic is as follows:

There cannot be four mafia, as the setup information precludes that (besides, the scum should have already won in that case).

If there are three mafia in the game, then there are only two possible pairs from my perspective. You and Billy claimed masons together, so you can only be scum with each other, with Shaft.ed-scum already revealed. The only other possibility is Fonz/Kison.

If Fonz and Kison are scum and there are three mafia in the game, then the setup has to be:
Naive Cop + Mason pair vs. Oman-SK (who would be investigation immune and have some kind of kill immunity) vs. GF + 2 mafia (which would be Fonz and Kison).

That means that the town had only a worthless cop role that could have deceived people and a Mason pair as the only power roles? I can't believe that. So I really can't buy that pair as scum here. At all. I'd bet the game on that (and I have).

The other possibility, if you two are the scum, is:
Sane Cop + Fonz vs. SK (with no kill immunity) vs. GF + 2 mafia

To me, that possibility is orders of magnitude better in terms of balance.

And if there is only one mafia left (which I don't believe), then we aren't in LYLO, and it doesn't matter if I voted early or not.

[Jitsu]

Actually, there was one thing I forgot - as you noted, I changed back to my skull avatar at the start of this game. Some of you may be aware that this is a piece of art from a Tool album. Now go and Google the last line of Billy's sig. Both this and the "friend of a friend" bit are quasi-references to a Newbie game I modded with him in it.

In any case, you said yourself that the mason claim "fits perfectly with [our] behaviour this game", so I shouldn't need to prove it to you with breadcrumbs.

Any good claim fits the behavior, but I have to give you props here, because the claim fits particularly well in this case. There's obviously no way I can argue against this crumb or how well your claim fits your behavior, but you forgot what would seem to be your best crumb of all?

I'm not sure what you mean by "distancing" in this context.

Distancing is probably the wrong word. I was referring to the lack of interaction between you two most of the game.

Incidentally, the last couple of paragraphs of 1062 seem to be contradictory. Your defence is that if you were scum then you would have to have played really badly, but you go on to say that you played badly as a townie. If you're capable of poor town play then surely you're equally capable of poor scum play?

I could see that it might seem that way, but it's really not. I didn't say I played badly, I said I played as well as I could given my skill level. I apologized to the town that I couldn't do more. That's not quite the same. Of course, I am certainly capable of poor play (everyone is), but obviously I'm not going to point out how I think I might have played poorly at this point in this game.

I said it wasn't a great defense, but in the face of an eminent town loss, I have to try to convince the Fonz of my townieness using whatever evidence I can. I'll also point out that I've been active, scumhunted and probed on points of interest, not hid from any criticism, and other than the overzealousness in my case against Shaft.ed knowing whether he hammered or not, both you and Billy seem to have admitted before the massclaim that I was looking townie (though I admit that the value of that point is diluted because you and Billy were not high on my suspect list before the massclaim either).

Obviously I'm aware of that, but it pretty much

is

a foregone conclusion for me, unless The Fonz has something revelatory to share.

Yes, but you are acting like you two are the confirmed ones and there's still a chance Fonz is scum, when the opposite has to be true. What could Fonz possibly claim that would change your mind to vote him over Me/Kison? If Fonz were indeed mafia, then he certainly would not have blocked the mafia kill, and then the game balance would be even worse for the town (as the ability that "blocked" the mafia kill has to be in the hands of scum). I can't imagine why you are clinging to the possibility that Fonz could still be scum.

[Jitsu]

Well, I tried.

Nicely played, Fonz.

Vote: Jitsu

[Jitsu]

We pretty much nailed Oman and Cicero having power roles since Day 1. We were reluctant to kill Cicero, as he seemed likely to be protected, and well, Oman was totally on the wrong track about his suspicions (or at least pretended to be), so we decided to let him live for mislynch bait later on. Then we were down to alternate choices.

Oman killed Adel, and when Vollkan somehow got lynched instead of me (I still don't know how that happened), we went after Oman. The kill failed on Oman, and somehow Oman got Shaft.ed. The problem for us is that Shaft.ed told us he had investigation *and* NK immunity, our kill failed (Kison/Shanba performed all of them) on Oman, and then Shaft.ed somehow turned up dead the morning of D3. With four vanilla townies and our ace in the hole dead, we knew we were one massclaim away from losing.

Kison and I knew were totally hosed (and also thoroughly confused), but we weren't able to talk about it until it was too late. It seemed way too ridiculous for Oman to have investigation immunity, NK immunity, and also be able to get through Shaft.ed's NK immunity, so we figured Fonz had to have one of those roles. I figure that Oman probably had NK immunity, but I'm still wondering how the hell Shaft.ed died.

Knowing we had little power, we knew at least one of the power claims was false, and I figured it had to be Oman. Then Cicero wisely claimed as well and the masons followed suit. All of the claims were pretty believable, which left Kison and I little room to operate with respect to counterclaiming. I thought about claiming Doctor or RB, but I thought I would need Fonz's vote, and I was sure that the town would have believed Fonz over me. We killed Cicero N3, still worried about the Fonz blocking/protecting us, never guessing he was an ordinary vanilla.

I came up with the plan of trying to look like I was protecting the Fonz with a WIFOM trap before the end of D3. Then on D4, when Erg0 and Billy latched on to us and started talking like the game was over, I knew it was time to go big, or go home (in a pine box). I tried my darndest to get Fonz to stop and think about things (silly me, I actually thought I wasn't doing half bad at attacking the masons in a hopeless cause). If Fonz *had* been sitting on a power role, then discrediting the masons might have worked, as there would still have been two power roles left (him and Cicero). That is why I decided to try vanilla and not Doc/RB. But when Fonz turned out to be vanilla, all that work was for naught.

@Guardian: What was the setup? How did Shaft.ed die? Didn't he have NK immunity?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I honestly tried to approach the game like I did my other two, but to be honest, there wasn't a whole heck of a lot to analyze (nowhere near as much as in my first two games). There were not a lot of big points to talk to. I really was at a loss for what to do for a large part of the game. I can't believe that there were so few votes cast and that the town let the lynch go to deadline each of the first three days. The play was so ultra-conservative, it was frustrating.

The "exploit-gate" was not an actual slip. I use "exploit" to mean "to take advantage of a chance" all the time in real life. But the wording was awful, and Shaft.ed latched on to it, thinking it was a real slip.

The bad case on Shaft.ed started out legit, oddly enough. He didn't realize that he hammered, and he told us that. I saw the writing on the wall early on D2 that suspicion was turning to the two of us, so I decided to try to drive a wedge between us, but he didn't give me much of an opening as I had thought. When things started to go south on the case, I decided that if I was going to look scummy, then I should really mess it up good. I figured that if the case looked bad enough, then one of us would make the other look better when they flipped. It actually seemed to work... until the massclaim. I shamelessly bussed my partners from the beginning, but Shaft.ed never exposed enough of a front that I could do it well without piggybacking on Fonz's case.

Being scum was an insanely difficult thing for me to do -- I don't know whow you people do this!! It adds yet another layer of thinking to the game that already makes me think too much. With the all-star cast in this game, I was at a loss trying to figure out how I was going to fool people (especially several that knew my playstyle). Not having a scum meta probably saved me. I was totally freaking out the entire game, afraid I was going to make a blunder and cost us the game. I'm just pleased that I lasted as long as I did and had some people leaning the wrong way for a while. If it weren't for just about all of the vanillas dying early and getting outfoxed by the results of N2, we might of had a chance to pull it out. After nearly getting lynched D2 and the disastrous N2, then having some of the town swing back on my side, I thought we might have still had a chance for a bit there, then the massclaim ripped it to shreds. What a roller coaster that was.

Thanks to Guardian for modding the game, to my scumbuddies for fighting hard and helping me, and to all of the townies that made it a good game. It was certainly a challenge, and I did enjoy myself.

@Erg0: Your comment about "The Jitsu Effect" made me laugh. Can I put that in my Wiki?

[Jitsu]

Yeah sorry for not reading my own role PM properly, that didn't help much. I though NK/investigation immune GF was overpowered.

Mistakes happen. Even if I had known, it would have been tough to pull out the win -- we got unlucky with the kills and Oman make a great choice that totally hosed our chances of winning.

At least we got Oman back. I was sure he was the SK after he said that Kison was the play for the day and didn't make a case for it. I did know on some level that Oman knew Kison was scum and was going for the win, but I couldn't figure out how. I did spam Guardian a couple of PMs on D3 because I was so confused and just a little frustrated (even though I knew he couldn't answer). Sorry, Guardian. <3

I really think my play in this game was pretty awful. It was my first time as GF and so I was playing to draw the cop investigation, which worked but I also drew the SK kill. I'm still amazed that I was able to get The Fonz to flip on his opinion of me from a meta (and mad I had to waste it), and also amazed I was able to get vollkan lynched so easily.

Don't be so hard on yourself. We agreed before the game started that somebody would have to get their hands dirty to get some mislynches in this game and I still believe that was necessary. You did the dirty work to start shaking things up, and you did a fantastic job of staying just far enough under the radar that the town couldn't agree on you. Plus, when you flipped, you really made me look better, I thought.

Also Jitsu, why not claim a power role? A cop and two masons is pretty strong, so it was unlikely The Fonz had one. In order for Erg0 and Billy to be lying that only left the town with one power role once Fonz claimed vanilla.

I nearly did, but I couldn't figure out who to try to counter. I do a decent job at analyzing the game, but it takes me some time -- which I didn't have. I was actually away from the computer when all the claims came out, and they were all so believable, I didn't have a lot of good choices. And I felt that Fonz did a good job baiting us into thinking he had something to claim, when he really didn't. I really was working furiously to analyze things to try to figure out what to claim, but I didn't have enough time (that part was true). I think on some level, I was afraid I'd screw up the claim and we'd be really hosed. I've never had to fakeclaim before, obviously. I'll remember that for next time.

I was actually hoping Kison would claim something since the attention drifted off of me and toward him, but to be fair to him, the plan going into D3 was for Kison to claim vanilla since he didn't pick up much attention on D2. The game balance analysis I did on D4 really did reflect my thoughts. If Fonz did have a protection/blocking role, I thought Cop + Blocker/Doc vs. Normal SK vs. GF + 2 goons was a pretty believeable setup to argue. I might have been able to believe a NK immune + investigation immune SK, but I still had to explain how you died, and I thought it was too much for Oman to have. I didn't think ANYTHING I claimed would sound very reasonable given all the other claims that were out. Honestly, I don't think it would have made a lot of difference in the end. We just got unlucky. Too many vanillas died too quickly, and with masons being able to confirm each other and a cop with an innocent on one of the other non-confirmed players, we just didn't have much wiggle room.

I really did want to win this game, but I'm not bitter. The game was fun, and other than not having the cojones to try the fakeclaim at the end (admittedly when the game was probably already lost), I take comfort in the fact that I had most of the town leaning the wrong way on me before the fakeclaim and only got caught by process of elimination in the massclaim. I set out to try to give my team a good chance to win, hold my own against some of the best players on the site, and not embarrass myself. I think I did alright. I thought Shaft.ed and Kison were great partners, and I'd be scum with them anytime.

I did smile for a while on D3 when my attempts to manipulate some incredibly skilled players actually seemed to work for a bit. And I worked crazy hard on the morning of D4 to try to discredit the masons and salvage the game. I think this setup was a tough challenge for the scum, but I'm not going to be a bad sport and whine about it -- we had our chances. Besides, I have too much respect for Guardian, Mith, and the people that nominated me to do something like that. Given the choice, I would rather play a challenging setup than a cakewalk anyway. Just being selected for this game was a supreme honor for me, and I have no regrets. It sounds cheesy I know, but I already "won" when I got selected for this game.

[Jitsu]

Also I think (myself at least) scum rested on a laurels too much and assumed we could push lurker lynches out to just coast through this thing until it blew up in our faces thanks to Oman's heroics for the town.

It's just too bad for Oman that he wasn't town

[Jitsu]

Jitsu is my hero.

Heh. Why is that?

[Jitsu]

I had some fun myself. When Kison and I were deciding who to kill N3, he said Cicero, but left the decision to me since I was second in priority order after Shaft.ed for sending in the kill. Here's what I said in the Mafia discussion thread:

Having me kill Cicero is the move I would make. But I shall let you have the final say.

Ah, Kison... Come in, come in. Please, sit down.

Kison, I have a job for you. A very important job -- for the family. As you know, our beloved godfather Shaft.ed, god rest his soul, was minding his own business at the 2006 Scummie awards when tragedy struck and cut him down in his prime. You see, in a private room, some of those cocky MafiaScum bastards had the audacity to disrepect the great Nibbler and our godfather's outstanding Nibbler-themed haikus.

Shaft.ed, of course, could not let such an affront go unpunished. After all, dishonoring Nibbler in such a way was almost as bad as calling Mama S haft.ed's special pasta dish "almost as good as Spaghetti-O's". So Shaft was forced to

strangle them with their own entrails

empty a few (dozen) clips into them

teach them the error of their ways.

Apparently, the bloodbath did not go over well with all of the other MafiaScum players there, and they have decided to hunt us down like common street rats. Rats, I tell you!

The rest of the family has decided that this deed cannot go unpunished. So the family has sent for you. You're a good guy, Kison. Very loyal to the family. Now we need your help. I want you to take that punk cop Cicero, and make him sleep with the fishes. And this should not be a silent, painless kill. I want you to kill him violently, and make him suffer. And suffer. And suffer some more. Then you can start with the real pain. Send a message to those despicable townies and let them know what happens with people mess the family. And whatever you do, don't let that Fonz punk get in your way.

Good luck, and Godspeed.

(PM sent to Guardian with kill choice: Kison will kill Cicero)

[Jitsu]

thanks for the win!

I <3 Adel

[Jitsu]

If I'd been you, I'd have had Jitsu claim doc, and Kison claim RB with a block of me the night before. That would have muddied the waters more, I think.

Lessons learned. Next time, I won't be so timid. In hindsight, I should have realized that it would have been easier to hide claiming power than not, but I was still confused about the setup.

I'm just glad we won this one despite my terrible play. Memo to self, never listen to cicero. It seems like every time i've had to make a call on whether to go with my gut or not in the last six months, i've called it the wrong way. In my defence, I really didn't see shaft.ed putting in a meta which looked to me like it would have taken several hours of effort to find out my alignment if he knew it already.

I thought you did just fine. It might be fair to say that nobody had a "killer" game, but given how ultra-conservative the play was, I think the game was a tough challenge for everyone. To your credit, you were one of the most vocal townies of the group and were one of the least conservative players. You helped keep the pressure on Shaft.ed, which eventually paid off. And all of us were kind of shocked when Shaft.ed's "reason" for the turn on you worked so well. He did a great job with that. I'm well aware of your scumhunting reputation, and I intentionally did not try to take you head on. That may have factored into my decision not to claim power on some level.

Shaft.ed and Jitsu's bus was really good- I just didn't see scum using such utter craplogic against one another, which made me think them both scummy, but mutually exclusive scum.

I did honestly screw it up at first (so I can't say it was completely planned), but making us look mutually exclusive was exactly what I was trying to do on D2 by pushing the crappy case too far. If I had fakeclaimed like I should have, it might have worked.

[Jitsu]

Jitsu effect? I forgot it! Someone link me!

Here it is. Erg0 coins the term in
post 932[/url]

[Jitsu]

You should post more then

You are an excellent player Jitsu, I want you to play more because of that, but don't want you to burn out.

Thanks!

I do like to play because the game is so cerebral and thought-provoking. And I really couldn't have asked for a better set of fellow castmates in my three games to date. I've been very fortunate to have played with some of the best players on the site, and I believe that has let me learn a lot in the span of those games.

I would like to play a bit more often, but I confess it takes me a lot of effort just to keep up with a single game (especially in the first couple days or so), and I'd rather just to try play one game really well, than play three or four not so well. I constantly marvel at how many of you can play several games at a time and do it well.

I would have played more games by now, if they hadn't all lasted a long time. I reached endgame in two and D4 in this one, and that luck surely won't hold over time.

Also, with a wonderful three year old son to watch over (btw, congrats again Billy on your little one!), working on the campaign for the 4E D&D group I DM, and learning Japanese, I'm already wishing I had more free time as it were. I'm going to take a couple of weeks off to work on my D&D campaign, but I'll be around, and I'll hop back into another game soon. I'll certainly look forward to playing with any of you guys (or gals) again.

[Jitsu]

Bah it seems me not being able to read my role PM correctly swayed my scum team away from the optimal end game play of killing a mason and countering-claiming cicero. Sorry about that guys.

Like I said, mistakes happen. I'd play with you again in a heartbeat. Even without your PM snafu, I should not have claimed Vanilla after Kison did. After the stack of Vanilla bodies started piling up, I should have stuck with the original plan and figured out that claiming just about any power role would have had a better chance at winning than claiming Vanilla and taking the chance that Fonz was sitting on power. I don't think the chances were great for us regardless of what I did, but I should have been more proactive in trying to steal the game away from the town.

Also I loved this:

So did I -- Kison rocks

[Jitsu]

A quick note here- it just goes to show how valuable it can be, if towns can manage to avoid claiming prematurely. I think a single extra claim in this game could well have swung it hard in the scum's favour.

No question. The claims all happened really at the optimal time for the town, and I think that was a significant factor in the town win. You holding back on your claim was pure genius also. I don't like to play Monday-morning quarterback, but I'd like to think I would have played differently had some of the claims come earlier (especially yours).

[Jitsu]

I wanted to draw the nk N1.

The funny thing is that you were probably the first player we tossed out of the running (check the scumchat thread).

[Jitsu]

I think Oman or Erg0 might be the easiest D1 lynch but let's see what develops.

Wow, you need to meta me better

I wasn't buying that either -- I know you too well from Vollkan's game

[Jitsu]

For me it was because I was scum and I felt that letting the game drag was helping my cause, which it was if not for that meddling serial killer and his dog

Ditto. There were times I specifically let the game drag, and I intentionally did not talk much about Fonz's case on Shaft.ed (other than a vague "I think it has merit"), well, because it was accurate and damning. I certainly was not about to draw a lot of attention to it.

You know, I have another theory. The town seems to be beating themselves up a lot over not being more proactive and stirring things up. Letting things proceed slowly and waiting until near deadline could have been disastrous. But, in reality, if you think about it, on the dawn of Day 2, of the people alive: 3 were scum, 1 was the SK, and 3 of the remaining 5 were town power roles. So that makes 7 of 9 people that had a vested interest in not standing out and working things from behind the scenes. Is it any wonder then, that there was a lot of conservative play? So don't beat yourselves up too much.

For the scum, it was a double-edged sword. Being able to avoid getting lynched D1 and D2 really denied a lot of information to everyone early (town and scum alike). Nailing the first scum seems to be the most important so that you can examine their relationships with everyone else, and it definitely helped us at first. The problem, of course, was by D3, that we were vulnerable to a massclaim and could not really use knowledge of the setup to our advantage much.

We as scum were taking full advantage of the lack of activity and firm votes to stall the game. With a number of people on the wrong track, we saw no need to correct them, and let them point fingers at each other (while still jumping on mistakes made by the town). There really was no need for us to shift out of that strategy (I think it was working pretty well), until the massclaim came out suddenly just before deadline. I really didn't have enough time to switch gears, analyze the situation, and determine the optimal strategy -- that's how I blew the chance to counterclaim to try to save the game for the scum. Being my first scum game, my knowledge in the area of what/how to counterclaim was pretty lacking.

I agree with earlier comment: if the shit-stirrers (e.g., Adel and Simenon) would have lived longer, it would have been bad for us -- presuming Adel could have avoided a D2 lynch.

Anyway, it was a good game. I think that the town did get a little lucky, but you guys DID do enough to win, even if was mostly choosing was the power roles doing well to stay hidden and claiming at just the right time. We totally didn't see the masons coming (other than Shaft.ed and I seeing a potential CKD/Cicero masonry D1), and knowing what I know about Erg0's play from Vollkan's game, I probably should have picked up on that.

It's kind of interesting for me to note that in the recent time period, with the "bombastic" style prevalent (to use Adel's term), that this game turned out to be completely opposite of that after D1.

[Jitsu]

Oh, and by the way, since the PMs weren't posted, I thought I'd mention that the three of us did have role names:

Shaft.ed = Nibbler
Jitsu = DrippingGoofball
Kison/Shanba = Guardian

[Jitsu]

Shaft.ed title should be:

NK Immune Investigation Immune GF

[Jitsu]

I'm not as worried about Oman,

YOU SHOULD BE!

I specifically try not to underestimate anyone (I think it is foolish to do so), but it is true that I was most worried about Adel, Erg0, Vollkan, and CKD, because I got the impression from their prior posts that they all understood my playstyle well. You probably do also, but I just had less actual evidence of that than I did from the other players.

Actually though, I know you are a good player when you are engaged on your game. I actually had a good feeling about you for most of D1. You had some insightful comments and your conclusions looked sound. It was when you started to disengage and wanted to take a backseat that got me onto you. When you named your scumteam, saying how sure you were when you really didn't have much of a case -- that's what started to make me think you were an SK. When Kison's kill on you failed, there was no doubt in my mind you were the SK. (Of course, knowing who the mafia were helped a lot.)

In my humble opinion, if you were stay engaged and play the game more like you did early on D1, I think you would be a very good player. To be sure, in this game, you had two of the three mafia figured out after the first two days, and that's pretty good in my book.

[Jitsu]

.. and I wish I would've lived long to play with the rest of y'all.

I was looking forward to the challenge of playing scum against you (and it would have been a challenge), but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit relieved that you got taken out early.

I too share the love for Guardian. I think he's a great player and mod, and he was very classy in Mafia in Vollville, replacing in for a scum that was about to be lynched, where he had very little room to maneuver.

As for Oman's role, I still think that an SK with investigation immunity, NK immunity, and roleblocking ability was a lot for we scum to deal with. We were lucky to get him lynched on D3.

The best part of Guardian's modding in this game was how he tortured the Peanut Gallery for most of the game, asking people who the scum were and not giving any hints.