Alright. To begin with, I've been taking a look at Elfboy. This got... very long, in the writing of it. Appy-polly-loggies in advance.
He began Day 1 with some role metagamery, doing a bit of analysis of potential LYLO situations based on Rat's votelessness (sort of amusing, now), and then talking about why he suspected Rat of having some other power. Okay, early Day 1, whatever.
http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=1398.msg24405#msg24405 Here he lays down a justified anti-lurking vote against me on principle. Otherwise, the post sums up the day's cases thus far against Rat, Tom and OK. He takes no actual position against them aside from saying that he doesn't suspect Rat that much anymore and asking the other two to justify themselves somehow.
Next, there's this on the subject of lynching OK:
I'm less opposed to lynching him compared to you, though, because on average I'd rather operate under the assumption that the lynch (rather than a vig who may not exist) is town's best weapon and should be used against those who are being destructive to town's workings.
So Elfboy is
for lynching those who appear to be against town, but of course he never actually makes that vote against OK. Or, you know, anyone at all. Then later...
Posting again to check in with the game, and... hell. Well not much has really changed since earlier today, except that OK has confirmed that he wasn't just taking the joke phase a step too far.
Lynching either of them would be cool with me; Tom's probably a better pick because if he IS telling the truth, reasons Corwin/Laggy have championed will make it not so bad an outcome. For all that I find OK more disruptive to the game.
Gives support for two possible lynches... while not actually
supporting either one. Seems like a remarkably good way to contribute to mislynching without dirtying one's hands in the actual votecount. That was his last post during Day 1.
His first post of content during Day 2.
In response to Corwin/Laggy's concerns about my non-voting:
I'll admit I've historically been a bit reluctant to vote as long as I think there is still discussion to be had. Just kinda how I play; if someone wants to convince me I am horribly wrong for doing this, I'll listen and try to change my ways. Until then I'll do what's natural to me. I can still put down a vote to pressure someone, but Tom quickly got that from others anyway, so there was no need for me to jump on the train and push him closer to hammer when I didn't feel it was time for that yet.
Regardless, hopefully I was clear enough about who I was going to vote for if the day had gone on a bit longer (Tom went from 4 votes to lynched pretty quickly, so I didn't really get a chance to get involved with the lateday).
Analysis and such will come tonight, I hope. As mentioned I will be away a lot today.
Now, I understand what Laggy's said about my vote record making me "unreadable" to him, but come on. I tend to go for outliers because I am extremely uneasy with the idea that once somebody's lynch train has gained a certain amount of momentum it's impossible to save them. That way lies
madness and easy scumtrains, but there's only a certain amount I can do to convince people that my secondary option is better or at least worth considering seriously. Elfboy, on the other hand, plays things so incredibly safe and "reasonable" that there's no paper trail whatsoever. His behind was thoroughly covered by everything he did, Day 1. And yes, sure, it was Day 1, but at the very least this characterizes an attitude and playstyle that I find pretty troubling when I look back upon it.
This is followed by a post discussing Bard's role and general game theory:
http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=1398.msg24802#msg24802.
His next post is quite long (
http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=1398.msg24808#msg24808) and does the thing I (and he as well, apparently) hate, where one lists every player in the game and gives a couple sentences of pretty surface analysis of each one. Yaaay commitment.
Now, the thing of note here is that he
does finally put down a vote; on Meeple, no less, against whom nobody had yet voted. So that's well worth keeping in mind, as it's his first shift in something resembling a townie direction.
In his next big post (
http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=1398.msg25059#msg25059), quite a bit later, he discusses Meeple and Snow. What I find especially notable, here, is that just as heat is starting to pull back from Snow and be added to Meeple's train instead... Elfboy says this about Meeple:
Meeple stuff:
Yeah, the Shale defence is a bit odd, but not unreasonable. It was also a pretty quick reversal, but I have no idea what that means either. I'm having a pretty hard time pinning Meeple down now, but he definitely still bothers me.
And all this about Snow:
Snow stuff:
The breakdown nonsense had me considering a votechange pretty strongly. For all that there's a decent chance he did it as town, I just... can not give him a pass over it. It's frustrating, as intuitively I don't think he's scum, and lynching town is the worst thing we can do. But that kind of defence can't be accepted. Yeah, I'm well aware others have said this, but it's worth restating. Fortunately, Snow seems to have recovered a bit. Not that this makes me unsuspicious of him, but it means I won't be calling for him to quit the game at least.
One thing I would like to see from Snow is an explanation for the Corwin vote (well it's not a vote yet but it's the thought that counts). He comes up with a conspiracy theory for Meeple/Shale being Corwin's creation. I go back and read his post and I... do not see it. Didn't notice it at the time, don't get it now. Definitely would like to see this elaborated on.
So as popular opinion tends toward one, he starts to seem a lot more suspicious -- at the very least ways he can qualify -- of the other. But then he goes ahead and leaves his vote on Meeple, keeping the vote deadlocked as opposed to being the one to make it shift in either direction. Huh. And then there's this:
Vote, for now at least, stays on Meeple. I'm not wholly comfortable with lynching him, nor Snow, but I feel a jump to someone else this late in the day would be to grasp at straws. I've seen nothing to make anyone else look notably scummy since my big post, today.
Nice example of a philosophy for which I've described my lack of enthusiasm. They were deadlocked at three votes each when it took eight to lynch. That's seriously too far-gone for anything else to happen?
Here (
http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=1398.msg25074#msg25074) and here (
http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=1398.msg25083#msg25083) the Elf is mostly going back and forth with Bardiche over a weird issue of his having twisted the latter's words in some fashion. This is harmless -- and unproductive -- enough, I suppose. In the second post, I find this notable:
And Corwin, as for giving you a good look, it may be simply due to the fact that I'm uncomfortable with you. I find the aggressive sniping to put me off balance a bit, and I'm far from the most emotional one in this group. It does feel like you've stirred up trouble today, but whether as town or scum, well... I dunno. People as active and aggressive as you deserve a good look. They can be very helpful as town, but as scum... well, I don't need to finish that thought.
Now, the first three sentences of this I actually rather like. I agree that being antagonistic towards other people is counter to the desires of the town, since it's all about emotional manipulation whereas town only survives on its reason and logic. The part of the quotation I've put in bold, however, is the gateway to Elfboy's later opinions about "aggressiveness" being bad because, well, scum who lead debate might hurt town! Which he seems to see as far outweighing the possibility of town leading debate to hunt scum, for some reason. It just seems like both a specious argument and a tacit defense for his own tendency not to take strong stands.
Then there's my accidental Meeple hammer, and Day 2 is over. -_-
Day 3 starts, he makes this post (
http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=1398.msg25277#msg25277), pretty much just taking a look at the flips and night actions, not much of note and my own post here is getting too long. This post is on page 15...
... and his next is the very beginning of page 17, here:
http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=1398.msg25459#msg25459. He reiterates some of his early comments about not actually finding Andy scummy despite having put him third in a lineup with Snow and Meeple. But what really gets me is:
The rest of your accusations spanning the next few paragraphs all stem from this misunderstanding and thus, thankfully, I have no need to defend myself from them.
That combined with his early Day 3 m.o. seeming to be to defend himself constantly against Meeple's parting shots just makes Elfboy seem more defensive and worried about public perception than ever. More of such defending himself in this back-and-forth with Bardiche:
http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=1398.msg25469#msg25469http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=1398.msg25471#msg25471Aside from that, he also had a post almost entirely about the game mechanics and non-specific worth of Roleblockers to Town (
http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=1398.msg25465#msg25465), and then he really starts hitting the debate about "aggressiveness" that I've mentioned previously (
http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=1398.msg25477#msg25477).
This post (
http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=1398.msg25522#msg25522) is another rundown of everyone currently in the game, and to no great surprise Elfboy doesn't feel like voting for the person he apparently suspects the most of being scum. The fact that Bardiche strikes me as a likely town player (for reasons that are, yes, largely metagamey, but they're what I've got) just adds to my distaste for this post.
We're getting so close to the end of this post! Yeah alright!
Next is Elfboy's whole "I'm going to hammer Snow!" song and dance which has been covered by others. He's just playing everything so dang safe it's darn near impossible to peg him with any scummy action either than that of... not
taking any action and playing things close to his chest. Maybe if he were a Doc or a Cop this would make slightly more sense to me, but he's apparently got a Tracker role that by his own admission he considered to be vaguely useless all game. It's not as if he was playing carefully to preserve his power role's use to the town, then.
Yeah. Wow. I honestly didn't expect to be this convinced of Elfboy's scumminess, but once I started taking a careful look at him he just struck me as worse and worse. LYLO means that I'm not going to drop a vote until some more discussion of my own post has been had, but this has become a very strong suspicion for me.
Ninja'd by a couple posts, but I just need to get this out there because it is too effing long. -_- I'll read the other stuff and catch up.
