Open 193 - Friends and Enemies: It's over!

[Zorblag]

I've sent a PM to Head_Honcho pointing out that this isn't quite the standard Friends and Enemies setup (there aren't enough Friends and Enemies in this one.) I'm now waiting to see how that's resolved.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Thinking about it some my intuition is that balance wise the setup works better with 3 scum and 3 mason than two of each. I know that I recommend in the message that I sent that the roles be redistributed in the numbers the setup was intended for and that I wasn't taking Albert B. Rampage's views on scum team numbers into account. Like I said in my previous post, at this point I'm waiting to see how things resolve.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

/confirm

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

It's his first time modding and he replaced into a newbie game for me one time when I needed it. I figured I'd return the favor and play in this one so I pre-inned a couple months ago.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Good day.

Here are a couple quick questions for everyone to start with.

1. What was your role in the aborted version of this game?
2. Did you know before the game started that Friends and Enemies is intended to be run with 3 mafia and 3 masons?

My answers are townie and yes.

Mod: I don't see any preassigned deadlines in your rule set. Does that mean that we won't have deadlines unless you feel the game is dragging? Also, if two players are tied for the most votes at a deadline is there a tiebreaker or will there be no lynch?

Vote: Albert B. Rampage

for being the first player alphabetically by player name not to have posted since the game started.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Vi, any reason for the delay on answering the first that you can share now or would that spoil the reason for delaying?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Mod, thanks for the clarifications.

@Vi, while it might seem obvious that you wouldn't put off saying what your role was in the previous game because you had some reason in mind it's not at all obvious (to me at least) what possible reasons there are. I've got no problem with letting you delay your answer but I am now going to expect to hear the reason that you wanted to delay when you do answer. If you don't have a reason and are being vague just for sake of being vague or difficult then I will hold it against you later.

Also, most people would take the following to mean that there's just one person you had in mind:

I'd like to hear from DDD and ABR on the Scien/Vi exchange.

There's someone else who hasn't commented on the exchange that you're missing.

Was that your intent?

@Charlatan, why the irreverence? I don't find it that out of place but it's not particularly the start I expect from you.

@PorkchopExpress, others have asked in other ways but I'll do so as well. Why the interest in input from Debonair Danny DiPietro and Albert B. Rampage in particular about the Scien/Vi dynamic?

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, why ask about my lack of inclucsion in PorkhchopExpress's question rather than, say, Ojanen's?

@Ojanen, are you done with your trip at this point? Should we reasonably expect to see you posting regularly or are your posts going to be sporadic because of your schedule for the next while?

Re: Scien and Vi, Scien's opening pressure is for an unimpressive reason but that's not particularly unexpected for him. Past that it looks like opening probing being done all around. If there's anything to dislike about the spat it's how quickly it's calmed without either of the two changing a vote to anyone else.

Re: Albert B. Rampage and VP Baltar, in our new growing early accusation exchange I'm not sure how touchy VP Baltar expects Albert B. Rampage to be but thus far he has yet to exceed my expectations. I believe that a more productive thing to watch for him is how his game flows based on changing situations.

In any case Albert B. Rampage is here and poking at things which is what I want him to be doing. Ojanen on the other hand isn't here despite being about in other games. Given my lack of ability to read her from Mini 880 I'm not fond of that combination.

Vote: Ojanen

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@VP Baltar, how much of Albert B. Rampage's play have you seen previously?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@VP Baltar, clearly you've seen enough of Albert B. Rampage's play to make a judgment call on it as you were willing to make a judgment call on his play. I don't think that the judgment call you're making fits all that well with my experience with his play and I'm trying to figure out how much that should be an issue for me. Is there a reason you'd rather not answer my question in a useful way?

@Ojanen, if you were still traveling and had limited access to MS then it would have made sense for you to be prioritizing games and posting elsewhere in games where important things were happening as opposed to here where things were just getting started. The reason you gave for not posting here prior to my asking about it makes sense as well.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

OK, first off there seems to be a trend this game for people not wanting to answer my questions in a straightforward manner. It's vaguely irritating but more than that it's slightly anti-town and I'd appreciate it if people would stop. I realize that you're all clever people and having fun but setting a mood where we're giving sly answers rather than straightforward ones allows the scum to do the avoid giving answers to questions without raising flags.

@VP Baltar, your answer wasn't useful because I could already tell from your previous posts that you were willing to make a judgment call . All I was looking for was what you gave when you said:

... My playing experience with ABR is limited, but from my memory I don't recall him being so personally reactive in various games I have read him in.

Outlandish? Sure. Antagonistic? Definitely. Flustered into pushing his RVS vote as serious after a flippant call for his lynch... not so much.

Albert B. Rampage plays a game that makes people think that he's scum. He does it when he's scum or town. He lies about his views when he thinks there's a temporary gain to be had from it, he throws suspicions around for no good reasons other than to get reactions, he does whatever he thinks will get a rise out of other players in order to get reads on them, he's perfectly willing to jerk people around and avoid answering questions to see how they'll squirm under pressure and how they'll try to apply it. His interactions with you earlier were nothing that I wouldn't expect to see from him regardless of alignment and if you haven't played with him then your reaction isn't surprising at all.

You say that there's no reason for experienced town to have acted as Albert B. Rampage did. If that's true then there should really be no reason for scum to react that way either; clearly an experienced player would know better. It's not true though, a perfectly good reason for town (or scum) to act that way would be to draw reactions out of the other players and that's exactly what I would expect from Albert B. Rampage.

@charlatan, I don't know what your motives were which is why I asked. An answer of:

I was mostly curious to see if someone who wasn't really contributing otherwise would jump on the opportunity to attack erratic play that amounts to a nulltell, and whether they would do so in a thoughtful way or whether they would just be like "WTF lunch? Scum!!"

Would have been all I wanted there. It's reasonable and I assume that you'd already gotten the reaction from me when you gave your "let me turn your question around on you" answer that you gave. Clearly I could make guesses about what you were up to but saying that I had already answered for you when I hadn't and being coy doesn't help us evaluate your play nearly as much as a straightforward answer.

@PorkchopExpress, although I'm not worried about VP Baltar's posts up till you question doing anything to out masons I don't particularly think that Albert B. Rampage is hiding behind the existence of masons, no. I think that he is correct that connections aren't the main thing that we should be looking for to find scum in this game simply because he's right to be concerned about not outing masons even if that wasn't an instance of it being likely to happen.

@Albert B. Rampage, so far as I know WoW does their Trolls wrong. I'd pick Tauren. That's all based on the RTS games rather than the MMORPG which I have no direct experience with.

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, I do know that you're willing to hang back and let someone else drive the game; I saw that first hand in the game we IC'd together (I never got around to posting after that game ended by the way; nice work on finishing it up after I got night killed.) The trouble with that approach here is that it doesn't give the rest of us the chance to get a read on you along the way. In the newbie game I wasn't so worried about it as I had more pressing issues with simply making sure that the others knew how to play the game; they were going to look scummier than you by default whether you were talking or not just because they would make mistakes they didn't even know were mistakes. That's not going to come up here; we need your input not just for the sake of the input but also so that we've got a way to judge your play and the connections later on. Waiting till you've got something great to latch on isn't acceptable here.

@Scien, if you stop trying to put pressure on people for unimpressive reasons at the start of games then I'll probably stop expecting that you're going to do it after a while. Seriously though, the L-x on Vi's votes? That's worse than the issue you were having with jokes in the random voting stage in Mini 880.

I think I've just put some things together that won't be useful to talk about but if I'm right then I think it's possible that SerialClergyman noticed the same thing just a bit ago; remind me to check with him about it if we're both about in a couple days. Yes this is mysterious, I just need to remember it so I'm putting this in here because someone's sure to ask about it and remind me what I have in mind later on when it could be important.

It's tempting to change my vote now to someone other than Ojanen that I want to hear more from but (PorkchopExpress and Debonair Danny DiPietro both spring to mind) but I think that's probably less productive than joining a charlatan wagon. This either of Albert B. Rampage or VP Baltar are his top choices is overly convenient and I think that they're both red herrings right now.

Vote: charlatan

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Charlatan, by the time I asked about your irreverence you'd already had reactions from Amished. He wasn't just attacking you for asking about lunch but rather was trying to figure out what you were up to. I won't deny that you should be given a chance to scum hunt as you see fit but to continue not to give a straight answer at that point looks more like an attempt to bait Amished into doing something you can attack than trying to judge how he'll react.

I also have to admit that the pattern of evasive answers I've gotten from people this game has lowered my tolerance for it; it's a bad precedent to set in a game as I said earlier.

@VP Baltar, it's time to stop giving Albert B. Rampage a pass for being Albert B. Rampage when he stops being Albert B. Rampage. Here's what I said to you about him not playing the game I expected in Mini 880.

Regarding Albert B. Rampage, I've only played with him in newbie games before so I expect a bit of a different approach to this game then I've seen from him in the past. In those other games he played the role of an agitator or a catalyst. He's not afraid to play abrasively and directly against the expectations that people have to get reactions. I'm not seeing that in this game but I've seen him play as both town and scum in the newbie games so the lack of that behavior isn't much of an indicator on it's own. What might be is that I believe that he must have been interested in joining this game from the start. BigBear had him ready as a potential replacement from the first time it got raised in game as an issue. I know that with his first post he said that he was going to be V/LA for the next week or so but even taking that into account I don't see the engagement that I think I'd expect. A part of that is going to be the game itself which has an off pace but I tend to think that an interested town Albert B. Rampage would be raising more dust than he has.

Albert B. Rampage when he's playing a good town game is a catalyst. He gets things going and polarizes issues. That he uses unconventional tactics to do it doesn't make his play useless at all as people are more likely to react to it and reactions to unusual play are valuable for determining alignments. When he gets stuck in a rut, actually starts hurting the ability of others to scum hunt with distractions or stops participating in the game (like he did in Mini 880) is when it's time to start looking at him seriously.

In the end here you're welcome to do what you want regarding him but I've seen nothing in his play that makes me want to move him out of the neutral category so far. As I said earlier, with Albert B. Rampage you want to watch how his game flows rather than the individual things that he's doing in order to get a better read. The sort of switching of opinions on you for example is something that I've seen him do as town; he's not settling on something yet so as of yet he doesn't worry me overly.

I actually do recognize that I've got a double standard here regarding acceptable play from charlatan and Albert B. Rampage. It's clear to me as I type this post. I suspect that it's due to expectations based on what I've seen of their play individually and I'll think a bit to see if that seems fair.

Also, I don't disagree with VP Baltar about Debonair Danny DiPietro. But that should be clear from my previous post.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

You don't really get to decide when the usefulness of another's experimentation has expired. It's a matter of interpretation, and seeing as I really haven't attacked Amished I don't even know what you're trying to get at here.

You're welcome to pursue experiments as far as you'd like to but if it looks to me like you're going to try to excuse trying to get someone to attack you by calling it scum hunting then I'm going to point that out. No, you didn't attack Amished, but then he didn't take the bait that you were putting out there. When I asked my question you and you decided not to answer it certainly looks to me as though you should have had the information you claim you were going for.

This is a very simple thing -- you were denied an easy answer for once and it upsets you, and though I very, very, sincerely doubt it affected your game in any way it still irritates you, so we're talking about this instead of the actual one-line reason you gave that is supposed to justify your vote. It's not the kind of silliness I've come to expect from you.

If I was voting you now because I was upset by your not answering a question in a straightforward manner then I would be acting in a silly manner. I don't think that it's the sort of thing that I'd be that likely to do as either town or scum and apparently, as you've seen me play both alignments and are making that statement you don't either. That would seem to me to make it more likely that I'm actually voting for you because of the reason that I gave (which was in fact primarily the case.)

My irritation isn't entirely directed at you; I tried to make that clear at the start of Post 250. I then went on to complain about VP Baltar's answer to a question as well. Why would I then be directing my frustration at you in particular? We have a better chance of finding scum if we don't make obscuring answers when there's no good reason to part of the expected play. As I've said, that lets scum do so without standing out and that hurts our chances of finding them. If you think that view on my part is just me being petulant then I suppose that's your prerogative.

We're talking about this issue rather than the reasons that I gave for voting you because that's what you chose to respond to in your first post after I cast my vote. You talked about the votes the others had cast for you but everything that you directed towards me had to do with your failure to answer my question. Why is it that you're trying to strawman me like this rather than asking me more about why I cast my vote?

I know that you know as well as anyone else that Rampage also gets a free pass based entirely on this argument frequently.

What I know is that Albert B. Rampage often gets attacked for his playstyle when he's town, especially by players that aren't used to watching him in action. I know that I expect people to suspect Albert B. Rampage and make moves like VP Baltar is making when they don't have a good feel ahead of time for what to expect. I don't think that I'm inclined to call that a free pass as it's garnering suspicion that has a real possibility of leading to a lynch for play that in the context of coming from Albert B. Rampage is a null tell at worst (and in my experience probably a slight town tell.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@charlatan, since you ask, I'm happy to share more about why I voted for you. Your not answering my question really didn't enter into things much at all. I very rarely vote out of irritation (I can think of one case when I did but that was also doing some distancing from a scum partner and it was back in the first game that I played here.) Saying your vote was overly convenient was a bit of a simplification. You started out the game with a vote for Scien with a built in option to move to Vi at what could easily be played off as a whim. That came at the early, not so serious phase of the game so on it's own it wasn't too noteworthy. Continuing that pattern by setting yourself up to easily fall on either the next pair of wagons that seemed to come along (Albert B. Rampage and VP Baltar) was perhaps more noteworthy and was enough of a reason for me to give to vote given how early in the game it was but wasn't really something that I felt that strongly about.

At the time I was ready to move my vote from Ojanen as it had done what I wanted it to. Like I said back when I voted for you, I was tempted at the time to vote for one of Debonair Danny DiPietro or PorkchopExpress (others have since followed that path which I'm fine with) but they didn't have any other votes on them at the time so it wasn't all that likely to accomplish much. Given that SerialClergyman had just cast a vote for you I was more likely to get more in the way of a useful reaction to a charlatan vote than I would have with the other options.

I was expecting a complaint about my vote not being well founded or a defense involving why you had legitimate reasons for suspecting both VP Baltar and Albert B. Rampage. Instead, apparently what I got from that is that you chose to portray me as casting a petty vote for you because I didn't like how you reacted to a question I asked earlier in the game. I really don't think that you'd have a reason to think that I'd play that way (which goes along with you saying you didn't expect that sort of sillyness from me) so I have trouble understanding why you'd jump to that conclusion. Town should probably have more interest in figuring out why the vote was cast rather than talking about the question answering business and then accusing me of talking about the question answering rather than the reasons for the vote. I seems to me that scum would have much more reason to try to discredit my play as a reaction to having my toes stepped on.

What, to you, signals a scumtell for Rampage if it's not conflicting logic and changing of stances?

... When he gets stuck in a rut, actually starts hurting the ability of others to scum hunt with distractions or stops participating in the game (like he did in Mini 880) is when it's time to start looking at him seriously.

An example of the stuck in a rut idea that you might relate to would be his interaction with LongNameForAShortLife in Newbie Game 749. The vote didn't stay on LongNameForAShortLife for the entire time but there was no change over a very long stretch about where his suspicions were. That game is also a fine example of the same sort of lack of engagement that he had last game.

I won't claim that my read on Albert B. Rampage is perfect; it certainly isn't. The things that stand out as warning flags for him simply aren't the same things that would stand out for most people. At this point I'm actually trying to decide what to make of how he's been interacting with me. He knows how I react to direct pressure from him and I'm not sure how good he feels those reads are so it certainly looks like he's trying another approach here. It's probably not buddying (at least as a surface tactic) as it's too blatant for that and I don't think that he would assume I'd be taken in like that but it might be something deeper along those lines. He's certainly isolating and drawing attention to our potential connections for some reason though.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Your vote was not well founded and was justified with a brief line about things being "too convenient", which is vague and feels more like an excuse than anything else. So, it seems pretty logical to me to suspect that the real reason was that you were voting at erratic, unfamiliar behavior that makes you uncomfortable. That sort of behavior is not in and of itself a problem for you; you defend it when it can be passed off as meta from other players who employ it frequently.

The foundation of the vote aside (I didn't have a particularly strong reason to cast it but this early in the game it was strong enough and it's cute that you make that attack now that I've said it was what I was initially expecting) I play a fair amount of newbie games. I've seen a fair amount of erratic, unfamiliar behavior. As you say, it's not really a problem for me. When I was complaining about people not answering questions I called it anti-town rather than scummy. What don't make sense given that you realize this are both that you'd assume that would be my reason to vote for you and that you'd think it would make me uncomfortable coming from you but not from others.

I also don't know why you think I wouldn't simply give that as my reason for voting for you if that was it. It's just not an assumption I see any reason for you to be making unless you think that I'm trying to pull one over you you.

The vote didn't stay on LongNameForAShortLife for the entire time but there was no change over a very long stretch about where his suspicions were. That game is also a fine example of the same sort of lack of engagement that he had last game.

I would suggest that he is neither engaged nor actively scumhunting in this game, either.

Well, we've got plenty of discussion being generated by his actions and he seems to be posting regularly in a way that indicates that he's been reading the game and knows what's going on so I suppose that we'll disagree about whether or not he's engaged. I don't recall saying anything about him actively scum hunting but I am a bit curious as to what you expect active scum hunting from Albert B. Rampage looks like.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Vi, are you unclear about my opinion on Albert B. Rampage now? He's doing nothing that I wouldn't expect him to as town, he is impacting the game in a way that I feel is helping us get reads on players and he's pushing at me in a way that he hasn't before. I think he's more likely town than scum at this point. The game is still young but I don't see the patterns that I expect him to follow if he's scum. I also don't think that any of that should be particularly surprising based on what I've been saying up till now.

I do wonder a bit about your most recent vote change though. It doesn't seem as though either Debonair Danny DiPietro or PorkchopExpress have posted since your previous vote. Was Amished's defense of his vote really enough to convince you that it was worth moving from one lurker vote to another or did you see something that you've failed to mention?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Vi, my intent regarding Albert B. Rampage has been to say that those things people are calling scummy in his behavior (OMGUS, switching opinion, etc) aren't particularly scummy in his case. Further, I've said that I see him engaging in the sort of behavior that I expect him to if he's town (stirring things up, polarizing opinions). I'm not here to defend Albert B. Rampage's behavior but thus far I've seen plenty of scum reads on him for reasons that don't strike true and nothing to indicate that he isn't town. If a tentative read of town based on that isn't what you've gotten out of that from me then I'm not sure what to tell you.

Regarding your Debonair Danny DiPietro vote I don't see anything in your explanation there that indicates why you would have been voting for PorkchopExpress previously or what would make you decide to change. Amished's vote for reasons which you apparently agree with came before your vote for Debonair Danny DiPietro. If his lack of participation was a concern for you why start with PorkchopExpress rather than going right to Debonair Danny DiPietro who you had reason to be concerned about on the lurking front?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@PorkchopExpress, that still doesn't explain what would motivate Vi's change of vote as Debonair Danny DiPietro's lurking would still have been an issue when Vi decided to previously vote for you.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@charlatan, I'm fairly aware of what I put in the post where I voted you. Here's a summary of the points that I was making there:

1. People aren't answering my questions in a straightforward way. That's anit-town.
2. VP Baltar could have answered my question with a statement he made later.
3. Thoughts on why Albert B. Rampage's behavior doesn't stand out.
4. charlatan could have answered my question with a statement he made later.
5. VP Baltar wasn't in danger of outing masons but it's something worth being concerned about.
6. In WoW I'd be a Tauren rather than a Troll.
7. Debonair Danny DiPietro should be participating.
8. Scien puts pressure on people for bad reasons to start games and until he stops I'm going to say when he's done it.
9. I've noticed something about the game that SerialClergyman seems to have noticed as well.
10. I vote for charlatan over a non-participant giving the convenience of his current stand as my reason.

What you're trying to tell me now is that you thought that I voted you there because of irritation at you and that further I didn't just give that as my reason either because as town I was making a mistake in my fit of pique or as scum I was manufacturing a reason. Have I got your take on my play there correct? Because that doesn't seem particularly simple to me and I don't think that it should be what you'd actually expect from my play.

As for Albert B. Rampage, he's done more than simply say that your case is so bad. Surely you know that taking a single quote and trying to use it to represent all of someone's play in a game isn't going to work. It looks to me as though you're expecting Albert B. Rampage to be transparent with his motives at this point in the game; that you should be able to see how he's using the reactions that he's generating to connect the dots to find the scum. That you think that it's somehow a point against him that he hasn't shared all the details about what he's thinking based on how people have reacted to him and what he's planning. It think that's a particularly interesting stance for you to have as you also seem to be trying to say that I voted for you because I was irritated at you for doing exactly the same thing on a smaller scale and yet as far as I can tell you think that you were perfectly justified in doing it.

I don't think that I'm going to be able to get Albert B. Rampage to play a transparent game and I think it would hurt my ability to scum hunt to try to do so; it's much easier to treat his play as a tool to take advantage of in so far as I can use a particular set of expectations for both the play itself and how others will react to it. I have different expectations for you, Vi and VP Baltar and so I'll say when I think you're not being helpful where I probably wouldn't for Albert B. Rampage. That doesn't mean that it's going to be the motivation for my vote and your insistence that it was flies in the face of what you should expect from me.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@SerialClergyman, I use Troll speak on and off for entire games if I've got the choice. Having to quit for a day in Mini 880 was irritating so I decided before this one started that this would be an off game; I was using it enough in a thread in the Mafia Discussion forum to satisfy my needs at the time.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@charlatan, I am sorry if you're not enjoying the game thus far. If you're done with the topic of my vote for you then I've seen what I want to from it so I'll let it drop. With Albert B. Rampage I'm not interested in going through to find for you the places I think he's been doing things. I already pointed out one aspect but past that I was really only interested in letting people know what I expect from him and what it seems to me that he's doing. If you'd like to pursue an inactivity case on him I'll let him defend that or not past here as he sees fit.

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, I can't tell right now whether you're trying to draw something from a particular person or whether you're still using a more general stalling stance while you're getting general bearings. I'm not at all convinced that you would believe a number of the things that you've been saying so they really should be smoke and mirrors for something else. Would you be willing to elaborate at all on your PorkchopExpress answer or was that given mostly just to give an answer at all?

@PorkchopExpress, Sando and Scien, you've all been busy for your various reasons, fine. When should we see more of an impact (again, perhaps for some) in the game? Are your current votes relevant do you think? If so I'd love to hear why. If not I'd love to see one that you thought was.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Amished, it's an interesting idea there but I think I'd get lynched a lot more as town if it were used as a tell regularly. Would you have applied it to me in these cases:

Zorblag replaces Putboy
Zorblag repalces Jackabomb/Grave Scrabbler
Zorblag replaces Vel-Rahn Koon

Those were from three of the first five games I had replaced into as town and all came within the first couple posts that I made in those games. Perhaps I misunderstand what you've got in mind. More likely I think that the usefulness of the tell is going to depend on the person involved (and whether they're aware that others think it's a tell.) Having said that,

@xRECKONERx, welcome to the game. You've started with a post that I find interesting. I want to hear exactly what made charlatan you strongest pro-town and SerialClergyman your strongest scum reads over the start of the game. They don't strike me as the reads that I'd expect people to have at that point.

Regarding my post 114, do you think that I should have thought that one of Vi or Scien was scummy based on their exchange? If so was it one or the other in particular that you expected me to go after? Is using a vote for pressuring someone who isn't participating in this game but is posting in other games something you think isn't worth doing? I'll be interested in hearing what you think of the other players who chose to make the "safe" votes on players who hadn't been contributing later on.

@Ojanen, at this point I have no interest in voting for VP Baltar today. I'd rather not go into my reasons. The same currently applies to all of Amished, Debonair Danny DiPietro and SerialClergyman for a variety of reasons. Should any of them get closer to being lynched I might talk more but for now I'll just say that I think they do not make good choices for today.

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, you've joined that list very recently. Based on what it looks like you're doing I think that you should be seeing something that it looks like you're not. There is a hole in your reasoning that probably explains some of what you're looking for in the way of a couple answers and I think that you can find it.

I can also confirm that Debonair Danny DiPietro did do pretty much what he's explaining fits this situation in the newbie game we played together. I actually mentioned that game back when I said I wanted to see more content from him. I do still want more content but what he's doing here is consistent with what he did when I was pushing activity in the early game while he hung back.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Amished, if memory serves, in all three of those games I was replacing into a spot that was either already under pressure or which I thought should get pressure shortly based on the play of my predecessors. I do always read the entire game when I'm replacing in which involves looking at what the dynamics that included the person I'm replacing were. Knowing who attacked them and somewhat objectively whether the attacks were reasonable is important for my other reads. It's entirely possible that I'm not using a standard approach. In any case, if attacks have been made against my predecessors that were warranted or I anticipate that attacks will be made then I prefer to be up front about it. In the first two of those in particular I found my prececessors' play to be scummy. With the third one it was more a matter of not liking the arguments that Vel-Rahn Koon had made; I wouldn't have gone for them if I had been in the game at the time and I wanted to make that clear quickly.

As a side note, the only one of those game where I actually got lynched was the first one but that probably had as much to do with the deadline as anything (it was relatively soon after I replaced in.)

Would the following have gotten your vote? So far as I could see with a quick look it was the only place where I complained about my predecessor's play when replacing in as scum in the first couple posts (and there Far_Cry, who I was replacing after the first night, had posted a total of once the first day.)

Zorblag replaces Far_Cry

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

I don't have time to post much just now and I need to go back and look at a couple things but I think that although I'm not particularly opposed to a PorkchopExpress lynch he wouldn't be the first choice for a place to move my vote just now were I inclined to move it. I'll have some thoughts to share this afternoon.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

I'm having a bit of trouble finding the time (when the site will cooperate and let me go back and look things up in any sort of efficient way) to get the post I want in so this will do for now.

My top three choices for lynches today at this time, in order are charlatan, xRECKONERx, PorkchopExpress. I'd also be willing to consider Ojanen or Sando and to a much lesser extent Albert B. Rampage or Vi if it was a choice between one of them and a no lynch. I still have no interest in lynching any of Amished, Debonair Danny DiPietro, SerialClergyman or VP Baltar today.

I don't really understand how this PorkchopExpress wagon got going. Albert B. Rampage pushing for something is probably a good sign if anything; he's managed to create a second wagon out of very little and he's forcing people to take sides in a way that they weren't really forced to with the charlatan vs. Debonair Danny DiPietro or whatever else might have been competing wagons previously. Saying that he was trying to derail the charlatan wagon doesn't take into account how long that wagon was there as a serious contender. I also don't have any reason to like what PorkchopExpress is doing so I'm not going to argue against people joining his wagon even though it's not my plan to do so myself. What I really don't like though is xRECKONERx's reaction to the wagon.

For some reason, even though his top three scum suspects in Post 432 were charlatan, PorkchopExpress and Debonair Danny DiPietro he didn't get around to voting for any of them. At the time there was a 5 vote wagon on charlatan, a 2 vote wagon on Debonair Danny DiPietro and no one at all on PorkchopExpress. When Albert B. Rampage starts the PorkchopExpress wagon he jumps on immediately and sounds excited about a starting wagon. Later we learn that charlatan and PorkchopExpress (and one assumes Debonair Danny DiPietro) were all about equally scummy in his eyes (Post 483) and then just recently that he apparently has different preferences for their lynches (Post 529.) It just doesn't fit.

If you've got three people you suspect equally why on Earth would you as town ignore the two that already have wagons going on them and wait till someone else starts a wagon on the third to join that. Even if you had a strong preference for the lynch for that third player (despite thinking the others were equally scummy) why not say that sooner and start the wagon yourself? Town with those top three suspects would have had really no compelling reason I can think of not to vote for either charlatan or Debonair Danny DiPietro (I might be able to come up with a reason for one of them but certainly not both) when they'd finished with their suspicions.

When you add that to Amished's tell (I'm not sold on it but I've thought about it some and I think I'm willing to use it as corroberative evidence), and how xRECKONERx doesn't seem to be settled on exactly what it was that made him give charlatan a town read in the first place (the story already seems to have changed) I'm finding him fairly scummy. I'm leaving my vote on charlatan at this point as I don't care for how he reacted in our exchange but if I thought that an xRECKONERx lynch were feasible today I would be completely willing to be a part of it as of now.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Vi, although it seems pretty likely that there's scum on the PorkchopExpress wagon one way or another I don't know that I'd call it scum driven. I don't fully know Albert B. Rampage's motives for starting it but I don't believe that simply doing it to derail the charlatan wagon makes sense. That sort of switch when the game isn't moving is par for the course for Albert B. Rampage. If he had wanted it derailed just to derail it I think he would have moved sooner than he did; he certainly had the ability to do so pages earlier if that had been important. As for what I don't understand, it's really that it gained so many people so relatively quickly; the falling into place all of a sudden shouldn't just be a matter of 3 of the 4 on it now being scum (I suppose that might be happening but scum really don't clump like that in general) and it wasn't just a matter of being pressured or badgered or tricked into it or anything. I'm not seeing why 2 or 3 town would fall into place that quickly on an issue which wasn't a change from what had been happening all game (lack of content from PorkchopExpress.)

@xRECKONERx, why didn't you bring up that preference before Albert B. Rampage voted for PorkchopExpress? That seems to be some of your issue with Debonair Danny DiPietro as well; why not join his wagon with your suspicion list? Or do I misunderstand what it is you didn't like about Debonair Danny DiPietro's play? It looked like it was lurking and then an OMGUS vote and then I suppose I'm not sure. Is there that much less concern that we'd be letting him lurk to endgame, almost getting lynched but never quite as scum than there is for PorkchopExpress?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

It's a busy week so I apologize for my lack of presence up till now and for the fact that I expect that I'll be pretty light until this weekend. I'll have more to post (reasons for my vote and reactions in general) this afternoon but I'm pretty sure that xRECKONERx is our best lynch at this point.

Vote: xRECKONERx

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

I will have time tomorrow to get to this game that I have not had this past week. Glancing briefly at what's happening, my vote is still where I want it to be though. When I had a chance to glance briefly at what people were saying it looked like VP Baltar was raising many of the points of concern for me about xRECKONERx (which should be about the same points that I brought up yesterday.) The voting pattern day one just didn't match with his stated suspicions how it should for town. I'll need to take a closer look at what has happened since and I apologize for not being here to play.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

So here's some of what I think of people/the state of the game right now:

Albert B. Rampage is still playing the game that I expect him to. He's been more active with his role than he was in day one (I recall arguing that he was participating in a meaningful way then which he was but now he's getting under more people's skins.) While I've still got him as more likely town than scum I do disagree with xRECKONERx's last assessment about why he wouldn't do this as scum though. When he's scum I think he's a bit more likely to stay out of the game when it's a feasible strategy like he id din Mini 880 but he knows what people's perceptions of his game are. Doing things that people are going to find scummy is in no way a town tell for Albert B. Rampage; it's just part of his play style in general. This not having him as an expendable player on the scum team seems pretty unlikely to be how he'd approach the game (and hence how a scum team he was on would approach the game.)

The reason that I'd lean town is that I'm still not getting an overall attempt to confuse issues with the moves that Albert B. Rampage is making. He's drawing flak for changing his opinion and not giving the justification people expect but he's largely doing it in a way that's focused on a reasonably consistent part of the game. I'd say that the overall shape of the his game is focused on what's more likely at this time to be scum hunting than it is to be misdirection.

I don't think I'm communicating that particularly well, so for those who are having trouble with him I'll suggest looking at everyone that he's applying pressure to and compare that to the wagons that we've had so far. Ignoring the reasons that he's giving for his moves I think he's putting pressure on a pretty reasonable group of people to be considering as scum (barring whatever reads I or whoever is looking might have.)

Taking a look at those on the Albert B. Rampage wagon I think that I'm happiest with VP Baltar's being there. Given his level of experience with Albert B. Rampage it feels like he hit the right point (timing and opportunity-wise) for getting fed up with the play as town. My biggest reason for not being interested in voting for him yesterday is gone (though I'm still not interested in sharing what that is/was at this point) but I've got a stronger town read for him based on overall play than I do for anyone else in the game.

The reason I had no interest in lynching SerialClergyman is in a more interesting spot but I think that there's a bit more benefit in leaving him with that status for one more day than dropping it. I'm not thrilled with his move to Albert B. Rampage killing the momentum on the xRECKONERx wagon as I think that's where we want to be today. It also seems like a more calculated move than VP Baltar's did and less reasonably attributed to hitting an Albert B. Rampage tolerance limit. I do like that he wants to hear what I'm thinking about VP Baltar in particular.

@SerialClergyman, if I was talking about what you think that I was talking about yesterday when I said that I thought that you had realized something was happening, was what I thought we'd figured out correct or not?

hitogoroshi's place on the wagon actually feels off to me as well; I think that it's the statement that he'd be voting for Sando if he felt that his vote would have the proper wagon pushing power combined with the choice of Albert B. Rampage over xRECKONERx given that either would be acceptable to him. It'd feel a lot worse though if his post in isolation on Albert B. Rampage hadn't come before the wagon had started. Other than those details (and perhaps the way that he's treating me) overall I find his entrance to be a null tell; it's good analysis of each player which is appreciated but something that I personally like to do no matter what my alignment is. PorkchopExpress's play wasn't overly scummy but he definitely wasn't anything pro-town either (he was my number three choice for the lynch yesterday after all), mostly he just wasn't really there. The player spot on the whole then is a bit on the scummy side for me thus far.

@hitogoroshi, what would an Albert B. Rampage lynch right now if he flipped town tell you about SerialClergyman and VP Baltar? What about if he flipped scum? I don't know that I'm sold on it being informative which you seem to think it would be.

I'm still not interested in lynching Debonair Danny DiPietro. I'm still not interested in talking about my reasons.

I'm not particularly comfortable with how Ojanen does seem to be holding off on the popular wagons because of their popularity (it felt like that's happened with both charlatan and xRECKONERx now) and I don't like this change of attitude on xRECKONERx today that seems to have only come after the wagon has gone through the derail that it has. Even when she was being tentative about the wagon because of the way it was building she was bringing up problem points about xRECKONERx's play. Now apparently that's all been written of as inconsistent, bad play from town rather than scum. It doesn't feel like a fully legitimate progression of views there.

It's odd that I can't quite tell what Sando thinks of xRECKONERx at this point given his general reaction and vote on Vi once the xRECKONERx wagon hit L-1.

@Vi, are you ready to say why it was that you didn't want to share your role in the previous version of the game yet?

If we don't lynch xRECKONERx today my top choices for alternates are currently Ojanen and hitogoroshi.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

OK, this is ridiculous on my end. I've never replaced out of a game but as of right now I'm now putting myself on notice. If I don't shape up and start finding the time to get to this game tomorrow and then consistently this week then I'm going to replace out. It's not fair to anyone else to have me gone like this.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

So at this point I think that our two best lynches are hitogoroshi or SerialClergyman. As I said yesterday, hitogoroshi's vote for Albert B. Rampage over Sando or xRECKONERx when he replaced in (for reasons that look to boil down to because he wouldn't have had enough influence when voting for Sando but would have had too much influence when voting for xRECKONERx) didn't feel particularly natural. Today he's got Albert B. Rampage and Sando still listed as his top suspects but he chooses not to vote at all at the start because voting for Albert B. Rampage would be a waste of his vote because the wagon wouldn't get going yesterday and Sando isn't current around to defend himself. I just don't buy it. How is voting for Albert B. Rampage more a waste of a vote than not voting at all at this point. If he's all over an Albert B. Rampage lynch (which I still don't think is a good move) then there's really no good reason at all not to rest his vote there while he's seeing what others do.

hitogoroshi seems to have gotten a fair amount of credit from people for his initial posts when he placed in looking at everyone in the game. At least I'm assuming that's a big part of why his player spot went from all sorts of attention on Day One to as little as we had on Day Two. It's silly really as the analysis in the initial posts should be a null tell. I know that it's one of the tools I use coming into new games as town or scum (and that it often makes me look much better than it should when I'm replacing in as either alignment.) It's the voting actions that actually have some indication of alignment and his look like scum trying to avoid a partner getting lynched when there was a chance to, a bus when it's unavoidable and now sitting back to be ready to join whichever of two wagons that looks to be the more popular.

With SerialClergyman there are the actions involving xRECKONERx that have been talked about some. The calling for an xRECKONERx lynch (with bonus points for not giving reasons) followed abruptly (two posts later on his part) with a switch to Albert B. Rampage artificially made the xRECKONERx wagon look like it was inevitable and then partially derailed it. If he's scum then he's given himself a great cover for the defending a partner for the rest of the day because, look, he was on the wagon at the start, back when it was probably going to be a lynch. Him now listing Albert B. Rampage on his probably town lynch after using him to leave the xRECKONERx wagon doesn't feel good either.

@SerialClergyman, what's changed your mind on Albert B. Rampage?

Vote: hitogoroshi

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@VP Baltar, xRECKONERx, when he cast the vote for PorkchopExpress, was just second on a wagon which only ever grew to four out of seven needed (I think.) Given that he had a couple other suspects listed at the time who had votes on them I'm not at all convinced that he wouldn't have tried to switch to either the charlatan or Debonair Danny DiPietro wagon if the PorkchopExpress wagon ever got too close to lynch. Staying off the charlatan wagon seems like something he would probably have wanted to do if he thought it was going to happen without him.

@hitogoroshi, I am willing to talk about Debonair Danny DiPietro now, yes. He made my day one no-lynch list when I thought that Amished and VP Baltar were masons. I needed to have more names than just theirs to not talk about so that it would be a bit less clear why I didn't want to vote for them. I saw a few things that looked like Debonair Danny DiPietro might be trying to draw a mason-suspect night kill so I gave him the message in Post 404 which was potentially to let him know that others (Amished in particular) might either be masons or be faking it and to draw some attention to his joining my list. SerialClergyman was the other on that list because he'd drawn attention to the interactions in the first place.

Day two, when I made my statement, I still hadn't fully revealed that I had thought that Amished and VP Baltar were masons on day one so I figured I might as well keep holding over the not interested in voting status for Debonair Danny DiPietro and SerialClergyman.

And of course none of that tells you what I think of Debonair Danny DiPietro. My guess is that he's town. I like his vote on xRECKONERx going back to day one. I think that he's wrong about Albert B. Rampage now and that he needs to just forget the WIFOM thing from xRECKONERx (there's no need to try to outguess scum in this situation; we've got enough other evidence to look at that we shouldn't have to try to hit scum by figuring out the degree to which he'd lie when he knew he was going down anyhow) but I do think that he's doing more to help the town than hinder.

@Vi, Albert B. Rampage is probably town at this point. He continues to narrow his attention in a way that I think fits his town play. I disagree with the individual statements he's making (his hitogoroshi is 100% scum stance is pretty ridiculous, I don't agree that both scum need to have been in on the bus and his interpretation of xRECKONERx being forced to follow his lead on PorkchopExpress doesn't seem to be based on anything I can see in the game are a few examples) but if he was scum I'd expect him to still be throwing more flack out there rather than to be this focused.

I voted hitogoroshi over SerialClergyman because my scum read on hitogoroshi is a bit stronger. I'm pretty willing to be part of either wagon today though I'd like to hear SerialClergyman's reaction to what I said to hitogoroshi there. One of the issues that hasn't quite settled for me for SerialClergyman is how he dealt with Amished and VP Baltar day one (and then how he framed it mentioned it on day two.) hitogoroshi's actions are more clear cut to me.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Albert B. Rampage, I did have a reason for being cryptic (and I tried to explain it some in my last post.) Day one I was throwing some interference into the mix to make my reasons for attention less clear so that scum who were hunting for masons would have less of a chance of picking up exactly what I was working with should they look closely. Debonair Danny DiPietro was on a number of people's radars so I didn't have to worry about him playing an unexamined scum game but I didn't have any particular suspicion of him; he made an excellent candidate for the role of red herring. Come day two I still didn't suspect him and he was pushing for xRECKONERx's lynch which was a fine idea. I didn't have anything that needed to be said regarding him so there wasn't any compelling reason to change my stance. If there was a chance that scum would waste effort trying to figure out what I was onto there it seemed worth it.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Albert B. Rampage, on day one there were at least 5 players that I had mason reads, or that I thought were at helpful to the town in some way who I didn't have any interest in lynching that day.

@Vi, hitogoroshi is my strongest scum read but at this point in the game. I guess if you want numbers to go with it I'd put him at around a 2/3 chance of being scum. Unless you want to go with the sort of 100% certainty (which I don't as I've spent enough time being wrong about suspicions to know better) that Albert B. Rampage is using here such numbers are largely meaningless. I typically just give rankings instead.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@SerialClergyman, I suppose I've got two questions for you at this point. Why did you leave your mason conclusions as easy to find as you did on day one and not make some attempt to provide other options for scum to follow? Why the change in opinion on Albert B. Rampage between yesterday and today.

It's possible that the first one has an answer that involves my expectations being off, I'll go to the group if that's the case.

I have a guess for the second answer as well; if I'm right the follow up question is when exactly did you decide that?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@SerialClergyman, was there a reason that you didn't answer my questions about why you changed your mind on Albert B. Rampage earlier today but rather waited until someone else brought them up again?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@SerialClergyman, do you think that you'd given some reason that we should have seen for your change in opinion about Ablert B. Rampage from day two to day three? I see the explanation you just gave but I don't recall seeing a spot where I would have picked it up before. Or was that in the realm of topics that you weren't interested in talking about?

I thought that:

@SerialClergyman, what's changed your mind on Albert B. Rampage?

and it's clarification of

Why the change in opinion on Albert B. Rampage between yesterday and today.

should make it somewhat clear that I didn't think you'd made your reasons clear.

It's pretty clear that you must have had the reason you just gave in mind when you made your statement that you thought Albert B. Rampage was town in Post 916, I just don't understand why it's taken you this long to get to talking about why.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Albert B. Rampage, a scum in the noose is worth two being wagoned or some such pithy saying. Let's see what we get for a flip from hitogoroshi or SerialClegyman and work from there I think. I'd like to think that you're right about hitogoroshi and SerialClergyman as well but that'd be convenient and I don't particularly trust convenient in games of mafia.

Out of curiosity, how likely do you think both of the mafia would be to claim vanilla in this situation?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@hitogoroshi, I've looked at your argument from Post 998 and thought about your mechanism theory. The trouble that I'm having is that I expect Albert B. Rampage to make the sort of switches in his calls that he's been making and I think that you're theory hinges both on that being scummy and calculated rather than being (as seems more likely) somewhat coincidental in it's timing. It seems that it ignores how he's been doing it to others (e.g. Debonair Danny DiPietro and myself) but have I got that wrong? So far as I can tell you're clearing SerailClergyman here based on the only possible motivation from Albert B. Rampage being to exploit one particular, somewhat complicated chain of suspicions.

If both you and SerialClergyman are town then wouldn't it be fairly likely, given that you've been pretty much the only players to be extensively pressured today, that the scum could probably count on being able to go after either of you that was still alive tomorrow anyhow? Why would they need to jump on something SerialClergyman had said in order to get that result?

@SerialClergyman and hitogoroshi, if you were lynched today under what circumstances would you recommend that the town no lynch tomorrow? We've got numbers that suggest that it's a potentially viable plan at some point. Is there any situation that includes your death now which would make tomorrow the time to do it?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Actually, that last question can be extended to everyone I suppose.

@Vi, this is my first time in this setup but I'm inclined to think that with the information we've got to work with we should be lynching the one who has the greatest chance to be scum given the claims that we've got and who they came from. I don't think the particular pigeonholing concern that Albert B. Rampage mentions isn't that much of an issue for a couple reasons but unless we collectively felt there was a reason to think that someone else had a greater chance of being scum there isn't any a good reason to draw more claims out and there is another issue which is hinted at by the pigeonholing that is worth trying to avoid.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@hitogoroshi, Newbie Game 842 was the first game that I played with Albert B. Rampage when he was town (we had a game where we were scum together before that one.) It might be worth taking a look at his play there and comparing it to what he's done here.

If you'd like you can take a look at the scum game (Newbie Game 749) for more of an idea of what I expect from him as scum. Clearly his games aren't going to all be identical to one of the two of those but I think that they gave me a good idea of where to start looking at his behavior when trying to determine his alignment.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

So here's a problem that I've got with things that have been happening lately. Both hitogoroshi and SerialClergyman, after originally having suspected each other, seem to have come to the conclusion that both of them are almost certainly town and they both think (or at least have thought at different times) that it's best to lynch them and that this should for various reasons make it much less likely that the other will flip scum. Do correct me if I've got the basic story there wrong from either angle but that's what I seem to be seeing.

From hitogoroshi this still seems to be based on what I think is a misread of Albert B. Rampage's play and still seems to rely on Albert B. Rampage being scum for it to make sense. For SerialClergyman it's apparently a more a general shape of game argument, everything just fell into place too easily for everyone's reads to be town motivated and hitogoroshi's willingness to take that lynch today to help the town is moving.

To top it off both of them are now making the case that anyone who is saying that at least one of the two of them is probably scum has a pretty good chance of being scum trying to set up a pair of mislynches for the win.

I suppose that I could see two members of the town coming to all these conclusions simultaneously, deciding that they trust each other and backing up their complementary overall game view. I don't see why it would have to be true though. I'm not sure how we're supposed to expect scum to act here but I sure don't think that either of them as scum would have any problems with trying to get the game to go along with that set of assumptions.

I don't currently have a great reason to think that anyone has a better chance than the two of them of being scum. I don't buy the arguments against Albert B. Rampage or VP Baltar. I do think that after the flip today it is going to be worth looking at what's happened today and using that to try to figure out who had the most to gain but I'm not interested in holding off on what I think the best lynches are because I'm worried that lynching one of them and having the come up town is likely to lead to the mislynch of the other. I think that describing that sort of attitude as "my thoughts will be a mystery after a potential mislynch today" or something of the sort is something of a spin job.

@hitogoroshi, that strikes me as a particularly non-committal answer to the question of whether we should consider a no lynch tomorrow. Still, I suppose it's more than I got from SerialClergyman.

For what it's worth, if we do lynch town today I think that we're probably best served tomorrow with a mass claim and then a lynch if a mason is not a night kill or a no lynch with no claim (and probably minimal discussion) if a mason is the night kill.

Does it surprise you that you don't seem to have much of a read on Debonair Danny DiPietro yet (or have I got that wrong on your part?)

@Vi, I'm not hugely interested in talking with people other than hitogoroshi and SerialClergyman at this point, no. Seeing what everyone else has to say about them is satisfying at this point and I'm most interested in seeing, among other things most easily accomplished by talking to them in particular, if there's some reason that I should stop suspecting them.

A more concise answer to the question about whether we should feel constrained in our lynch by the current claims that have been made is no. We should today lynch whoever we feel has the greatest chance of being scum and the claims are secondary.

@SerialClergyman, you asked if anyone thought Ojanen was obviously a mason at one point but then didn't seem to put out when no one answered. After that you said that Ojanen wasn't obviously a mason to you and went on to give likely reasons for her death other than mason hunting. Without asking for names at all did you think that there were obvious masons at the end of the day yesterday (I didn't, though Ojanen would have been high on my list of guesses if I were forced to make one)? Why wouldn't you think that scum with the extra information of the scum team weren't that likely to think that Ojanen was an obvious mason (which seems to be your implication)?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@SerialClergyman, you've left the first couple sentences off the part of my post that apparently made you itch which is interesting as I think that they (the first in particular) don't at all indicate I'm expecting a town flip. What I said there was:

I don't currently have a great reason to think that anyone has a better chance than the two of them of being scum. I don't buy the arguments against Albert B. Rampage or VP Baltar. I do think that after the flip today it is going to be worth looking at what's happened today and using that to try to figure out who had the most to gain but I'm not interested in holding off on what I think the best lynches are because I'm worried that lynching one of them and having the come up town is likely to lead to the mislynch of the other. I think that describing that sort of attitude as "my thoughts will be a mystery after a potential mislynch today" or something of the sort is something of a spin job.

My guess is that if we lynch either you or hitogoroshi we're going to get a scum flip but regardless of your alignment we are going to want to take a look at what's happened today and try to figure out who has the most to gain from what effects their actions have had on how lynches might go down. I've also been pretty clear that I think that the two of you would be the best choices for lynching so I don't have any trouble talking about what I think the best lynches for today are and having it be clear that I think it would be you and hitogoroshi.

I in general prefer not to give all the reasons for the questions that I ask as at times that defeats part of the purpose of the question. I'm interested in seeing what people think is worth responding to in given situations in addition to almost always caring some about the answers that people choose to give. I don't think that I've been asking you an unreasonable amount of questions but perhaps you disagree there. Certainly the rate at which your answering does indicate that you think I'm asking about things which aren't important for whatever reason.

@Vi, my vote is still on hitogoroshi because I think he's still the most likely to be scum. I don't buy the case on Albert B. Rampage because it doesn't seem to take into account how I expect him to play. I don't buy the case on VP Baltar because his actions from day one forward in terms of suspicions and who he's choosing to attack form a pretty reasonable path for which I fail to see great scum motivations. I don't take VP Baltar's dislike of hitogoroshi to be simply a product of xRECKONERx's scum play as you seem to be doing; instead it seems as though xRECKONERx's scum meta not being inconsistent with hitogoroshi as scum seems to have removed a concern he expressed near the start of the day.

@hitogoroshi, if we lynch SerialClergyman today and he flips town then I fully expect to have at least two and hopefully three other (town) alignments known before we make any other lynches. We'll definitely learn that whoever the scum kill tonight is town. Ideally that won't be a mason and then we'll have the masons claim tomorrow. That knocks out three people but I'm not sure who it's going to be. I'm hesitant to go into any particular details in part because who I think is likely to be scum tied to at least some degree to how likely I think people are likely to be masons and right now I don't think that's worth sharing.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

I don't see much chance that the potential risks from letting SerialClergyman share his latest reads before getting lynched outweigh the potential rewards. If we're right and he's scum then we ignore what he's said. If wrong and he's town then we've got his final thoughts to refer back to if we want.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

OK, now it's time for this day to end.

Unvote

Vote: SerialClergyman

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Yeah, the correct move here is all three of the following:

No claims.

No discussion.

Vote: No Lynch

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

I'm just done with an unexpectedly pleasant (if internet-free) weekend. I'll need to take a new look at the game as a whole now that we've got the information that we do.

Here's a quick question for now though.

@hitogoroshi, did you have any strong guesses for who the masons were? I ask because it's interesting that with your initial post today you seem to be assuming that the scum didn't which seems a bit unlikely to me. For what it's worth I have been thinking about the masons for most of the game and Sando's flip didn't surprise me too much based on what I'd seen; I don't know that he would have been my first guess but he certainly wasn't a bad one based on everyone's interactions. Once he was a mason I was pretty sure it had to be either Albert B. Rampage or Debonair Danny DiPietro as the third (I could rule out you, Vi and VP Baltar from strong negative interactions alone.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Hmm, it seems that I'm not the only one having trouble finding time for mafia (or at least this game for some) at the moment. I still need to take a look at everything. My plan is to have time for that tomorrow.

@Vi, is there some reason that you in particular should be the last to share your conclusions? I know that to some degree someone has to but I find it odd that you've decided it should be you and that come out publicly with that as your plan.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@VP Baltar, there are enough walls of quotes recently and your post about me is very near by so I'm going to address the major issues you seem to be interested in without quoting them. If anything isn't clear let me know and I'll clarify.

Re: voting for charlatan. My initial vote for charlatan on day one was a vote for reactions (his and others) as much as anything else when I cast it. The reason I gave for the vote, as you quoted, was that I didn't like the convenience of his top two targets (you and Albert B. Rampage.) At that point in the game I'd just decided that I didn't want to pursue several people that I had been considering previously and I didn't have a strong case on anyone. I expected him to say pretty immediately that my stated reason was weak and that we'd then move on. Instead he didn't address my reason for voting from the start but rather he invented a reason for me to have cast the vote (petty irritation over an issue that I had called 3 different people on thus far.) He seemed to be deliberately misrepresenting my play in a way that didn't make any sense to me. That reaction was then enough for me to be fine leaving my vote on him.

Re: Albert B. Rampage day one. Albert B. Rampage draws suspicion in the early game when he's town. I expect to see people who haven't played with him much attack him for reasons that don't strike true to me because I've got a different set of expectations for his play than they are likely to. Further, I expect town to be more likely to do this than scum on the first day. My general expectation is that scum who aren't used to him probably view Albert B. Rampage as a good mislynch target for later in the game. Town on the other hand, if they see his play as useless and distracting (which I don't think it is) are more likely to want to move against him from the start. As such I have no trouble pointing out that I don't find the arguments people are making against him compelling but not doing anything to attack those making the arguments.

Re: Debonair Danny DiPietro's contributions day one. You seem to have all the relevant posts listed there but aren't quite putting together what I was saying. I played in a newbie game with Debonair Danny DiPietro in which he hung back at the start while I did some overall pushing for activity (you seem to think that I've said he pushed for activity somewhere; I was saying that I was doing it in another game.) In that game we were both town so I've seen him act that way in the past. In this game, with more experienced players who I didn't need to get a basic set of reads on I was saying that I didn't want him to do that. I consistently (when I made statements about it) said that I wanted more content from him. If there was a time at which the lollygagging became implicitly acceptable (in that I didn't bring the issue up again after that) it was when I decided that he probably made a decent screen for the masons if he was town.

Re: Amished, xRECKONERx and the tell. Amished's tell strikes me as pretty counter-intuitive (as I said, I'm pretty sure that I'm more critical of the person that I'm replacing when I'm town than when I'm scum) so I was trying to understand exactly when he thought that it applied. It turned out that it was more subtle than I thought he was indicating with the start. I do think that tells of that sort (and most sorts really) need to take the individuals to which they're being applied into account but I was working out the degree to which that was true here.

Re: Albert B. Rampage's changes of opinions on day three. Day three Albert B. Rampage named at various times as suspects he seemed to be serious about Debonair Danny DiPietro, hitogoroshi, SerialClergyman and myself. Of those Debonair Danny DiPietro and I were the ones that hitogoroshi hadn't mentioned. I could have listed other changes in Albert B. Rampages opinions but those were the ones that had come up that day.

Re: The importance of the town knowing who the masons are. I suspect that I think it's more valuable for non-mason town members to have a good idea of who the masons are (or even better who they can't be) than anyone else in the game. It's a tool that we've got in this game in particular that helps give us a leg up on the amount of information we've got. The better we use that to keep the scum in the dark and to narrow the pool of candidates we have to consider as scum the better of we should be in terms of both immediate scum hunting and the long term position. In my experience I'm more likely to want to use leverage from game setups in that sort of manner than most other players (e.g. the chosen dynamics in Mini 817 and /in-vitational 2 or the role distribution and claim strategy in Open 111.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

At this point, probably the the thing that I'm most interested in in this game isn't the suspicion that people seem to have for me just now (though it appears to be there somewhat across the board.) Given how active I've been through the game it's not that surprising at all that I'd be suspect for town and a pretty convenient LyLo target for scum. I continue to be busy this evening but tomorrow's the last day of the quarter so I should be less distracted as of tomorrow afternoon. What's most interesting is the set of opinions people have given about hitogoroshi today. Now that I've got the most recent statements from Debonair Danny DiPietro about him to look at I'll need to think that through somewhat carefully.

For now though I can at least give a brief summary of where I think we're likely at. I'm still fairly comfortable with VP Baltar as town. His play clearly hasn't been perfect but I think I see the right motivation for it to believe that he's been playing with the town's best interest in mind. I can see any pairing of the remaining three players without too much difficulty. I think that despite the fact that I've got the least familiarity with his play the easiest alignment to tell of the three of them is probably going to be hitogoroshi based largely on overall reactions from everyone else.

For now though I'm off to bed before one last flurry of academic activity before class tomorrow morning.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

The thing that's making this game tricky for me to figure out at this point is how hitogoroshi went from the position he was in yesterday to the position that he's in today. I don't think that the cases presented against him were particularly trumped up when he got his initial votes on day three and at various points point pretty much everyone had him at the top of their suspect list. I expected to start today with hitogoroshi still getting some suspicion from one or two other players and to use those reactions to try to leverage some better reads on what's actually been going on here but that isn't what happened.

Today, for three different sets of reasons, the rest of you have at this point got hitogoroshi as one of your top two candidates for town. That's a bit of a surprising change, perhaps especially given that it's the opposite of what hitogoroshi laid down as the scum plan yesterday. I believe (and believed yesterday as well) that "The Mechanic" being as dependent as it was on Albert B. Rampage driving it was a stretch that failed to take Albert B. Rampages play into account but get rid of the details and the overall scum route he was describing, planned or not, made pretty reasonable sense if hitogoroshi was town.

If hitogoroshi is town then scum have decided to pass on directly trying to get him lynched after his levels of suspicion yesterday. The pressure is gone. In addition, the last two night kills of Sando and Albert B. Rampage took out the two players most vocal about hitogoroshi still being likely to be scum if SerialClergyman flipped town. Debonair Danny DiPietro has said today that the scum needed to kill masons during those nights and it largely went without comment (hitogoroshi echoed a similar thought about needing to take it into account when explaining why Vi and I are still alive) but that's really not strictly speaking true. All the scum need to win the game is enough mislynches; it doesn't matter whether the masons are still alive or not.

If Albert B. Rampage or Sando would be unkillable as masons but still likely to cast a vote to lynch a town hitogoroshi then scum would have a real reason to consider keeping them alive. I think that everyone in this game should be good enough to put that together though I've been known to overestimate the way people handle these decisions in the past (e.g. Tofu Mafia where Elmo still claims that if he were scum he would have made the same kill Vi did as scum in conversations I've had via PM with him long after the game was over.)

If I assume that scum are competent (which I do) then I've got to assume that they had some idea of what they'd be trying to do to get a mislynch either today or tomorrow. For that to have happened with a town hitogoroshi they had to have had some alternate to hitogoroshi that would be at least in the ballpark for feasibility or they had to be convinced that everyone else would have be swayed by hitogoroshi's play yesterday. It took me a fair amount longer than it should have to figure out what that might be. Most of that has to do with the pace the game's been moving at today (I didn't realize that this was something I needed to investigate too closely until somewhat recently.) I asked if Vi had any particular reason that they should be the last to give their opinions today because I think that everyone should at least consider similar motivations to hold back in a situation like this if they're town. Scum should have a different set of motivations but the result is the sort of game that lead to a deadline that we got here.

If hitogoroshi is town and the scum have decided not to push his mislynch then the easiest path to victory that I can see is for them to both come out and say that he's town now and try to get a mislynch on either of the other two players if they then became the dissenting voice saying that they still thought hitogoroshi was likely to be scum. If both of the other townies were leaning that way then they could still be eased into a hitogoroshi mislynch but this adds a bit more flexibility. If neither of the other players was still aiming for hitogoroshi I assume they'd have some backup plan (and at this point I guess I think that it would be going after me though my inactivity today could just have combined nicely with my play from previous days to make that an opportune way to go on the fly.) For that to work they'd have to have been pretty sure about who the masons were as either Sando or more likely Albert B. Rampage would probably have been tempting candidates for the fall guy position if they weren't masons.

Of course, the other explanation for the position that we're in is that hitogoroshi is scum and his partner isn't going for the bus today but is rather trying to get someone else lynched for the win right away. If that's true then scum are benefiting from two townies who have made a move in suspicions that helps them and we don't have to make the same assumptions about the scum knowing who the masons are. It's WIFOM to bring it up but given the way night kills are treated in today's game at mafia scum hitogoroshi almost certainly had the most to gain from the kills that were made if we take certainty in mason identity on the scum's part out of the equation.

The key then is to take a look at what everyone has done in terms of transitioning their views from hitogoroshi as scum to hitogoroshi as town since the peak of the hitogoroshi suspicion. If hitogoroshi is town then there should be two players who have gone from suspecting him to not suspecting him in a convenient manner. If hitogoroshi is scum then it's just his partner who would be disingenuous (and then just at the second step in the process.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

So taking a look at the changes in position on hitogoroshi in order the clear first is Vi who did it back on day three. Vi gave a number of reasons at the time and has been kind enough to summarize them today. So far as I can tell no one else in the game outside of hitogoroshi and SerialClergyman was convinced by them at the time but based on Vi's question to me (why was I still voting for hitogoroshi) there was an expectation that others should be.

I guess that evaluating how genuine Vi is mostly boils down to what you're willing to think Vi will expect scum to do. I'm not that impressed by the apparently mind-changing town tells that Vi was seeing.

I don't think that scum would be any less likely than town to provide new evidence of their scum meta if they didn't think that it matched with what they were doing in the game in which they were sharing. Scum under pressure should be eager to point to confirmed scum play where they weren't acting the same way. Perhaps Vi thinks that they play is similar but that doesn't seem to be likely given what's been said.

I think that the likelihood of scum calling for their own lynch in a situation like the one hitogoroshi was in is a bit more up in the air than either Vi or VP Baltar. If hitogoroshi is scum and felt that he was likely to be the lynch the way things were going (which isn't out of the question at all; momentum for SerialClergyman and hitogoroshi was back and forth a bit) then saying that he'd rather be the lynch as a means to get out of that isn't a terrible plan at all. If things are lost anyhow there's no reason not to try a new approach. My thoughts on the issue run along the lines of what Debonair Danny DiPietro said in Post 1117.

His statement such as, "This is more or less a death sentence for me." really bother me because it's basically a call for people to lynch him for such a statement or completely get off his wagon. I guess it makes most sense for me as scum backed up in a corner where he's lynched quickly and left a mess on the table for the last days or he gets his wagoned as derailed. As town I don't think I'd ever cut such a bargain because I always think I can shift votes off me; the truth is a powerful thing.

I don't think that "The Mechanism" is something that I expect town to come up with. As I said last post I can see a general scum plan involving trying to mislynch both hitogoroshi and SerialClergyman in quick succession but getting to it from Albert B. Rampage's action is way too specific. In the position he was in (under a fair amount of suspicion) I don't see a reason to think that as town he would latch onto one particular chain of events and stake the game on it (with the whole I'm not worried about a mislynch of Albert B. Rampage deal.) My take was much more a last ditch attempt as scum to throw some suspicion back at Albert B. Rampage but I do have to admit that that's colored by the fact that I didn't think Albert B. Rampage was scum and I expect him to do just the sort of attention hopping that hitogoroshi was taking to be scummy when he's town.

I really don't see a reason to think that hitogoroshi wouldn't make the sort of post that he made about the state of the game (and not being worried about being lynched if SerialClergyman came up scum in particular) in 1062. I go back to the idea that if scum senses that they're next in line for the gallows it's absolutely reasonable for them to be willing to offer to put their own neck in and claim they no longer care about their own welfare. At that point in the game (unless it's a LyLo situation) anything they can do to change the overall mood should help them and they really don't have anything to lose.

Basically, Vi seems to be assuming that scum will always fight their own lynch with all the tools that they've got rather than trying to subvert the mood of the game by making a change and being willing to go along with it. I know that as scum that's not true for me. Especially when I've still got a partner left there are going to be times when I'm going to go along with being the lynch in a non-LyLo situation as scum just because I hope that the town will take my apparent sincerity at face value. In fact, that's almost exactly what I ended up trying to do in Vi's latest mini, Mafia Reverberation when the town put the Mighty Orbots hydra in a position where my lynch was almost a given.

Either that or Vi got enough out of hitogoroshi's play this game and in the one scum game that we have to look at to assume that there's enough of a lack of sophistication to warrant making that sort of assumption. I'm actually a bit up in the air on that. On the one hand I do see enough general game awareness on hitogoroshi's part to think that he'd be up to that sort of play in a pressure spot. On the other hand "The Mechanism" and his take on what the scum would have been doing in terms of mason hunting seem less subtle. The trouble is that the places where he's showing a lack of sophistication are pretty much exactly the places where he'd be faking it if he were sophisticated scum. Vi seems somewhat blind to that (though perhaps everyone else has been as well.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

VP Baltar and Debonair Danny DiPietro are easier transitions to look at for fairly different reasons. Both of them happened on day five with VP Baltar's being both less extreme and earlier.

Basically VP Baltar still has trouble with "The Mechanism" as well as a fair amount of the earlier play and the interactions with xRECKONERx in particular. He seems to agree with Vi that calling for his own lynch would be a less obvious play (given the effort expended) than trying to get the other major wagon lynched if hitogoroshi was backed into a corner. He also seems to be somewhat swayed by the provided meta.

I've just talked about what I don't like about hitogoroshi's play already so there's no huge reason to go over it again. The difference here is the degree to which the change is made. Where Vi (and Debonair Danny DiPietro though I haven't talked about him yet) have at this point apparently largely written off the idea that hitogoroshi is scum VP Baltar is being much more cautious about his reads. Vi seems to think that's a bad thing but I'm inclined to think it's the way town should be going. There's something to be said for deciding that you don't need to seriously consider one of the players on a given day as scum because the scum are more likely to be found among the others (and everyone this game including myself seems largely to be doing that) but town is much better off if they aren't writing anyone off as obvtown.

Of all the positions that are being taken by the rest of you in the game regarding hitogoroshi VP Baltar's easily feels like the most natural to me.

That leaves Debonair Danny DiPietro. While Vi was apparently convinced earlier than anyone else that hitogoroshi had to be scum Debonair Danny DiPietro's change in opinion seems to have come much later and more abruptly. The only cases that we really got on Day Three from Debonair Danny DiPietro came in Post 1093 and Post 1117. While there are points that I agree were scummy about hitogoroshi's play there definitely isn't any sort of mention of connections to the play of others. Today for the reason Debonair Danny DiPietro has hitogoroshi last on his list of suspects we get Post 1234 which rules out hitogoroshi as scum purely on the grounds of connections without addressing any of the points that Debonair Danny DiPietro found scummy earlier.

Debonair Danny DiPietro was the last player in the game to take a stance on which of SerialClergyman or hitogoroshi was more likely to be scum day three (and apparently those were the two he was looking at if we're to believe what he said in Post 961.) In fact, he was late enough in the process that by the time his vote was cast it's likely that it no longer mattered. At that point I was the only other player voting for hitogoroshi and I don't think that anyone else ever looked at that wagon again. To take that stance that late in the process, to be as apparently uninterested in any other lynches for the day after the Albert B. Rampage silliness and then to abandon it without giving anything other than connections as a reason as quickly as he has today (well, after giving people plenty of time to express their opinions though he's in no way alone in that) is certainly noteworthy.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

What I'm looking at then in terms of scum teams is most likely one of the following:

hitogoroshi was scum backed into a corner day three and came up with "The Mechanism". Vi as scum partner (who had expressed dislike of hitogoroshi's play but never cast a vote that way) jumps on that as a possible alternative to one of them and moves from SerialClergyman to VP Baltar (though really this is anyone who's not scum in this scenario.)

hitogoroshi was scum backed into a corner day three and came up with "The Mechanism" which targets Albert B. Rampage in particular. Debonair Danny DiPietro who's previous vote had been on Albert B. Rampage but who had avoid committing to the hitogoroshi/SerialClergyman options waits until his vote doesn't matter and then casts it for hitogoroshi saying that he doesn't support the SerialClergyman one.

hitogoroshi was town backed into a corner day three and came up with "The Mechanism" as the only means he could to explain what he saw happening the game. Vi, jumped on this as an opportunity to try to get a lynch on some other townie (there's no move towards suspicion of Debonair Danny DiPietro) while leaving two townies with high levels of suspicion who have claimed not to be masons alive and Debonair Danny DiPietro waits to commit to one of the two till it's fairly clear which way the lynch will go (and conveniently picks hitogoroshi wagon which won't happen at that point.)

If either of the first two pairs are the case then the night kills are likely to be as much protection of hitogoroshi as they are mason hunting. If the last pair is the case then they had to be fairly sure about who the masons were and they had to decide that they were more likely to be able to frame someone else than they were to get the hitogoroshi lynch today.

If Debonair Danny DiPietro and Vi are the scum then it's actually pretty easy to see them knowing who the masons were after the Ojanen kill. VP Baltar and hitogoroshi were reasonably easy to rule out based on their interactions with Ojanen. SerialClergyman and I were probably obvious enough that we were looking for masons that we would be reasonable to rule out (though I like to think that I would have done about the same thing in terms of actions had I actually been a mason I don't expect that the rest of you would have assumed that.) That just leaves Albert B. Rampage and Sando.

If you pair either of the two of them with hitogoroshi it's still fairly easy to see where the scum team might look after day three. Vi and Sando were clearly not mason partners. Debonair Danny DiPietro and Albert B. Rampage were clearly not mason partners. Either scum team would probably just have been considering one major uncertainty when looking at masons. The Debonair Danny DiPietro team would have cleared that up the first night, the Vi team would have cleared it up the second.

I think that of those three the most likely pairings are probably Debonair Danny DiPietro/hitogoroshi, Debonair Danny DiPietro/Vi and then hitogoroshi/Vi.

I don't buy Vi's case for clearing hitogoroshi but it's not unreasonable to think that Vi does. I'm much less convinced by Debonair Danny DiPietro's case on hitogoroshi. I'm torn about how sophisticated a game hitogoroshi should be playing but on the whole I guess I think that he's playing dumb when he's making the posts like the one's at the start of the day when he seems to be assuming that either the scum didn't have any leads on the masons or they had them completely figured out.

@VP Baltar, I see that you've posted while I was posting this. To answer your earlier question to me from a previous post explicitly I think that I'd take a Debonair Danny DiPietro lynch over a Vi lynch at this point. More generally my current lynch preference would be Debonair Danny DiPietro, hitogoroshi, Vi, VP Baltar.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

So I do have to admit that my reads at the end of that last post are somewhat influenced by how people are choosing to approach my play today.

I don't think that it's that valuable for me to repeat the reasons that I suspect someone most of the time. Day one I've got no problem admitting that my reasons for wanting to lynch charlatan came after my vote had been cast. The initial vote was because I needed someplace to cast it and it was my conversation with charlatan after that which convinced me that I'd found a reasonable spot. At the end of that conversation charlatan said that he wasn't interested in discussing it anymore and I took him on his word. I didn't see any reason beyond that to think that he was more likely to be town and so I left my vote there for the rest of the day. As I said towards the end of the day, had I thought there was a good wagon forming on xRECKONERx I would have moved my vote there. As it was I was voting for reasons I was happy enough with for day one.

Day two I should have been around more. I cast my vote for the person I thought was scummiest based on his day one actions at the start of the day and then I didn't see a need to change it. In that case happily I was right about my suspicions.

Day three I was pretty sure that none of hitogoroshi, SerialClergyman or VP Baltar could be masons and I was pretty sure that the scum would have been able to see that as well. Further I thought that there were reasonable cases to be made for both hitogoroshi and SerialClergyman being scum in addition to thinking that VP Baltar was probably town. I made my cases and voted for the stronger one. Everyone else in the town had a decent chance of being a mason so there was no great reason to draw attention to who among them I thought was more likely to be scum. Nothing that happened during the day made me want to change my mind (I did ask both of them questions to see what they were trying to accomplish and failed to see great town motives or planning from either of them) and so I stuck with my vote. When I did drop the hammer on SerialClergyman it was fairly clear that the hitogoroshi lynch I preferred wasn't likely to happen and so I was happy with lynching my second guess for scum.

Debonair Danny DiPietro's listing me near the top of his suspicions isn't out of character with what he's said about me in the past. He's light on opinions on the whole but he did say that if hitogoroshi and SerialClergyman weren't partners I'd be one of the first that he'd be looking at. The "terribad" description of my day three play in particular sticks out. That he joined me in voting for hitogoroshi (but in a much more opportunistic way) and avoided the SerialClergyman wagon but is now trying to make an issue of not having been on town wagons despite thinking that hitogoroshi should be town is a neat move.

hitogoroshi's somewhat fluid opinion of me is cause for some concern. Today I've gone from being unlikely scum due to the timing of my case on xRECKONERx (and apparently that's the only thing to really like about my play) to being a pretty good choice for a lynch if there's not a reason to think that Debonair Danny DiPietro and VP Baltar are scum together. Vi seems to be ruled out because Vi agrees with him and Albert B. Rampage was convinced that Vi was town which aren't reasons that would convince me not to worry about a player but so be it.

Vi, of all the players in the game, has probably been the one cutting me the least slack as we've gone along. The other suspicions today seem a bit more recent but Vi has at least been consistently questioning and prodding since day one. While I might not agree with his conclusions I can see where he's coming from.

VP Baltar thinks that I make a decent partner with Debonair Danny DiPietro based on a bus of xRECKONERx. Given that scum should bus completely if they're going to I can buy town considering that. It also feels like he's been doing the most to actually look at everyone still in the game from as objective a position as possible.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@hitogoroshi, why couldn't Debonair Danny DiPietro simply not have had a chance to get to the game since I made my posts? It's not as though there's been a huge explosion of content from anyone since I got my thoughts out there. Speaking from personal experience this game I can say that there are certainly times when I've been away from the game that have nothing at all to do with the game itself. Why assume that couldn't be the case for Debonair Danny DiPietro during this relatively short stretch of time?

@Vi, I certainly could have changed my day two vote when I was looking over the game leading up to my Post 750 but there was no reason for me to make a change then. Past that I was largely too busy to have made any sort of informed vote changes as I wasn't caught up with the thread.

No matter how strong somene's town read on another player might be they shouldn't be written off or we get things like Elmo's play at the end of Tofu Mafia or yellowbunny's play in Newbie Game 749. I've been on both sides of obvtown reads going badly for the town and they're just not worth it. Certainly you don't throw out all the evidence that you've got when you get to a 5 player or 3 player LyLo but especially when there's just one scum left you need to do exactly what you've described and look to see why it is that you're alive in that endgame situation. I had that turn out well for me recently in Newbie Game 871 where Patrick, despite seeming much more obviously the town member with me in LyLo ended up being the scum.

At this point though, given the fact that even if my read is wrong he can't be the only scum left in the game, I think that the chances of VP Baltar being scum are low enough based on everything that I've seen from his play that it's not worth worrying about him just now. As you say there does need to be some narrowing down of people that you're willing to lynch. I'm not sure quite what you're getting at with being willing to lynch someone vs. saying that you're not sure who scum is but that one person needs to be the most likely. Town clearly have to do the first if they've got any chance of scum getting lynched. They should also clearly be doing the second as the way to get to the first.

Do you think that having two of the other players off the table rather than one is the better move for the townies? Do you think that I (or others) have done too little to eliminate options or take a stance on how likely everyone else is to be scum?

Also, on an unrelated note, do you have any reaction to hitogoroshi having finished Mini 922 as scum and not bringing that to our attention in the thread quickly as a means to double the scum meta we would have to work with for him? Personally I don't think it's relevant on it's own; I've glanced at the game and I don't think that his play there is particularly similar to his play here and I don't think that sort of reporting is valuable as an alignment tell anyhow but you apparently felt it was a good thing for him to have done with his other game.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Vi, my vote was on xRECKONERx when I made post 750 which should convey some thoughts about him reasonably well. Had I wanted to say new things about him I would have but there wasn't a huge reason to. Nothing he had done recently changed the reasons that I suspected him. What would you expect me to have said about him there?

I'm not sure quite what you're getting at with

not

being willing to lynch someone vs. saying that you're not sure who scum is but that one person needs to be the most likely. Town clearly have to do the first if they've got any chance of scum getting lynched. They should also clearly be doing the second as the way to get to the first.

You would have less trouble if the operative word was thrown in.~

No, that doesn't particularly help clear things up. You were pretty clearly saying that being willing to lynch someone was directly opposed to saying that you're not sure who scum is but having being willing to give a top suspect (unless this wasn't what you're trying to say here?):

There's something to be said for deliberately keeping all of your options open, but eventually you DO have to decide that you're least willing to lynch

someone

(as opposed to "Iunno which of you is scum but this person seems most likely") (unless you're scum, in which case keeping your options open is a great idea).

You don't seem to have answered my question about whether you think I (or others) have been doing too little to eliminate options or take a stance on how likely everyone is to be scum. I'm getting implications from your posts that you do think that's the case but I'd like to hear who you think is and isn't doing that reasonably as of now.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Vi, how often do you think that someone on a wagon needs to confirm why they're on the wagon for it to be reasonable? I'm pretty comfortable with the fact that I used Post 750 to talk about why I didn't like the Albert B. Rampage wagon that had popped up, what I thought had changed since I'd had a chance to post last and saying that the xRECKONERx lynch was still the one I thought we should make.

I do see now that I was putting the extra at into what you were saying in the willingness to lynch topic. I can also now see how you're trying to tie it together with the thought that VP Baltar hasn't said that he's ruled anyone completely out of consideration today. Given that understanding I think that you're reaching a bit with the concern that you're giving. I think it's fairly clear that VP Baltar is giving a town read to hitogoroshi and isn't that interested in lynching him now and that not having a strong town read on anyone in the game at this time isn't that unreasonable.

On the whole I like that attitude more than double clearing you seem to have done. I've talked about your stated views on hitogoroshi; I don't agree with parts of your reasoning but I can live with that. I'm still a little less clear on why you think that Debonair Danny DiPietro is town. You've talked with VP Baltar about it some today and as far as I can tell you don't like some of the play but you think that if he was scum he'd have to have been setting up the play that he's been using since day two at the latest.

Why is it that he couldn't be scum mostly coasting through the game with no huge plan outside an xRECKONERx bus and then simply not participating much during days beyond that because it was working? Perhaps I've got the basis for your read wrong but I'm not really seeing all that much you think he's done other than being on the right wagons that makes him seem town to you.

You've talked about my theory that we've got a sophisticated scum team and it seems that you think I'm trying to foist something on the town with it. Do you think that I'm wrong in thinking that the scum are probably fairly sophisticated? We've got a fairly deliberate town town in this game and I really do think that the change in attitude towards hitogoroshi needs to have some planning if it's going to be explained. The only things that make sense to me are that hitogoroshi played a good, sophisticated game as scum day three or he's town and the scum have both set him up as a good candidate for a mislynch as well as not doing anything to pursue that mislynch. I'm happy to hear other explanations but I simply don't see a heavy handed scum team getting to the position we're in as a game now.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@hitogoroshi, I can understand the sentiment regarding Debonair Danny DiPietro. What throws me off was the language you were using. Seeing no way that he could be town given that reaction is strong especially in the context of a game in which we have had multiple stretches where Debonair Danny DiPietro has been absent and that hadn't had the same effect on your position earlier given that this shouldn't be all that unexpected.

Having said that,

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, you do need to get in here and share some thoughts. Using my being a day late on giving analysis as an excuse to hold back on anything yourself with your last post is a fairly weak. If you think that I'm the best candidate for scum then you shouldn't be particularly eager to help me hold up a game by not contributing until I do should you?

Why don't you think that a Vi, hitogoroshi scum team is likely? What was I missing when I listed it as an option?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, your characterization of day three really doesn't match what actually happened there. You most certainly did hold off on your vote until SerialClergyman was the most likely lynch; VP Baltar and Sando had gone through their arguments and had both largely settled there, Vi and hitogoroshi were both pretty clearly not going to move to hitogoroshi at that time and the only other vote that might have gone back that way was really Albert B. Rampage. I said at the start of the day that the best lynches were hitogoroshi and SerialClergyman, the fact that I didn't move my vote prior the hammer doesn't do anything to make my move at the end any sort of surprise. Clearly the most likely lynch to happen by the time you cast your vote was SerialClergyman and you cast it in a way that very conveniently kept you off another mislynch. If you're scum with hitogoroshi it was a good move that probably wouldn't get a team mate mislynched (though even if it did you'd look even better going forward) and if you're scum with anyone else it simply served to keep your record spotless.

You're saying that scum would be less safe leaving confirmed town in the game than anything else they could have done because non-mason kills would cause us to explore the reasons that the night kills were made and track back to critical information. Regardless of who the kills were we should be looking back at the motives and trying to find that information. The idea that mason's being killed would avoid that for scum in some way makes no sense. You also seem to be assuming that the scum must have been fairly sure who the masons were which I can see for some scum teams (most easily you and Vi) but which in general is a bit of a stretch based on the information that I could see when looking over that myself. Scum wouldn't have needed a quick lynch to get a mislynch from a living mason; if Sando or Albert B. Rampage were likely to provide one leaving them alive would have been the right move for scum to make.

A particularly nice touch in your argument here is that you've tried to set this up as a ploy on my part for me having an excuse to vote for you after you cast a vote for me. Unless I get hammered by a scum team that you're letting win here of course I should be voting for you if you leave a vote on me. I'll see what you do here and what the other players choose to add at this point but I'm in no hurry to cast a vote when I think that there's still discussion that should still happen and there's a chance that you're town and will avoid an immediate loss by removing that vote (it's unlikely but I've certainly seen town play scummy end games before.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@hitogoroshi, so looking back I'm having trouble figuring out exactly why you think Vi is so likely to be town. If you're not scum then my best bet for the scum team is Debonair Danny DiPietro and Vi. Is there anything other than agreeing with you and SerialClergyman yesterday and Albert B. Rampage's thinking that he's town that stands out as town play from him for you?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, wait a minute. Are you actually trying to say that you thought that the VP Baltar lynch was anywhere near as likely as either the hitogoroshi or SerialClergyman wagons? That's just not particularly believable at all. We were looking at a choice that was almost certainly going to be between the other two. You delayed throwing a hat in the ring until after things were largely settled in a way that was going to keep you off the lynch. Now you're trying to use the fact that my top two choices for lynches that day (from the start of the day) were the two options that it came down to against me by saying that I opportunisticly went with the SerialClergyman vote just because it would be a lynch. When I changed my vote it was because SerialClergyman was a reasonable lynch, and there had been what felt like enough discussion to be able to make informed decisions as we went forward. I did think that hitogoroshi was a bit better in terms of a lynch but I spent time that day asking questions designed to see if SerialClergyman or hitogoroshi were displaying the sort of reasoning that should change my mind. Neither of them were. I certainly had no problem settling for my number two choice in that situation.

As far as Albert B. Rampage and Sando go even if the scum were sure they were the masons they didn't have to be sure that they wouldn't consider other options to make them possibilities to leave alive. Certainly they're going to consider other options, anyone would. The scum just had to think that they'd be reasonably likely to end up hitting town after they did their considering. Insisting both that the only thing it makes sense for scum to do is take out masons and that they had figured out who the masons were makes no sense. That seems to be the position that you're taking here. For all I know you're right about the assertion and the kills were just made because the scum had the mason's nailed. That doesn't mean that we should be assuming that's how it went down. Confirmed town are not always the best lynch and this is a situation where that's got a real possibility of being the case.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, certainly saying that one of two players is going to be the one lynched doesn't make it true. Who's arguing that it is? You're right that you didn't support the VP Baltar wagon. That is part of the reason that the wagon wasn't viable but even with your support there's no reason to think that it was going anywhere. In any case, none of that changes the fact that you came in late in the day to join the hitogoroshi wagon at a time when doing so probably lead to the SerialClergyman wagon happening in a way that let you point back at yet another mislynch you weren't on.

Have you looked at the context in which Vi was asking why my vote was still on hitogoroshi just after making their case that hitogoroshi wasn't scum. It's a case that I didn't agree with. I took the question to mean why was I still voting for hitogoroshi when he wasn't scum to which my response was that I did still find him the most likely to be scum. Do you think that I hadn't expressed suspicion of SerialClergyman prior to that?

As for scum not necessarily killing confirmed townies you're welcome to ask Vi what his kill at the end of Tofu Mafia should have been. Given what he's had to say about it in that thread I'd be surprised if his answer was the confirmed townie. I think that you should be a good enough player to realize that there are times when it's not the best move to make. Players can pivot on you from not suspecting you to advocating your lynch regardless of whether there are confirmed town in the game and there are definitely times when you're better off leaving them around over the other choices.

Having said that, hitogoroshi being scum doesn't necessitate he and his partner not wanting to kill the masons at all. Sando and Albert B. Rampage were both masons as well players who were on his case had him high on their list of suspects regardless of SerialClergyman's flip. They would be great kills for him to make and he'd have the mason hunting as a screen for anything else. I was bringing up the possibility of not killing the masons as something that a scum team that didn't include him should have been considering if they were looking for the ideal play for today. The stance your working with now might mean that I was being overly generous.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, you don't worry, you've done a fine job of pretty much removing any doubt I might have had that you're scum. Where you say I've simply disagreed with you I've actually been pointing out what's wrong with the arguments that you're using. If you were town you should be somewhat interested in hearing why what you're trying to say might be wrong here but instead you've just been interested in trying to twist things into a case against me. You didn't cast your vote with any interest in being convinced to change it, you cast it because you were ready to commit to trying to get my lynched.

You're are right that I'm interested in the rest of the game seeing how this discussion has gone. It's LyLo and I will need to convince them that you're not making sincere arguments because I can't afford to be a mislynch.

On the other hand, I haven't got an great reason to hurry a vote at this point. The reactions from the other players at this stage should be valuable for tomorrow assuming we make it to then. I'm certainly capable of thinking that you must be scum without needing to cast a vote. Town controls the pace of the game today and there's still at least some left that needs to be played out. When I think that's happened I'll be there with my vote.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Vi, what is it that you dislike about me not talking much about my votes after I cast them exactly? I'm not usually interested in trying to persuade people to make certain lynches until late in the game. I cast my votes for where I think they make sense and then unless that changes I leave them there. This game the vote on charlatan was weak but my discussion with him following that convinced me it was a reasonable place for it to stay. Day two I wasn't around to do much talking at all. Day three I spent my time mostly talking to and about my top suspects. I'm more interested in seeing the reasons that others have for casting votes (and objecting when I think they're being cast poorly) at those stages of the game than reiterating the reasons I have to place my vote.

As for Debonair Danny DiPietro, no, there's no specific silver bullet for me to share with you so far as he goes. The shape of the game now left him as my top suspect like I went over last page. His vote for me and then the nature of our discussion this page certainly have me convinced that he's scum but unless you agree that's he's trying to spin what happened day three in a way that serves simply to attack rather than with any open mind to my alignment (and apparently you don't given how you've opened your last post) that doesn't do it. I can point out his overall detached play, the lack of cases that he's made in general throughout the game, his late attack at the end of day three yesterday, his convenient change of position on hitogoroshi from reasons that involved no pairs at all for guilt to entirely connection based reasons for innocence and the recent insistence that the only explanation for the night kills is mason hunting among other things as reasons that I don't like his play but there's no one thing that would clearly indicate that he's scum on it's own.

Up until Albert B. Rampage was killed I thought there was a fair chance that Debonair Danny DiPietro was a mason. I had it narrowed down to one of he and Albert B. Rampage towards the end (though they pretty clearly couldn't be masons together.) I gave my talk about him day three as a last screen about how I'd been treating him (not wanting to talk about him prior to that) and in fact at the very end of the day I thought that it was a bit more likely that it was in fact him that had the role. Albert B. Rampage seemed to be fishing for a night kill by insinuating that he was on to something he wasn't sharing which I've done multiple times in the past as a vanilla townie trying to draw a night kill. Debonair Danny DiPietro being a mason trying not to draw attention via any sort of impressive scum hunting prior to endgame and then using his confirmed status as a mason seemed like it would be valuable. Without that mason possibility I have a lot more trouble liking his play before today.

You didn't answer my previous question to you long those lines. What is it that you like about his play specifically other than the fact that he's been off the mislynches and on the scum lynch?

Also, I can think of a reason that I'd want to have my vote on Debonair Danny DiPietro right away as scum in this situation (that would give any partner other than him a chance to easily quick hammer if someone else voted with me) but I can't really think of a reason that it would benefit me to do so as town. As you say, there's no real danger of town quick hammering and further, if I'm completely wrong and he really is town somehow then we've lost anyhow as it's just a matter of scum getting coordinate a lynch on me. Why should I want to cast a vote quickly here though? Does it hurt to leave it off in some way? From what you know of my play do you expect me to cast a vote quickly in this situation?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@hitogoroshi, should I take it from your last post that you're not opposed to Vi on a scum team anymore? Is it just that Debonair Danny DiPietro and I are now so clearly opposed that's caused that or is there anything else that you're not mentioning?

It's interesting that you've spent today focused almost entirely on possible scum teams. I don't think that it's a bad place to look and I did largely try to figure out who I should be looking at and why based on what scum teams might make sense from my perspective. I'm a bit surprised that you're doing that mostly to the exclusion of looking at individuals as potential scum (the major exceptions seem to be Vi up until your last post, your comments on my likelihood of being scum on my own and some dislike of Debonair Danny DiPietro's play) and that you haven't said anything about trying to use connections with the one confirmed scum that we have in the game, xRECKONERx. Do you think that you're more likely to find the remaining scum pair just looking at connections among those that are still alive then you are to find a single member of the scum team by looking at their overall game play? Do you think that connections between currently living members are more important than those between people who are alive and the confirmed scum/town/masons who are dead?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@hitogoroshi, I've been drinking pretty heavily tonight but so far as I can tell from the pair analysis you're doing everything that you found in the first section you did (looking at how people reacted after I expressed suspicion of xRECKONERx) that you're using as a point against them being my partner could also be used as a point against them being Debonair Danny DiPietro's partner as well. As you noted, he was on the xRECKONERx case even before I was. That's actually been something VP Baltar has brought up previously (I'm thinking the beginning of the day today offhand) which I'd think you should be aware of prior to that last post.

I'm all for you looking through pairs of partners but I also want you to come to conclusions in the process. If you're going to argue that pairs are the way to go then you have to be able to get results from looking at them more than you would individuals. Right now it feels like you're wasting time.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Vi, my job is as a townie is to try to lynch scum. I happen to know that this doesn't mean lynching who I think is scum as I've been known to be particularly wrong often when I'm town. As such I cast my vote where I think it's most likely to hit scum and then see what others do with their suspicions. As the game goes on my chances of gaining the information that I need to make the right choices increases.

My top suspects day three were hitogoroshi and SerialClergyman. Do you think that I didn't spend the day talking mostly to and about them? If so why did we have the following exchange?

Troll: Would you like to talk about someone other than hito or SerialClergyman?

@Vi, I'm not hugely interested in talking with people other than hitogoroshi and SerialClergyman at this point, no. Seeing what everyone else has to say about them is satisfying at this point and I'm most interested in seeing, among other things most easily accomplished by talking to them in particular, if there's some reason that I should stop suspecting them.

I have played with Debonair Danny DiPietro once before. He was the cop in the newbie game we were in together. His detachment there ended before the first day ended.

Why is Debonair Danny DiPietro being on all the lynches and off the mislynches a strong town tell when he'd have the ability to do the that easily as scum? As town it takes work but as scum he's got the inside information to manage it without any scum hunting. If that's your only reason to think that he should be town then color me unimpressed.

Do you think that discussion today should be coming to an end? If there's a good one then it's probably time for me to vote. If not then I continue not to be in a hurry. Is there some reason that you'd rather have me casting a vote here?

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, did you think that I wasn't willing to vote for SerialClergyman at the time? Why would you expect me to hunker down and not be willing to make that change?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, I said at the start of the day that they were two best lynches. hitogoroshi was my first choice and I stayed with it until there was a reason to think that it wasn't going to happen but my second choice was. Did you even look at my last explanation about my response to Vi's question?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, no, I mean this:

Have you looked at the context in which Vi was asking why my vote was still on hitogoroshi just after making their case that hitogoroshi wasn't scum. It's a case that I didn't agree with. I took the question to mean why was I still voting for hitogoroshi when he wasn't scum to which my response was that I did still find him the most likely to be scum. Do you think that I hadn't expressed suspicion of SerialClergyman prior to that?

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, why should I only be willing to be part of my top choice for a lynch in an 8 player game with two scum? Yes, hitogoroshi was my first choice. I thought he would have been a better lynch than SerialClergyman at the time. That doesn't mean that I thought the SerialClergyman lynch was a bad one. He was my clear second choice and I didn't think it was a bad option at all. Why would I need to move my vote around to apply pressure to him for that to be true? You're still trying to spin my play yesterday in a way that didn't happen and doesn't make sense.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Vi, the not trying to convince others that I'm right after my vote probably shouldn't be that surprising to you. Here's what I had to say on the issue back in Tofu Mafia. I could dig up other games where I've said that was how I play my games as town as well if you like (I recall it being an issue getting people to believe it in /in-vitational 2) but this is one that you would have seen first hand (this was just the first place I found it in the game in a fairly casual search for a few key words; it wouldn't be surprising if it came up more than once.)

As for leading a lynch, Elmo's view be interesting. Troll knows that when Troll votes Troll typically no follows that up with an attempt to get the one Troll has voted for lynched. This game alone be replete with examples of Troll incorrectly voting for town. Troll no assumes that Troll must be right in Troll's votes and most of the time be more interested in seeing how others will react to what Troll has found worth voting than trying to push it on others. It could be that a vote means more for Elmo means it does for Troll (and actually day two of this game might well indicate that be the case) but this view of voting strikes Troll as overly cautious offhand.

I'm glad that you're going to take another look at Debonair Danny DiPietro now but I'm still puzzled as to why it was that you've taken so long to think it was worth doing. I assume that when you're talking about town vs. scum staying off all the lynches you mean staying off all the mislynches but potentially being on the scum lynches. I'm baffled that you think that was a strong enough town tell before looking that up to use it as such a major part of your argument.

@hitogoroshi, I had hoped that you would find the time to get that post in this evening that it sounded like you thought you would. Clearly I'm in no position to chide anyone for missing the deadlines they set for themselves but I feel that you're taking a path towards scum hunting which is inherently more time consuming than looking for individual scum. It would be reassuring to see progress at this point.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

At this point I've seen the stances that I wanted to make sure that I would. I don't expect that I'll be around come day six but if I am I see the paths that people are taking to the end of today which is what I needed. I'll have some things to say tomorrow but tonight it's late. For now it's just time to

Vote: Debonair Danny DiPietro

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Vi, I stated most of my case that xRECKONERx was scummy day one rather than day two. It's back in Post 531 and Post 543, my last two posts of the day. You've said that you think my not talking about xRECKONERx day two is scummy but I just wasn't there to do much talking. I voted for him at the start because he was the best case we had and then the other post of interest I was able to make I got my other major thoughts about the game in. Post 531 is incidentally the post Debonair Danny DiPietro is saying that I deemed 4 lynches outside my first three choices either good or acceptable. What I said there was that I'd be willing to consider Sando or Ojanen and to a much lesser degree you or Albert B. Rampage, yet another fine example of the spin he's trying to work here. It's also where I talk about PorkchopExpress as a potential list. I put him at number three but say that I'm not planning on joining his wagon wagon at the time. I didn't have anything to like about his play so I wasn't going to oppose his lynch but I wasn't interested in working for it (something with Albert B. Rampage seemed particularly interested in my doing.) I was also pretty clear in that post that if there was movement towards an xRECKONERx lynch (there wasn't a major move at that time) then it was an alternative to the charlatan lynch which I would have some interest in.

As for my meta and how much I dig my heels in over lynching a particular person, the only time that you really would have seen that happen outside of the day in Tofu Mafia where Ectomancer opened the day voting for me and showed that he had to be scum would be the day that I was as stuck on DrippingGoofball as I was because I thought I'd caught her in a scum revealing lie. It turns out she was a townie making a mistake but it takes something strong for me to insist on a single lynch being where I'd put my vote as town. I think that I'm actually a bit more likely to do it as scum (how I dealt with Rhinox, a scum buddy, in your recent Mafia Reverberation game, for example.) What's particularly telling here though is that Debonair Danny DiPietro has been in exactly one game with me, Newbie Game 866. In that game I was town and was killed the first night. On the first day I ruled out a number of players that I was interested in lynching and I spent a good deal of effort pointing out what I didn't like about arguments people were making but I don't believe that I said anywhere that I was committed to lynching the player that I was voting for near the end nor can it at all truthfully said be said that I fought for their lynch.

By framing this as a debate contest you're making it sound like Debonair Danny DiPietro just isn't as convincing as I am when it comes to describing his view of the play that we've had. The thing is that I'm not that convincing a speaker at all. The reason that you're not finding him convincing is primarily that he's not describing what actually happened much of the time. He's trying to get a mislynch which means that he's trotting out cases that he hopes might convince people, not that he has to believe them himself. I think he's too good a player to actually believe the spin he's been putting out here.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

If I were only looking at this game I'd actually be disagreeing with the Debonair Danny DiPietro, Vi scum team as my first guess right now. Despite what hitogoroshi has said it's not true that everyone else in the game has listed him as among the most likely to be town. The last time I made a list he was the most likely to be scum for me outside of Debonair Danny DiPietro. He's definitely trying to use confirmed town status in his discussion as this point though (down to how he's calling the scum kills for tonight in various situations.) I'd like everyone to notice what it is he's done today and keep that in mind when decisions are being made tomorrow.

He started off the day ruling out Vi for reasons that I could never get him to pin down outside of his main qualms being settled some by Albert B. Rampage having thought that Vi was town. He took a look then at the three possible scum pairs involving Debonair Danny DiPietro, VP Baltar and me. The last thing that we heard when this was still being considered was that he had decided that Debonair Danny DiPietro and VP Baltar almost certainly couldn't be scum together so there was "a strong justification to vote for Zorblag."

After that he feels it necessary to defend himself once for reasons that don't really make sense and then hangs back until after Debonair Danny DiPietro has cast his vote and I've given my defense. From that point, where Debonair Danny DiPietro makes what's probably an earlier attack than he should have because he felt that there was still momentum to mislynch me and he needed to seize upon it the attack on me started to crumble. It'd be nice to think that was because everyone saw what Debonair Danny DiPietro was up to, that his attacks weren't particularly strong and that he wasn't describing the game as it had actually happened and that I put out such a great defense that people were simply swayed by it but that's pretty unlikely to be the whole story. VP Baltar did have too many chances to turn on me if he's Debonair Danny DiPietro's partner. If they're scum and working this bus angle from the start they're passing up easier opportunities for the win and I don't think that they'd do that.

That means that one of Vi and hitogoroshi needs to have decided somewhere in there that it was time for the bus. hitogoroshi, when the attack was made and it didn't immediately result in my mislynch opened things up again and continued to look for his pairs. He asked some questions to make sure that it looked like he was scum hunting and he questioned details for all of the possible pairs of scum he was looking over. He also did an excellent job of not committing to anything as he went. There are moves towards the conclusions that he's saying he's come to now but I think there's definitely an argument to be made that he didn't say anything that would commit him to ending up coming to what looks to me like a conclusion that's going to serve him well when looking for a mislynch tomorrow if he's scum and needs it.

Unless people have a reason to think that hitogoroshi is town before today I have trouble seeing why no one else would be looking at his actions today and questioning his motives. The need to look for scum teams rather than the focusing first on the behaviors of the individuals when that just gives scum more information about what night kills will make sense in order to leave themselves an easy mislynch tomorrow is suspect. That he's now in a position to end up in a three player hitogoroshi, Vi, VP Baltar endgame (probably one that would receive the least questioning after the events of today) is suspect.

If hitogoroshi is competent scum then he's in a perfect position due to his own play and as of now and looking at this game alone I don't have nearly the reasons to rule that out that the rest of you seem to have come up with.

That said, I do have other games to look at. Now that hitogoroshi has finished two other scum games I've had a chance to look them over. What I don't see there that he'd need to be doing now is the elaborate planning. There's nothing like the mechanism. There's nothing like the hunting for scum pairs there. It's all very straight forward. Unless he was holding back in those games because he didn't need to put in the effort or he's getting some serious coaching from Debonair Danny DiPietro in the quick topic (and that would be enough to go through the gymnastics he did on Day Three without being able to talk at the time) I don't think it's a good fit at all.

With Vi on the other hand I do have the sort of transition to bussing a scum partner in a 5 player LyLo (from me to Ectomancer) that I do here and the reasons that Vi's giving for pushing the direction that was pushed for that length of time aren't very satisfying.

@Vi and a general

TL;DR

, at this point I know that Debonair Danny DiPietro must be scum. My best guesses past that are you, hitogoroshi and VP Baltar in order. Having said that if I'm alive tomorrow I'll have to go over everything again with the extra information of who dies in the night kill. hitogoroshi hasn't gotten enough attention today but right now I think he's most likely town anyhow.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Thanks for modding the game, Head_Honcho. I did enjoy the flavor along the way. It looks like things mostly went smoothly enough. I'm glad that the issue Vi and VP Baltar are talking about (which I can see but wasn't aware of till after the game was over) didn't have a serious effect on anything that happened in here as that would have been a huge shame. And that's all I'm going to have to say on that particular subject at this time.

Vi and xRECKONERx, you were both a pleasure to work with and I'd be happy to be on scum teams with either of you at any point. Vi did an excellent job anchoring the team and I was pretty sure that should it come to a 3 person LyLo Vi would be there and be in decent shape. xRECKONERx's entrance gave me some focus and I loved the scum list that had both Vi and I in the town category. What scum does that? Scien, if you continued to follow this at all I was disappointed to have you drop out when you did as my first thought when I saw the scum team was that the game should mostly be ours to lose. Hopefully everything is back under control and you're finding time to do fun things like playing mafia.

I don't care if the quick topic gets shared; I always assume they will when I post in them. I would e interested in seeing what the mason quick topic looked like.

I think that Head_Honcho exaggerates how efficiently we found the masons. As Vi said, we had them completely wrong on night one. Night two my opinion was that the Ojanen kill had to be made just to make it look like we were hunting masons and that it wasn't that important whether it hit a mason or not. She wasn't the person I thought was most likely (I think that was Sando at the time) but she was the one that I think most would have called a mason if they had to make a guess.

Vi and I disagree a bit about how restricted our movements were in the game but I'm probably more willing to leave confirmed town in a game than most people. From night two on if we ever didn't hit a mason then the masons were going to claim and we wouldn't have to worry about that aspect of the game anymore which would have been fine with me. It also would have taken any of the guesswork about what night kills had to be made and left time just to focus on other things (and not having to worry about looking too townie as we went.)

Vi, I know you wanted me to be a bit more proactive the start of the final day. My schedule worked against that a bit but I also feel that I work just a bit better under some pressure (as either alignment really) so I wanted to let that build some while I continued to get the lay of the land. I apologize if that made the last day more nerve wracking than it needed to be for you.

It was a pleasure playing with all of you. If anyone has any questions I'll be happy to answer them.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

Sadly, I think the village needs a few idiots to operate smoothly. Sometimes it's just easier to get a read on someone with a lower level of playing.

Third!

As town that's absolutely my biggest trouble in with these self selected games. I need some worse play in there to have someplace to start. If everyone's more or less doing doing reasonable things (and it's got to be more than just one or two false moves, it's got to be a pattern of poor play or it's too easy to write off) I end up feeling lost. When I've got that scummy play I get to look at the motives for something which is very much important for me if I'm going to believe my own cases.

Actually, having said that, having Albert B. Rampage in the game with people who aren't used to his play does the same job for me. He's a lightning rod and he's going to draw suspicion. He just rubs people the wrong way. I don't know if I can actually read him well (I've only ever seen him as scum when I was his partner) but he gives me access to other reads just based on how people take his antics and that's a foundation to work from.

@VP Baltar, for a while in the group of people I played FtF mafia with the fun thing to do was just to vote for me right off the bat up to and including a lynch. I developed the defense of simply starting games where I was scum by saying that I was scum and naming someone as a partner (almost always falsely, but only almost.) After a few rounds of that I could drop it because they got out of the habit of that lynch if I wasn't telling them I was mafia. Don't make me need to develop an equivalent strategy here. Besides, I've never seen Vi play anything but scum so that's the way you should really be looking.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@VP Baltar, having the mechanism spawned was almost certainly useful for the town. If it hadn't then the play it described (sans the motives) had a pretty good chance of going down. You are right though that Albert B. Rampage was less helpful to this town that he could have been. That's because the rest of you didn't know who to expect from him and how to use his energy. If more people had known that he probably would have had to have been an earlier kill.

@Vi, it's interesting that it's the unknowns that worry us even when we're the informed minority. It was pretty clear that you wanted something like Albert B. Rampage that you couldn't control and didn't know what to expect from out of the game whereas I was much more concerned about Debonair Danny DiPietro for just about the same reasons. It completely fails to surprise me that he was the one that mounted the final attack on me; he's the one that I didn't know what to do with.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@VP Baltar, oh yeah, and I would have been hunting masons regardless of my alignment this game (up to and including being a mason, though in that case it would just be for show and confusion purposes.) I'm not all that good at finding scum but masons are easier to find as masons aren't going to bus each other. If I can identify who the masons are without clearly outing them it very much narrows down the pool of people that I need to be looking at for potential scum. The more people there are in the game the more connections there are to look at, more than 5 or so and I just can't keep up with it (i.e. The rule of 5 from the Illuminatus! Trilogy.) Mason hunting would let me focus on a small enough game that I might be able to do something productive earlier than I would otherwise.

I'm a very big believer in using the setup as much as possible as town. If it's open at all that's extra information that you have that you wouldn't normally. It's pretty clearly the information which makes it easier for me to play as scum than town (and I do find it easier) so I try to go with my strengths.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, it is interesting that you think that of my play. I never really had more than two people that I'd have taken part in lynching after the middle of day one. Once xRECKONERx entered the game my vote was going to be on he or charlatan until the day ended (the PorkchopExpress bit was a bit of clumsy buddying but my unwillingness to move my vote because it was clear that the wagon wouldn't happen without it was real). Day two I never considered moving off xRECKONERx, I was on scum and I'd pointed out reasons to suspect him and challenged a few things the previous day. Day three going in I had no chance of voting for anyone other than hitogoroshi or SerialClergyman as, again, I'd done some legwork on cases on them ahead of time and I could use my mason information gathering to justify it later. I'm pretty sure I would have been willing to make that same switch as town. I stayed with my first choice until it became clear that the day was dragging and I could switch to my second choice and get what was still a decent lynch. Unless I need to be right that day or I've got a particularly strong scum read I'll usually take that option.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, we're going to disagree about what happened here. At this point it doesn't matter unless it comes up later in a future game.

I didn't plant my vote on the biggest town wagon and get away with it day one. I helped start the biggest town wagon day one and then didn't need to change my opinion. Of course I do the same sort of thing as town (see the Sando wagon in Mini Quick and Dirty for an example.)

Had I been town it wouldn't be that unlikely to have me be willing to see any of 7 people lynched day one in a game like this. I do believe that just about any lynch we manage is better than a no lynch. I would have argued against the other four lynches had they looked like they were going to happen but the seven I mentioned I wouldn't have done much to oppose. If you're going to take that as my saying that I'd be willing to lynch tons of people then I suppose that's your prerogative.

Day three there were still two scum in the game. I suppose you can think that town should only be interested in their single strongest read being the lynch or only being willing to vote one way if you like but it doesn't make much sense to me in that situation. Town needs to be willing to work together and make some compromises at that point because a no lynch isn't an acceptable outcome. I made my position for the number one and two choices for me clear from the start and I would have been completely comfortable making that same move as town at that point in that particular day. If you find it unbelievable then perhaps that'll lead to a mislynch in a future game but I'll deal with that when and if it comes up.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@hitogoroshi, taking notes is a fine idea. When I'm scum I tend to use the scum quick topic for that a little bit (which is why there's so much seemingly trivial stuff in there from me on some topics.) While I do agree with Albert B. Rampage that it's not pro-town to say you want to be killed before someone else I also can't think of a time when I've seen anyone other than town actually do it in a game.

@Albert B. Rampage, what did you expect the scum to do if not plot? In this case we had the advantage of not needing to worry too much about coordinating our day play because I knew that Vi would hold up just fine without it but that discussion during the the night phase to make sure that we're at least lined up about expectations is a pretty key part of a successful scum team in my opinion. I also do pretty much agree with Vi that we had the perfect excuse not to get NK'd as long as we looked like we were trying to pick off masons; we didn't even need to bring that up in the thread, Debonair Danny DiPietro and hitogoroshi took care of that for us.

Even if there's nothing much there I'd be interested in seeing the mason quick topic if no one minds.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh