Discworld Mafia is go!

[Sierra]

Update!

Cmdr_King (1): Strago
Corwin (1): Otter
Hunter Sopko (1): Corwin
Nitori (1): Mad Fnorder
Shale (1): Cmdr_King

With sixteen alive, it takes nine to lynch.

There 16 hours until the deadline.

[Strago]

Okay, we are getting nowhere fast and we are drawing absurdly close to yet another lynch deadline, while everyone just sort of sits back and goes "Huh. Nobody looks that bad." We really need to kick this into higher gear, and fast. Currently only one third of the players have active vote right now, and we've only got until tomorrow morning to string somebody up. Which really means we have until tonight, if we want most of us being active when we do it. I implore all God-fearing townies to use the power of their vote. Even if you're having a hard time choosing, look back over your own analyses - and the analyses of others - and choose. I'm calling for everyone to put their votes on the dang ol' line so we can see what in the hell we're doing right about now.

I'm gonna stick with Cmdr_King, myself. Yeah, he's one of the few out there with an active vote, but he's hardly even exerting any real pressure with it. Just says he wants to hear more from Shale, and really he could more or less have picked randomly from the most recent batch of names he presented as vaguely suspicious. He continues to glide on by going "yeah, I'm not very helpful, am I?" As if the acknowledgement of such solved it, which it does not. And I still can't shake that the vote-'n-run on Tom was a dirty move. Now's the time to talk, people. So far I still don't really know where others stand on King, so I can't tell if I'm barking up the wrong tree entirely. But for the moment I'm comfortable with it.

I will say that I also think Otter is acting weird. Can you really not see why it was probably a dumb idea to be voting for Uno and CPU around the time of their parallel implosions, Otter? Do you honestly think Unoriginal's self-vote was more scummy than the way some people jumped on him for it? In addition, your point against Shale seemed like a bit of a stretch. That, and your only substantive post so far began with:

Not a ton of opinions yet, but I'll post some random comments to various things.

I've seen you call people out for just this kind of thing, in the past. Y'know, saying that they didn't have much to say with the implication of more to come later. It just feels alien, coming from you.

Yeah, that's all for the moment as I paw through the last few pages once again. Let's get this rolling, guys.

[Kilgamayan]

##Vote: Veryslightlymad

Don't wanna talk Day 1, okay, whatever, I can sympathize on some level. You've made exactly four posts today, and the only opinion on a fellow player that you've expressed is that you think Sopko is human but you've left open the possibility that he's scum (BUT THEY MIGHT BE STRANGERS BUT THEY MIGHT BE RELATED). Forget posting more, I want you to say more.

[Yakumo]

I don't like Cmdr_King's reasonings all that much either, but on the other hand, he's being a lot more active and talkative than he has in past games, so I'm not sure what to think on that subject.  Shale is too quiet, Otter is way too quiet, Nitori's fallen under the radar AGAIN... but there's nothing out there that really jumps out to me.  Soppy's been reading as off again, but he always does so I'm not sure how far to trust that.

I guess I'm just going to go with my gut and toss a vote at Soppy.  He hasn't posted a whole lot of meaningful content, to me, and he's not posting much either.  Also, he continues to make minor mistakes in his analysis, which he later corrects.  I find, personally, that it's a lot easier to make those kinds of mistakes as scum because you aren't looking for every little detail in what somebody posts since you already know who's on your side.

Vote: HunterSopko

[Yakumo]

Err... ##Vote: HunterSopko

I apparently suck at remembering formatting.  And right after I call someone on mistakes.   Granted, this is a slightly different type of mistake than what I was referring to. <_<

[Veryslightlymad]

I am not going to form an uninformed opinion. I am doing what I can to get discussion going on various topics. I ask questions, and I point out opinions. What would you prefer? Me to say "I think Sopko is town and I now TRUST HIM FOREVER"? I can't do that. However, Sopko acting as pro-town happens to be the one stronger opinion I have at this time. You really wonder why I'm not voting?

[Yakumo]

I wonder why you aren't voting.  We have less than a day to come to something at least resembling a consensus, so even if you don't have a concrete opinion, you need to at least use the only weapon that we have against the scum on your best guess.  Choosing not to vote is nearly as bad a play as choosing not to play at all, really, it accomplishes more or less the same thing.

[Veryslightlymad]

I have a little experience in using a powerful weapon incorrectly, and frankly, I don't much care for it.

[Cmdr_King]

Well Strags, let's put it this way.  Basically, I'm just providing an explaination why my posts haven't been very satisfactory so far- I haven't really noticed anything that seems worth building a case out of.  Riding the line of trying to stir discussion and coming across as flailing is delicate, so attempts on that front often meet with failure (as seems to be the case here).
To bring myself back to the point, everything I've said has been simple explaination.  You can choose to believe it's honest, or you can choose to believe it's the work of a faltering scum.  Pressing the point any further than that can only serve to cloud the topic with circular defensive arguments that do nothing but make myself (and to a lesser extent you) look worse, and as such I'm not going to expand too terribly on those points.  I'm not TOO happy about this post, in fact.

Otherwise... well, not much has happened since I last posted.  Shale's suspicion of 'rapid fire voting' is understandable, although I'm not sure I agree, since honestly the only time scum are absolutely going to bus somebody so decisively is in LYLO.  At other times, it's as much a tell as hammering, leading the charge, or voting at any point in a chain.  That said, I can't disagree with is assessments of those three people; I said as much about Excal myself and Fnorder isn't CPU, so any tells CPU might have had are not meaningful to Fnorder despite one being a replacement for another.  Otherwise, well, like I said I see VSM being VSM, not VSM being wishy-washy scum, so at this time it doesn't seem like a case to push as today's lynch.  Though obviously something might happen if people do insist on putting pressure on him.

[Otter]

Man, I love having quotes that work without having to check any boxes!

In fact, only against bad play so far; you’ve been in the game for a while now, care to share your thoughts on town/scum?

I did mention that Kilga looked surprisingly good to me.  You (Shale) and Corwin look the worst, although I am really worried about Yakumo and Excal because they're really fading into the background for me.

Yeah, but you’re responding to an accusation of bad play, not confirmed scumminess.

Sopko wasn't actually "confirmed" either.  A zombie told you he was scum; it happened that the zombie was right.  Actually, it doesn't matter, because the point is that Corwin is using that "Ehh, even if you're convinced he's scum, his ONE VOTE WON'T MATTER for a while so we can just keep him around and focus on other things safely!" reasoning and this is extremely, extremely bad reasoning.

Can you really not see why it was probably a dumb idea to be voting for Uno and CPU around the time of their parallel implosions, Otter?

No, I can't.  When people seem to "implode" like that, there's no reason NOT to vote for them.  Odds are pretty good it's a scum counting on that "Oh, it's probably just a townie who's stressing" emotional response.  Genuine townies really have no reason ever to act like that (assuming people are actually playing... which it seems like CPU wasn't, sadly, but I have to make the basic assumption that people actually want to win).

Do you honestly think Unoriginal's self-vote was more scummy than the way some people jumped on him for it?

Yes.  I have a pretty well-established "never vote for yourself, even as a joke" policy, and on day 1 (with not a whole lot else to go on) it's something I certainly would have jumped on him for, had I been around.

In addition, your point against Shale seemed like a bit of a stretch.

He withdrew his vote at the eleventh hour and is now emphasizing that his vote was only a joke vote and so he wasn't REALLY part of that train that killed a townie.  Vote movement is one of the most solid things we can look at, here, so it doesn't seem like a stretch to me.  Obviously he was consigned to the fact that he was "going to be lynched anyway" and he didn't have any OBJECTIONS, or he would have actually used his vote again on someone else; he didn't, he left it idle until the day timed out.  So why remove the vote at all?  The "Hey, I got MORE attention by removing it than I would have gotten by not removing it!!" argument is utter WIFOM and gets us nowhere.  I know Shale says he did it to give more people a chance to speak, but if you think consensus has been achieved and you personally have no one else you want to vote for, there's really no good reason to force the day to time out.  Town wants to hammer before time's up; in fact, in some games there are rules in place specifically to force that.  These reasons don't really add up to me, and the result is that it looks a lot like Shale was just trying to cover his back with that last-minute withdrawal.  Townies don't have much REASON to be so meticulously careful about how they look.

[Kilgamayan]

I am not going to form an uninformed opinion.

Then form an informed one. (Hell, form a whole bunch. The more, the merrier.) If you've done so, then feel free to share.

I am doing what I can to get discussion going on various topics. I ask questions, and I point out opinions. What would you prefer? Me to say "I think Sopko is town and I now TRUST HIM FOREVER"? I can't do that. However, Sopko acting as pro-town happens to be the one stronger opinion I have at this time.

Asking questions is nice and all, but it's kinda weak if that's all you do. As for pointing out opinions, that's relatively pointless if you don't follow it up with some of your thoughts about said opinions because any random schmoe could read the thread and find what you've pointed out on their own but you're the only one that can tell us what you're thinking.

You really wonder why I'm not voting?

I don't recall ever wondering that, actually, at least not outside my wondering why there has been a notable lack of votes on the whole. What I am wondering is why you aren't forming opinions on players (or are simply refusing to share them). You have roughly 250 posts to work with; I'm sure you can find something.

[Nitori]

I'm not sure how to exactly judge replacement players, but if CPU really didn't want to play like that then I suppose that I'll mainly judge on the Fnord, who I can't make much of a judgment about, really, since he hasn't had enough time to get in good posts.

Also, looking back at the EvilTom trio (CPU/CK/Excal)... I'm not sure what to make of the votes themselves since Tom was probably going to be lynched anyway at that point, but the timing may be a little telling, as CK posted almost immediately after CPU (Excal came a bit later). I think this makes CK look a little worse in my mind.

There are a few people I don't recall that well, but it's probably due to low post/high content style (Tai, Yak, and I suppose Kilga can be moved to here for now.). And of course, there are more overly aggressive people like Rat/Strago that look pretty good right now.

Of the people not to post much...Otter and Shale have less than I'd expect from them, and I don't think VSM has said a whole lot...I think I'll poke him for now.

##VOTE: VSM

[Veryslightlymad]

I'm pretty sure what opinions I've actually had are WAY the fuck more substantial than your opinion of "VSM's opinions are insubstantial". Way to go.

[Kilgamayan]

Then share them.

[Shale]

He withdrew his vote at the eleventh hour and is now emphasizing that his vote was only a joke vote and so he wasn't REALLY part of that train that killed a townie.

Okay, now you're putting words in my mouth. That is the exact opposite of what I said, thank you very much. I pulled my vote because I didn't want the day to end without everybody saying their piece, not because I opposed the lynch altogether. I said so then, and I said it again the first time you brought this out. Don't you think if I were trying to absolve myself from the lynch I would have made some argument about why we shouldn't lynch Tom?

And no, it wasn't "just" a joke vote. I jokevoted him to begin with, which is where you seemed to get the impression that I started the train. I didn't, unless my "OMG you jokevoted the same person somebody else did" post on the first page was way more convincing than I thought. I did, however, say this, once he started calling for No Lynch:

I can't vote for you because I'm already voting for you, but consider this a declaration that the joke vote is now semi-serious.

Was I behind it 100%, absolutely convinced he was scum? No. Would I have kept the vote on if there had been another big vote-getter, or a "deadline = no lynch" rule in effect? Yes, and I said so at the time. The bad play plus the no-vote push - not only a tell for newbie scum but also a dramatic difference from the games I'd seen him play before - made him the best candidate of the day.

know Shale says he did it to give more people a chance to speak, but if you think consensus has been achieved and you personally have no one else you want to vote for, there's really no good reason to force the day to time out.

There was a normally highly active player who hadn't posted at all - I think you might have met him - and others who hadn't weighed in on only person we knew was going to flip. I thought that was worth waiting a little while for, especially when it wasn't going to affect the outcome of the vote at all.

[Veryslightlymad]

I've gone so far as to make a claim on Sopko being town, and I'm sticking with it until someone can give me some meaningful evidence otherwise.

I've called BS on a lot of people's "This is scummy" calls, such as the self-vote nonsense that, hey, turned out to be nonsense, or the smokescreens of lists or any of that other nonsense. And really? I think it helps clear the air a little. You know what my take on what's scummy? Trying to nitpick out little responses on other people to fog things up further. Which is sort of what you're doing now (OMGUS?! Naw, I won't put any votes on you... yet.)

Really. I don't see what you're doing to help. You're putting pressure on ME, but what are you doing for yourself? And really, I don't think it's much of anything. My take on you, right now, anyhow, is that you're just trying to make things more confusing.

[Kilgamayan]

I've gone so far as to make a claim on Sopko being town, and I'm sticking with it until someone can give me some meaningful evidence otherwise.

You've made a claim on one person. Discounting myself and yourself, what about any of the 16 others?

I've called BS on a lot of people's "This is scummy" calls, such as the self-vote nonsense that, hey, turned out to be nonsense, or the smokescreens of lists or any of that other nonsense. And really? I think it helps clear the air a little.

So you've disagreed with a few ideas. You've said nothing about the people who presented the ideas, which is far more important because our goal isn't to vote ideas off.

You know what my take on what's scummy? Trying to nitpick out little responses on other people to fog things up further. Which is sort of what you're doing now (OMGUS?! Naw, I won't put any votes on you... yet.)

Trying to extract opinions on people from someone who has provided next to none of them is "fogging things up further"? It's getting you to talk a lot more than you have been, for one (you'll notice I was neither the first nor the last to call you on a lack of meaningful content). Talking is distracting now?

Really. I don't see what you're doing to help. You're putting pressure on ME, but what are you doing for yourself?

In terms of the game on the whole, I may not have a high post count for the game, but I've provided opinions on various people and various situations. In terms of right now, I'm stimulating talk from you to test the quality of my judgment in decided to vote for you, and so far I haven't seen much reason to change my mind.

And really, I don't think it's much of anything. My take on you, right now, anyhow, is that you're just trying to make things more confusing.

I don't see how trying to extract opinions on players that can be used to make better judgments on who to vote for is confusing. Feel free to explain it to me.

[Bobbin Cranbud]

I wonder why you aren't voting.  We have less than a day to come to something at least resembling a consensus, so even if you don't have a concrete opinion, you need to at least use the only weapon that we have against the scum on your best guess.  Choosing not to vote is nearly as bad a play as choosing not to play at all, really, it accomplishes more or less the same thing.

We've just had some very concrete examples of just how bad it is to choose not to play.  Choosing not to vote is not even close to even in the same ballpark.  If not for the need to reach a consensus to avoid No Lynch, it would, IMO, sometimes be a good play - for example, if you don't have a good idea of who's Scum.  That, to me, is a good time to let people who seem more confident take the lead and see where it goes, and whether it exposes either them or their targets.

(Incidentally, this is why I hate when the mods institute a 'come to a consensus or it's No Lynch' rule.  It's a huge advantage for Scum, because it gives an excuse for jumping on bandwagons and ending days before all the discussion is wrung out of them, encourages careless voting and thus further stifles discussion, and even covers for the usually suspicious Hammer.  I hope in the future Mods will consider just shortening the days if they don't want them to actually run to the deadline.)

I am not going to form an uninformed opinion.

Then form an informed one. (Hell, form a whole bunch. The more, the merrier.) If you've done so, then feel free to share.

This is just plain snark.  Obviously if he had formed an informed opinion, he'd be voting; that's what he's saying.  There's no call for this.

I don't recall ever wondering that, actually, at least not outside my wondering why there has been a notable lack of votes on the whole. What I am wondering is why you aren't forming opinions on players (or are simply refusing to share them). You have roughly 250 posts to work with; I'm sure you can find something.

Yet, several people have noted how there seems to be a decided lack of information floating around.  Not just VSM.  The fact is, between Tom, CPU and Uno, almost all of our discussion so far have been driven by bad play - and all three, in their own ways, have been taken out of play.  The other dead further confuse the matter, because QR being nonaligned makes it harder to judge her participation in the first day, along with those opposed to her.

In fact, there's SO little to go on - annoyingly little; this feels more like a Day 1 to me - I find your aggressive pursuit of VSM, and the way you've gone about it, probably the most suspicious thing going on.  It's honestly not all that much, but it's more than I have on anyone else.  So:

##VOTE: Kilgamayan

[Yakumo]

I wonder why you aren't voting.  We have less than a day to come to something at least resembling a consensus, so even if you don't have a concrete opinion, you need to at least use the only weapon that we have against the scum on your best guess.  Choosing not to vote is nearly as bad a play as choosing not to play at all, really, it accomplishes more or less the same thing.

We've just had some very concrete examples of just how bad it is to choose not to play.  Choosing not to vote is not even close to even in the same ballpark.  If not for the need to reach a consensus to avoid No Lynch, it would, IMO, sometimes be a good play - for example, if you don't have a good idea of who's Scum.  That, to me, is a good time to let people who seem more confident take the lead and see where it goes, and whether it exposes either them or their targets.

(Incidentally, this is why I hate when the mods institute a 'come to a consensus or it's No Lynch' rule.  It's a huge advantage for Scum, because it gives an excuse for jumping on bandwagons and ending days before all the discussion is wrung out of them, encourages careless voting and thus further stifles discussion, and even covers for the usually suspicious Hammer.  I hope in the future Mods will consider just shortening the days if they don't want them to actually run to the     line.)

Oh, give me a break here.  How is choosing not to vote really all that different from choosing not to play at all?  You're refusing to play the game the way it's supposed to be played, which is voting for the people you think are scum so you can get rid of them.  The only difference is that you may be putting some opinions out there, which is all well and good but if you don't think enough of them to use the only weapon you have based off them, why should we pay them any more attention than you are?  Hell, if anything, not voting is worse because at least we get rid of the ones that aren't playing, the guy that's not voting is making things harder for us and might be getting away with it.

As for the making the days shorter comments, we really should be keeping commentary like that out of the game thread.  You saw what happened when Kilga started talking like that in one of the other games(WoT, I think it was?).  It gets people talking about that instead of the game and obscures what we're trying to do.  I disagree with you, but if you want to debate THAT, move it to the general discussion thread, don't talk about it here.

[Kilgamayan]

I am not going to form an uninformed opinion.

Then form an informed one. (Hell, form a whole bunch. The more, the merrier.) If you've done so, then feel free to share.

This is just plain snark.  Obviously if he had formed an informed opinion, he'd be voting; that's what he's saying.  There's no call for this.

Yeah, I regretting saying that shortly after I posted. Sorry to VSM for this.

I don't recall ever wondering that, actually, at least not outside my wondering why there has been a notable lack of votes on the whole. What I am wondering is why you aren't forming opinions on players (or are simply refusing to share them). You have roughly 250 posts to work with; I'm sure you can find something.

Yet, several people have noted how there seems to be a decided lack of information floating around.  Not just VSM.  The fact is, between Tom, CPU and Uno, almost all of our discussion so far have been driven by bad play - and all three, in their own ways, have been taken out of play.  The other dead further confuse the matter, because QR being nonaligned makes it harder to judge her participation in the first day, along with those opposed to her.

In fact, there's SO little to go on - annoyingly little; this feels more like a Day 1 to me - I find your aggressive pursuit of VSM, and the way you've gone about it, probably the most suspicious thing going on.  It's honestly not all that much, but it's more than I have on anyone else.  So:

##VOTE: Kilgamayan

Jeez, so much for putting pressure on people to talk.

What kind of information are you looking for? Past games have dregged stuff up on Day 2 despite a lack of role claims and information provided thereby; people just needed to work a little harder to get it.

Now, let's take the lack of information in this game. Sitting around and doing nothing is not going to fix that problem, it's going to cause a death spiral until some informational roleclaims come in to play. This (plus in-game boredom) is why I decided to do what I did, and I would like to think I succeeded on some level, as we've now had several posts from both myself and VSM as well as weigh-ins on the issue from yourself and Yakumo. Now the town on the whole has some more information to work with.

[Taishyr]

...and Fnorder isn't CPU, so any tells CPU might have had are not meaningful to Fnorder despite one being a replacement for another.

A dangerous line of logic. If we have reason to believe that the role CPU has is a scum role, and Fnorder substitutes in for CPU, does that suddenly not make it a scum role? While I understand your sentiment, CPU's actions do reflect on Fnorder's position in some regard. ...this being said, I think that much of what was going on there was CPU's frustrations as a player. This could be a false inference, but based on what (little) I have seen of his playstyle, this does not feel like a bad assumption to work off of.

Okay. While I'm pleased that we don't have the death funnel on one person that we've had before... argh, now we have a massive case of votespread before the deadline, and no real discussion of the arguments besides voters and votees trading comments, which doesn't help either. Give me a moment to do an unofficial vote count and look over the arguments before I comment on any of them.

[Cmdr_King]

You're right.  Better to say... I just think that because CPU had few posts and clearly wanted out of the game, any tells he gave off are more likely a product of that frustration than a true indication of his role and it would not be prudent to use those to determine Fnorder's alignment.  That's a lot closer to what I meant.

[Hunter Sopko]

I guess I'm just going to go with my gut and toss a vote at Soppy.  He hasn't posted a whole lot of meaningful content, to me, and he's not posting much either.  Also, he continues to make minor mistakes in his analysis, which he later corrects.  I find, personally, that it's a lot easier to make those kinds of mistakes as scum because you aren't looking for every little detail in what somebody posts since you already know who's on your side.

Vote: HunterSopko

You're a bit off in your analysis. Scum can make those mistakes, but so can town. It's just as important for town to correct them in case they either A) Misrepresent a case against someone that could very well turn out to be a town and B) Misrepresent themselves as scum when they are really town.

There is no harm in a townie correcting a mistake in an argument they've made. I've been kinda consistant in it this game, so I apologize for that, but at this point there is nothing I can do rather than try not to do it in the future.

This kinda stuff is pretty obvious though, regardless of the paranoia in the game. You're saying if a townie makes a mistake in an argument, he should just let the mistake stand and lead other townies astray? That doesn't help town at all.

On other notes: I know my case against Corwin doesn't amount to much. Notice I haven't voted him? It's going to take more than what I have to damn him in my eyes.

For VSM, the case against him is kinda shoddy. But likewise, the stuff between he and Kil sounds like town vs town to me.

I'm still leaning towards Shale, but I can't tell yet. His vote pull at the end was bad strategy, scum or town, and doesn't damn him either way in my eyes alone. He's making me the most nervous at the moment though.

Cranbud's "Not voting" thing that Yakko pointed out is eye-raising though...

[Yakumo]

That's not exactly what I mean, Soppy.  What I'm saying is, since I don't have to pay as much attention as scum since I'm not trying to figure out who's on my side and who isn't, I find it easier to make mistakes like saying the wrong person's name when I'm trying to make a point.  I'm not saying you shouldn't fix mistakes you make, I'm saying it's easier to make them in the first place and then have to fix them.  It's part of the same reason I called Super out in the NR Mafia game. 

[Taishyr]

Post on hold for a few hours, new roommate has arrived.