Large Normal 212: Korts' Geriatrics - Game Over @1831

[MichelSableheart]

Hello all,

Glad to finally be in this game.

I've been keeping up with the thread since the previous replacement request. I couldn't replace in then, as I had too long a period without internet access upcoming. My holiday is over now, though, so here I am. I've fully read the thread and am ready to play. In fact, I'm writing these two posts before I've even received my rolepm.

First things first:

Why Old Man is lying scum:

1. I'm an unlimited PGO. This means that a gunsmith would not receive a false guilty on me, as they would die before getting their results. This means that there are no claimed roles who would give a gunsmith a false guilty, making gunsmith an unlikely role to be in the game.
   
2. The odd-night modifier is strange, when all other claimed and flipped roles were either one shot or unlimited.
   
3. Odd-night gunsmith + tracker + town universal backup is too much investigative power, particularly with a doctor around to protect. Kison is confirmed tracker because of his result on rofl, making Old Man the likely fakeclaim.
   
4. The "I was roleblocked" claim is a very convenient way to avoid having to make up more results.
   
5. If mafia had a roleblocker, they would likely have blocked kison over Old Man night 3, as kison's claim was unforced and therefore more believable (whereas Old Man had to come up with something good after his IC fakeclaim).
   
6. If mafia had a roleblocker, they would have used it to block either kison or pine night 4.
   
7. Mafia had a strongman. If Old Man is town, they could have killed his IC claim night 1, or his Odd Night Gunsmith claim night 2, without worrying about protection. Yet they kept a powerrole alive without even trying to get him mislynched?
   
8. If Old Man was town, Lycanfire would probably not have adapted his fakeclaim to perfectly match Old Man's (even night vs odd night, cop to verify gunsmith). By doing so, he made it impossible to lynch Old Man before him, when a power role mislynch is one of the more important things for scum to achieve in such a situation.
   
9. The two hours that were between Old Man's claim and Lycan's claim are a very short time period for Lycan to come up with a claim that fit perfectly with Old Man's, especially as there is no indication that Lycan was online when Old Man claimed. It's far more likely that the fakeclaim was cooked up by the entire scumteam during the previous night.
   
10. The IC fakeclaim in general is far more beneficial to Old Man scum then to Old Man town. For scum, it draws protects (which scum expect exists because of strongman), avoids investigations (as IC gets revealed day 2 anyway), and generally causes town confusion. For town, I guess it avoids being roleblocked by a scum roleblocker that might not exist? I'm ignoring avoiding the day 1 mislynch here, as that one applies to both alignements.

Basically, it makes good sense for him to fake claim odd-night gunsmith as scum, but the setup and night actions make pretty much no sense if he actually is an odd night gunsmith.

[MichelSableheart]

Also, we may be able to use my and Momrangals roles tonight to create some confirmed town.

Assuming we lynch scum today, if Momrangal targets me with her roleblock tonight, from an outside perspective, one of the following happens:

1. Momrangal dies, along with someone else. This leaves us in 3 player Lylo. Furthermore, I would be confirmed as a PGO, and confirmed town, as a scum PGO would use it's role to lure in powerroles, rather then claim it in the first post and likely be lynched over it.
   
2. Only Momrangal dies. I'm confirmed town, as I couldn't make the kill through Momrangal's block. This eliminates two potential mislynches, leaving us in essentially a 3 man Lylo with a result from Kison to work with.
   
3. Nobody dies. Either I or Momrangal is lying about our roles. We have 2 lynches to figure out which of the two it is.
   
4. Someone other then Momrangal dies. Either I or Momrangal is lying about our roles. If Momrangal is speaking the truth, I wouldn't be able to make the nightkill because of the roleblock. Therefore, Momrangal would be the liar.

Oh, and for completeness: Momrangal, I don't believe you've claimed your Night 1 and 2 targets yet?

[MichelSableheart]

confirmed town, as a scum PGO would use it's role to lure in powerroles, rather then claim it in the first post and likely be lynched over it.

not a thing btw

Since I'm the one making the suggestion, I assumed my readers would have the heaviest possible scepticism regarding the trustability of the PGO. Feel free to read "Furthermore, I would be confirmed as a PGO, and therefore confirmed town" if you prefer, it doesn't change the basic argument.

No thoughts on the plan as a whole?

The beautiful thing is that that post is either a genuine case or a hardcore bus

Either way clap clap lol

Keep in mind that if it is a bus, I would also need to have a way to win after lynching Old Man and being blocked by Momrangal tonight.

Not ready to vote yet, as I would like to hear thoughts on my suggestion of Momrangal blocking me tonight first.

[MichelSableheart]

Assuming you're right on Old Man, who do you think is the most likely second scum?

When you asked me that question, I found it difficult to make a choice between Momrangal and Eddie. Momrangal because the roleblocker seemed a bit overkill for townpower, plus the way the rofl lynch went down. Eddie was a combination of gut, his voting my slot despite claiming to prefer modkill, and the fact that scum were happy to kill stronger players, yet he was still alive.

So I decided to reread through my notes, doublechecking interesting details in the thread. This method suffers a bit from confirmation bias, in that I'm more likely to notice things from those I suspect. I did spot two interesting things worth mentioning though:

• The first three nightkills all expressed suspicion of Eddie at the end of the day before they died (Hito in #912 and to a lesser extend #915; Magna in #1462; OTM in #1526, #1537, #1544 and #1545)
  
• Both Old Man (#94) and Tywin (#99) came to Eddie's defense with regards to the early bandwagon.

Main suspect for Old Man scumpartner is Eddie, though I wouldn't be surprised if it would turn out to be Momrangal. Hence why I prefer to have Mom target me tonight to help choose between the two.

[MichelSableheart]

Magna townread me and OTM is a useless player I'd never shoot lmao

Regarding Magna: #1426 probably would have been a better example. But I read the second sentence of this quote:

Frankly I'm at the point where like Radiant and Math I'm happy to draw my read on you indirectly because I'm not really interested in working with someone who clearly thinks he's much better at Mafia than me and is "appalled" at my play even if I think they are Town.

And I'm clearly not there with you given that you were a solid scum read for Hito and in a world where Lycan is Town you make tons of sense for the reason he's pushing up daisies.

as "I'm not at the previously mentioned point regarding my opinion of you", or to summarize the entire post: "even if I would think you're town [...] which I don't".

Regarding OTM: That's why his nightkill was surprising to me. It didn't fit the pattern of scum killing strong pro-town players, but with 3 explicit (Old Man, kison, pine) and 1 implicit (firebringer/momrangal) powerrole claims, it doesn't fit powerrole hunting from scum either. The best explanation for his nightkill would be if his posting spree from #1526 - #1545 was pretty close to the mark.

[MichelSableheart]

kison, ginngie, while we wait for Old Man and Momrangal to post, do you have any thoughts regarding the proposal of Momrangal blocking me tonight?

[MichelSableheart]

two things I think of is gating the roleblock shot if we lynch wrong securing the last kill

then the scenario where both ya'll are together and you aren't PGO or something.

It's only a good option if we lynch scum today, agreed. If we don't lynch scum today, our only hope is that Momrangal is town and can succesfully block, so in that situation, she can do whatever.

and yeah, a Mom-me pairing is indeed the biggest weakness of the plan, a possibility you will need to take into consideration.

---

@Old Man: if there is an obv pro-town proven powerrole in the game, it's kison. He has shown knowledge of information that scum couldn't know, by correctly tracking rofl. And even him I wouldn't call fully cleared.

The one investigation your role has given us was information that scum would also know. There's no way that knowing that info proves to us that you're not scum. Particularly because you're showing the hallmark behaviour of scum trying to take the credit for a succesful bus.

As for my predecessor's play: in post #1338, shortly after replacing in, RayFrost explained that he would be minimally present as he didn't really have motivation to play mafia. He proceeded to be continually inactive from there. It's not pro-town play, but all it shows is that he had no motivation to play his role. Which is completely consistent with being a claimed PGO and seeing that on page 2 it was decided that he would be mislynched eventually. CoolDog was somewhat more active, but he was also in a state of perpetual catchup, implying not enough time to actually play the game, for which he was eventually replaced. If you want to argue their behaviour was scummy, you'll have to do better then what you've given us thus far.

As for my role being unprovable: in #1773 I suggested a way to prove it.

[MichelSableheart]

Important supportive evidence to convince me I'm right is that I would have used exactly the same case I'm using now, minus point 6, if rofl had been force replaced over his posting spree. With it, I probably could have convinced Pine to unvote, as he was mostly voting rofl over kison's investigation result, which would have been weakened incredibly by the mere consideration of the possibility of Old Man lying. I'm not sure if I would have been able to avoid the mislynch completely there, but I'm pretty sure Old Man would have been dangling by now if I had been mislynched in the rofl slot after making that case.

Another point of secondary evidence against Old Man is his early game posting style. When I had read up to about page 7, before I even knew about his subsequent IC fakeclaim, I spent about half an hour of my journey home from work considering whether I would want to policy lynch him if he was confirmed innocent. I eventially concluded no, but I needed the entirety of that half an hour to reach that conclusion. Basically, as attested by #234 he was intentionally wallposting, and combined that with remarks such as:

[...]I have written hundreds of words of content; is the definition of this one word the only thing that you have to comment on?[...]

[...]Your analysis of the outcomes with regard to the engagement of Cooldog were not only accurate and insightful, but also succinct. The presentation was also a point in your favor in trying to communication your intentions to town.[...]

[...]Could I trouble you for a brief moment to summarize your reads on those three, linking together the evidence to give us a more broad picture of your overall read on them? I've

skimmed

your Spoiler but they are fragmented and it is difficult to follow your train of thought.

So he was explicitly aware of the value of succintness, but deliberately chose to write in a flowery style that used far more words then necessary to convey his meaning. I'm aware I can be guilty of the same from time to time, but in his case, it was done quite deliberately, as his subsequent posting shows. At the time, I suspected him of being a parody account, but now I'm wondering if it wasn't just an attempt to get in town's good books when all he knew was that geriatric players prefer a more wallposting style.

---

I'm not going to waste my time replying to Old Man's #1806. I feel my post 1772 contains more then baseless accusations, but I'm never going to convince Old Man of that, obviously.

Given that Momrangal announced she'll go through with the plan if Old Man flips scum:

VOTE: Old Man

[MichelSableheart]

kison, momrangal, eddie, do you need more information from me in order to make a decision? Deadline is in 36 hours.

On another note, I will be offline with no internet access next weekend. I hope to be able to login/make a post in the early morning of Friday 10th, and then make my next post in the evening of Sunday 12th (both Central European Time).

[MichelSableheart]

Agreed. If it turns out I'm wrong, it's hoping Momrangal is town and blocks succesfully tonight.

I'm pretty sure I'm right though. So it's time to start thinking about tomorrow.

I'm not all that worried about myself, as any attempt by scum to nightkill me would mean an instant win for town, but for the other players: after an Old Man scum lynch, if it turns out you die tonight, who's likely scum?

[MichelSableheart]

First of all, thanks for the game, everyone! I enjoyed reading along, and I enjoyed playing during the last day.

kison, thank you for a great game. I feel you played well. I particularly liked how you started reconsidering when you weren't blocked in the night Pine was killed.

Eddie, very well played. Also, thank you for the civil way you handled my accusation of you.

Hito, it was a pleasure to see you play. I have good memories of playing with Copper, and your play here reminded me why.

---

That being said, this game had a serious problem with activity. The relative inactivity of Old Man and Momrangal was quite annoying. I replaced in with more then a week to go till deadline, but I only got a single post from Momrangal to work with. I had hoped that if she was scum, she had missed the post where Firebringer claimed not to have targetted anyone night 1, which is why I asked her for her nightchoices. There wasn't time to follow up when she didn't give them, though, and I felt dealing with the Old Man fakeclaim was higher priority. In the context of the entire game, their inactivity was relatively mild, though. Rayfrost in particular must have been a nightmare to play with. It seems to me that a geriatric game really needs clear expectations on the minimum activity that is required from players, and needs a commitment from the players to meet that requirement.

Similarly, I feel that the apathy in this town was horrible, particularly day 1. Far too many players were happy to wait till deadline without even trying to achieve a lynch. Unlike Eddie, I don't think the deadline is to blame for this, though. If this game had 2 week deadlines, we would also have seen the play pattern where nothing happened for most of the day, followed by a flurry of activity near deadline.

---

Old Man, wouldn't it have been far better to claim Vanilla Townie after Lycan had claimed even night cop? Claiming Vanilla would have been the last step in a [] gambit. It would have immediately exposed Lycan's claim as fake, thereby guaranteeing his lynch (now, you also needed Kison to track Lycan to get him lynched). Furthermore, it would have saved you from having to come up with a fake result night 3 (your claim to have been roleblocked lead Kison and Pine to join you on the rofl mislynch), and it would have gone a long way to preventing your mislynch as well (if you look at the argument I made against you, the first six points are essentially "this is why Old Man claim is fake").

I must admit that your flip came completely out of left field for me. I guess in this case to me fakeclaiming seemed so obviously beneficial from a scum perspective, and so obviously detrimental from a town perspective, that I simply didn't even realize that I might have to consider the possibility of fakeclaiming town.

---

Regarding the PGO: It is my strong belief that in the right hands, a PGO is a strong powerrole. It is an ability that has the potential to kill of mafia, and that can't be accidentally used against Vanilla Townies. The goal of the role should be to draw the nightkill. That has the risk of drawing protects as well, but it should be a net positive for the town.

@Hito: I believe I suggested a way to conftown a PGO: be targeted by a Roleblocker when there's only 1 member of the mafia left alive.

Having a PGO in a game with a Serial Killer is poor setup design, though, as it is one more way in which the SK can randomly lose. I'm surprised it's mafia that has an ability to deal with the PGO, as I would belief SK would need it more. After all, mafia can already deal with the PGO if they really want to, by sacrificing one of their members.

Did you consider making the SK bulletproof when killing? That way, there would be a whitelisted counter to the PGO (far better then the unpredictable greylisted role), while the SK has protection similar to the commuter they have now. One shot strongman would no longer be a good choice for scum power in that situation, but that's fixable.

---

One final note: at deadline, the player with the highest number of votes gets lynched. In case of a tie, the first player to that number of votes gets lynched. These rules imply that theoretically, town can win a 2v2 situation if they both vote the same mafioso immediately. I doubt that interaction was intended, as evidenced by the fact that Korts called the game, but it is something that is enabled by the rules.

[MichelSableheart]

Claiming Vanilla would have been the last step in a [] gambit.

*Kokusho's Gambit

[MichelSableheart]

@Hito: I believe I suggested a way to conftown a PGO: be targeted by a Roleblocker when there's only 1 member of the mafia left alive.

If the PGO claim was a mafia fakeclaim, they could just shoot the roleblocker, right? So even if the PGO is town, they can shoot the roleblocker (or no-kill and trust the PGO to do it's job - it depends if you're more scared that the roleblocker is gambiting and going to target elsewhere, or if you're more scared of a watcher on the roleblocker). If only the roleblocker dies at night, I don't see a way for the town to verify whether it was due to them targeting a PGO or being shot by the mafia to keep up their fake PGO.

The point is that if there's only one mafia member left alive, that one mafia member has to make the kill. This means that if that one mafia member is targetted by a roleblocker, the mafia can't kill that night. So if the claimed PGO is a fakeclaiming mafia, the roleblocker won't die through a PGO ability (as that's fake) and they won't be nightkilled by mafia (as the only one who can make that kill was blocked). This means that if the roleblocker does die (no matter who the mafia targets), the PGO can't be mafia.

[MichelSableheart]

Fairly certain I would have been all over Momrangel after a Town RBer claim though and I'm not sure how that one sailed through so uncontested.

This is particularly true given Old Man fakeclaimed being roleblocked, and Momrangal claimed town roleblocker.

I was quite frankly baffled people didn't just think of the obvious (even if right for the wrong reasons) conclusion of Momrangal truthfully claiming role but not alignment.

In my case, it was the lack of a roleblock Night 4. If Momrangal was a scum roleblocker, Kison would have been blocked.

[MichelSableheart]

Will the private topics for this game get posted?

[MichelSableheart]

It works, thank you.