Undertale Mafia: Friends & Corpses [GAME OVER]

[callforjudgement]

I've been following this game from the start (although not as avidly as I would be if I were actively playing), because I felt it might have trouble getting replacements late and decided I was willing to be a late replacement. It's going to take me a while to catch up, because I obviously didn't have access to the neighbourhood while I wasn't playing. Here are some thoughts I've had while reading the thread (there are plenty of people not mentioned, as I obviously don't have a perfect recollection of everything that happened):

@

Mathblade

: Can you claim your victory condition? Normally making this sort of request is pointless because everyone normally just claims town, but I think it'd be beneficial for later if you're locked into a claim of either town or town-compatible third party, rather than being able to pull an "I'm a survivor" or the like on us later. (This request is based on dayplay, and isn't based on any information that isn't public.)

With respect to

Nahdia

and

BigYoshiFan

, I got the strong impression recently that they're scum together or not at all. I can no longer remember the exact reasoning, but it was partly based on them being in a good position to cover for each other in terms of claims (as both have claimed to be capable of stopping kills), and partly based on the way they interacted in thread. Note that if they

are

scum, something weird is going on with respect to kills, but that isn't a huge surprise given what happened in the rest of the game.

I get the strong feeling that someone has overclaimed this game (i.e. claimed a stronger role than they actually have); such a player is highly likely to be scum. I've been scum who's been forced to overclaim before now, and it's a really uncomfortable situation to be in. Gio strikes me as the most likely player to be scum for this reason, both in terms of behaviour, and in terms of the claim. Overclaims tend to have a pile of modifiers on, and tend to leave a lot of evidence that there's a roleblocker/redirector around, and tend to cause an excessive amount of players cleared as Town but by dubious means; this fits this game perfectly, and Gio in particular pretty well.

Update after reading the neighbourhood thread: With respect to

Narna

, something that I'm not sure was publicly claimed yet is that Shiro (flipped town) claimed in the neighbourhood to have rolecopped Narna as a Psychologist. This doesn't 100% confirm Narna as town, but it does make it very likely (and it's also worth noting that if scum

were

given a Psychologist, that strongly implies that third parties are expected to be highly relevant this game, as what other use would the role have for them?). That said, an idea I had to explain the game while I was just reading along is that maybe there's a groupscum team, but without a kill (and the nightkills we've seen were coming from a third party). A town Psychologist would make a lot of sense in

that

sort of setup, and it explains why there seem to be so many townies here. (It'd also explain the implausible deadline change we had earlier; that's likely to come from an anti-town role without a kill, as it would give them a relatively harmless way to influence the game.)

[callforjudgement]

Spoiler: What happened in the vote count reset on day 5

Day 5, Vote Count #12

Current Vote Count:

(0)

SirCakez

(0)

Giovanni il Pellegrino

(6)

Maxous -- Accountant, BigYoshiFan, Nahdia, Giovanni il Pellegrino, SirCakez, MathBlade

(0)

MathBlade

(0)

PeregrineV

(0)

Nahdia

(0)

Accountant

(0)

Not Chara

(0)

Ankamius

(0)

BigYoshiFan

(1)

Narna -- Maxous

(0)

Almost50

(0)

Pine

(0)

Creeps20

Not Voting:

PeregrineV, Ankamius, Creeps20, Pine, Not Chara, Narna, Almost50

With 14 votes available, it takes 8 votes to hammer.

Day 5 Will End on Wednesday, December 14th, at 10 p.m. Eastern Time
Countdown: (expired on 2016-12-14 22:00:00)

Day 5 Begins Now

Current Vote Count:

(0)

SirCakez

(0)

Giovanni il Pellegrino

(0)

Maxous

(0)

MathBlade

(0)

PeregrineV

(0)

Nahdia

(0)

Accountant

(0)

Not Chara

(0)

Ankamius

(0)

BigYoshiFan

(0)

Narna

(0)

Almost50

(0)

Pine

(0)

Creeps20

Not Voting:

SirCakez, Giovanni il Pellegrino, Maxous, MathBlade, PeregrineV, Nahdia, Accountant, Not Chara, Ankamius, BigYoshiFan, Narna, Almost50, Pine, Creeps20

With 14 votes available, it takes 8 votes to hammer.

Day 5 Will End on Tuesday, December 20th, at 8 a.m. Eastern Time
Countdown: (expired on 2016-12-20 08:00:00)

So in other words, Maxous was getting a ton of votes, then we got a Gaster-flavoured message that seems to be connected to a vote count reset, then the vote count was reset. (Then a little later in #7241, Mathblade took this as a prompt to claim Bulletproof. IMO, this pretty much confirms Mathblade as town, as I can't see why scum would assume their own bulletproofness was the reason for the vote count reset, and claiming Bulletproof without a good reason is nearly always a bad idea regardless of alignment.) I'm inclined to think that the vote count reset was triggered by someone in Maxous' faction, but am having trouble understanding why that would be part of his role from a setup design perspective. Flavour people: is it at all possible flavour-wise that there's more than one Gaster (e.g. does he have multiple bodies, or something like that)? If not, I'm really confused about the faction balance here; before rereading this I was fairly convinced that we had an SK that could kill + a scumteam that couldn't, but this seems to contradict it.

I'm aware of the "a new faction was created" message, but am not sure what conclusions to draw from it. I guess it's most likely that the original scumteam was fairly small. We might now have a new one.

[callforjudgement]

I've been rereading

massive

/

Creeps20

, and not really liking what I see (especially massive's posts; pretty much all the explanations for votes strike me as being scum-indicative). I'm really surprised that there wasn't a previous member of the slot; its first post was #683, which is a crazy high number for a slot's first post.

@

Creeps20

: Could you claim night actions? The entire point of being a Fruit Vendor is that you can confirm that you weren't doing anything at night via giving out fruit. This only works if you actually let us know who you gave the fruit to, so that they can confirm that you weren't doing anything else. You should be claiming your targets immediately every morning, and asking the recipient to confirm; you aren't making full pro-town use of the role otherwise.

I've also been rereading Almost50. As far as I can tell, he's trolling intentionally, which disappoints me. If the claim's fake or not town-aligned, though, it's a very good one, and either the moderator or the player('s scumteam) has done a very good job of thinking it up.

@

Almost50

: What's your read on Gio at the moment? (This question is more to help me read you than to help me read Gio, although if you have a good argument either way, I'll listen to it.)


PEDIT: It's not that Gio's claim is far-fetched; it's that something isn't adding up this game, and Gio's claim being fake is the easiest way to make it add up. If the game

did

add up, I'd have no problem with the claim.

[callforjudgement]

@

BigYoshiFan

: What reasoning did you use to conclude that last night was the best time to use your global doctor?

[callforjudgement]

lock-town: Almost, Nahdia, Mathblade, Giovanni.

Where am I?

Could you state your own reasons for why everyone (or Not Chara specifically) should consider you confirmed town?

[callforjudgement]

This was also to Narna. With all the cop claims it is foolish to think evil doesn't have a gf.

I think it's highly likely that some of the investigative results we're getting are unreliable. There's more than one way that could happen, though (e.g. one is a scum fakeclaim, or scum have an ability to redirect or otherwise interfere with the results, or the roles are carefully designed to give misleading results).

Something that's really worth noticing is that Skullduggery's Psychologist is a variant, and not the version from the setup that invented the role (the original version checked for

unused

roles, i.e. it'd get an innocent on scum who'd performed their factional kill in the past). I've only ever seen that exact version of the role once before (it was with mafiascum players but offsite mods as part of a special crossover event between the sites), and in that game, it cleared a Mafia Traitor (with no kill) who then coasted to victory on the clear. If a mod's going to the trouble to invent a nonstandard Gunsmith variant, it may well be because the differences have a reason in the setup.

(So to summarise: if there are unreliable investigative results going around, and it's highly likely that there are, it's most likely either Gio lying about them, or Narna getting results that are technically true from the mod but which imply something that would be true in more normal setups but false in this one. We also know that either Nahdia's lying-and-probably-scum, or else that someone's redirecting them, and if there is a redirector they could also be used to interfere with investigations. It's certainly possible that scum has some sort of separate role ability to hide from investigations, but that seems a bit less likely to me.)

[callforjudgement]

SirCakez: I meant why you gave things to the people you gave them to, not why you gave certain things themselves.

Oh
Night 1 I targeted Fire because I thought he would be able to use the BG effectively and he was a townread
Nights 2/4 Andrius was a solid townread iirc so I chose him.
And last night I picked Math because of how active they are in thread and so they'd be able to strategize the Neopolitan well

For reference, if we're talking about SirCakez. I was planning to ask him about the Inventor targeting, but I see there's already an answer. (Also, I wanted to check if the fact that I had a Bodyguard shot lying around was public knowledge, but it seems it is; I doubt the scum would fail to pick up on something like this, so there's no harm in claiming it now. I can confirm that SirCakez is telling the truth about his N1 action.) Is it public which inventions Andrius was given?

The thing that confuses me, though: effective use of Bodyguard requires dying in someone else's place. As such, wouldn't you want to give it to someone scummy-but-probably-still-town, so that they could use it to save someone who was widely townread?

[callforjudgement]

and since Creeps is fucking lurking out and probably isn't going to answer my question when we see him next anyway, I'm just going to make this point widely fucking known. THIS:

I jailed massive last night. Narna is lying or I was blocked again, I guess.

So this is a lie, and can be confirmed.

Yeah because we know Nahdia WAS roleblocked N2 (they claimed to have JKed me but I was not), so at least that part of Maxous's list lines up.

DOESN'T FUCKING MAKE SENSE FOR A FRUIT VENDOR. I checked Leonshade's ISO day 2, there was

no

soft from Leon that he received anything. Nothing that I saw anyway. Feel free to check my work.

I asked the Creeps slot to fullclaim night actions a little earlier (something that a Fruit Vendor should have been doing anyway; the role only functions in a pro-town way if you're aggressively claiming your actions and asking people to verify them). Or in other words, I totally agree with what you're dong here, and wanted to quote the post to reduce the chance that Creeps can claim to have missed it.

Actually, we can do this the other way round too. There should be a ton of fruit around by now if there really is a Fruit Vendor in the game. Did anyone receive any? (I can't see a plausible reason not to claim receiving fruit, as all that does is confirm the existence of a Fruit Vendor, something that's been claimed anyway.)

[callforjudgement]

@MathBlade: I missed your case on PeregrineV. Care to summarize it?

[callforjudgement]

So we know Narna got could not kills on Creeps slot and Nahdia slot and Accountant slot. JaeReed slot is out because of VT check claim Gio is out because of Maxous ascetic D2 check.

Can you explain the reasoning on Gio in more detail? I must have missed when that happened.

[callforjudgement]

Ankamius is confirmed as having vigged someone. I think that's a pretty clear implication that Ankamius isn't groupscum, at least (there may well be a weird victory condition there – we've seen a "town but with alternatives" victory condition already – but it's unlikely to be a Mafia-equivalent victory condition). So Peregrine V and Almost50 are going to be the most obvious choices here.

However

, I think this implies something else important: this was a 22-player game, so even if Peregrine V and Almost50 are

both

groupscum, there's no way that they form a major proportion of the anti-town power. So we've pretty much had confirmation about the nature of the scumteam now: either there's a cult out there, or else there are a number of third parties. I can't see any other way for the setup to make sense. Unfortunately, we haven't had any real information on the nature of that. I'm going to ask the mod some questions about what they consider to be a faction (mostly to confirm whether it's necessarily the case that there's guaranteed to be a scumgroup with size at least 2).

[callforjudgement]

So one theory I'm seriously considering at this point to make sense of the game is: groupscum can't kill, and all the kills we've seen (other than Ank's) have come from third parties. (Normally something like that wouldn't matter for town strategy, but as many of our clears are based on "can't kill" results, it may explain how scum are hiding in a sea of innocents.) The mod threw an FBI Agent invention into the game, which might be intended as a hint, but it might also be intended as a red herring. In any case, it's almost certain that there's an undiscovered third party out there, and if that player's victory condition is "everyone else dies", then they'd need a kill, much more desperately than groupscum would (as groupscum have a much easier time getting their opponents eliminated via lynch than a lone player does).

In other news, my top pick for scum at the moment is probably Gio. I agree that Gio is pretty much confirmed as being a Follower at this point, but I don't think the Weak modifier has been confirmed, and that could be a fakeclaim to make the role look a lot more townish. Gio's a player I was getting scumpings from while following the game. (Meanwhile, Almost50 and PeregrineV are both annoying to try to read, which has made me reluctant to actually do it. I'm going to need to reread them anyway, though; not scumhunting them is basically just being lazy/selfish and something that I shouldn't be doing. I'm putting this here to encourage people to call me on it and buck me into gear.)

[callforjudgement]

Spoiler: Some of Gio's reads posts, mostly here for my own reference but I may as well post them anyway

I am seriously at a loss...

So, basically, this day has reached a point where most participants are so sure they are right that they will not even dare discuss the possibility of being wrong. The downtime didn't help either.

VOTE: McMenno

This is an L-2 vote.

What the game lacks right now is information and he is the most informative lynch choice we have. We are so lost in details right now, it isn't even funny.

Ok, what the fuck? I come to post and I find myself in front of the Apocalypse.


I understand that I am scumread and rightly so, so reading the last few pages before the Leonshade shenanigan, I will try to defend myself.

If I was scum that had replaced into the generally townread House slot, I wouldn't have a reason to even go near the McMenno wagon or post polarizing theories regarding flips. Instead, I would had voted Narna like all the cool kids did at the time and generally I would not stick out as much I did.

In games I usually have a low post count with a high word count per post (I like textwalling). If I was scum, I would actually textwall based on theories my mafia buddies would help me to develop during the night I replaced in. I know that Creature (and possibly SirCakez) know how I play and I would do anything possible to play as similarly as I did in the previous games.

Also, regarding Creature:

Maxous, Giovanni and Almost50 are my top preferences.

This is the second time Creature says he wants to lynch Maxous and I. My objection here is that I am a weak role who targeted Maxous at night, so, barring shenanigans, I should have been dead if he was scum.

PEDIT

VOTE: Maxous

Disingenuous my ass.

Interesting.

VOTE: LeonShade

People I would not lynch:

SirCakez
Maxous
PeregrineV
Ankamius
SlySly
SnarkySnowman
Andrius
massive

Possibly Nahdia, as well.

Neutral on Firebringer and Almost50.
-----

I am divided on Leonshade.

On one hand, the more I think about it, the more it doesn't make sense for him to be scum. He was generally Townread before his "you shall not pass" moment and it doesn't make sense for as powerful a tool as a supposed scum Governor to get himself out in the open as blatantly as he did, as early as Day 3.

On the other hand, his move was horrendous. It screwed Town completely just when we thought that there will finally be a sprinkle of much needed unity and if he was Town he should had let the lynch go through on this basis alone. If he is scum, his timing, while not orthodox, is MVP worthy.

Flavor claim doesn't help either. Asgore is neutral storywise but a possible antagonist.

-----

I am lost on Narna, but since a lot of my townreads scumread her, I will do so, I guess. I also like to feed on grass during spring, especially in semi-mountainous areas.

-----

Titus and Not Chara, I generally like both. They both seem to try to sort out the mess. I like Titus slightly more; her thought proccess seems clearer. I will join the wagon of either of them if nothing changes today, however.

-----

Creature, I do not like. He seems disinterested at the very least, even with his usually scattered posting style. I consider him a good player and I expected him to be more involved, and he simply isn't.

-----

Shiro, as well. He is lurking, but he seems to be around in order to do something grandiose and then disappear again. He did so when he hammered MoI and afterwards when he unvoted Narna.

VOTE: Shiro

For a fake lurker is never late or is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to. Miller claim is dubious, as well. As far as I get it (I haven't played Undertale) while reading the wiki, flavor wise Asriel could turn into Flowey, or Flowey could turn into Asriel while not changing alignments (instead of being nightkilled, he isn't and he gains a different set of skills). This would explain the possibly low number of scum, as we have trouble identifying who could be scum from a flavor standpoint.

Wait, wait, let's discuss what has just transpired. Lay down the pitchforks.

Why in hell would the scumteam kill Titus? It makes absolutely no. fucking. sense. She was been scumread and she would have been a prime lynch candidate even today. She could easily be the wagon opposite supposed scum!Narna.

Why Asriel Dreemurr is not attached to a scum role? Then who can be scum, flavor wise? Asgore I can get being Town, but why Asriel is not scum?

Titus was one of my neighbors.
That should explain a lot.

Anyone posting without a vote on Narna is claiming they are her scumbuddy.

How the fact that Titus was your neighbor is in any way relevant? How could scum know that she is your neighbor?

More importantly, I targeted Narna last night and got an investigative action result. Also, I am not dead.

The main thing that's making me suspicious is that Gio's posts seem to show a low level of investment in who gets lynched. In general, this has been a game where tensions have run high and players have been furious with each other for not lynching a player who's "obvious scum". Meanwhile, Gio's been a voice calling for calm but not really

doing

anything with it. The best way to solve a "lynch X or lynch Y" argument is "but shouldn't we be looking at Z, at least to help solve the situation?". It isn't really "you're arguing too much, but meh". (Incidentally, having Maxous as a strong townread is not suspicious, as he had an unclaimed Ascetic at the time.) Gio seems to have had very few reads of his own; he's mostly just been happy to help wagons along. (Actually, many of his strongest reads have been on

himself

, using things like self-meta arguments.) Gio seems to have been softly pushing days to end without caring much about the outcome (which is likely to lead to compromise lynches, which tend tob e on town), and to have been defending himself, and not much else. That seems like behaviour that's most likely to come from scum, to me.

(The thing that prompted me to check through Gio, though, was the claim, which seems like an unreasonable amount of town power. Obviously, it's possible that it's someone else who overclaimed, or that the roles are less useful than they seem, but Gio's role is one of the least confirmed and also one of the most specific, which means that there are nightplay reasons to think Gio is scum too.)

[callforjudgement]

I still wonder about Yoshi though or if scum BP'd be but you go in my light clear pile since there was a kill tonight.

Scum shot at me even though I am BP aka BP'd me

I was townreading you for assuming that your BP had blocked a shot, but this is making me doubt at least part of that read. The fact that you're bulletproof has been made a big deal of over the course of the game. It's not reasonable to think anyone with a kill would have forgotten about it. So why are you suggesting it?

[callforjudgement]

I'm thinking it's true that not all scum members can kill, and Narna was killed to bolster the position of who they checked.
Also, Math and Gio team? Something that sprung up in my mind. Probably something I am missing that makes this obviously not true.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it anywhere earlier (other than in my head), but my main issue with MathBlade is that they seem to really care about surviving personally (something I picked up while following the game), but also don't seem to have (or at least, haven't claimed to have) a role that warrants that. This is what prompted me to outright ask MathBlade earlier if they had an alternative win condition. It also implies a possibility that the Bulletproof is a fakeclaim; generally speaking, if you're a Bulletproof Townie, you actively want that to remain hidden as long as possible, but MathBlade has been claiming it at basically every opportunity. Obviously, a fake Bulletproof claim reduces the chance that you die via discouraging players from shooting you.

People who have played with MathBlade before: are they generally selfish as Town? Or is selfishness an indication that they might have a different alignment? (I can reasonably see all of groupscum (although that's a bit of a stretch), third-party, cult (MathBlade is a blatantly obvious cult target; the main argument against is that we've seen no proof of a cult, but we have seen many hints…), and just plain selfish town.)

PEDIT: Oh, it looks like people have been discussing this already while I've been writing the post, but I'll post it anyway.

[callforjudgement]

Because I didn't say how many shots I was BP. If I was shot by Maxous then shot again it would result in a no kill.

We've only had one missing kill. Your

second

shot of BP can't possibly explain that (because there'd need to be a missing kill to explain your

first

shot).

Also, why are you assuming Maxous had a kill?

@

Gio

: Please ask the moderator how your Weak modifier would interact with a former Town player whose win condition had been altered via an external force.

[callforjudgement]

Weak only dies if visiting a killing role though?

No.

There are two commonly seen variants. The Normal variant dies if they target someone with a non-Town win condition. A commonly seen alternative dies if they target someone who would investigate guilty to a Cop. (And not all Cops can detect cults; in fact, I suspect that most can't. The issue doesn't come up in a Normal for obvious reasons.) As such, we probably need clarification from Gio on exactly how it works.

[callforjudgement]

Not Voting: SirCakez, Giovanni il Pellegrino, MathBlade, PeregrineV, Nahdia, callforjudgement, Ankamius, BigYoshiFan, Almost50, JaeReed

So this leaves SirCakez, myself, Peregrine V, Ank, and Almost50 as potential scum.

Taking out obv town SirCakez and myself this leaves Peregrine V Ank and Almost50 as group scum candidates.

(Yes yes I know before you start yelling I know I am ignoring the possibility of a cult on N5 but we need group scum death. )

Admitting you aren't confirmed as town by night actions.

Keep bending bud. I am town. I am annoyed and frustrated I had to drag y'all to Maxous you won't listen to me on Creeps or PV and now that it is narrowed down to PV. But a part of me finds it utterly hilarious you are trying to lynch confirmed town.

Acting like you are confirmed as town by night actions (sufficiently so that you made me go and reread to discover where). Also, why doesn't the second post mention A50?

(Please don't draw the wrong conclusions from my questions: I am trying to sort you at the moment. That doesn't mean that I think you're scum, or on any particular scumteam. It

does

mean, though, that I have little reason to consider you town.)

[callforjudgement]

Narna/Creeps FFS
Not Chara town flip is unsurprising though
Since Narna was town that basically confirms an investigation result manipulator I believe?

I think scum is in (A50, PV, Callforjudgement, Ank) at this point, with a small chance of Yoshi scum if there was a nokill gambit to "clear" him.

Could you explain your townread on MathBlade? Dayplay?

[callforjudgement]

(PEDIT: Re: #9619) Well, I've been calling Gio a likely liar repeatedly since I replaced in…

That said, even if you think an investigative role is lying, it's normally better to lynch them than their targets. I'm waiting for clarification on Gio as to whether or not he'd die upon targeting cult. If the answer's "yes" (which seems likely), then either there's still an action-interfering role out there somewhere or you're town.

I should note that while following along with the game – I was reading it in "realtime", so this was before the Maxous flip – I got a very strong feeling that Maxous was

group

scum, and covering for buddies. In particular, if Maxous was a member of a team rather than third party, I suspect he claimed someone else's blocks (which might have been performed directly, or might have been performed by redirecting Nahdia). That said, although this can explain the N1 death, it can't really explain Gio surviving a Weak investigation on MathBlade last night unless Gio was redirected, and onto another investigative (the Follower result proves the lack of a block, and in particular there's no way to produce the result in question by redirecting Nahdia). So it's indeed not that plausible for Gio to be town but MathBlade scum.

[callforjudgement]

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 1#p8563651

Here Giovanni dies if he targets anyone not Town aligned.

Therefore I am confirmed town aligned unless you are calling Gio a liar.

@cfj

I already responded in #9628. (Linking you to it because I know it's easy to miss posts in games this large/fast.)

[callforjudgement]

@Nahdia: Wouldn't be the first time this game that players had made incorrect assumptions about their role based on the name. It's at least prudent to wait for confirmation.

[callforjudgement]

The mod got back to me on a question I asked a while back: while it's confirmed that the game has scum, it is

not

confirmed that the game has (or ever has had) groupscum. So I can potentially believe a setup in which until Maxous got lynched, there were no other scum. (That said, such a setup would be very hard to balance, and there'd be likely to be complexities to try to bring the swing more under control. Additionally, it's hard to see this theory fitting with Maxous' behaviour.)

@Almost50: Do you think there are any players, other than yourself, who deserve to be lynched? Are you self-voting out of a belief that everyone's generally town, or that there are scum but you can't identify them, or that there are scum and you know who they are but you won't be able to persuade anyone to lynch them?

[callforjudgement]

Given that almost everyone has claimed and we still don't have a clue to the nature of the scumteam (thus this might be lylo? hard to tell), I agree with making sure that everyone has at least the generalities of their roles claimed. (In some cases, it might make sense to hide details, but players should be honest about what sort of details are omitted (e.g. the number of shots left on a role is something that may make sense to leave out, but you should be honest about "I won't claim how many shots the role has or if it's unlimited", rather than trying to imply a misleading shot count).)

[callforjudgement]

Ugh, maybe Gio is town.

I agree that Ankamius' question is a good one.

[callforjudgement]

@

BigYoshiFan

: I was rereading you (as you're only very slightly confirmed) and realised that I don't know what many of your reads are. What are they, especially on the unconfirmed players (PV and Almost50) and players with confirmed role but not alignment (Gio and SirCakez)?

[callforjudgement]

Does anything special happen if people target you with a non-killing role?

[callforjudgement]

Ankamius revealed his intentions in the neighborhood, right? Does anyone in the neighborhood scumread them?

I'm convinced Ankamius isn't groupscum, and reasonably confident that he can win with town. It's possible that he has an alternative win condition, like Nosferatu did.

[callforjudgement]

Also, almost50, notchara and I are all dogs.

For the record, this is PeregrineV's most recent post, 4 days ago. As far as I can see, he hasn't been on V/LA, so really should have been prodded and/or replaced by now.

It seems to be softing an investigative, so at this point I can't see a reason for PeregrineV not to claim; a hardclaim is normally (not always, but normally) better for town than a softclaim.

@Mod: Should PeregrineV have been prodded and/or replaced?

[callforjudgement]

@

PeregrineV

: #8869 seems to imply that you think some dead players got culted. That makes very little sense, as far as I can tell; Skullduggery's a competent enough mod to ensure that cultedness would show in a flip (given that we apparently have no other way to determine it or even that a cult exists), and a cult wouldn't target a player who'd already died for recruitment. Can you explain what's going on there?

[callforjudgement]

So if you have joined the "new Maxous faction" but used to be scum, you get all of your old scumbuddies lynched while your cultbuddies cult the rest of town. That makes your cult win.

(If this is obvious to a numbskull like me, how do you miss this?)

Right. Because we're certain to immediately trust someone saying "Hey I used to be mafia now I'm cult. Follow me!" And not just, you know, lynch them.

Right. Because mafia and cult win together, and cult can grow, so killing the mafia members seems dumb for cult.

Missed this exchange earlier, but it gives me a really strong "inside knowledge" tell on PeregrineV. I've never seen a game where Mafia and cult win together before, and it's not the sort of thing I would think of. It definitely makes very little sense as an

assumption

.

So I get the feeling that PeregrineV knows something that I don't, and am interested to know how.

[callforjudgement]

@

PeregrineV

: #8869 seems to imply that you think some dead players got culted. That makes very little sense, as far as I can tell; Skullduggery's a competent enough mod to ensure that cultedness would show in a flip (given that we apparently have no other way to determine it or even that a cult exists), and a cult wouldn't target a player who'd already died for recruitment. Can you explain what's going on there?

I can, but would you rather PV answer? I think there is a misunderstanding.

Well, I don't understand what PV's on about, so it's probably best for him to clarify himself. (That is, unless I've outright misread the post; you can intercept if that's the case).

P-edit. Interesting... is it common knowledge that mafia and cult do not win together?

Cult is a third-party alignment by definition. It says so in the first sentence of the wiki page.
Every game I've seen with a cult has either had it opposed to the Mafia, or else has had no Mafia equivalent at all (with the Cult designed as the main enemy).
Nearly every such game has also had really strong hints (or, commonly nowadays, an outright statement during signups) that a Cult exists in the game, as culthunting can be really different from scumhunting. Skullduggery's vague "MY FACTION" hint doesn't really come up to the normal site standards of warning the players about cults. Of course, that could be intentional, but I think it's almost guaranteed at this point that something weird is going on with the faction balance. I just don't know what.

[callforjudgement]

There are far too many dogs in Undertale. "Undertale Dog Mafia" would probably be runnable (although maybe not as a Large).

How many votes are there on PV at the moment?

[callforjudgement]

Counting the votes myself: just you and MathBlade it seems.
I'll be very uncomfortable if the wagon grows too large in PV's absence (there's no point in pressuring someone who isn't reading the thread, and I don't want a repeat of what happened yesterday), but I definitely believe PV is the best lynch at the moment, so:

VOTE: PeregrineV

If you're one of the players who can read PV and think he's town, please speak up.

[callforjudgement]

@

PeregrineV

: #8869 seems to imply that you think some dead players got culted. That makes very little sense, as far as I can tell; Skullduggery's a competent enough mod to ensure that cultedness would show in a flip (given that we apparently have no other way to determine it or even that a cult exists), and a cult wouldn't target a player who'd already died for recruitment. Can you explain what's going on there?

I'm arguing against the fact that people seem to think a cult was created.

Do you think a cult was created when Maxous died?

UNVOTE:

Still not convinced PV is town, but the explanations clear up quite a few things, and at this point I have no idea what sort of scum I'm even meant to be looking for. (Besides, a Dog Sensor is the perfect sort of "quirky VT equivalent" that a mod would like to use in a setup like this, to avoid flooding it with powerful town roles.) I'm finding scumhunting almost impossible because there's no real information available about how the game actually works. Logically speaking, in a 22 player game, today should be lylo or beyond lylo, but we have so many "confirmed townies" that it doesn't feel like it.

If we're going to have to lynch a confirmed townies, I'd rather lynch within Narna's confirmations. I have no reason to think Narna was lying, but I do think they're the most likely investigative to either have been interfered with, or to give misleading results.

[callforjudgement]

Has Math claimed their actual role yet? I thought the investigative action was an invention, not part of Math's role, so it isn't really correct to say that Math's an investigative.

[callforjudgement]

@

Nahdia

: Are you V/LA? You haven't declared it, but you're acting like it.

[callforjudgement]

OK, since PV has already responded to you on the mater, and since I'm soon to be lynched, I would like to tell you about my own theory of the "cult" (which isn't "technically" a cult bc they can no longer recruit, but the name makes sense as "those who have been recruited").

I've considered that. It'd be basically impossible to balance, though, and I wouldn't expect most mods to try it or most reviewers to allow it. It'd make much more sense from a game balance point of view if there were a fixed number of "cult" chosen upon Maxous' death.

In either case, though, where are the unclaimed kills coming from? Is there a killing faction separate from Maxous?

[callforjudgement]

VOTE: almost50
I still don't buy the PV claim but this is fine too

VOTE: SirCakez

This vote, and the fact it's coming from SirCakez of all people, makes me

really

uncomfortable. This is mostly gut, but thinking about it, I guess the reason is related to "well, we've had wagons turning into something akin to quickhammers frequently this game, and putting A50 at L-2 is a good way for SirCakez to increase the chance that the day ends without discussion".

FWIW, I think it's highly likely that A50 will flip town, although I can see why people want the lynch and am not sure if I care enough to try to stop it. However, I'd like much better reasons from people joining that wagon; if you're going to lynch A50, don't do so thoughtlessly and make sure you have good reasons. (Note that pressurevoting A50 is entirely pointless; if you're voting on

that

wagon, it's for a lynch.)

[callforjudgement]

Currently the way I see things going, SirCakez is, if not confirmed as town somehow (and I'm not sure we have any way left to confirm him other than Gio's shot which will take far too long), most likely going to get lynched tomorrow. I'd say they're more of a near-certain lynch than A50 is. So if people generally agree with both lynches and are just looking to order them, I'd rather lynch SirCakez first. It seems much more likely that we'd get a scumflip there than by lynching A50, and we really badly need a scumflip at this point (both to make sense of the setup, and simply because it places us closer to winning).

PV, would you be willing to unvote A50? (A50, would you be willing to unvote yourself?) I know I said I wasn't planning to fight this lynch, but I changed my mind; pseudodeathproofing a townie really isn't worth spending a mislynch, especially as we have no idea how many mislynches we have left.

PEDIT: @SirCakez: Quickhammers are most effective when people don't hold you responsible for them. Given the number of people who either a) are being pressured to hammer by the rest of the thread, or b) have hammer-dependent roles, putting someone at L-1 in this game is very close to hammering, so placing them at L-2 is the best it's possible to do to increase the chances of someone's lynch whilst being able to blame it on someone else.

Also, I had a thought:
@

BigYoshiFan

: What happens if you

attempt to

hammer someone? (I know you're not capable of hammering, but what happens if you try?)

[callforjudgement]

In either case, though, where are the unclaimed kills coming from? Is there a killing faction separate from Maxous?

As for the my theory of how Max picked his targets, it is not that hard to balance. If you have a cult that cannot kill (the normal cult) with a Scum group OR a Serial Killer, it is fairly balanced, and the longer the Cult Leader lives the greater their chance is of winning. Right? Now if the leader got lynched at any point the recruitment ability is lost. Agreed?

Disagreed already at this point. Standard Cult Leader + Mafia + Town is incredibly hard to balance; I wouldn't consider that a fairly balanced game. It's often attempted, but most such mods either advertise the game as high-swing and don't care that much about the balance, or else add in secondary mechanics to try to keep the swing down.

[callforjudgement]

In reply to your question, JaeReed is being pressured to hammer (although obviously can't currently hammer A50, who isn't at L-1). You're even asking them to do it yourself.

[callforjudgement]

In that case (after checking with the mod to ensure you won't be modkilled for it), I'd suggest attempting to hammer the next wagon that reaches L-1. Having more confirmation of people's roles can hardly be a bad thing.

[callforjudgement]

CFJ - if I wanted a quickhammer on Almost, why not wait until he was L-2 or L-1? Besides, it looks like we've (mostly) come to a consensus on Jae hammering Almost anyway.

That looks like pressuring JaeReed to hammer Almost50 to me. It was only a few posts before the statement you're asking about.

[callforjudgement]

So, a few hours ago, while offline, I had a realisation that might make sense of this game.

Is it possible that SirCakez, Mathblade, and Gio are all currently scum together (perhaps not over the entire course of the game)? Or am I missing something? This would seem to explain everything that didn't add up this game. If there's a night result contradicting that, let me know. Otherwise I'm going to try to build a case, because it seems to explain away a lot of anomalies I've been seeing. (This theory also has the advantage that it explains three scum; we'd expect to see either three or four at this stage of the game, given one scumflip, and thus it's quite possibly lylo.)

[callforjudgement]

I didn't say "actively".

Stating that there's a consensus that person X should do action Y will tend to have the effect of encouraging person X to do action Y (as it would typically be considered a scumtell if they didn't). I'm not sure that such a consensus exists, and stating that it does cuts off discussion and provides pressure in a way. I'm also not quite sure why you're arguing this point so much; it was a relatively minor point in my post and in most circumstances wouldn't have had any real followup. Why are you so focused on it?

[callforjudgement]

@Almost50: The point is that the "hammer" vote won't do anything, so we confirm BYF's role with no changes to the gamestate.

[callforjudgement]

OK, so since I proposed my Gio/Cakez/MB scumteam theory in this thread, MathBlade has gone off on a rant in the neighbourhood and basically accused me of gamethrowing, and SirCakez has accused me of being scum. I was mostly checking to see if other people thought it was feasible rather than fishing for reactions, but that doesn't mean I'm going to disregard that sort of reaction if I

get

them.

I think it's fairly likely that MathBlade thought that the game was sewn up, and is reacting so violently because I'm trying to throw a wrench into that. Thinking the game's sewn up isn't necessarily a scumtell by itself, but in this game, where most of the players have expressed confusion as to what's going on and many players have threatened to replace out or disrupted the game to the extent of needing to be force-replaced as a result, I can't see town having that sort of confidence in a plan unless they were

heavily

underclaimed; it requires inside knowledge that has to come from somewhere.

Let's see what MathBlade's plan accomplishes: it proves, by day 9, that if Gio is lying about a Follower, that either SirCakez or MathBlade is scum with them; it proves that Nahdia is in fact a Jailkeeper; and it discourages non-groupscum players from nightkilling JaeReed. That's more or less it. Now, that information isn't useless, but it also isn't gamewinningly useful.

Meanwhile, on day 9, there will probably be six players alive; perhaps five, if Ankamius gets another kill. If we don't hit scum by then, the only way that town could win then would be if the scumteam

currently

has two or fewer members (and if there were any third parties, it'd require navigating a screwy ending, something which really doesn't give any guarantees as to what happens). This was, originally, a 22 player game. We've only seen one scumflip. The most likely number of scum for a 22 player game, by a long way, is 5; and 6 is more likely than 4. That means we probably have 4 scum alive right now (although I'm assuming they aren't all in the same faction; if they are, there's a reasonable chance that town has already lost). Given that this game casts a lot of doubt on the nature of the scumteam, it's possible that the scumteam is rather weaker to compensate for their information advantage; perhaps there are only 3 scum alive. Even then, wasting lynches pottering around lynching townies is a really bad idea, as even against a scumteam of 3 we'd need to play a perfect game from then on.

So MathBlade's been playing in one of the most anti-town possible ways; encouraging people to drift into the iceberg, happily doing mostly inconsequential things while town's numbers get lower and lower, and then probably eventually getting endgamed. The thing is, I was trusting them despite this due to Gio's result, which is effectively impossible to interfere with; OTOH, perhaps Gio's simply just lying about it, which would make a lot more sense. MathBlade and Gio being scum together would get round that issue, though.

Further evidence for this is that SirCakez is pushing the Almost50 wagon and getting very defensive when I accuse him of encouraging JaeReed to hammer it, and meanwhile implying in #9826 and #9829 that he doesn't particularly care if JaeReed hammers Almost. MathBlade's on the same wagon, and mostly responsible for encouraging it to grow. Additionally, in neighbourhood conversation, MathBlade has been very reluctant to lynch SirCakez, except for the past few days (when they suddenly changed his mind with a SirCakez scumread); it was quite a noticable change. MathBlade is

still

reluctant to lynch SirCakez, but for different reasons (they want SirCakez' inventor shot around to be able to confirm that Gio is a Follower, because ???). I guess you can put it this way: it's often possible to figure out someone's scumbuddies via neighbourhood, once you know they're scum (I've done it before). If I knew for a fact that MathBlade were scum, I'd be highly certain that SirCakez were one of their buddies, and willing to lynch/vig purely on that information.

[callforjudgement]

This also means that if Maxous was not the killer at the start of the game it has to be Ank or Nahdia FMPOV.

Ankamius was not the killer at the start of the game. A solo SK would have no method of knowing when lylo was. A role like Ankamius' (which is pretty much confirmed as existing by the kill on Not Chara) would have to have a restriction preventing it functioning in lylo or the day before, in order to avoid a surprise endgame, which would be a huge setup design mistake (and something that reviewers nearly always check for, especially in setups which have screwy faction or kill setups).

[callforjudgement]

Having almost have the group fucking confirmed by tomorrow is a pretty big ass deal when we don't know how many evil people there are. We need confirmed town at this point.

Very few people will be confirmed. The only actual confirmation by tomorrow will be that Nahdia has a roleblock. That wouldn't actually confirm them as town. (Note that confirming the protective half of the JK role is basically impossible.)

I understand the gravity of the situation and I am trying to protect people in order to do so. I want to fucking demonstrate my townread of Gio to you all so you can see that I am indeed fucking conftown and JaeReed and I will be two unkillable conftown a (well except if someone has a strongman) and then any evil will be forced to murder and lynch each other.

I do not believe your plan is capable of confirming Gio's alignment. I do not believe your plan is capable of confirming Gio's role without making various assumptions about specific people being town (and even if it does, it'll be too late to be useful). You may try to convince me otherwise in the neighbourhood, if it's me who's missing something and not you; I wouldn't want an argument like this to blow up out of a simple misunderstanding, so I'm willing to be corrected! But I'm not willing to be corrected with mere assertions, I'll need proof.

[callforjudgement]

The Shiro argument is plausible, I'll have to reread that.

However I think it exposes a flaw in some of the assumptions you've been making in other arguments. Here's a question that should expose it: Are you assuming that the killer pre-Maxous-flip was aligned with Maxous, or not? If they were, then is the killer now aligned with Maxous?

[callforjudgement]

(And by "the killer" I'm including "killers" plural, in the case that there's a groupscum team with a kill.)

[callforjudgement]

Can you explain Narna's clear on Nahdia (#6164)? I can't see any way it can possibly have been incorrect, in that it stated that Nahdia couldn't kill at the time.

If Nahdia is scum, then either they don't have a kill, or else they were recruited by Maxous (in which case they weren't lying about the JK, because they would have been town at the time they claimed it). I can't see a way in which Nahdia is an SK and has been all game.

[callforjudgement]

An investigation immunity, to stop Narna, would have had to be something Godfather-like. An Ascetic-like would have produced different results ("blocked" versus "can't kill"). Psychologist isn't Tracker or Follower.

[callforjudgement]

DON'T HAMMER. FFS DO NOT HAMMER.

Thirded.

I wouldn't say there's a lack of opposition to the A50 wagon. There totally is, and much of it's coming from me.

On the other hand, I

would

say that the opposition is mostly coming from town (not totally convinced on BYF – although I'm leaning town there – but I know I'm town, and in order for JaeReed to be scum then there'd have to be so many scum that town has probably lost already). No opposition to a wagon means that it's on town. Opposition primarily from townies is an even stronger indicator it's on town.

Would the people on the A50 wagon

please

unvote? @

PeregrineV

: please unvote. @

Nahdia

: please unvote. @

Almost50

: please unvote. We badly need to catch scum today, and can't waste our few remaining lynches on townies.

[callforjudgement]

Actually, even more so: @

SirCakez

: Please unvote. If the opinions you've stated in the thread are correct, you're not very invested in the A50 lynch. So why are you still on the wagon? #9851 is the only post I spotted in a quick scan of your ISO where you've expressed a scumread on that slot, and it was a relational tell via me. In such a circumstance, you should be voting for me instead.

[callforjudgement]

Mathblade was confirmed by Gio in a way that's immune to most of the shenanigans I can think of, so either Mathblade is town or they're scum together. (Possible but unlikely third option: they're scum on separate teams, Gio "confirmed" Mathblade to sow WIFOM, and Mathblade decided to roll with it because they can hardly claim "actually, I'm not town".)

[callforjudgement]

Right, Cakez definitely has the role claimed (I received an invention D1, so have personal experience of that); PV also almost certainly has the role claimed. I'm not sure that either role has a definitive indication of faction built into it (and nearly all the claimed roles are at least town-suggestive). Of course, if the scumteam is made out of converted players, they'd presumably still have their original, town-suggestive roles; come to think of it, looking at the power roles that seem to exist, all of them seem to be designed so that a) they're potentially useful for any faction (assuming multiball), and b) they wouldn't be gamebreaking in scum hands. (For example, look at how long Ankamius had to power up before killing; I think that slot's town, but if it hypothetically had been culted, it wouldn't exactly make the cult unstoppable.)

That said, one of the points against SirCakez is that the way he's been

using

the Inventor shots is flat-out weird. I don't think I've ever seen an Inventor focus the shots on one person before, even if they are bulletproof, and why would you give Bodyguard (which kills the user, if it does anything at all) to a townread? Meanwhile, we can't get this sort of read on PeregrineV because the role doesn't obviously do anything useful other than confirming itself; it's been used in about the most pro-town way possible, but that would have been both easy and fairly harmless to fake as scum.

[callforjudgement]

Because giving a bodyguard to a scumread is worse. You give bodyguard to someone you think is a low power or VT role so they can die saving the high power role. It is swingy but that should absolutely be given to a townread. Hell given to me I could take the shot for the townie and no one die because I am infinite shot BP. Like a convoluted doctor. Focusing on a townread forces SirCakez if scum to give me the toys and the toys stay in Town hands. Never to go to scum. Therefore by lynching SirCakez we remove townpower indirectly.

A bodyguard shot is entirely harmless in scum's hands; they can't usefully use it.
A bodyguard shot in the hands of an obvtown player is pointless, as they can't save another player without dying themselves (not even if they're bulletproof).
A bodyguard shot in the hands of a scummy-looking townie is very powerful; they can die in the place of someone confirmed, which has the same amount of power as confirming themselves (assuming the shot hits).

[callforjudgement]

Furthermore if SirCakez ever visits anyone but me then SirCakez would be claiming scum. He gave me a way to verify him and I don't think scum would blatantly do that. As much as SirCakez pings me I don't think that SirCakez's lynch is the right one today.

You do realise this argument doesn't work for anyone but you and Gio, right? It rather presupposes you're town, so won't be convincing much to anyone else.
(Additionally, if SirCakez is scum without a kill, or groupscum where a buddy can kill, verifying SirCakez's entire set of night actions wouldn't prove anything but that they were in fact the Inventor, which is fairly obvious at this point and doesn't need verifying.)

As far as I can see, you've spent the past few (real-life) days trying to deflect the lynch on SirCakez off tenuous reasoning. If you were townreading him, that's one thing; trying to stop the lynch of someone you think is a townread, or preferring the lynch of someone more likely to be scum, is entirely reasonable. However, scumreading him and yet trying to prevent the lynch, without stating good reasons, is problematic and makes it look hugely like you're scum together. It'd be as silly as lynching a townread in possible lylo.

Let me put things this way: it's only Gio's night result that's keeping me from voting you right now. That's how antitown I think you're playing.

[callforjudgement]

@MathBlade: Repeatedly saying you're conftown doesn't make it true. Most of the people alive have been confirmed by one means or another.

Please try to look at what you're saying from my perspective. I think you, Gio and SirCakez are all scum. The only proof that SirCakez a) has shots left, and b) has been using them, comes from your claims; thus we have very little confirmation on SirCakez that isn't from a potential buddy (we know he was an Inventor

once

but that was ages ago). The only proof that you're town comes from Gio; thus we have very little confirmation on you that isn't from a potential buddy. Now you're basically trying to do more checks within the same little clique of people, trying to get everyone in the group to confirm each other. Of course, if you're all scum, you'll happily just confim each other. We're either in LYLO, or just one day away. Having a "confirmed town-bloc" made out of scum would outright win them the game, so I can easily see a scumteam taking that risk. Of course, if any of you gets lynched, the whole thing falls apart, which is presumably been why you've been trying to hard to a) lynch Almost50 despite townreading him, and b) fighting the lynch of SirCakez despite an alleged nullread. (Not everyone's in the neighbourhood, so they haven't all seen this, but: MathBlade was making argument after argument in the neighbourhood requesting keeping SirCakez alive for one reason or another, mostly related to confirmation chains, and none of it was very convincing.) Come to think of it, a while back you were trying in the neighbourhood to dissuade me from Gio using equally spurious reasoning.

Compare this to my reactions to your plans to confirm Nahdia. (Not that those plans are all that amazingly useful, because you've been claiming you think Nahdia is an SK and has been all game; there are certainly ways in which Nahdia can be scum, but that's one of the least plausible given Narna's clear. Actually, it's just crossed my mind that Jailkeeper is a really unlikely claim for a Godfather; I can certainly see scum fakeclaiming it, but that's got some of the worst fakeclaim/realrole synergy ever.) In this case, it's me who's doing the confirming, not you, so if I get proof that Nahdia or someone on their team is indeed capable of blocking (via observing nobody added to the neighbourhood), the town will then have my word for it, not yours. That adds a lot of information, because it really cuts down the possible scumteams involving Nahdia to a) teams that contain a block, or b) teams containing me. It's not a case of getting players which are heavily linked already all confirming each other in a circle. So although the benefit from this plan is very low, the risk is also very low, and the only real issue is the opportunity cost.

[callforjudgement]

You could be, you know .. a GODFATHER.

I don't see why Nahdia could be that but you can't. If it's a valid reason to suspect Gio's results then it applies to all his targets, not to one in particular.

You're back to being scum with Cakez.

Huh, a) I hadn't considered that earlier, b) that makes a huge amount of sense. Skullduggery's answer to questions about roles is nearly always "read the wiki page", and the role often seems to turn out to be some weird combination of things mentioned on the page rather than the Normal variant. Just look at the wiki page Godfather; the role has two variants, one which is investigation-immune, one which is bulletproof, and the page outright states that they're often combined. "Alternatively to the above, some moderators take the concept of investigation immunity to make Godfather immune to some other investigation role instead of Cop." is vague enough to make it at least excusable for it to dodge Gio's role (and in fact, given what happened with Shiro, I'd say it's rather more likely than 50% that a Weak role wouldn't die upon targeting a Godfather in this game, regardless of what happened earlier).

In other news, despite MathBlade's claims, I've given plenty of reasons why SirCakez is scum (it's much of my recent ISO). There are also plenty of reasons why MathBlade is likely to be scum, and I could certainly be persuaded to move (although whether I do depends partly on who ends up on the wagon and on how good their reasoning is for joining). FWIW, I suspect the SirCakez lynch is easier, but if enough people off the SirCakez wagon (that I'm not scumreading) think it's a bad idea, I'll defer to them and move.

[callforjudgement]

Anyone have a brief recap on how we went from "everyone confirmed town except PeregerinV and Almost50" to lynching Cakez?

Just want to see some other perspectives on it while I read a bunch of pages.

I was the main person pushing to stop the Almost50 wagon. The problem with it is a) very few people actually scumread Almost50 (and MathBlade, one of the main people behind pushing the lynch, seemed to think it was on town but wanted it to happen anyway?), and b) it was growing in what was (at least from my point of view) a really dubious way (i.e. a way that indicated that it would likely lead to a mislynch). I also proposed a MathBlade+SirCakez+Gio scumteam; I'm not certain about that, but it's currently still my best theory as to who's scum. Quite a few people have scumreads on SirCakez (either just generally, or on the way he's responded to recent events), so he's accumulated a lot of votes (and they're votes to lynch, too, rather than intended as pressure votes; many people on the wagon, including me, would not be upset at a hammer, although ideally we'd avoid having yet more quickhammers).

The other main thing that's been happening from my perspective is people (especially those on the SirCakez wagon) getting generally fed up with MathBlade (on the basis that they seem to be proposing complicated plans which have very little benefit – it basically starts with the assumption that certain players are town, and then ends up proving they're telling the truth about each others' roles, which is not really useful – and often include things like intentionally lynching townies). MathBlade's been confirmed by Gio in a way that seems hard to interfere with, but multiple players (including me) have stated that they'd be voting there otherwise.

I should note that my perspective is probably somewhat biased; the town's fallen into two main camps at the moment, which can loosely be described as the people who want to lynch SirCakez and the people who want to lynch someone else (these people have not yet agreed on a counterwagon, as far as I can tell). I'm pretty heavily in the first camp here, but would definitely be willing to hear counterarguments because I know that I have a tendency to tunnel.

In terms of confirmations, the issue with them is that everyone has some sort of confirmation (either they demonstrated their role, or their role or alignment was vouched for by another player) of their role apart from MathBlade and A50, and most people have confirmation of their alignments too. (One of the main reasons why Almost50 and SirCakez have been the players who received the wagons was that neither of them have any sort of alignment confirmation; SirCakez is known to be an Inventor but that's not a role that's inherently limited to townies, especially if there's a cult involved.) As such, there's more of a general willingness to lynch confirmed players than usual, in the belief that some of the confirmations have to be either inaccurate or misleading for one reason or another.

[callforjudgement]

I think it's worth giving people on the wagon some time to react. If nothing else, it gains us more information (because you get to see the reasons people have for unvoting). You might also want to hear the other side of the story, too, rather than just listening to me.

(We've also had a bad record this game about hammering without fully thinking it through. I expect you'll see a big rant from MathBlade when they get online.)

[callforjudgement]

It is because I can't prove you are a killer. As I have said in the hood I am working on multiple theories one of which is there was an SK. Unless it is Nahdia someone has a role that is provable and can kill.

Proof that someone has a power role is not proof that they can't kill, and not proof that they aren't scum. Being able to kill and action at the same time is very common even in Normals (even in Newbies!), and

especially

on serial killers in Theme games. Besides, several of the power roles that have been claimed don't have active actions (either every night, or at all).

Also, have you ever given any evidence for this Nahdia-is-SK theory? As I've been telling you repeatedly, it's the least likely type of scum for them to be. Like, if you think Nahdia is scum, why wouldn't you be pushing them as groupscum, which is a lot more plausible? (Besides, SKtells are much harder to spot than scumtells because SKs don't have much investment in keeping their nonexistent buddies alive, and care about discovering who's town and scum just like townies do (although for different reasons).)

[callforjudgement]

I'm not convinced this game is actually Mafia. Not only did it not have any groupscum at the start of the game, it's possible that there could have been no groupscum all game. This entirely removes one of the main scumhunting tools that town has, hunting for interactions. (There were some much more minor issues involved here along similar lines; for example, we correctly figured out that scum had access to the neighbourhood, but because it was read access and wasn't mentioned in any of our roles that there was a hidden scum access to the neighbourhood, it lead us to hunt in the wrong direction.)

The size of the scumteam scaling based on how long the game had lasted is one of the facts about the setup I'd missed (I knew I'd missed

something

; the setup was clearly implausibly badly designed if you take everything at face value, and I knew the game would be better than that). The major problem I see with this is that it makes the entire game before Gaster's lynch entirely pointless; if the game's designed to produce balanced team sizes given any timing for the lynch, town aren't rewarded for finding scum early, nor penalised for finding scum late. (Thought experiment: if town mislynches repeatedly, leaving just 3 players alive including Gaster at the end, they still have a 33% chance to win. Assuming the global roleblock was fired at some point, that means town have a 33% chance to win even after 10 mislynches. Or 20 no-lynches.) Likewise, because there weren't any other scum prior to the Gaster lynch, anything that happened beforehand is pointless for scumhunting.

The

other

major problem with the mechanic is the same problem that 2:11 mountainous has; the expected behaviour is to see mislynch after mislynch and town doesn't lose much from it, but they're very demoralising (both for town because they aren't making any progress in the game and aren't revealing any connections that might make scumhunting possible, and for scum because they're doing as well as possible and yet the parts of the game that really influence the result haven't happened yet). Several players doubted the existence of scum, and I think that's entirely understandable given that a) it was a 21:0:1 setup and b) it has Undertale flavour (which strongly suggests considering the absence of scum at least as a possibility). If I were reviewing the setup, I'd have flagged this up as something that's very likely to make players unhappy (and as it happens, it did make players unhappy).

So all in all, I'm not that happy with the setup here. I guess Skullduggery put the idea behind the setup fairly well: "I tried to create a game that would challenge players to think and play differently, move out of their comfort zones, and try to figure out the game from a different point of view than what they're accustomed to." Well, the fact that most setups are built along similar lines is not necessarily due to a lack of creativity, but because there are reasons behind the choices. We repeatedly shoot down setups in Open Setup Discussion for not having a scumteam (with the normal shorthand phrase for this being "not Mafia"). I'd say that a game which eliminates two of the main scumhunting tools (interactions between players, and postings from earlier Days) has a pretty high chance of just not being a Mafia game (and if you encourage the town to treat it as one it's no surprise they'll be frustrated). Sure, the game requires players to play differently, but a) there's no information that they should, and b) they don't really have much to go on (except night actions). FWIW, no-lynching 20 times in a row might even be optimal strategy in this setup (you catch the killer via night actions then don't lynch them until the last moment; this isn't quite a 100% town victory but it has to be close), but there isn't a reference frame that most players have that could even consider them to realise that that might be the right idea, and I don't consider that a shortcoming in the player.

Incidentally, it says quite a bit that out of the four players I read as scum over the course of the game (both watching it, and after replacing in), three of them were the three scum who existed in the game (sorry MathBlade for misreading you), and yet I feel like my scumhunting was terrible this game; every single player I caught, in retrospect my reason for catching them couldn't possibly have been correct. I had a strong read on Maxous as

group

scum (he wasn't), based on the way he claimed Survivor and on the fact that I felt the gamestate was most plausibly explained by a buddy covering for him with night actions. I thought the way SirCakez used night actions was implausible for a townie, but he was town at the time. I thought Gio had overclaimed, but the claim was entirely truthful. 3 out of 4 seems unlikely to be coincidence, and yet I still feel dissatisfied with the way my play turned out.

In terms of what happened with BYF, this is either a huge (if fairly amusing) failure of reading comprehension from BYF for not noticing the indicators in the PM that it wasn't modconfirmed information, or a failure of the mod to send unconfirmed information in a way that isn't clearly marked as unconfirmed. I'm guessing the former, but either way am both somewhat confused and somewhat amused as to how it happened. (For people who missed it, BYF genuinely seems to have believed he was scum, on the basis of a message sent by Maxous, and was possibly more surprised at his Townflip than anyone else.)

(BTW, for anyone reading the last few posts in the dead thread, Math was almost correct and I knew it; I'd figured out the "Ank is a Miller and Gio will die by killing them" combination myself. However, the possibility was there that scum was reading the dead thread, and I could see no way for this information to help town, so I just blatantly lied about it.)

[callforjudgement]

BTW, because this game doesn't meet the definition of Game Mechanics in the wiki (specifically, "The game is comprised of factions, including Mafia, Town, and/or somewhat predictable third parties."), I don't think it qualifies for the longest-games leaderboard. (Chess Mafia was disqualified on the same basis.)

[callforjudgement]

See the second half of the sentence. I don't think Maxous qualifies as any of Mafia, Town, or a somewhat predictable third party, so there aren't enough "normalish" factions listed there.

[callforjudgement]

Lynching Leonshade didn't actually hurt town at all. It meant the scumgroup ended up smaller when it was created, and Governor is fairly low-power as town power roles go.

[callforjudgement]

I also asked Skull for access to the dead thread once Creeps was lynched and never got an answer; I became convinced that the killer wasn't actuallyin the game but the Riverman was ferrying people into a scum group that was in the dead thread, and THEY were doing the killing.

.. that's actually pretty clever of me, I might have to run that game.

Your biggest issue there will be working out what town has to do to win. I'd recommend having a scumgroup with no kill that's inside the main game thread, that town win by eliminating, and another scumgroup (with either the same or a different win condition) in the dead thread that performs the kills. You'll also need to make sure that kills happen before any people in your secret scumgroup die; one way to bypass the issue is for the first player who dies to automatically be recruited.

[callforjudgement]

BTW, because this game doesn't meet the definition of Game Mechanics in the wiki (specifically, "The game is comprised of factions, including Mafia, Town, and/or somewhat predictable third parties."), I don't think it qualifies for the longest-games leaderboard. (Chess Mafia was disqualified on the same basis.)

Bullshit.

First of all, this game

did

have a two-person groupscum faction. It was created after Maxous was lynched, remember?

Secondly, that page you linked does not in any way indicate that the factions of a game are required to be of a certain alignment or size. Mafia is a game that pits the uninformed majority against an informed minority that usually has access to a factional kill. That's it. That's as far as the definition goes, and this game meets that definition just fine. This game began with two opposing factions who could not win together: an uninformed Town faction who comprised the majority and a one-person faction who was in the minority and possessed a factional kill. A one-person faction is still a faction.

Yes, this anti-Town faction was of a non-traditional size, but that does not in any way mean that this game doesn't qualify as a Mafia game. Just because something is different, that does not automatically mean it's wrong or invalid. Show me where it says anywhere on the forum or the wiki that a Mafia game is required to have a multi-person groupscum faction in order to qualify as a Mafia game. Show me where it says anywhere on the forum or the wiki that a Mafia game is required to adhere to a specific Town-to-Scum ratio in order to qualify as a Mafia game. Go on, show me. Show me where it says that. Show me where those provisions are specified in a concrete, irrefutable fashion.

For a 22-player game, general opinion would say that a five-person groupscum team is acceptable, yes?
Well, what if I run a 22-player game with a four-person groupscum team? Is that acceptable?
What if I run a 22-player game with a three-person groupscum team? Is that acceptable?
What if I run a 22-player game with a two-person groupscum team? Is that acceptable?
What if I run a 22-player game with a one-person groupscum team? Is that acceptable?

At what point does the size of the anti-Town faction in the game go from "acceptable" to "too small"? And no, "I'll know it when I see it" is not a valid answer to this question.

2 is acceptable. 1 is too small. This consensus isn't on the wiki, but is fairly well established over on Open Setup Discussion (e.g. here).

If Maxous had been lynched on day one, would you still be complaining about it?

Yes, although for a different reason; town would have been punished for finding scum quickly, as a 15:5 where scum get to choose the entire scumteam (possibly after role claims) and eliminate one townie, with the roles evenly distributed between factions as shown here, would have been very hard for town to win,

If this was a five-person micro game pitting just one anti-Town player against four Town players, would you still be complaining about it? If your answer is no, then why is a single-person faction acceptable in a five-person game but not a 22-player game?

Yes, I would be complaining about it. The whole reason setups like Vengeful exist is that 1 is widely acknowledged as being too few scum for a 5p, so methods of fitting in two scum are highly desirable. (Even

4p

games tend to have two scum; our most popular 4p, which has been run nine times, does.)

Look, I may not have enjoyed this game very much, but I can take solace in the fact that I can still think to myself, "Well, at least I can say that I hosted one of the largest games in the site's history." That's something I can be proud of. Hell, that's something that

we

can be proud of. That's something that all of us earned because we all contributed to the impressive length of this game. And you want to take that honor away from us? Why? Because you didn't like the setup? Shove off.

Your argument that this game doesn't qualify as a Mafia game is complete nonsense. I am willing to fight tooth and nail to keep this game listed on the records page, so if you want to remove it, I hope you're prepared to fight just as hard.

I can see a potential argument that you can start counting at #7737. What you have to acknowledge, though, is that nothing the players did before that point mattered! Lynching town wasn't any worse for town than lynching scum (in fact, it may well have been better). The mislynch of Leonshade, and the mislynch of zakk, and the mislynch of Shiro, all

benefited

town more than lynching Maxous would have done. (The mislynch of McMenno probably hurt. In all four cases, though, this was he based on which roles the players were given – which were selected randomly – rather than anything in the way the players played.) Up to that point, the players weren't playing a meaningful game because there was no real correlation between their actions and the result of the game, and no information available to the players that could have allowed them to work out whether their actions were helpful or not. And after that point, everything that happened earlier was entirely useless for scumhunting because all the players were town at that point. At most, it served to give meta on what an all-town game looks like. The only influence that more than half the game had on the result is that it served to confuse the nature of the scumteam, the existence of third parties, and whether or not the posts were relevant (they weren't, but we didn't know they weren't). That's an incredibly small amount of influence on the setup, compared to the huge amount of effort the players initially put into it (before suspecting, correctly as it turns out, that their efforts weren't really doing anything meaningful).

I replaced in after all this, so I got to benefit from a meaningful game; it's not a problem for me personally, and I enjoyed my time in the game. However, I think it's unfair on the other players that you effectively made them spend a lot of time accomplishing nothing; and I think the discontent that happened pre-Maxous-flip, and the resulting replacements, were entirely predictable.

[callforjudgement]

(Incidentally, although a 20:2 ratio is acceptable to be considered as Mafia, I don't think I'd ever recommend it as a reviewer specifically because it tends to lead to apathy when town is doing badly. This isn't quite the same problem as in this setup, which tends to lead to apathy when town's doing well via repeatedly mislynching players who are heavily suspected and don't have valuable roles.)

[callforjudgement]

As it happens, all X-shot roles were informed that they were blocked (because they got the shot back); I assume Inventor got caught up in that. That's nonstandard, but not unheard of. (The main use I managed to make of my Bodyguard invention was that, being 1-shot, it made it possible to ask an appropriate question to discover that information.)