Open 29 - C9+2 (~GAME OVER~) before 470

[Ripley]

Wow, I've never played with any of you before. That'll make an interesting change.

Vote: DeliciousGoldfish.

The infiltration of fish into Mafia games needs to be stopped, before the situation gets out of hand.

[Ripley]

Unvote: Vote Honary Hitchhiker

For his post 21 that added a quick third vote to somestrangeflea. It's not so much the third vote as the accompanying explanation. If it's serious, it's a bizarre reason and if he thought it was valid, HH should surely have thought it was valid at the time he made his first post (where he ignored somestrangeflea's post and voted for me). Or maybe it's one of those posts where the writer subsequently says "It was obviously a joke" which has a way of diffusing criticism since people tend to be reluctant to be seen to lack a sense of humor.

[Ripley]

And I believe we have more than 2 mis-lynches. It is 2 mis-lynches in the regular C9 setup so... With two more townies and possible doctors saving and investigators investigating... We'll have to see though.

In a regular C9, even with a doc save you only get

one

mislynch. The second mislynch, together with two nightkills, reduces the players to 2 Mafia, 1 town on Day 3 without a doc save. With a doc save there's 2 Mafia, 2 town, but that's also a scum win. It takes two doc saves to buy another day (though one doc save buys you the no-lynch option). So in this setup we only get 2 mislynches, basically. That would take us to 2 Mafia, 3 town on Day 3.

One thing, however, I have noticed (and this could just be the one lame game I just replaced out of) if day one takes too long, players get disinterested, upset, distracted, then they replace out making it more difficult to remember who's who... The game just gets boring. Let's not get to page 12 without ending day one?

This is all very true. I haven't played a game for ages that didn't have multiple dropouts, and I'm convinced the lack of continuity is a massive benefit to scum. But it's really difficult finding a pace that suits everyone. Go too slow, people drop out because they're bored. Go too fast, the faster players start calling out the slower ones for lurking, and then they drop out because they can't keep up. It's great if everybody's active - the only real downside is that you very soon amass 15 or 20 pages. Somebody will inevitably drop out, and all of a sudden you've got a replacement player who has to wade through all that. And rereading becomes a chore, even for the established players. Probably a Day 1 of about 8-10 well-argued pages with a high level of participation from everyone would be perfect.

[Ripley]

OK< here are my current suspicions.

Honary Hitchhiker

remains a prime suspect. I gave my original reasons back in post 38. He never attempted to respond to that and seems now to be trying to blend in, with his latest post FOS'ing, with very vague reasoning, the person currently receiving the most attention (Lateralus).

Lateralus:

To a certain extent here I'll be repeating things others have said, but really he seemed to be doing his best to place his vote wherever it was most likely to lead to a lynch, and accompanying his votes and unvotes with meaningless or unconvincing reasons.

Post 17: votes YogurtBandit "out of randomness" - hmm, just a coincidence that YB was the only player on 2 votes at the time, then? Obviously not, because when challenged Lateralus replied "well how else we gonna get somewhere on day one..." which surely is an admission that his vote wasn't random at all. Which is highly suspicious.

Post 46: unvotes YogurtBandit because "I like yogurt". So, nothing to do with the fact that yours was by then the only vote on YB, then?

Post 56: votes ssf because it "just seems like hes trying to start a bandwagon on me. ", although ssf had in fact just unvoted him. Claims not to have noticed this though it's pretty hard to miss, right there in black and white in the previous post. And surprise surprise, for a second time Lateralus has singled out a player already on 2 votes for his own vote.

Then comes post 64.

this is ridiculous.... no rush at all here i just want to see how we can get through a day without random votes and stupid ones...

The irony of this, coming from Lateralus, has already been noted.

I have yet to see a reasonable post that I can build a disscusion on

this just sounds like blaming everyone else for your own mistakes. And I think there have been plenty of reasonable posts. What kind of discussion do you mean? It sounds almost as if you haven't been able to find material to build a case against anybody else, and you're actually saying that's our fault for not doing enough scummy stuff, and therefore you're entitled to bang out votes for ludicrous reasons. (Despite having said your avowed intention is to get through a day without "random votes and stupid ones"...)

and that third vote thing is pretty lame just cause i voted third on one person automatically makes me suspicous?

You did it twice, and without convincing reasoning.

Post 67: "jesus ill takeone for the townie team just lynch me.." Histrionics.

Rishi

is starting to catch my attention for his repeated defending of Lateralus.

Post 52: "Still, Lateralus did remove his vote eventually. Honorary Hitchhiker still has his vote on somestrangeflea still up." Planting the seed of the idea that HH is the scummier of the two.

Post 69: "Yeah I'm not sure what's going on with Lateralus. I'm guessing he doesn't realize how long these games go. " Offering an excuse.

And then Post 72, all of which is reassuring and supportive of Lateralus. The bit of this post that really struck me as odd was this:

I think you gave a fairly good explanation of your reasoning.

The explanation he appears to be referring to is this:

I suspected SSF because he began a bandwagon on me then he took it off and i kept the vote on him and then you guys started to suspect me cause i had not known he had removed his vote on me and then people thought it was odd that i had the 3rd vote on one person which for some reason gave me the FOS from everyone thought i did say it was random because i did not have anyother reason. and the only thing i can talk about is proving myself innocent which i am.... and the only thing i can speculate was SSF attempt at a bandwagon towards me but soon he removed it. and now just cause of a random vote im automattically scum thats just not right.

Seriously, you call this a fairly good explanation? To some extent the problem with it may be the lack of punctuation, but to me it reads like incoherent rambling.

AmeliaLi

: I agree with Crub that her criticism of a player for FOSes (Post 64) doesn't make much sense. And she's hardly said anything else.

YogurtBandit

: Look at his posts, there's nothing there at all apart from the early votes and confirm votes on ssf (four in total) and then the unvote (because it was random anyway). And that's it.

I still haven't decided whether to move my vote. Lateralus has done a lot of stuff I really don't like, but HH is avoiding posting anything that might be a bit controversial. And there are other candidates floating around. I'm going to think about this some more.

[Ripley]

I hadn't even realised HH had voted to no lynch. (I thought he just meant he wasn't going to vote for anyone at the moment.) I'm even more suspicious of him now.

[Ripley]

Unvote: Honary Hitchhiker

I'm not ready to see the guy lynched yet, for all the reasons other people have said already, so I'm unvoting for now at least, since some players seem a bit lynch happy...

FOS: YogurtBandit

.

[Ripley]

I was the first to vote HH, the first to make a case against him that was any more than a passing comment, the one who pointed out that he never answered it, the first to point out how he tried to blend in by FOS'ing Lateralus without adding any actual arguments. I unvoted him because I felt it was to soon to lynch anybody (AmeliaLi has escaped without contributing a useful word on Day 1) and also because the speed of the wagon made me slightly nervous of scum jumping on for an easy quick lynch.

This is the opposite of what scum do. They never build the initial case against their buddy. They jump

on

bandwagons to look good on the voting records, especially when it seems likely the guy's going to be lynched. Which is why I think it's naive to assume his buddy wasn't on the wagon. By the time of the last couple of votes the guy was almost certainly going to be lynched.

Having said that, Lateralus and AmeliaLi are among my top suspects for today, not really because they weren't voting HH but pretty much for the reasons given by Rishi. AmeliaLi just basically avoided posting anything all day. I was highly suspicious of Lateralus yesterday (see post 76 for full details of why) and Rishi makes a good case against him. I'm also suspicious of YogurtBandit - posted no content at all before HH's bandwagon looked to be gaining unstoppable momentum, and then voted him, repeating that HH was obvious scum, though notice how he never said a word about him before that point, and never at any stage gives any reasoning for his conviction.

Torn between YB and Lateralus. Since it's possible we have a cop with a guilty result, I'm not voting at all till everyone's checked in.