Newbie 503: Game over. Scum win!

[Rishi]

While I would like to wait for SilverWalker or his replacement to return to the game and comment before doing this, I note that he currently has no votes on him, despite being mentioned as a top-2 candidate by many of our players. I don't know how that happened, but:

Vote: SilverWalker

Questions? Comments? Veiled threats? :)

Incorrect. Claus voted for Silverwalker earlier today, a fact that I commented on.

[Gemelli]

Whoops. So he did. That's what I get for skimming on one day, and posting on another

In any case, I think my vote's in the right place for now.

[Claus]

Gemelli, thanks for the analysis. Some comments:

Claus: 52% scum

165 (post 137 was "taunting," not a real suggestion to hammer Rishi).

Oh, don't misunderstand me. It was "taunting" AND a making a real suggestion. If I didn't want you (or anyone else) to hammer Rishi, I would never have voted him in the first place.

I vote people when I want them most to die. If I change my mind later I unvote them.

I said what I said at that post, in that way, because I found it interesting the way that Anthithesis was goading you into voting Rishi. Maybe it was the wrong way for me to do it, but I decided to put a little extra "peer pressure" into that goading to see what your response would be.

I never "gave you permission" - I can't allow or forbit you of anything. But if you want to say that I was suggesting that you hammer Rishi - yeah, you could say that

[Thestatusquo]

Incognito replaces silverwalker, effective immediately.

[Incognito]

Hey, all! I gave the thread a quick browse initially, but I'm gonna do some serious reading now and try to post my thoughts about the game within a day.

For the record, unlike Silverwalker, I don't know an ounce of French so English only please. Thanks!

[Claus]

Yay! Welcome Icognito!

Hoping to hear what you have to say.

[Incognito]

Wow, okay first of all I should mention that this thread has a lot more content than I initially thought. I looked at the number of pages and didn't think 9 pages was much but the wordiness of the post content (at least in the first few pages) is enough to make my head spin. I'm also not too happy with the fact that most of the initial content after the random voting seemed to focus on theory instead of actual suspicions on players but the game did seem to eventually progress to a better state.

I got up to about pages 5 and 6 when I noticed Antithesis's Doctor claim. I have to admit I'm a little concerned about this claim even though there was no counterclaim. If we look at the possible scenarios for any game set-up, we realize that 2 out of 4 game set-ups allow for a doctor. The problem with the doctor claim is the following:

Suppose our game set-up is of the 50% that does not have a doctor as a role. Then obviously in this type of set-up nobody will counterclaim. If we suppose our game has this set-up, let's also suppose that Antithesis is mafia. We might accept his claim as being truthful and look towards the other 6 players as possible suspects leaving us with a total of 1 out of the 6 players having a chance of being mafia. Clearly the odds of lynching scum are lower than that of the game set-up where we assume our game actually

does

have a doctor role. If we happen to choose wrong and lynch a townie today and Anti is not chosen as the mafia kill for Night 1, where does that leave us on Day 2? Do we still believe Anti's doctor claim in a LyLo situation?

I think the doc claim does more bad than good right now because we aren't able to determine the validity of the claim by comparing it with Frostypants's posts. It would be like someone coming out right from page 1 of the thread claiming to be a doctor... how exactly would you read that post? Also, I'm not entirely fond of the fact that Antithesis has continuously reaffirmed that he is the doctor, he is the doctor, etc. We're really placed into a situation where we're almost forced to believe he's speaking as a townie when there is the possibility that he's not.

I wanted to jot down my thoughts about the doctor claim before I forgot them tomorrow. I would like to read through the thread again though, and I hope to bring up some more thoughts sometime tomorrow. As for now I need some rest... this thread is a killer on the eyes and my neck.

[Incognito]

Also, I'm not even sure if Silverwalker had a vote on anyone or even if the vote carries over to become my vote. In any case, I'd like to

Unvote

for now until I complete my read.

[Shanba]

My purpose for stating suspicion against Antithesis was twofold:

(1) To reiterate my position that fact-fudging is by its very nature suspicious to me, and
(2) To see how Antithesis would react to someone challenging him on his position

(1) is just an expression of how I play the game, and (2) yielded some interesting results. Do I think that Antithesis is scum? Not necessarily. But his reaction to being challenged did raise a significant doubt in my mind over whether he is actually pro-town.

1) is untrue though. Why would a scum fact fudge when they could use real facts to get someone lynched? Perhaps scum are more careless, but that's a different argument.

As for 2) - so your questioning of him was pressure? Eh. I guess that makes sense, but I'm not sure you're interpreting it properly. The fact that he blew up is not necessarily indicative of scum - it really depends on the player's meta. Elias_the_Thief, for example, is a very good player who only tends yo blow up as town. I know that I blow up properly as town and scum. Some players only blow up as scum.

@Incognito - Your post has failed to alleviate the suspicions I had against you. The only player you give an opinion on, Antihesis, you say is scummy simply because he may not be the doctor? I agree his claim was not helpful, but that doesn't equate to him being scum. What do you think of Rishi? Claus? Myself? Gemelli? Taishyr/DLOS? What makes you think that Antithesis is more likely scum than doc?

@Darklady the same applies to you, tbh. Please give some thoughts on who you actually think is scum.

As a sidenote, I've just realised that Antithesis replaced Frostypants and not Taishyr. My vague pro-town read from Taishyr means nothing about my read on Antithesis, who is therefore flat neutral.

Unvote

. I need to think.

[Incognito]

@Incognito - Your post has failed to alleviate the suspicions I had against you. The only player you give an opinion on, Antihesis, you say is scummy simply because he may not be the doctor? I agree his claim was not helpful, but that doesn't equate to him being scum. What do you think of Rishi? Claus? Myself? Gemelli? Taishyr/DLOS? What makes you think that Antithesis is more likely scum than doc?

Shanba, I just joined this game as of about 9 P.M. my time and only got through half of the pages in a two-hour time span before going to bed. You've had about a month to read and re-read this whole thing. As I mentioned above, I'd like to complete my read and then possibly reread before I go into detailed postings about each of the players.

I singled out Antithesis because the posts following his claim seemed to accept his doctor claim soley on the basis of there being no counterclaim. I didn't say I'm definitely leaning towards him being scum - you're putting words in my mouth. I was just trying to assert that just because there was no counterclaim does not absolutely prove that Antithesis is the doctor. It seems like nobody presented this possibility so I was just trying to make sure everyone realizes it. Again, I didn't complete my read so it is possible that someone else has already alluded to this possibility but at page 6 where I stopped, it seems like the majority of people accepted his claim. I'll provide more information about the rest of the players later.

[Claus]

Incognito - I would love to hear your finished read and analysis before questioning ensues. Do go on.

[Incognito]

Okay I'm guessing that since nobody has posted since Claus's statement, everyone is waiting on me. So in an effort to not delay the game any longer, here is my rough analysis of the game/players so far.

Antithesis

- claimed the role of doctor. He's also been aggressively pushing for at least more votes on Shanba, if not a lynch. Antithesis's suspicions of Shanba do seem warranted to some degree as Shanba is one of the two IC's in this game and should therefore be more active in helping maintain a healthy pace of the game as opposed to entering the thread here and there to make a comment and then leave. Anti's pro-scum analysis of Shanba could merely be derived from a difference of playstyles though. Antithesis certainly has proven to be the most aggressive player in the game and has even gone further to classify Claus and Richi as being pro-town because they share similar more aggressive playstyle choices (I can't remember the location of the thread where he made this statement). I do have issues with Anti's doctor claim as I mentioned above, but I feel these issues should more likely be addressed after the conclusion of today's events and the events of Night 1 unfortunately.

Rishi

- I bring up Rishi next because as of this moment in the game, he's been the only player who was at an L-1 situation. As far as I could tell, Rishi has seemed mainly neutral to me. I agreed with his opinion of Tai's post 88 to a certain extent in that the content of the post did seem somewhat suspicious, but I don't agree with Rishi's reasoning. In my opinion (and this could be a testament to my own playstyle), I feel as though more could have been derived from actual focused votes or FoS's on one or two players as opposed to merely ending a post with a huge FoS on the world. The amount of content with regard to actual suspicions on players has been somewhat low on Rishi's part but that seems to be due to the fact that substitutions have been necessary for certain players. I think now that the full complement of players should be in order, we should be able to see more of his ideas and suspicions come forth and I should be able to develop a better read on him.

Shanba

- He placed a random vote on Rishi, confirmed the vote, and then left it there even during an L-1 situation. Again, my read on Shanba is his playstyle could be more relaxed than other players like Antithesis. The issue I have with the L-1 situation is why did he not unvote on Rishi when Rishi was that close to being lynched? I don't feel like the case against Rishi was ever that strong to begin with and it was even less strong when Shanba initially confirmed his vote. I personally would have unvoted in that situation to at least hear Rishi's defense, but again it could be a difference in playstyles.

Claus

- He seems about as equally suspicious if not more suspicious to me than Shanba. He placed Rishi at L-1 and then gave Gemelli the permission to hammer when he felt the time was right. Again, my argument against Shanba and Claus is I generally feel it's worth listening to the possible lynch victim's rebuttal instead of pushing forth for the immediate lynch. The entire situation just seemed rather opportunistic and unwise especially considering the fact that there were at least two inactive players in the game against whom nobody was able to develop a strong impression of with regard to alignment (town or scum). Suppose Rishi was lynched and was shown to be aligned on the side of the town, where exactly would that leave us on Day 2, again considering the fact that strong reads hadn't been developed on all of the players?

Having said all that, Antithesis would seem almost as equally as scummy as both Shanba and Claus except I'd rank him slightly lower only because of the doctor claim (which we should be able to judge on Day 2).

Gemelli

- I'm picking up mainly neutral vibes from him. The problem with his posts is he seems to place suspicions on others without committing to his suspicions with a vote. This could be a playstyle preference leaning towards a very safe townie but it also could seem somewhat scummy as he's not willing to completely commit to any of his thoughts. In light of this though, he did seem to steer clear of joining the Rishi bandwagon and hammering Rishi and did engage in mildly argumentative discussion with Antithesis. His reason for eventually voting Silverwalker at the end seems reasonable since he was among the list of suspects but it's somewhat worrisome that he overlooked Claus's earlier vote on Silverwalker.

Tai/DarkLady

- As I mentioned previously in the Rishi analysis, I wasn't too thrilled about his giant FoS to the world without backing up the FoS with accusations and actual hunting. He was experiencing connectivity issues which could excuse him from following up with his suspicions though. DarkLady's posts have seemed somewhat neutral as of yet but she seems to be in somewhat of the same predicament as me as she's been forced to cram a whole load of information into her mind in such a short amount of time.

I realize that one post is obviously not enough to summarize 9 pages of material but I tried to focus my analysis around the two events that stuck out the most to me during the course of today's events: The L-1 Situation and the Doctor claim. Hopefully we'll all begin posting again now that I've at least gotten a rough idea of the game situation.

[Claus]

I read a lot of words, but was not impressed.

Antithesis: First post you attack him, then you get attacked by it, and now you think that "unfortunately, we can only judge him tomorrow"? Backtracking much?

Rishi: you don't really say anything about him - you agree and disagree on post 88, says that he has "low content, but that's justifiable" - funny that you say you focus your analysis on the "doctor claim" and the "L-1 Situation", but you don't comment anything about Rishi's attitude on any of these.

Shamba: In this paragraph, you say that you think his case on Rishi was not strong enough to leave the vote, but that is justifiable by different playstiles. But in a later paragraph you say he is the most scummy?

Claus: I find it cute that you say that I gave permission to Gemelli "when the time was right". What do you mean by that? I made the comment in the very same post where I put the L-1 vote, AND that was right after Anti's vote. So what "time is right" did I wait for?

And no, there were not "Two inactive players about who no one had a good impression". Many people had expressed opinions about either Silverwalker or Taishyr at the time.

Gemelli: I find your analysis of Gemelli extremelly wish-washy - you congratulate him for his vote on you - didn't you just say that Silverwalker was "a inactive player about who no one had a good impression"????

Dark Lady: You really have NO opinion about Dark lady - so you just copied Rishi's analysis on Taishyr, and gave no opinion whatsoever about DL.

==============

I'm not impressed at all, Icognito. Given that I already had a very low impression of Silverwalker, my vote stays.

[Dark_Lady_Shaiann]

Random comment before I too do another re-read:

If you are going to use any acronym for me, I ask that use DLS. No real reason, just a preference. It's easier for me to pick out.

[Incognito]

Antithesis: First post you attack him, then you get attacked by it, and now you think that "unfortunately, we can only judge him tomorrow"? Backtracking much?

I didn't attack Antithesis in my opening post. When I initially read the thread, I got up to pages 5 and 6 where I came across the following thoughts related to the doctor claim:

If you are in fact the doctor, you have just given the mafia an obvious choice for their first NK target, essentially nullifying your ability to help the town.

The other obvious conclusion would be that you are Mafia, trying to get the REAL town doctor to claim in order to draw out a power role. (Note, if there is a townie with the Doctor role: DO NOT COUNTERCLAIM!)

Either way, I don't understand how a Day 1 role claim, with zero pressure on you to claim, helps the town. What are you hoping to accomplish?

I agree with the second paragraph I quoted here. This is a really weird claim. For future reference, my IC advice is to never do this, even if it works out well for the town in this game.

I disagree with the first paragraph though. If there's a real doctor, they should counterclaim. Then we know that one of the two "doctors" is scum. Though the timing of the claim is weird, in the absence of a counterclaim, I am inclined to believe Antithesis.

For the record, I am not a doctor.

... anyway, Gemelli, I must agree with rishi - if he is mafia and we do have a doctor, the right play now is to counterclaim.

Anyway, mr. doc, do you REALLY think that you can have NO opinion at all on the other 6 players from the current discussions?

Hi Antithesis. Wait. You claimed doc? :\ Subject thoroughly hashed out and beaten and flogged and generally made to look rather like a deceased equine already.

For the record, I believe the claim.

According to these reactions, does it not seem like the general consensus at that point was to believe the claim? In my opening post, I presented the possibility that the doctor claim may not be true, and I went forward and displayed a scenario that could be detrimental to the town if Antithesis is not actually the doctor. According to the reactionary posts following the claim which I quoted above, it seems like nobody presented this scenario and it seems like everyone was leaning towards believing the claim.

I stated that we are basically forced to judge the credibility of his claim in Day 2 because we have no real way of determining the validity of his claim otherwise - his replacee didn't post anything game-related except for when he confirmed. Nobody counterclaimed so again, either this guy really is the doctor or he really is mafia posing as the doctor to limit the correct voting pool down to 1 out of 6 people. It would be a risky move on the part of the mafia, but it's not implausible. Also I found his unvote of Rishi to be fairly pro-town considering the fact that the evidence found in Day 1 simply wasn't enough to warrant a lynch on anyone, period.

Rishi: you don't really say anything about him - you agree and disagree on post 88, says that he has "low content, but that's justifiable" - funny that you say you focus your analysis on the "doctor claim" and the "L-1 Situation", but you don't comment anything about Rishi's attitude on any of these.

This is a good point and I will address it now. I do disagree with Rishi's initial comments about the doctor claim as he said the following:

Though the timing of the claim is weird, in the absence of a counterclaim, I am inclined to believe Antithesis.

because I would actually be inclined to form a neutral opinion about the claim. Again, there was absolutely no previous game-related information from Frostypants that would help someone lean in one direction or another (doctor or mafia). However Rishi didn't state that he was immediately believing the claim - he said he's inclined to believe it and even stated that if a doctor is present within the game, he/she should counterclaim to narrow our focus on the two people claiming doctor since one of the two would obviously be lying. He also made good points about the doctor claim on page 6 in the following:

I do want to talk about why the doctor claim is bad, since this is a learning game. Even if you all think I'm scum, I am writing this section as ADVICE and not to manipulate the game. So, take it or leave it.

Tomorrow, with the doctor alive, the Mafia's chances of killing a pro-town player were pretty good, but not 100% absolute. Now they are guaranteed to kill the doctor on Night 1 and then a townie each day after that, with no one left to protect someone. Having extra townies is definitely an advantage for the town, since it can give us extra days to lynch and more of a margin for error.

If a doctor manages to survive to Day 2, his chances of protecting someone successfully go up dramatically. Once the doctor protects someone, it also somewhat clears that person. If the person was the target of the Mafia, after all, then it is quite likely that player is innocent.

Antithesis's argument is that we have one fewer player to choose from when lynching, which increases our chances of hitting scum. That's true, but the claim could have come at a time when Antithesis was about to be lynched. If there's no danger, there's no need to claim.

Also, since there is uncertainty whether or not a doctor is in the setup, the Mafia could refuse to kill Anithesis and then push for his lynch, with the logic, "If he were really the doctor, why wouldn't the scum kill him?"

The other players (Claus, Shanba, and Gemelli) seemed already willing to accept the claim as an absolute truth. To me, this seems problematic since in my opinion, only mafia would be able to determine whether or not the claim is truthful since they already know who each other are. Interestingly, who exactly did the L-1 bandwagon consist of? You (Claus), Shanba, and the self-proclaimed doctor himself (Antithesis). This is also partly the reason why both you and Shanba seem scummiest to me at this point of the game - you both willingly accepted the claim and placed Rishi at an L-1 situation. Again, who else could willingly accept the claim besides mafia?

And what could I actually say about Rishi during the L-1 situation when he was the person who was AT L-1? He stated that your vote against him seems oddly opportunistic which I would agree with. Why, Claus, did you immediately vote for Rishi to place him at L-1 when he stated he would provide more feedback about the day's events the very next day? Did you not want him to look through the thread once more to gain more information and allow for the day's length to increase? I don't think Page 6 of Day 1 is enough time to place a person so close to being lynched especially when there were two people who seemed fairly inactive the whole game.

I do want to talk about why the doctor claim is bad, since this is a learning game. Even if you all think I'm scum, I am writing this section as ADVICE and not to manipulate the game. So, take it or leave it.

Tomorrow, with the doctor alive, the Mafia's chances of killing a pro-town player were pretty good, but not 100% absolute. Now they are guaranteed to kill the doctor on Night 1 and then a townie each day after that, with no one left to protect someone. Having extra townies is definitely an advantage for the town, since it can give us extra days to lynch and more of a margin for error.

If a doctor manages to survive to Day 2, his chances of protecting someone successfully go up dramatically. Once the doctor protects someone, it also somewhat clears that person. If the person was the target of the Mafia, after all, then it is quite likely that player is innocent.

Antithesis's argument is that we have one fewer player to choose from when lynching, which increases our chances of hitting scum. That's true, but the claim could have come at a time when Antithesis was about to be lynched. If there's no danger, there's no need to claim.

Also, since there is uncertainty whether or not a doctor is in the setup, the Mafia could refuse to kill Anithesis and then push for his lynch, with the logic, "If he were really the doctor, why wouldn't the scum kill him?"

As I said, this is all water under the bridge. Antithesis has claimed and I generally believe the claim to be true. There's no point dragging out this discussion, though I would like Shanba to chime in if there are other reasons he can think of why the early claim was a bad idea.

Shamba: In this paragraph, you say that you think his case on Rishi was not strong enough to leave the vote, but that is justifiable by different playstiles. But in a later paragraph you say he is the most scummy?

See above explanation for why I feel Shamba is one of the most scummy (along with you, Claus). Maybe 'playstyles' was the wrong choice of word in my analysis of Shanba. It seems as though Shanba was involved with multiple games at one time and he eventually concedes the following:

Am finding it hard to get involved with this game. Will re-read now.

There is the possibility that when you placed Rishi at L-1, Shanba wasn't able to unvote because he hadn't checked into the thread. And by the time Shanba actually does come back to the thread, Antithesis had already finished unvoting on Rishi. But the fact that Shanba was one of the three players who seemed to willingly accept Antithesis's doctor claim, I would consider him as scummy as you.

Claus: I find it cute that you say that I gave permission to Gemelli "when the time was right". What do you mean by that? I made the comment in the very same post where I put the L-1 vote, AND that was right after Anti's vote. So what "time is right" did I wait for?

And no, there were not "Two inactive players about who no one had a good impression". Many people had expressed opinions about either Silverwalker or Taishyr at the time.

Look at your statement here:

Welcome to lynch -1 Gemelli, if you really feel that rishi is suspect, feel free to hammer him.

Did you not direct your statement to Gemelli? And did you not state "if you feel rishi is suspect"? Suppose Gemelli did feel Rishi was suspect at that moment, then clearly he would have thought that right at that moment was the appropriate time to lynch Rishi. Therefore "when the time is right" seems like an accurate way of describing the scenario.

And there basically were two inactive players who nobody had formed definite opinions on. Silverwalker and Taishyr were suspicious to some people in the game but so were you, Rishi, and Shanba. Nobody formed conclusive opinions on any of you, nobody had formed conclusive opinions on Silverwalker and Taishyr... Obviously the moment you placed Rishi at L-1 probably wasn't the best time to lynch Rishi. But yet you seemed more than happy to do it anyway.

Gemelli: I find your analysis of Gemelli extremelly wish-washy - you congratulate him for his vote on you - didn't you just say that Silverwalker was "a inactive player about who no one had a good impression"????

Silverwalker was an inactive player who no one had a good impression on but he was still someone who was suspicious just like everyone else who had votes placed on them during the game. But yet up until page 8 and 9, he was voteless and Gemelli went ahead and placed a vote on him. I find most of Gemelli's posts to be neutral and the fact that he didn't place the hammer on Rishi suggests to me that he was in favor of allowing the day to progress to form better opinions about all of the players since there clearly was still plenty of uncertainty about everyone.

Dark Lady: You really have NO opinion about Dark lady - so you just copied Rishi's analysis on Taishyr, and gave no opinion whatsoever about DL.

I didn't copy anyone's analysis on Taishyr. The most striking post coming from Taishyr was the post where he places an FoS on everyone without going forward and trying to do some form of scum hunting. I'm not gonna hold this post against Dark Lady because she wasn't the person who made the post - Taishyr did. She has recently replaced into this game like me and as of right now, she hasn't provided much analysis to the situation at hand. Obviously my opinion about Dark Lady is gonna be virtually non-existent considering the fact that she hasn't done anything in the thread up to this point.

You can be unimpressed by my analysis all you want. I just feel like you've already formed this judgement against Silverwalker and won't change your judgement no matter what I say. And considering the fact that I find you scummy, I doubt your judgement will change anytime soon.

[Gemelli]

1) is untrue though. Why would a scum fact fudge when they could use real facts to get someone lynched? Perhaps scum are more careless, but that's a different argument.

It's true for me, and (I admit) possibly for me only. This game is about trying to convince others that your position is the correct one. From the mafia perspective, their job is to convince townies that behaviors exhibited by other townies are scum-tells: in other words, they have to deliberately misrepresent the motives of others. So one thing I look for is instances where people are bending the truth in order to make their arguments seem stronger. It's not an ironclad strategy, but so far in my short Mafia career it's been moderately effective.

As for 2) - so your questioning of him was pressure? Eh. I guess that makes sense, but I'm not sure you're interpreting it properly. The fact that he blew up is not necessarily indicative of scum - it really depends on the player's meta. Elias_the_Thief, for example, is a very good player who only tends yo blow up as town. I know that I blow up properly as town and scum. Some players only blow up as scum.

Not the fact that he blew up per se; more the fact that he immediately declared that I was probably scum simply because I was challenging him on what I thought was a relatively minor point. So really, it's more that I find some of his behavior hard to reconcile with a pro-town perspective at this point. I am not convinced that he's scum, and there are certainly stronger candidates worth investigating today. But I am absolutely NOT putting him firmly in the pro-town column at this point.

Incognito:

I'm having a hard time sorting out who you find scummiest/towniest from reading your summaries. It looks like your hierarchy is something like: Shanba, Claus, Antithesis and then a big lump of neutrals on Rishi, DLS, and myself. Is that a fair assessment?

According to these reactions, does it not seem like the general consensus at that point was to believe the claim?

I didn't get that from the posts you quoted. The impression I got was that there was no immediate reason raised NOT to believe the claim, which isn't the same thing. I've posted at some length that I have some serious reservations about Antithesis at this point -- and I am certainly not, as you posted, "willing to accept the claim as an absolute truth"; did you not read the lengthy back-and-forth between me and Antithesis over the last few pages? -- but on D1, as a claimed power role he doesn't make any sense as a lynch target.

This is also partly the reason why both you and Shanba seem scummiest to me at this point of the game - you both willingly accepted the claim and placed Rishi at an L-1 situation. Again, who else could willingly accept the claim besides mafia?

Wait, wait, wait. In your rundown of the players, you listed me as giving you "mainly neutral vibes," and you confirm that perspective later in your most recent post. But in this same post, you state that (a) you think I've accepted Antithesis's claim as gospel, and (b) this is behavior that you think is scummy. This doesn't jibe with your stated opinion of me. What's up with that?

Suppose Gemelli did feel Rishi was suspect at that moment, then clearly he would have thought that right at that moment was the appropriate time to lynch Rishi. Therefore "when the time is right" seems like an accurate way of describing the scenario.

Read the post I made just after Claus's L-1 vote. I *did* feel that Rishi was suspicious at that time (and still do), but felt that we needed to collect a lot more information from quite a few players before we sent anyone to the gallows. So I disagree with how you've presented the situation, especially the first sentence I quoted here.

[Incognito]

Incognito:

I'm having a hard time sorting out who you find scummiest/towniest from reading your summaries. It looks like your hierarchy is something like: Shanba, Claus, Antithesis and then a big lump of neutrals on Rishi, DLS, and myself. Is that a fair assessment?

Close. From scummiest to least scummy it's more like Shanba and Claus are at about the same level, Rishi, DLS, and you seem neutral and I'm still not sure about Antithesis with relation to everyone else. The doctor claim is what concerns me about him but his unvote of Rishi seemed very pro-town. Claus seems slightly scummier than Shanba though because he was the one who actually placed Rishi at L-1 when I felt that there was way too much uncertainty about everyone to place someone that close to a lynching. So if you'd like a definite hierarchy from scummiest to least scummy, it's Claus, Shanba, Antithesis, and then the neutrals.

According to these reactions, does it not seem like the general consensus at that point was to believe the claim?

I didn't get that from the posts you quoted. The impression I got was that there was no immediate reason raised NOT to believe the claim, which isn't the same thing. I've posted at some length that I have some serious reservations about Antithesis at this point -- and I am certainly not, as you posted, "willing to accept the claim as an absolute truth"; did you not read the lengthy back-and-forth between me and Antithesis over the last few pages? -- but on D1, as a claimed power role he doesn't make any sense as a lynch target.

This is a good point with respect to *your* position on the doctor claim. Looking back on it, your stance was different from the others even before the lengthy back-and forth between you and him as you questioned Antithesis's reason for claiming doctor when he wasn't pressured to do so:

Either way, I don't understand how a Day 1 role claim, with zero pressure on you to claim, helps the town. What are you hoping to accomplish?

But how about Claus's statements directly after the doctor claim?

... anyway, Gemelli, I must agree with rishi - if he is mafia and we do have a doctor, the right play now is to counterclaim.

and then two minutes later:

Anyway, mr. doc, do you REALLY think that you can have NO opinion at all on the other 6 players from the current discussions?

Do you not think that Claus became a little too comfortable at this point by already referring to Antithesis as "mr. doc"? Don't you think that if Claus believes that the right play right now would be to counterclaim (like he mentioned above) he should have at least waited a little longer than two minutes for a counterclaim before slipping into this familiarity? It just seems like Claus knew a counterclaim wouldn't come about and so he immediately began referring to Antithesis as "mr. doc".

Also let's look at Shanba directly after the claim:

Hi Antithesis. Wait. You claimed doc? :\ Subject thoroughly hashed out and beaten and flogged and generally made to look rather like a deceased equine already.

For the record, I believe the claim.

He believed the claim rather quickly also. Again why did these two seem to believe the claim so quickly without first asking additional questions about it (like you had done) or contemplating about the possibilities (like Rishi had done)?

This is also partly the reason why both you and Shanba seem scummiest to me at this point of the game - you both willingly accepted the claim and placed Rishi at an L-1 situation. Again, who else could willingly accept the claim besides mafia?

Wait, wait, wait. In your rundown of the players, you listed me as giving you "mainly neutral vibes," and you confirm that perspective later in your most recent post. But in this same post, you state that (a) you think I've accepted Antithesis's claim as gospel, and (b) this is behavior that you think is scummy. This doesn't jibe with your stated opinion of me. What's up with that?

I received neutral vibes from you because of what I said in the following:

This is also partly the reason why both you and Shanba seem scummiest to me at this point of the game - you both willingly accepted the claim and placed Rishi at an L-1 situation. Again, who else could willingly accept the claim besides mafia?

and the following:

I find most of Gemelli's posts to be neutral and the fact that he didn't place the hammer on Rishi suggests to me that he was in favor of allowing the day to progress to form better opinions about all of the players since there clearly was still plenty of uncertainty about everyone.

In my first quote, I mentioned that not only did Claus and Shanba seem to willingly accept the claim, they also were part of the three-person bandwagon that placed Rishi at L-1 when there was still a fair amount of uncertainty with respect to the all of the players within the game.

In quote two, I mention that you did not place the hammer on Rishi and you instead favored allowing the progression of the day to form better opinions about the remainder of the players in the game. Hence, your actions were nowhere near as scummy as Claus's and Shanba's. And as I mentioned above, I re-read your reaction after the Doctor claim and you did question the significance of the claim with respect to the town. So I apologize for lumping you in with the people who "readily accepted the doctor claim". This thread is a lot to take in all at once.

Suppose Gemelli did feel Rishi was suspect at that moment, then clearly he would have thought that right at that moment was the appropriate time to lynch Rishi. Therefore "when the time is right" seems like an accurate way of describing the scenario.

Read the post I made just after Claus's L-1 vote. I *did* feel that Rishi was suspicious at that time (and still do), but felt that we needed to collect a lot more information from quite a few players before we sent anyone to the gallows. So I disagree with how you've presented the situation, especially the first sentence I quoted here.

Okay, poor choice of words on my part. It should read more like "Suppose Gemelli did feel Rishi was definitely scum at that moment,...". And above I already touched on how you felt we needed to collect a lot more information from the players when I explained my reasons for receiving neutral vibes from your direction.

[Claus]

and then two minutes later:

Anyway, mr. doc, do you REALLY think that you can have NO opinion at all on the other 6 players from the current discussions?

Do you not think that Claus became a little too comfortable at this point by already referring to Antithesis as "mr. doc"? It just seems like Claus knew a counterclaim wouldn't come about and so he immediately began referring to Antithesis as "mr. doc".

Note to self: Stop using sarcasm in this forum.

(Or maybe Incognito is really going out of his way to misrepresent people)

[Incognito]

and then two minutes later:

Anyway, mr. doc, do you REALLY think that you can have NO opinion at all on the other 6 players from the current discussions?

Do you not think that Claus became a little too comfortable at this point by already referring to Antithesis as "mr. doc"? It just seems like Claus knew a counterclaim wouldn't come about and so he immediately began referring to Antithesis as "mr. doc".

Note to self: Stop using sarcasm in this forum.

(Or maybe Incognito is really going out of his way to misrepresent people)

Claus, regardless of whether or not that statement was sarcastic, I'm still receiving contradictory vibes between your

words

and your

actions

. Your

words

imply uncertainty as you gave your opinion about all the players in Post 196. Your

actions

imply that you feel we've gathered enough information about the players as a collective to proceed onto Day 2.

[Rishi]

Keeping up with the game. Not sure what to think about Incognito. Want to do a more careful read on him.

[Incognito]

*drops a pin*

Mod, can we get a prod on Antithesis?

[Claus]

actually, a prod on all players that are not me, rishi or icognito would be more appropriate.

[Thestatusquo]

4 players have been prodded.

[Claus]

:-/ Where are the players AND the mod? (pm-ing the mod)

I was waiting for other players to weigh in, but since they won't, a few comments on Incognito:

And what could I actually say about Rishi during the L-1 situation when he was the person who was AT L-1?

Really? I thought that the point of bandwagons was ALSO to see the reaction of the person being bandwagoned. Interesting that you seem to base your case on Me/Shamba/Anthi on the bandwagon, but didn't even bother to analyze Rishi's response - you know he is innocent, right?

I don't think Page 6 of Day 1 is enough time to place a person so close to being lynched especially when there were two people who seemed fairly inactive the whole game.

I like your logic. You accuse me for putting the L-1 vote when there were two inactive people. If the two inactive people were not in the bandwagon, and Gemelli was under the spotlight - who were you worried about putting the hammer vote?

I love how people in newbie games seem to assume that voting L-1 for someone is scummy - it is a broad accusation that scum can always rely upon to accuse others, no?

Your actions imply that you feel we've gathered enough information about the players as a collective to proceed onto Day 2.

Also I found his unvote of Rishi to be fairly pro-town considering the fact that the evidence found in Day 1 simply wasn't enough to warrant a lynch on anyone, period.

bandwagon that placed Rishi at L-1 when there was still a fair amount of uncertainty with respect to the all of the players within the game.

You keep talking about evidence, and how we don't have enough information on Day one. And at the same time, you say that there is a lot to read at once and gob down. This is really non-commital, and I don't like it. "Hey! We don't know anything! Too much uncertainity! There is no info! But these three dudes tried to lynch someone, so they must be scum!".

I find it funny that you find the 3 people in the Rishi bandwagon scummy, while ignoring completely their reasons for voting. It assumes 3 things:

- You seem to assume Rishi is town, but you analyzed him as neutral and avoided talking about his reaction to the wagon) - how do you know?
- you seem to assume both scum would be in the Rishi bandwagon (but you said there were 2 inactive players, so inactive = not scum?) - So everyone else, including DLS who you said don't have a read on, are townies?

Questions:

1- what do you think of the reasons that I, Shamba and Antithesis each used to vote for Rishi? Do you think all those reasons are invalid and Rishi is Town?

2- Would you comment on my attack on Silverwalker? You said that silverwalker was voteless, but I actually attacked and voted him, for reasons I find to be valid. (Like you ignored most of my play to concentrate on the bandwagon while accusing me of scummy).

[Claus]

Ooops, the mod showed up before I had a chance to PM him Thanks, TSQ