Mini 174- Townie Mafia- Game Over!

[Mr Stoofer]

Random FOS: Omniplex

.

I'm going away for Easter (which is a 4 day holiday in the UK) so I won't be posting again until Monday evening GMT. So I won't risk a random vote yet.

[Mr Stoofer]

Weel' I've read the thread through and can't find a post that is scummy. The nearest one is this:

Which is kind of weird in a game where no-one is a basic townie - you'd think there'd be more information than normal floating about?

Why would you think that? The only information we have is that there are no vanillas and what we know about Mathcam (the implication that he was some variant of cop) - where would this extra information come from, and how does the information we have help us?

Nope, we're in standard day 1 territory - bandwagon and hope. Bah. At least this post will help contribute towards evading a deadline.

Not much to go on at all but its the best I've got.

Vote: Seol

[Mr Stoofer]

It didn't seem

especially

scummy to me

I quite agree that it was not

especially

scummy. But since we have had no scummy posts, it was the best I could do.

[Mr Stoofer]

I note that SquareKnight posted in another game earlier but not this one.

[Mr Stoofer]

I'm still finding it difficult to find a good home for my vote. I do think Seol has a point here which needs to be cleared up:

Sory for not postnig, I was away for the weekend and didn't get much slep last night. Just got up now and remembred this game. No one looks scummy to me, so I will not be votnig anyone as of yet.

If you're post-limited, and furthermore to only three posts today, why did you waste your first post with this "check-in" post? I'm not sure I'm buying this.

I find it really difficult to think of any reason why any townie should be less than completely frank about a post restriction.

[Mr Stoofer]

I think Seol and SquareKnight's points are very good ones and I am nearly persuaded. Brushopper, I think you should use your third post to answer these points very carefully.

In the meantime:

unvote Seol

and

FOS Omniplex

for lurking.

[Mr Stoofer]

Mos, PTMWSTYASF Omniplex.

[Mr Stoofer]

vote Assassin

He hasn't posted here since 29 March but if you lool at Assassin's profile it seems that he has been pretty active in other games, particularly Mostly Mute Mafia.

I also noticed this:

At this point, I'm willing to bandwagon to a claim any of brushhopper, SquareKnight, or kwyjibo.

Odd that he didn't mention Assassin. First explananaton that springs to mind is that SpeedyKQ did not want to draw attention to Assassin's lurking.

[Mr Stoofer]

Omniplex seems to have stopped posting in mafiascum completely. Can we have a replacement please?

Assassin is posting in other threads (he posted today in Mini 175). Either: (a) he is a lurker and deserves it die whether he is scum or not; or (b) he has forgotten that 174 and 175 are two different games and he is in both. Either way he needs a sharp mod prod up the backside.

[Mr Stoofer]

Assassin lurks until prodded, refuses to vote and refuses to make any positive contribution to the debate. That's good enough for me for a day one lynch. Come on people, let's get this game moving.

(I'm in 2 really slow games at the moment and I couldn't stand it if this became a third )

[Mr Stoofer]

Well that makes me confortable with my vote.

[Mr Stoofer]

SpeedyKQ's

continued

support of Assassin makes me even more comfortable with my vote. Whether Assassin is scum or not, lynching him will tell the town SpeedyKQ's alignment.

[Mr Stoofer]

Kwyjibo: you're right, I'll be more precise:
* If Assassin turns out to be innocent then Speedy is very unlikely to be scum.
* If Assassin turns out to be scum then Speedy's behaviour towards him will be powerful evidence (but as kwyjibo says, not conclusive evidence) that he is scum also and he will have a lot of explaining to do.

Brushopper: I for one am inclined to believe you. If you have a useful pro-town ability, I would rather you used it tonight and then just used your 3 posts more wisely tomorrow.

[Mr Stoofer]

I find the Assassin debate very cofusing. As Lots have people have pointed out, there are so many permutations (Is he scum or town? Is Seol scum or town? Is Assassin telling the truth? Is not, what is his real ability?) that I don't think that the town will be any the wiser tomorrow.

I can understand why Bluesin wanted to lynch him regardless. I would still be happy with Assassin as our first day lynch, given that the first lynch is essentially an educated guess. However, the town seems to be against this so

unvote Assassin

.

Instead I'll

vote MoS

for the reasons given by Seol.

[Mr Stoofer]

Sorry I've been away for awhile. I'll

unvote Thesp

and

vote Mr. Stoofer.

When Assasin roleclaimed, Stoofer was more eager for a lynch, which makes me think he may not have a "___-Townie" kind of role.

On checking my role PM I see that it my role is in "___ Townie" form, although the second part did not register at the time. I have just been thinking of myself as the "_____".

The biggest question in my mind right now is whether scum have special abilities. If they don't, those of us with verifiable abilities can clear ourselves. Like Assasin, my ability is weak, provable, but the use of it would not prove my innocense.

This is an appalling idea because it makes it easier for the Mafia to locate the "power" townies (i.e. there are bound to be townies with powers like a cop, doc, maybe vig, etc). The scum are looking for the power townies and if the weaker townies reveal who they are, the scum will be able to find them easily.

[Mr Stoofer]

Please could people who don't want to play ask for a replacement rather than voting for themselves. I understand that kwyjibo was making a joke early on day 1, but Bluesin: either play the game properly or don't play at all.

[Mr Stoofer]

My response to Seol’s points:

1. When I said “continued support” I was referring to the post which you quote, in which Speedy says that he is inclined to believe Assassin. I said “continued” because I thought that Speedy had previously surprisingly lenient on Assassin in the post in which he said he was willing to bandwagon any of brushhopper, SquareKnight, or kwyjibo.

2. I agree that we should be discussing Assassin’s claim but I just thought it was very odd (see also point 3).

3. I was a bit lazy following your FOS on MoS with a vote, and I did mean to

unvote MoS

in my last post. However (and this also addresses point 3) I’m in 2 very slow moving games at the moment (Mini 163 and Mini 167) and I was feeling frustration and a wish to get the game going and to vote for somebody. After all, the biggest value of a first day lynch is looking back at the voting patterns, since the probability is that you’ll end up lynching a townie (not that we shouldn’t do our utmost to nail the scum).

4. I agree that “Popular Townie” doesn’t make any sense without the “Townie” bit, while “Techie Townie” perhaps could be remembered as “Techie”. However, my role actually makes

more

sense if you ignore the “Townie” bit. I’m going to tell you what my role is since there is little chance that the mafia will claim to have this role later, and it doesn’t reveal anything about any powers I may or may not have. I am the “Veteran Townie”. Literally, those words mean that I am a veteran at being a townie, whereas in fact, according to the flavourtext, I am a veteran soldier. So I just interpreted my role as “Veteran who is a townie”. With all due respect to the Mod, I thought that it was just bad grammar and forgot about it. By the time I saw Assassin’s roleclaim I just thought of myself as the “Veteran”.

5. As for what I said about Bluesin, I was being perfectly honest and I would adopt what SpeedyKQ just said:

I'm getting really tired of the self-voting too and I'm considering a metagame policy of lynch all self-voters. As we've discussed, whether self-voting is a scum tell or not, it does indicate a player who is not taking the game seriously and is not going to be helpful to the town.

6. You are right that Bluesin has been on some of the bandwagons I have been on, but then the whole point of bandwagons is that more than one person is on them. More importantly, Bluesin has been throwing his vote around quite a lot so it is not surprising that he has hit some of the targets I have been looking at.

[Mr Stoofer]

I think that I am only able to respond to 2 of Seol's points. First, I agree that my role name is off-kilter. That is the point I was tryng to make and explains why I simply remembered the grammatically accurate version.

Secondly,

5. As for what I said about Bluesin, I was being perfectly honest and I would adopt what SpeedyKQ just said:

I'm getting really tired of the self-voting too and I'm considering a metagame policy of lynch all self-voters. As we've discussed, whether self-voting is a scum tell or not, it does indicate a player who is not taking the game seriously and is not going to be helpful to the town.

I'd agree with SpeedyKQ too - it's the old BWCS scenario. Either he's scum, or he's a townie who's not bothered about playing properly. If you're adopting what Speedy says, though, why didn't you vote for him?

I think that BlueSin is a townie frustrated by being bandwagonned and frustrated by not having a useful power role. I think he is being childish and I have even started a thread in the "Mafia Discussion" forum about self voting. I made it quite clear in that thread that I believe the most likely cause of self-voting is frustration of a vanilla townie. (See for example Harry Potter 2 in GL at the moment, where Digit Ne, a vanilla townie, started a bandwagon on himself.) I think that BlueSin should be replaced by a player who will help the town. I don't think the town should waste a lynch on him.

As to your other points, I have been rather slapdash in my desire to get the game going (it was at a time when my other two minis were both mired in a seemingly endless Day 1). I apologise and I just hope I it doesn't lead to the town wasting a lynch on me.

[Mr Stoofer]

Furthermore, this comment here:

I think this self vote kinda clear myself, since scum don't need to take such risk(-1 lynch)?

What is this, if not trying to play off the self-vote in order to clear suspicion?

That is really unfair on me - he posted this after I had indicated my belief that Bluesin was a frustrated townie.

Like Thesp and others I think that that comment of BlueSin puts a wholly different complexion on his behaviour. I still have a nagging doubt that BlueSin might just be a poor player but I am certainly prepared to give a

FOS: BlueSin

for this comment.

Your other comments on my attitude towards BlueSin are also unfair. It is clear from my thread on self-voting that my views on this topic have changed, during the course of this game, in light of the points made in that thread.

[Mr Stoofer]

Just quickly to respond to Seol before the Mod locks the thread: I didn't vote BlueSin because he was 1 away from a lynch and as I said I am still in two minds about whether he is scum or just a poor player.

[Mr Stoofer]

I'm surpised to see that I am a prime target today.

As I understood it, a principal accusation against me yesterday was my attitude towards BlueSin. Seol, my main accuser, said about BlueSin:

that's what I'm trying to argue, that both his self-vote and the way he's trying to use it now are scummy and do deserve your vote.

So Seol was saying, in effect, that I looked scummy because I was not voting for BlueSin. But I never did, becuase I believed that it was more likely that BlueSin was just being a poor player. Well, I've turned out to be right.

Surely if I was scum, I would have known for certain that BlueSin was town and I would have voted for him? Especially since my not voting for him was being used against me. The fact that I didn't vote for him does not prove my innocence of course but it requires some expanation at least from those who think I might be scum.

Since no actual evidence has been cited against me today I don't think that there is anything more I can say at this point. But I was suspicious of Speedy yesterday for the way he acted towards Assassin and I am suspicious of his unsubstantiated acusations against me today.

[Mr Stoofer]

Oh yes, another thing that I was accused of yesterday was voting for Mastermind of Sin without sufficient justification. So apparently, the 2 main things that make me scum were:

1. Not voting for BlueSin (townie).
2. Voting for MoS (mafia).

Speedy, Thesp, care to explain how that makes me suspicious?

[Mr Stoofer]

Mr. Stoofer, Scum don't necessarily vote townies but instead try to protect them to try and prove their own inoscence. This only makes me more suspicious of of you. Also, your voting MoS does not prove your inoscence either. Scum sometimes vote eachother so that the town does not get suspicious of their not voting scum.

So the fact that I voted for MoS but not BlueSin is suspicious? And what if I had argued against voting for MoS, and argued that everyone should vote for BlueSin (as Seol did at the end)? Would that have made me less suspicious?

[Mr Stoofer]

Post 92:[/url] Immediately after Assasin claims a verifiable role, you claim you're happy with your vote on him, without offering further analysis. This strikes me as odd. (Seol also made this observation.) (((Does he have an in game trigger?)))

Assassin's role was

not

verifiable: that was the point. The fact that he claimed to be able to form a mason group does not prevent him being scum. Amongst many other possibilities: he could have (a) been a cultist (b) been simply scum who could form a mason group. Mason groups with scum are very common. So there is no reason why scum shouldn't be able to start a mason group.

I should perhaps have explained my thinking at the time. A number of others made the relevant points subsequently.

Post 128: After some very clear, well thought out responses re: verifying Assasin's status on Day Two, you claim skepticism of the whole scenario. To me, this sounds like trying to plant seeds of doubt into an otherwise sensical puzzle. Rather than trying to help clarify and work out things, you sound like you're trying to muddy them up.

I was sceptical. The questions and possibilities I raised in that post are perefectly fair ones and most of them were based on points that had been rasied by others. It would have been scummy to simply accept Assassin's claim unquestioningly.

Seol also gave further reason for suspicion of you in Post 138. Ignoring the Bluesin part of this post, I do not fault you for your association of SpeedyKQ and Assasin (as I'd believed it too, and it took some very careful checking of timestamps for me to see otherwise), but his analysis of your vote on MoS was spot on. It was oddly timed coming after he'd come back to posting content, yet that's the implied justification you give for your vote. Sounds like piggybacking.

Yup, it was piggybackingas I have already admitted. A piggybacking vote on a revealed scum is not evidence of scumminess (or of innocence, of course).

It also seems odd that in your point 2, you agree that we should be discussing Assasin's claim, yet you had not previously, and your contribution to the Assasin discussion was the previously mentioned Post 128, where you seemed to have disdain for the whole conversation.

Unfair. I discussed Assassin in post 128 as you point out.

Yes, you were right about BlueSin. It's also worth noting that Mastermind of Sin was also less anxious to vote for BlueSin after he self-voted, and he was mafia. This doesn't suggest that you are or are not scum,

but the fact that you seem to be trying to use it as justification for your innocence is suspicious

. It's similar with your defense of "I voted MoS!", voting for him at that point doesn't prove/disprove being mafia, but raising it in your defense at this point looks suspicious to me. (There's also a possible argument there that you may have voted for MoS when you did

because

he was starting to post content, so an all-out bandwagon on him would be less likely to succeed, lacking its initial basis, and pointing the finger at each other makes you look innocent when the other turns up scum.)

This is ridiculous. I didn't vote for a townie and I did vote for a mafia. How is it suspicious that I use those facts to justify my innocence? What facts am I allowed to use to justify my innocence? If I had voted for BlueSin and not for Mos, would it have been scummy to say that that justifies my innocence? This is worse than Assassin's post where he says that I am suspicious becuase I vote for mafai and not for townies.

And last but certainly not least, it always irks me when people say "The only reason people are suspicious of me is

x

" when there are other issues as well, as it seems to do two things: distort the facts and intimidate those who may consider voting for you.

Where did I say "only reason"? Read my posts again. I made it quite clear I was talking about what (I believed) were the main reasons. You are distorting my words.

[Mr Stoofer]

I'm 2 from a lynch now. I'm not going to repeat all I have said already and I don't think there is much new I can add. I have already said I am the "Veteran Townie".

The best point in my defence was made by Seol, not me, and so I'll just repeat what he said:

Furthermore, if you were scum, that would mean (assuming a 2-man mafia, which is normal for a game of this size) that neither Mafia was on the bandwagon, which seems odd, albeit possible. It's also a risky strategy, as toward the end of the day

MoS was pointing at you and you were pointing at MoS as alternatives - if you had convinced us to drop the bandwagon, it's likely that one of you would have been the next focus

.

Please read this and think about it. Also please think about the inherent likelihood of me being scum when I was voting for MoS (mafia) and arguing (albeit not as strongly as I should have) against the BlueSin (townie) bandwagon.

There is one final comment directed at kwjibo: that was me on night 1. You know what I am talking about. You can confirm my innocence.

[Mr Stoofer]

I'll assume for the moment that Mr Stoofer's refraining from explaining details is likely because we don't need to know what's going on on his side

You are right - and kwyjibo should not give any more details either.

[Mr Stoofer]

Yes, I would love to!

(Is that what I have to say?)

[Mr Stoofer]

Where is SquareKnight? He last posted in this game on April 19th. Yet he has posted a couple of times in Mini 183 since then.

[Mr Stoofer]

I was roleblocked night 2, but kwyjibo could have worked that out from the fact that I didn't indicate a night 2 choice in my post 200.

However, my blocking took a particular form. If kwyjibo can specify this it would confirm his story.

[Mr Stoofer]

Correct. That clears kwyjibo.

Now who the hell are we going to lynch?

[Mr Stoofer]

for a simpler way of achieveing a non-biased order, we have one of our confirmed townies nominate someone, then as people claim the claimant nominates the next person to claim. I've seen it done that way a number of times, and it seems pretty immune to rigging and/or corruption.

Those yet to claim are myself, Thesp, dybeck and brushhopper (from whom we have a partial claim at best). I propose that either Stoofer or Kwyjibo picks someone to start the process.

I agree and I pick dybeck.

[Mr Stoofer]

I’m going away on Saturday 30th April for about 10 days. I’m hoping to be able to get some net access during this time but I can’t guarantee it. I hope this doesn’t mean I have to be replaced (but I’ll understand if it does).

I am sorry if this causes any problems.

[I was expecting that I'd be dead in all my games by the time this rolled around. ]

[Mr Stoofer]

Congrats scum, GG everyone.

Thanks very much to our mod DarkLight for a cunning, complex setup.

[Mr Stoofer]

You were brilliant, though.

Seconded. You had me totally fooled.

You defended me on day 2 when a (rather irrational) bandwagon was developing against me. As a result I thought that you couldn't possibly be scum - which is why I protected you. Why did you defend me day 2 and not just let the bandwagon roll on? Or did you realise (correctly) that your defence would be ignored?