Pledge of Allegiance (Game Over! Page 76)

[Jack]

That is in no way feeling them out to see if they are scum.

[Jack]

Let's lynch Gamma.

[zoraster]

Just so you know, the mod finds it confusing if you refer to Zorblag as "Zor." Carry on.

[Gammagooey]

Oh, you're asking whether it is or not and not what exactly is doing that? Yes, asking for reasoning for their comments and suspicious is part of how I can tell if they are legitimately scumhunting or pulling things out of their ass like you are.

[Jack]

That's kind of a crude expression don't you think?

[Jazzmyn]

Ack. I completely missed the start of the game yesterday, and now I see that there are several pages of posts. I'm a bit swamped in real life but I'll catch up as soon as I can.

Regards,
Jazz

[DrippingGoofball]

Good day. I know most of you but for those that I'm meeting for the first time you're welcome to call me any of Zorblag, Zorb, Zor, Z or Troll.

FLUFF

Let me start by saying that I'm particularly thrilled to see that people seem to be doing a good job following the format for the voting. I was expecting that people would get that wrong a fair amount but I enjoy being wrong thus far.

SUCKING UP

Hopefully that means that everyone has read the rules and has a good understanding of the instant night mechanism. That along with a relatively short deadline for day one (15 days with 24 players means that we're going to have to stay focused and present) are the next two things that we want to make sure we're all on top of.

INFORMATION INSTEAD OF ANALYSIS (IIoA)

If I was one of the first posters this game I was probably going to ask questions similar to the ones that Ojanen asked; they seem a pretty valuable way to get meaningful conversation going in this game. I think that it should be reasonably valuable to start with our expectations of how likely people are to pick various teams and work there.

INFORMATION INSTEAD OF ANALYSIS (IIoA)

Personally I picked town...

WIFOM

...because in general scum is fairly easy to play

FALSE

...whereas town is a nice challenge without being as impossible as other would be likely to be (I can get killed as town and not lose for my team; I imagine that wouldn't be the case for most other roles.) I like a challenge but I also like to have a decent shot at winning when I play a game.

FLUFF - INFORMATION INSTEAD OF ANALYSIS (IIoA)

Parama looks like he's going to be pretty distracting unless he settles down a bit. I mostly read his play thus far as clumsy rather than scummy but I don't have any experience with him so I might have to go look at some of his other play. He also is the one person who didn't pre-in so his claim that he joined based just on player list seems pretty decent. The rest of you I expect joined in larger part because it gave you the chance to pick your alignment.

NON-COMMITTAL - INFORMATION INSTEAD OF ANALYSIS (IIoA)

The whole cult as non-hostile other idea seems pretty odd. Given that Vi was part of the design team here it's probably more likely that if we've got non-hostile others they'll have win conditions more in line with some of the ones listed in the possible win conditions listed in Mafia Reverberation (lyncher, moychendiser (which was already mentioned), researcher, reporter and survivor would all work.) I don't think that it's worth spending too much time on the setup speculation until we've seen some flips but those are the sorts of roles that I'll be keeping in mind when watching for behavior. Cults and Serial Killers are the obvious potential hostile others but I'm sure that it would be possible to come up with others..

GIANT, PLANET-SIZE INFORMATION INSTEAD OF ANALYSIS (IIoA)

Parama's scum numbers are ridiculously specific but everyone should be keeping how powerful their role mind when looking for scum. If others seem to be working with the assumption that there are lots more/less scum than you are it's a pretty decent flag that their alignment might not match yours (keeping in mind that there should be some variation of power inside the town.)

BIG OLE INFORMATION INSTEAD OF ANALYSIS (IIoA)

For those that know Jack, is this his standard play or is the cult business an unusual distraction?

DOES NOT CONSIDER JACK MAY BE SCUM

##Vote: Charter

for being the first one alphabetically by user name not to have posted yet.

AFTER ALL THIS TALK, A RANDOM VOTE???

[DrippingGoofball]

DGB- I'll wait for the Zor case for the answer to this but why do you say he came in late?

He came in on page 5. I thought he came in later. Never mind that part.

[xvart]

I think xvart has some damn good points against him with his attack on Parama that points out the order of his reasoning of all things and his obsession with a quicktopic that isn't even in this game.

Am I totally blind or what? Where was this said??

xvart.

[DrippingGoofball]

So, what you said to DGB, DDD, etc is you feeling them out to see if they are scum?

He needs to hear more from me. My 18 posts aren't enough.

[LlamaFluff]

Llama, for his over-the-top defense of Parama, like when he was defending Parama's guesses at anti-town factions. I'm willing to accept that Parama was joking because Parama does stuff like this, but Llama takes it to a whole different level by saying "anyone can make guesses! Guesses aren't scummy! I'm really on Parama's side here!"

Yeah im going to defend my town reads hardcore. Especially against really bad points. Lets try you. Why is guessing scummy?

@ Llama: What do you think of UK and Zorblag?

Obviously town and slightly scummy.

I see what DGB is talking about at apparently meta backs this up (?). Never have played with him so I have nothing good to base it off of. Either way, xvart wagon is far better than zorblag wagon.

[Gammagooey]

That's kind of a crude expression don't you think?

Nothing to do with the points that I've made.

Why Jack is scum-
iso 0-the famous non-hostile cult post, no reason to be thinking that from Non-Hostile except as either to use it as a distraction or because he's overly thinking about Other win conditions/cults because he's Other-aligned.

iso 4- Voting the first person to show suspicion of him.

iso 7- Another distraction from actual scumhunting, ending with the ever-so-useless "Most People just picked what the(y) wanted to be", and matches up quite nicely with his wishing to have picked Other in his first post.

iso 9- doesn't answer more questions, asks if UK is asking something completely unrelated

iso 15- Says that fishy doesn't understand his FoS instead of actually defending it, plus a bad excuse for being vague and unhelpful

is 25&26- states that he doesn't think xvart is scummy with no explanation why

iso 30 and beyond- again voting because someone is suspicious of him, changing what I said and saying it's a slip, refusing to reread in one post and then stating that he can reread perfectly fine in the next.

Lack of in posts: Completely ignores the non-hostile cult question despite being asked by several people and providing no reason why the information should be kept secret.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Xvart- Llama's iso 7.

You are ignoring the simplest answer still. It was a QT from a past game hydra. Are you honestly trying to argue that Eli tried to prove a point by quoting the scum QT in such a way that it could not have been accidental? They arent masons, they arent scum, they ARE both town. Let it go, you are wrong.

[Jack]

Thanks, I was hoping for something like that earlier.

[d3x]

Holy shit, 9 pages in 1 1/2 days. Starting my read now.

[Fishythefish]

@Jack: my point on you is that you interpreted a player's posts in a way I don't believe you could have done genuinely. This makes your case bad in a scummy way. It's pretty difficult to express what makes a bad case scummy in a general setting, and trying to put that into words is probably a silly thing to try to do.

@DDD: that clarification helps, thanks. I agree with you that voting Jack for cult leader reasons is silly and a bit scummy. I don't think that post is a particularly good towntell - I see no reason it couldn't come from mafia (it's unlikely it was calculated to draw suspicion to Jack from any alignment).

[Ojanen]

I see what DGB is talking about at apparently meta backs this up (?).

Not my meta, at least. Troll's style of thick, somewhat impenetrable posts is close to this regardless of alignment, at least from what I've seen.
"vote x for being the first one alphabetically by user name not to have posted yet.", for instance, is what he does as a policy in every game I've seen from him early D1. I don't love that practice but it's not an alignment tell. He came off as somehow amusingly teacherly with being particularly thrilled for everyone voting in the right format and to a lesser degree in some of the spelling information out, but again, I remember him like that regardless of alignment.
I thought his reason for picking town sounded genuine coming from what I think I know of him and gave me a healthy town vibe. That being said, it now comes to my mind, he's very much one for gaming the system and trying to exploit a setup. If his mafia win rate is ridiculously high (/er than town) I could see him treating that as a setup tool.
Troll - only thing I couldn't really decipher from your post: why did you think me asking the sort of questions I did fits what you know of me as town specifically?

xvart, to cut pointless going in circles in thread, Parama actually said one post after your original FoS on DGB/Elli that the qt mention was from their mafia 109 hydra.
You seem to have genuinely missed that but I just can't see that original suspicion as anywhere close to sincere.

Llama makes good points. xvart is the best wagon.

An obligatory or three for Parama for refusing to talk to me in any way but not interested in voting him atm.

[Phate]

DGB, do you think Troll is scum or are you just criticizing him?

[Nicodemus]

Yeah im going to defend my town reads hardcore. Especially against really bad points. Lets try you. Why is guessing scummy?

Guessing isn't scummy when it's just guessing, but when someone asks you how many scum are in the game and you come back with a very confident, exact number, it

is

suspicious. No townie role, at least in my experience, could possibly give you any clue as to the exact number of scum in a game. If it was a guess, fine, but the way Parama presented the number it sure didn't sound like a guess.

I am however, willing to accept that Parama was joking, because I've seen him do things like this in the past (OMG META Parama), but you defending his, on the surface, non-guess as a guess made me question your motives. We're on the same page with Parama and xvart, though, so I'm willing to drop this for now.

But I'm curious: what is the number of scum that you guess are in this game?

-------------------------------------------

DGB's case looks good, although I admit it seems to be drifting into "too townie to be town" land. I'm going to let Zorblag post a bit more before I come to any conclusions on that front.

[UncertainKitten]

@Nico: Funny, I could think of several townie roles that could give you exact numbers, and given the format of this game, I get the impression that at least one would exist.

Also, how in the hell is she accusing him of too town to be town? You may answer after Troll has responded so as not to give him a free defense.

Not much else to say, DGB's case is pretty decent, wanna see Troll respond to it.

[Jack]

DGB's case isn't great, and certainly doesn't seem to be drifting into "too townie to be town" land. It was better when she just said that he sounded like what she thought of his scum meta. OJ disagrees though.

[UncertainKitten]

IIoA is actually a pretty reliable tell and I can see most instances of it she highlights.

But I also note it was his first post, during the miasma between RVS and non RVS.

[Zorblag]

##Unvote
##Vote: popsofctown

for being the first person alphabetically by user name not to have posted yet.

I guess I'll start with DrippingGoofball. For the most part I'm fine with her opening with the suspicion about me that she has. The time she's seen me play scum I did spend most of my time in the game fiddling with game mechanics rather than looking at what was and wasn't scummy. It happened to be a game with particularly complicated mechanics (California Trilogy: City of Angles, I was in the Mighty Orbot's hydra if anyone wants to look it over) and I probably would have done a fair amount of that as town as well but she's directly seen me focus on it as scum. I can point to my first couple posts in Lynch all Liars as a game where I was town and also focused mostly on the mechanics at the start (because again they were somewhat noteworthy) which I might expect her to recall but I transitioned away from that as my main focus much more quickly there. We'll see what she has to say after I've posted some more.

I will object to calling my charter vote a random vote. Just like my popsofctown vote now it's a vote for someone who hasn't done anything at all to participate. It's how I normally vote to start a game but for this game in particular with the short deadlines and a large player pool I think that scum are going to have a good chance of coasting by on inactivity if we're not keeping pressure on them. I'd rather not have to deal with players who I don't have a good pool of posts to make reads on around towards the end of the game. Accuse me of lurker hunting if you like but I fear it's likely to be an issue this game and I plan to do what I can to avoid that.

I could quibble about other things in her analysis but for the most part I think it'll be easier just to play more for now. If they're still an issue in a couple days (i.e. she or others are raising them as concerns) I'll talk about them then.

Well, that's not quite true. I will say that if I wasn't considering Jack as at least non-town then I wouldn't bother asking about him. Of the other categories off hand I'd guess that scum is a bit more likely than other just because of how the attention is drawn.

As far as who would make good lynches or not for now, here are some thoughts:

Regardless of her alignment DrippingGoofball isn't a good lynch for today. She's a catalyst. She gets reactions from people that are going to be useful later in the game (look at how many people focus on what she's had to say; that's pretty typical.) I expect VP Baltar in particular to dislike this stance given what I had to say about Albert B. Rampage in Open 193 where I was scum but hopefully he's got more experience with DrippingGoofball than he did with Albert B. Rampage and he can more easily see the point that I'm driving at here. Down the line we'll be able to look at the pattern of attention that DrippingGoofball is giving as a means to determine whether or not she's scum. I also think I know some things that she's unlikly to do if she is scum and I'll speak up if I see any of them. For now I think she's easily a net gain to scum hunting.

VP Baltar and Debonair Danny DiPietro are thus far both playing more or less within their standard town games. I see them garnering some suspicion but I wouldn't be interested in voting for them.

I think Ojanen is probably town as I've already said. To answer her question, from what I recall of her play as town and scum (and I've been in one game for each) the questions get to the heart of the matter in a way similar to what it seems like you've done in town. It's largely gut and if you're around for long I'll go back and take a closer look at the play from the other games to confirm that but it was enough for me for the start. Also, I'm 11-7 as town and 8-1 as scum if that helps you decide whether you think I'm likely to be trying to use them as a setup tool.

Parama doesn't seem to have said anything of interest past reactions to what people are saying about him since I posted last. It's still probably just a bit more likely to be clumsy town than scum but there's not really much to make me want to stop him from being lynched.

xvart seems to be getting caught up in unimportant details without seeing the explanations that make sense (the quick topic is an example of this.) The overall play looks like finding things to take time to talk about in order to look town. I'd be fine lynching him.

Jack seems to be doing enough looking about to get a solid read on later. It's interesting to note at this point that how he's dealt with the cult bit has made it a more interesting tool to use for how others are reacting to it than what he said. Regardless of alignment I like that play well enough.

I don't understand how Phate isn't clear on DrippingGoofball's stance on me and the only other content is a case that I don't buy on VP Baltar. He'd be a fine lynch.

Any of Cobalt, d3x, Jazzmyn or popsofctown would be fine lynches as of right now. When they provide more content to work with I'll form more in depth opinions. I believe that popsofctown is the only player not to have posted yet and that he also confirmed via PM after the game had started. It seems he should have had something to say publicly.

I'd like more from Ellibereth but for the start I've got no reason to believe that DrippingGoofball wouldn't have good meta on him on the matter of his likely choice from their hydra experience. For that alone he's not a great lynch for now.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[charter]

Fishy and Balter on a scumteam.

Xvart is scum.

Jack is scum.

Parama is town.

Zorblag is probably scum.

I'm keeping my vote on Balter for the time being. I think Balter and Xvart have the same number of votes.

[zoraster]

Day 1 Vote Count

charter ( 0 )
Cobalt ( 0 )
d3x ( 0 )
Debonair Danny DiPietro ( 0 )
DrippingGoofball ( 0 )
Ellibereth ( 0 )
farside22 ( 1 ) RedCoyote
fishythefish ( 0 )
Gammagooey ( 1 ) Jack
imaginality ( 0 )
Jack ( 1 ) Gammagooey
Jazzmyn ( 0 )
LLamaFluff ( 0 )
Nicodemus ( 1 ) Debonair Danny DiPietro
ojanen ( 0 )
Parama ( 4 ) xvart farside22 imaginality VP Baltar
phate ( 0 )
popsofctown ( 1 ) Zorblag
RedCoyote ( 0 )
Shotty to the Body ( 0 )
UncertainKitten ( 0 )
VP Baltar ( 4 ) Parama UncertainKitten phate charter
xvart ( 5 ) Ellibereth LLamaFluff ojanen Nicodemus fishythefish
Zorblag ( 2 ) Cobalt DrippingGoofball
Not Voting ( 4 ) d3x Jazzmyn popsofctown Shotty to the Body
Total Votes ( 24 )

Deadline: May 18th at 11:00 EDT
With 24 able to vote, 13 needed to lynch.

[charter]

Clearly they are not at the same number.

##unvote
##vote Xvart