Super Mafia Bros Brawl - Game Topic (GAME OVER)

[Bardiche]

Hm. Let's see.

Second, the sentence I bolded. I'm certainly no Freudian in my general practice, but slips like this can definitely be telling.

That wasn't a slip. That was intentional. Acting as if I am totally, absolutely, unpossibly scum potentially has the opposite effect. I've not experienced it as uncommon that one who acts as if there is no way in hell he is scum does not get suspected, if not more-so suspected.
At the moment, there is no way I can convince everyone 100% I am town. Claiming I am town with a 100% certainty to it has no meaning, since I have no backing of my arguments. The only way I can prove I am town is either by getting KO'ed now, or someone with a role that can ascertain my alignment can back me up - And I don't suspect the latter is willing to unveil their role so early on in the game.

It seems like a ploy for pity, some sort of cry of selflessness, but that's a trap because it's better to fight for yourself as a townie than let someone who could easily be scum get a pass.

Well, it certainly isn't a "ploy" for pity. From my point of view, all I did was 'suspect the wrong person', as I do not have the proper arguments to convince all of you of my suspicion. Heck, it's even possible I was reading too much into it.

Your mention of "not giving in to Day 1 tunnel-vision", your observation that "Day 1 is usually Town VS Town" and that "scum don't have to do anything but lob off a vote" and "this might be a smoke curtain" makes you, in turn, suspicious to me, given the course of action you elect afterwards.

Paranoia makes everything suspicious, and I am willing to admit my suspicion of Carthrat may have stemmed from paranoia. At the moment, I've been made the subject of your suspicions. Were I to say nothing, that would certainly not help my case and simply encourage others to also vote on me. However, with each defense I make of myself, as you've made evident, there is always something you can potentially use against me.
I am not so skilled at debate that I am capable of eliminating each and every aspect that could possibly be used as an argument of why I would be scum, which is why I am willing to accept the consequences of the earlier made mistake.

Of course, I'd suggest you stay your hand for now and give me the benefit of the doubt, but I hardly consider that to be an effective method of defending myself.

The problem with the situation is that I can completely understand your suspicions against me, yet at the same time disagree with the suspicions. To me, it is clear-cut I have nothing to do with villainy whatsoever. But as I said earlier, I have no effective means of convincing you of the same.

----------

Argh, the point is that Otacon has implied that these "terrorists" get stronger the longer we go without SMASHing someone, and that does not sit well with me.

As a deviation from my own defense, I am tempted to believe that Otacon implies the flower is an ability triggered by scum. The more time passes, the easier it is for scum to Smashvote Sopko off, in the event that you cannot decide whether or not there is a more eligible candidate for this. This is only if the flower is multi-use, though; I'm pretty sure its absent in the original mafia installments, so I'm not sure exactly whether regular mafia rules apply to this phenomenon.

[Yakumo]

Meeple, I'm not trying to say that what you have done so far has been all that bad, for all that I think you're overrating the importance of that flower.  However, if you keep spending most of your posts analyzing game mechanics with much shorter blurbs in the end about the important stuff, finding the scum, then you're very likely going to create a smokescreen where you drag half the brawlers into theorizing the way the system works.  Or just look like that's what you're trying to do.  Frankly, that flower means very little right now because of the way the voting system works.  No matter how high Soppy gets because of that flower, he cannot die without someone specifically hammering him.  This early in the game, the scum aren't going to pop out of nowhere and whack Soppy without a consensus.  I realize that most of this theorizing happened before the real voting got started, which is why I don't think it's a big deal yet, it's kinda a warning shot.

As for Captain K and rolefishing... well, what do you call it if it isn't, man?  You have four posts since we actually started getting serious, one defending your jokevote(useless), one denying rolefishing after the other three, and these two sandwiched in the middle:

##UNVOTE: Taishyr

I'm honestly not reading anyone as scum right now.  It's tempting to OMGUS Carthrat, but I can't fault his desire to get something started.  I think the Rat/EvilTom/Bardiche/whoever thing is just a misunderstanding, not a scumtell.

Cid, since you're openly displaying that power, can you give us more detail on it?  How often can you use it?  Is it always 1% damage?

And Snake's power to call Otacon seems fairly straightforward, but is there any more information on it as well?

And while we're on the subject of powers, did anyone learn anything in Night Zero that they want to reveal?

After seeing Falco's power, I am now jealous because I did not get the ability to Taunt for 1% damage. 

Yeah, I didn't figure anyone would want to give out their Night Zero information yet.  But it doesn't hurt to ask!  Unless, of course, it does hurt to ask.  Which happens a lot around here.

Looking back through posts, I see another power that I didn't recognize as a power before.  Kirby's inhale/regurgitate combo.  Details please?

That one asking for night zero info, is pretty much asking "gee guys, what can you all do at night?"  Even when everyone has a role(I think Alex said that?), fishing out what people have this early is only good for scum.  Plus, every possibly shown power, whether it's actually visually doing anything or not, you seem to want every single possible detail of.  Why?

The more I think about this, the less I like it.  Bardiche, I really wish you would give more details, but I guess for a day 1 case I've seen worse.  Still watching you, though.
##Unvote: Bardiche
##Vote: Captain K

[Strago]

Second, the sentence I bolded. I'm certainly no Freudian in my general practice, but slips like this can definitely be telling.

That wasn't a slip. That was intentional. Acting as if I am totally, absolutely, unpossibly scum potentially has the opposite effect. I've not experienced it as uncommon that one who acts as if there is no way in hell he is scum does not get suspected, if not more-so suspected.
At the moment, there is no way I can convince everyone 100% I am town. Claiming I am town with a 100% certainty to it has no meaning, since I have no backing of my arguments. The only way I can prove I am town is either by getting KO'ed now, or someone with a role that can ascertain my alignment can back me up - And I don't suspect the latter is willing to unveil their role so early on in the game.

Yeah, no, I agree with all of that. What you actually said, though, was this:

"If I were a scum (not saying I'm not, but I could still be!)," etc.

Just, y'know, syntactically speaking, the "but" in the second clause inside the parentheses implies that the first clause ought to have been "not saying I am [scum"." Am I the only one who sees how this is funky? Don't want to belabor it, though; as Nitori mentions, it's hardly damning. Just wanted to make it clear what I was going for, since I agree with everything you've said in the bit I quoted higher up.

Paranoia makes everything suspicious, and I am willing to admit my suspicion of Carthrat may have stemmed from paranoia. At the moment, I've been made the subject of your suspicions. Were I to say nothing, that would certainly not help my case and simply encourage others to also vote on me. However, with each defense I make of myself, as you've made evident, there is always something you can potentially use against me.

Well, yeah. That's... the game. I don't mean to be flippant, but that's really just the game. And it ought to be harder for scum to stand up to that sort of repeated scrutiny, since they are by design a bunch of filthy liars. You are, of course, right in that a continued back-and-forth often does result in little things getting blown out of proportion and people jumping at shadows. Hmm.

I'm not sure I buy the flower being the slowly-growing strength to which Otacon refers, simply because somebody coming out of the blue to Smashvote Soppy after next-to-nobody's actually talked about voting for him is going to look ridiculously suspicious. Just completely beyond the pale.

... then again, it's Otacon. And, you know. I could be jumping at shadows. Who wants to weigh in?

[Luther Lansfeld]

This game is craaazy. Keeping track of 17 different peoplez!

First of all, Meeple's complete derailing of everything with long rants about the flowers is unnerving as hell, as well as his commentary on the Rat. I just really don't like the refusal to remove votes; I don't see any reason that you shouldn't be searching for candidates -especially- if someone is piling up serious votes. That slightly bizarre logic plus his dwelling on minor points is enough for suspicions.

Sopko and Meeple interactions in general are just strange to me. Meeple reiterating that Sopko needs to talk doesn't seem like an innately bad thing to do, and Sopko acts like it is. Both Meeple and Sopko are doing things which I find irksome, which is justifying votes that they placed earlier for frivilous reasonings (or in Meeple's case just sayign I DON'T WANNA CHANGE IT OKAY?). Sopko's only real post of note is that of mostly Meeple criticism, but he does have a very good point about starting the game.

The entire Tom/Rat/Bardiche thing just seems like a huge thing blown out of proportion and I find all of it a bunch of bollocks. I feel like that the possibility of two scum groups completely skews the interpretation of the game since scum could be going after other scum and not even know it! Oh man. Honestly I am moderately suspicious of a couple of people that are inhabiting either of the ET/Bard trains, but I'm not sure if I can justify why aside from warm and fuzzy feewings and joining trains which I don't really approve of/think of as a small amount of railroading.

The person I am most suspicious of this for is Excal. He seems to be in passive mode from the get-go and lays a soft vote down on Thomas and then comes out with a snotty tone with regard to Tom. The comments about being apathetic about who is lynched also strikes my chord a great deal.

##UNVOTE: Yakumo
##VOTE: Excal

Another quick post incoming, my Internet is dying and I want to get this posted before it dies.

[Sierra]

Of course, if you still feel you should press your vote on me, then I feel there is only little I can do about that. Probably, had I known it'd turn out this way, I'd have not acted at all, but alas. I already explained my belief on Carthrat, and if you find it to be an inacceptable list of arguments... I can hardly go out and reach for any others, as the reasons I had were the ones I presented. To me, my suspicion of Carthrat remains justified.

This is the part where I go into my usual rant about how you should always, always mention something that you think someone else has done wrong, even if it'll cause trouble. That's how town wins. Even if it gets people upset, well, that's better than not talking. (The fact that I disagree with the particular arguments you made doesn't change this in principle).

I've made an err in assessment of the correct course of actions and have failed to correctly portray my stance by submitting arguments which are deemed faulty. I recognize this err and am prepared to face the consequences, so if you feel my present actions have all tallied up to be worthy of lynching me, then by all means, I will bear no grudgings against you if you so do.

The game's been running for barely a day, and less than half of that time was "serious discussion." No one's a surefire lynch candidate this early. Me dropping a vote on you doesn't mean I'm yelling "He's scum, kill him!" Not on day one, at least. There's just not enough info to be sure about that. You're just suspicious, which kind of has to be enough because that's all we've got right now. In your favor, you have been quite active and responsive to your critics. There's also this perspective, provided by Nitori:

Bardiche...reading his post on the Rat, it does really a lot like misinterpretation on his part of what the Rat was trying to accomplish. He chatises the vote as being a non-serious vote against a person who was spreading around non-serious votes, yet I think that Rat had a serious intention in starting discussion and not so much the lynch.

Bolding added to draw out what struck me as a valid point of view, which got somewhat buried in the ensuing discussion. At least, looking at it that way, I can understand where your Carthrat vote came from in the first place, even if I disagree with the arguments you used to back it up. You don't know him like we (regrettably) do, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that you took the whole thing at face value. I dislike the defeatist tone that Strago has also pointed out, but I don't think that this, in conjunction with what I increasingly view as a misunderstanding, is enough to hold a vote against you right now. I also have to admit that I feel obliged to be a little more generous with board newbies when dealing with misunderstandings like this (at least early in the game), because it seems to happen to pretty much all of 'em here in their first game. So:

##Unvote: Bardiche

I'm also not seeing anything in the syntactical issue Strago brings up. It's just too trivial for me to read it as a slip.

---

Other stuff...

Meeple needs to talk more about non-flower issues. I'm aware he's done it some, and this is a good thing, but I really think we've got all the info we can from talking about that topic today. Given the way the voting system works, it's not going to kill Soppy by itself, and scum are unlikely to wander in and smashvote him once he reaches 100% just because they can. If Soppy goes down today, it will be as a result of discussion and consensus. Anyone killing Soppy without allowing time for that instantly makes themself day two's prime suspect. We can learn more about the flower issue if it recurs tomorrow, but right now I think it's a moot point. EDIT: Yakko and Strago already went through this on their own, but yeah, I pretty much agree. It's not something we should be worrying about right now.

As for another target...well, Tom's probably asleep right now. I still think he looks off for the reasons previously stated, but he's got votes on him already and I'm not sure just adding to those will help right now. I'll make up my mind about him when gets back and responds to the last couple pages. Right now, I think Yakko's got the right idea.

##Vote: Captain K.

Mon capitan! I think it is reasonable to call you out on role-fishing, and this little addendum here--

I don't have much time, only on a break, but I'd like to quickly smack Captain K for rolefishing this early,

I didn't specifically ask for roles, just information.  For example, Soppy could say that he got a mod message about being attacked by X, resulting in the flower.

Sorry if I'm dragging too much out too soon, but we don't have a lot to go on at this point.  Even if there are 8 scum/non-town, odds are still more likely that a townie will get lynched today.

--is an easy explanation to throw in after the fact to allay suspicion. I'd really like to see more from you right now. Thoughts on Rat/Tom/Bard stuff, or Sopko/Meeple sniping, anything?

[Hunter Sopko]

Bolding added to draw out what struck me as a valid point of view, which got somewhat buried in the ensuing discussion. At least, looking at it that way, I can understand where your Carthrat vote came from in the first place, even if I disagree with the arguments you used to back it up. You don't know him like we (regrettably) do, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that you took the whole thing at face value. I dislike the defeatist tone that Strago has also pointed out, but I don't think that this, in conjunction with what I increasingly view as a misunderstanding, is enough to hold a vote against you right now. I also have to admit that I feel obliged to be a little more generous with board newbies when dealing with misunderstandings like this (at least early in the game), because it seems to happen to pretty much all of 'em here in their first game. So:

I don't particularly agree with this. It skirts on a serious metagame/WIFOM reasoning to turn the argument back around at Bardiche. "You don't know him like we do"? Are you seriously trying to pull that kind of argument without more explanation than that? If you do that, you have to explain it to the person. Otherwise, you're just brushing them off. I do know what you're talking about, but how exactly does it make it any different? Bardiche could always be right on. We may know how Rat is normally, but that doesn't mean he's always doing it for our sake.

[Sierra]

I don't particularly agree with this. It skirts on a serious metagame/WIFOM reasoning to turn the argument back around at Bardiche. "You don't know him like we do"? Are you seriously trying to pull that kind of argument without more explanation than that? If you do that, you have to explain it to the person. Otherwise, you're just brushing them off. I do know what you're talking about, but how exactly does it make it any different? Bardiche could always be right on. We may know how Rat is normally, but that doesn't mean he's always doing it for our sake.

The line you pulled out was less a serious point itself than it was a humorous jab at Rat slipped into the midst of a serious argument, as should have been indicated by the "regrettably" lodged in the middle of that phrase. Inappropriate? Eh, maybe, but it'll be a cold day in hell before I pass up a chance to poke fun at the rodent. And yeah, I'm aware that there's no guarantee Rat is town. It's not as though I've come out and said I'm convinced that's the case. That wasn't the point. What bugs me here is that you suggest I'm trying "to turn the argument back around at Bardiche," when I unvoted Bard in the same post. I don't follow this at all.

[Ranmilia]

It is now day 1.  With 18 alive, each vote is worth 12% damage.

The stage for day 1 is Battlefield.  It has no gameplay effects.

Captain Olimar (Sopko) has a beautiful flower growing out of his head!

Yakumo (Ganondorf): 0% - Ciato
Meeple (Poketrainer): 24% - Sopko, Ephraim
Carthrat (Ike): 12% - Meeple, Nitori, Bardiche
Bardiche (Jigglypuff): 12% - Strago, Andrew, QuietRain, Yakumo, El Cid
Shale (Mario): 0% - , Meeple, Captain K
Excal (Marth): 12% - Ciato, Yakumo
Taishyr (Kirby): 0% - , Bardiche, Captain K
El Cid (Falco): 0% - , Taishyr, Strago
Strago (Wolf): 0% - Excal
Sopko (Olimar): 58% - Taishyr, Carthrat
Captain K (Pink Luigi): 24% - Yakumo, El Cid, Carthrat, El Cid
Ephraim (MetaKnight): 0% - Taishyr
QuietRain (Pikachu): 12% - Shale, Bardiche
Andrew (Toon Link): 12% - Dread Thomas
Nitori (Snake): 12% - Andrew
EvilTom (Link): 36% - Nitori, Excal, Carthrat

Under normal circumstances a ##Smashvote will KO anyone who is at or over 100% damage, no matter how they reached that amount.

[Luther Lansfeld]

My second candidate and mildly suspicious entity is on the other side of the Tom/Bard train, and that is El-Cid. (Who has just posted, time to read~). Mostly just an uneasy feeling regard some of his points about Bardiche, and Cideon tends to just float to easy targets in general, for all that I'm not sure if this is a pure playstyle thing. El Cid's long analysis style seems to all mesh together into actually very little, and his post with the Bard vote seems nitpicky at best and fishing at worst.

After what has amounted to a stall on the Bard train, El-Cid comes with an attack on Captain K. I'm not sure if I interpret this as a positive or a negative but it's definitely worth noting. He nitpicks at Meeple for something that has been said several times, and some other light and general points. I'm not going to lay a vote on him because I already decided where to lay my vote, but he is second on my list at the moment.

[Mad Fnorder]

Re: Carthrat/Bardiche/EvilTom

I'm not seeing much of substance here. It seems like it all started from Bardiche sticking out because of his unfamiliarity with the style of play that predominates the board. Carthrat hasn't done anything untoward, which means nothing either way. And lastly, I admit to somewhat of blindspot about Tom since I always seem to want to lynch him (Absolutely NOTHING personal, whatsoever, just something in your post-style always says "bad juju" to me) and I'm usually wrong about him.

I think we've got the flower thing pretty hashed out, now. Which means that, while, we should pick up the pace before some decides to Smash poor Soppy as the lynch gets taken out of town hands, at the same time the Smashvote system means someone has to pull the trigger on it.

On to the pressing vote. PK VOTA!

##Vote Ephraim Where are you?

[AndrewRogue]

First thing is first, I'm inclined to agree that the flower is being exaggerated a bit currently. While there is something to be said that having someone able to be easily SMASHed off later in the game is dangerous (especially if we get into LYLO range), here and now, anyone who takes advantage of the flower is begging to get lynched the next day. So, while it is cool to get a grip on the flower today, let us not fixate on it until we know it is a regular fixture and it starts getting near the point where it matters.

To people asking about why I voted for Nitori, I think it should be pretty patently obvious. Tom never said anything that resembled "it is too early for serious content." While he might well have overreacted to Carth's post, he didn't do it because it is "too early for serious content." He did it because he felt Carth was pushing too hard against minor things. This (while a bit flawed in and of itself) is completely different than what Nitori was accusing him of.

Speaking of, Nitori. You acknowledge the clarification of Tom's vote, yet stick to your guns there despite it appearing to be a simple case of you taking his intent as one thing and him describing it as another. Do you still feel he is the best candidate at this point? Are there other factors to your vote for him?

Of course, this brings me to a related question about odd votes! Tom! You've failed to notice that Alex disqualified your vote and thus still have a joke vote on me. Are you planning on acknowledging or correcting that mistake at any point? Because as is, I'm not very happy with it.

Captain K! This sounds like echoing things but... seriously. What the hell. Even if it was a joke, role fishing this early? That is... yeah. While I still want answers from both Nitori and Tom, you definitely shot to the top of my suspects list there. There is no excuse for doing that day one. At all.

##Unvote: Nitori
##Vote: Captain K

[AndrewRogue]

##Unvote: Nitori
##Vote: Captain K

Already bold starts to hate on me.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Of course, this brings me to a related question about odd votes! Tom! You've failed to notice that Alex disqualified your vote and thus still have a joke vote on me. Are you planning on acknowledging or correcting that mistake at any point? Because as is, I'm not very happy with it.

I find you emphasizing the point about EvilTom really bizarre because, uh, EvilTom hasn't -posted- since Alex pointed that out. And the tone that this little snippet employs is vaguely OMGUSesque without the vote following it, the sort of "you are voting for me, so I am UNHAPPY!" sulky thing when there's really nothing to be unhappy about other than Tom being gone for a period of time and not being able to change his vote!

[Lord Ephraim]

Serious Mafia is Serious, ugu~

I love how half of the posts here are related to Soppy's beautiful flower.  Is it a SCUM trap? Maybe that's what they want you to think.  I'm curious if he does get to 100% if anyone will Smash him out of here, or wait later.  Honestly, it's DAY 1, it's IMPOSSIBLE TO TELL who what is and people are trying too hard to mind fuck. Stop it plz.

Okay, my  mindset that pokemon are foul foul creatures so that's where the jokevote came from.   Meeple to add on top if adds more foulness. He's sincre enough to help explain the wacky mechanics of Soppy's flower because that's what Meeple does: Unlogical Math~

##Unvote: Meeplelard

That said, I feel uncomfortable with the sudden jump on the serious bandwagon EvilTom sparking this off means that he looks to prey on us weaker, less capable players.  I understand Rat is playing the same way, but really after Anom. Mafia, I don't understand him anymore.

##Vote: EvilTom

[Meeplelard]

To Yakko: Fair.  I have been exaggerating a bit too much, but as I said, it couldn't hurt to know something works.

Sopko posted like I wanted and...wait...

Heh. End of Day 1 jokevote is always fun. People always get their panties in a wad about something. Normal stuff, but Meeple strikes me as making a lot more out of the situation than he should.

Comes in at about 10:30, picking up on the lurking/content thing about me 1-2 other people have already called on, and runs with it. Fine. 15 minutes later he AGAIN calls on me for lurking... with only an Alex vote between them. I find the obsession mostly in the right place, since figuring out the flower is rather important to the game, it looks like. But after his original 10:30 post, it has given his posts the semblence of actual content even if he hasn't really weighed in on anyone else in that timeframe.

So the whole argument here is basically "Meeple's calling me out, he does it 15 minutes later!"   I'm not allowed to state what I wanted a second time just to make something clear?  You may have had a point if I said "He needs to talk" then 15 minutes later, voted against you, and said the same thing.  That's not what happened; I repeated myself, yes, and I do this all the damn time in real life and you know it.

He's then saying I'm OMGUSing him.  Its funny cause until he said that, I hadn't even noticed Soppy had a vote on me.  I knew someone did, but I frankly didn't care since:
A. Its one vote.  In a game this large, you're likely to get voted against. Heck, unless we're late in the game (especially LYLO), one vote on you isn't going to much.
B. Joke Phase.  I'm not going to piss and moan cause someone shoved a vote on me in the joke phase.

I felt no reason to pay heed to a single, joke phase vote on me.

If anything, your post feels like an OMGUS.  You'll notice I didn't actually attack you.  I said you needed to post and say something worth a damn, not simply respond to Ciato's follow up post that was more a side comment, when she had one of content before (admittedly, there wasn't much to work with at the time.)

I'm not seeing how this is "a big deal."  Yeah, I prompted you to post twice in a short frame of time, but calling it OMGUS, especially when I didn't vote and even so much as mention (let alone NOTICE) your vote on me is clearly missing the point.

...though, speaking of joke votes and such...

##Unvote: Carthrat (aka President Eisenhower)

Regarding Bardiche...I don't see anything TOO bad in what he did.  Feels more like he's taking a different approach to things having different Mafia experiences than others.  Now, this can't be used as an excuse for everything he does, but as of now, that feels like what's going on.  The case he has against Rat feels more like a misinterpretation than anything.  Not going to hold that against him.  We saw how ugly that gets in Clue Mafia; holding a misinterpretation against someone too heavily just leads to connecting it to other arguments you make, and lo and behold, you have a case on someone through bad play.  As such, letting that slide.  Of course, I'm not going to completely ignore everything he does.

Strago's taking the whole "I'm not scum, but I might be!" thing too seriously. Um, ok, why the fuck would scum come out and say that to avoid suspicion?
The answer? Its just another way of saying "I know I'm not scum, but you don't!"  Townies will say this for the sake survival instincts, and cause if you know you're townie and going down, you know its bad for the town.  Scum will lie about it, naturally, cause Scum lie all the time!
Not seeing this as a red flag statement one way or another.  Its...a bit unprovoked, I guess, but you're looking too deep into it.  Again, this falls back to how I think Bardiche is playing based on different Mafia experiences than the rest of us, which will make some of his playstyle clash with ours, whatever he might be.

...again, I AM NOT SAYING BARDICHE SHOULD BE IGNORED.  Just making it clear that if he does something like say something differently than what we're use to, its possible its just simple experience thing, playstyle, etc.  Attacking people's playstyles is never a good idea, for a variety of reasons (simple Metagaming, and what not.)

...then again, Strago does have that second point on Bardiche.  Bardiche not trying to defend himself...I can't get a scum read on this unfortunately.  This feels more like "Bad Play...really bad play...what the fuck are you thinking?" If nothing else, he's more just going against the "Play to win!" thing.  The only reason I can see him saying "Lynch me, Lynch me!" is if he KNOWS he's a scum bomb, and...ok, now I'm getting back into mechanics, and possibly considered role fishing.  The point is?  I can't see this necessarily as a scum tell, but more headdesking inducing play, REGARDLESS which team he's on.  I reference Fudo in the first game we played; he was basically "Oh, people are voting me, heheh, its cute!" and people were asking him to defend himself, and he was simply responding "I think its funny!"; there's no reason anyone should play like that.

Bardiche does pull what vaguely feels OMGUS in response to Strago.

Next off, Ciato...

Sopko and Meeple interactions in general are just strange to me. Meeple reiterating that Sopko needs to talk doesn't seem like an innately bad thing to do, and Sopko acts like it is. Both Meeple and Sopko are doing things which I find irksome, which is justifying votes that they placed earlier for frivilous reasonings (or in Meeple's case just sayign I DON'T WANNA CHANGE IT OKAY?). Sopko's only real post of note is that of mostly Meeple criticism, but he does have a very good point about starting the game.

At this point? Yes, it probably was a really stupid thing to just not vote on anyone, and remove my Rat vote.  I should have done that, and didn't, and...yeah, I can't really back that up at this point.  You're right; my only reason was "I don't wanna change it!"  I didn't really have any case on rat, but I had no case on anyone else that felt strong enough either.  Either way, you're right; it was kind of pointless.

I think right now, at the risk of the "OMGUSness!" Soppy spoke of, he feels the worst.  Calling me out for something as bizarre as that, and then not really contributing much beyond challenging a single paragraph of El-Cid.   

So yeah, its not much, but Soppy feels the worst at the moment, so...

Return Ivysaur! Go Charizard! Flamethrower on Olimar go!

##Vote: Sopko

As I said, Bardiche feels more like play style clashing with possibly some really head desk inducing play (side be damned), the other arguments are Town vs. Town to me.  Soppy's raised some flags for me, if small ones, and its the best I got.

And Ninja'd by Eph!!!!

[Taishyr]

...oh, blood and ashes.

Firstly: ##Inhale/##Regurgitate? Flavor. Joking around. Was the joke phase, I was making a joke of Kirby looking for hats. Sheesh. /(-_-)\

Secondly oh dear lord what so much rolefishing.

Thirdly a more analytical post will likely come later as I just woke up and I have a migraine still so I'm going to try and shake that off. Sopko's posted, want to read his, glad he's posting, he gives me flashbacks to FFT no matter what but let's see if it's justified. But awake, reading, waking up.

[Bardiche]

While I don't have many other suspicions to raise, I'm going to contribute again, regardless, so as that my opinion can also be taken into consideration. First, though, there's just one thing I want to address...

...then again, Strago does have that second point on Bardiche.  Bardiche not trying to defend himself...I can't get a scum read on this unfortunately.  This feels more like "Bad Play...really bad play...what the fuck are you thinking?" If nothing else, he's more just going against the "Play to win!" thing. 

...

The point is?  I can't see this necessarily as a scum tell, but more headdesking inducing play, REGARDLESS which team he's on.  I reference Fudo in the first game we played; he was basically "Oh, people are voting me, heheh, its cute!" and people were asking him to defend himself, and he was simply responding "I think its funny!"; there's no reason anyone should play like that.

I'd like to make it absolutely clear that I am playing to win. Even if my actions seem contradictory with that statement, the underline with everything I do is that I intend to win this game: Even if I am dead near the end of the game, I consider it my victory if those on the same team as me win.

As an explanation, let's just say that in previous Mafia games I've played, it wasn't really unheard of to sacrifice yourself (despite being innocent) to narrow down the number of players that would need to be cleared by Cops or Docs. If someone became suspicious in those games, and they were really innocent, they'd willingly allow themselves to get killed so that a Cop wouldn't check their alignment in the consecutive night and thus waste an investigate round due to the other's behaviour causing high suspicion.

Now to the game itself... There's one thing right now that I am a bit confused about, so I'd like some clarification from...

Ephraim!

That said, I feel uncomfortable with the sudden jump on the serious bandwagon EvilTom sparking this off means that he looks to prey on us weaker, less capable players.  I understand Rat is playing the same way, but really after Anom. Mafia, I don't understand him anymore.

Uuuh, I'm not sure if I am reading this right, so correct me if I am wrong Ephraim. I also understand this could be seen as supporting the only one that agreed with me, but at the moment you all are equally likely to be scum, to me, so I am not doing this merely because of that.

However, I'm... Somewhat confused by the argument Ephraim puts forth for voting on Tom. The part I quoted seems to imply that because Tom sparked a serious bandwagon, it implies he is seeking to prey on weaker and less capable players. I... Didn't get this implication at all. Am I reading this wrong, Ephraim? Uh, care to enlighten me what leads you to believe that this implies/means EvilTom is preying on weaker players?


-----


Cap'n K's rolefishing, which everyone seems to feel rather strongly about... I've always disliked role fishing, but I'm not going to call suspicions to him for that. Rather, though, something strikes me as odd... From my understanding, he's played this before, so I'm sure he already knows role fishing makes him suspicious. Given that this is a role madness game, I'm willing to overlook it, but...

It just almost seems as if he's trying to... I dunno, something just feels really off, but I can't place my finger on it.

[Excal]

Hey, Ciato, welcome to the game.  If you're curious as to why I didn't care overly much about who my vote landed on earlier, then I'm happy to explain.  Simply put, I am in agreement that those little flare ups that start the day are almost never involving scum, certainly aren't reliable, and are only a precursor to the real discussion.  More to the point, only about a quarter of the game had had a chance to get involved in serious discussion.  This means that I don't really have a read on anyone, which means that it is impossible to make a truly informed vote.  In a situation like that, then, who you vote for doesn't matter, because it is going to change in the next 24 hours.  What is important is that a vote is placed on the member of the flareup that looks the worst so that there's something for people to comment on, and to help serious discussion get going faster.  And why Tom?  Because found his side of the argument to be the weaker one of the three.

Now, on to current events.  Soppy feels a little off to me, but nothing serious at present.  Same with Meeple, who is moving from mechanics to a nice in depth look at the person who is most strongly railing for him.  My thoughts on these two haven't crystalized yet, so I'm just going to watch for now.

Eph...  seriously man, what's going on here?  Your post is short, and here's how it reads.

You start off by harping on something which two or three others have harped on, and basically come out with nothing more than a "Me Too!"  Then you join in this baffling and pointless exercise of explaining your joke vote (People, please tell me how explaining a joke vote helps in the least?  We already know it's got bad logic to it unless you specifically say you're changing it to a real vote.  It just wastes space and obscures the fact you're saying nothing)

Then we get your one real ummm...  paragraph?  It's just two sentences latched together though, so still pretty sad.  That said, what you did post makes no sense.

That said, I feel uncomfortable with the sudden jump on the serious bandwagon EvilTom sparking this off means that he looks to prey on us weaker, less capable players.  I understand Rat is playing the same way, but really after Anom. Mafia, I don't understand him anymore.

Right, I can't tell if you're missing punctuation here or not, because the first sentence feels like two, split at Evil Tom and Bandwagon.  Assuming your punctuation is correct, then it feels like you're uncomfortable with the train Tom started on Rat because it looks like Tom is going after easy targets.  And you feel that Rat is doing the same bloody thing, but you don't feel you can understand him, so you're voting for the more comprehensible Tom.

This reasoning does nothing to explain why you're voting for Tom (more comprehensible!) rather than the equally valid Rat (less comprehensible!)  This makes no sense to me whatsoever, so let's go to the second interp.

Assuming your punctuation is incorrect, then... It sounds like you're against people getting on the serious bandwagon, which sounds like the best interp is serious play.  ie. It sounds like the first sentence is griping about how quickly we jumped from joke voting to serious business, which combines with your slightly sarcastic intro to the post about how Serious Mafia is Serious.  The connotation then seems to become that you're speaking ill of Tom and Rat for sparking off the serious phase.  And you prefer Tom over Rat because you don't think you can read Rat's intentions, while you know Tom was intending to do what he did, which you disapprove of.

Now...  that second interp actually makes logical sense.  It's also so blatantly anti-town that I cannot see any one on either side seriously proposing such a thing as it's tantamount to suicide.  Also, both arguments also run into the curious omission of Bard, who posted before Tom, with several of the same issues, and managed to do more for the case of starting a train on Rat than Tom did. 

##Unvote: Tom, ##Vote: Ephraim

Consider this some incentive to clear up what you said and to bloody well elaborate, because I'd like to hear your thoughts, and you've no excuses for not making them after you've posted.

Captain K is presently my second choice for who to vote for.  My main reasoning is, as with the others, the role fishing.  However, one of the things he said really struck me as questionable.

Yeah, I didn't figure anyone would want to give out their Night Zero information yet.  But it doesn't hurt to ask!  Unless, of course, it does hurt to ask.  Which happens a lot around here.

Looking back through posts, I see another power that I didn't recognize as a power before.  Kirby's inhale/regurgitate combo.  Details please?

The bolding is mine.  In this he says that he had a reasonable expectation that town would be hurt by revealing this information, and yet he asked anyways.  I don't know whether this feels more like bad play or an awkward disguise for scummy behaviour at the moment, but it's giving me some bad vibes.


EDIT: Ninja'ed by Tai/Bard.  Will possibly have more to say later in response.

[Captain K.]

To Yakko and the others addressing me, I don't really have a response that will be satisfactory to you.  If rolefishing or whatever else you call it on Day 1 is "bad play", then so be it.  It's been a while since I played Mafia, but those of you who remember the old games will note that Captain K. rarely follows the Big Mafia Bible of Standard Play.

Thoughts on Rat/Tom/Bard stuff, or Sopko/Meeple sniping, anything?

I've already weighed in on Rat/Tom/Bard.  I think it's Town vs Town, and nothing they've posted since I said that has changed my opinion of the situation.

Meeple is trying to figure out game mechanics.  I find that commendable.

Soppy has said almost nothing of value.  If he's at 100% by the time I leave for work tomorrow, I wouldn't feel bad about smashing him myself.

Yeah, I didn't figure anyone would want to give out their Night Zero information yet.  But it doesn't hurt to ask!  Unless, of course, it does hurt to ask.  Which happens a lot around here.

The bolding is mine.  In this he says that he had a reasonable expectation that town would be hurt by revealing this information, and yet he asked anyways.  I don't know whether this feels more like bad play or an awkward disguise for scummy behaviour at the moment, but it's giving me some bad vibes.

The bolded portion is adapted from something I like to say in real life.  "A little poison won't kill you.  Unless, of course, it does kill you."  "Which happens a lot around here" refers to how these Mafia games turn out.  Anything you say gets turned around to the worst possible meaning.  People in past games complained that I didn't post enough of value early on.  So I try to get some information flowing in this game, and now I've got everyone's eyes on me.  It's a lose-lose situation.  Which is why I stopped playing Mafia - it's just not that fun trying to defend yourself when you don't think you've done anything wrong.

[Captain K.]

Changing the subject, one more thought that just occurred to me about Soppy's flower.  Ingame, the item that causes the flower (Lips Stick) isn't associated with any of the fighters.  But Olimar does have a flower motif.  It's possible that the flower is self-inflicted.  Maybe if he survives a full day with it on his head, he grows a Pikmin or something to power up.

[Lord Ephraim]

OH GOD SHORT POSTS HE LURKING/NOT POSTING/NOT MIND FUCKING LOL.

I don't need to explain my self in 3 page essay with a thesis. IT'S DAY 1. DAY 1 SUCKS.  People are too busy looking for meat in people posts so they can think they know who is scum, but it doesn't work that way, BECAUSE IT'S DAY 1.  Captain is at least trying to get something going so Day 1 doesn't suck by role fishing.  Like anyone will fall for that and it's an obious scum tactic.  He's done this before and wasn't scum.

Doh!  Captain does make a point with Soppy's flower. But I think it caused by another role power. Why would this be self-inflicted?  Olimar isn't a pikmin himself (although it's kind of believable since no plays Pikmin).  While this power does favor scum more than town,  did it come from a scum, third party, whatnot?  With that, it's pretty clear its a time effect with how it works in Brawl and all.

Overall, my point is people good at Mafia are more dangerious as scum as town, and seeing this is DAY 1, we don't KNOW anything about ANYBODY and no amount of WORDS will do us no good.  I'm not really in the mood to go through 5 pages of reading BS after the all the crap I went through in the last 3 days, so there is not much I can do.

So yeah, I don't like following standard Mafia play because it's a bunch of random bicker and it's okay if you enjoy it, but I thought this game was going to be different.  Doesn't matter now if I get knocked off now so I don't have to put up with it or last longer when it's actually FUN.

[Luther Lansfeld]

I have seen Captain K get picked on in all the games that he's been in so far, and I have seen no signs so far that make me think that he is scummy this time as opposed to before. Rolefishing is really weird since I think people would want to be private about such things but frankly the closed-minded crap sucks.

I know I've had a problem with people having views that were very my way or the highway, a not-open, not subject to interpretation view of Mafia in past games, and frankly, a lot of those people have been scum.

[Lord Ephraim]

Captain gets picked on because his bizzare playstyle is a threat to scum AND town.  He plays more of vig role than anything it seems all the time and no one likes those.  It's hard to understand what he is thinking.  I don't see how he's a threat on DAY 1 (maybe I should start bolding this from now on, because everyone keeps forgetting that), but I'll see what goes on as the game goes.

[Bardiche]

Thing is, though, Ephraim, that it all the same is confusing argumentation you used to justify a vote on EvilTom. (pot, kettle, black, I know)

I'm not sure how to take the posts of you two. At one side, my sense of... Well, I guess sympathy wants to exclude you two from my suspicions for now. I'd feel a little bad about voting on someone that expresses a dislike for the game and plays the game in a different way, especially considering my way of playing apparently differs from most here as well!

On the other, I don't know you well enough to know whether it is genuine irritation at the game or just an elaborate mindfuck. I was earlier called out on on going against the "play to win" mentality, so yeah, this strikes me as uh, the same thing. It seems to contradict with wanting to win by stating you dislike the game and this is why you never play Mafia.

Though I find Cap'n K's actions suspicions, and so Ephraim's as well, my sense of sympathy overrules cold logic for me so I am prepared to stay my hand for now and wait it out a bit longer, because honestly there are no other leads. Though it's clear cut we have to lynch someone this day or it'll never end, so yeah... people do want to get some leads so they have at least a possibility on possibly getting scum.

Still, though... Calm down a bit, Ephraim. No need to get so aggressive.

[Luther Lansfeld]

That said, I feel uncomfortable with the sudden jump on the serious bandwagon EvilTom sparking this off means that he looks to prey on us weaker, less capable players.  I understand Rat is playing the same way, but really after Anom. Mafia, I don't understand him anymore.[/b]

I'm just curious, are you calling the person I consider to be the DL's best Mafia player weak and incapable? Your logic is bizarro.