Random Mafia - Be Afraid...Very Afraid

[Ranmilia]

Reasons to vote lurks...
Insufficient for my taste.
I got a bad vibe.

Smodge wants to tip it
even though he won't be here
in case of roleclaim.

This makes Smodge look worse!
On the other hand, Otter
is lying, Yak's right.

Rather vote bad play
than lurking, but lying, now,
that's a different thing.

Leaving my vote, but
actually deadline's bout here...
Otter lynch is fine.

[Ranmilia]

Hammer minus one
Defense from sea mammal thing?
Probably won't be

since he's talking, now,
to me about a game he's
playing at this time.

[Otter]

Okay, it's about deadline, time to role reveal.



OK, did you REALLY expect me to try that hard not to die here?

##UNVOTE: Zenny
##VOTE: Otter

That's HAMMER.

[OblivionKnight]

Well, as MC Hammer would say...

"Can't touch this!"

(till after my next post, at least)

[OblivionKnight]

A scream.  A crash.  The chaos of unknowing was indeed a maniacal thing.  At the end of the day, after many call-outs and maddening claims, two people rose to the top of the heap.

One called Zenny.  The other Otter.

It was unclear for the longest time who would be the first to die in this harsh world. 

Until the one named Otter made the call:

"I cannot take this anymore!  This world hates me!  The only one who ever loved me...who ever cared about me...is dead!  I must join him!  KILL ME!!! KILL MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"

Screaming and morphing into a beast with glasses, red braided hair, and a whore-suit, fully visible in the dark dimension, all present began a choking session, which continued long after she died..."

Otter,(Shion Uzuki, the bloody retarded bitch and a half from the ass of Dan Brown's most recent taco shit, VILE EVIL) has been killed!

1) Quietrain (0): <Zenny>
2) Otter (8): Ciato, Yakumo, Carth, Meeple, Zenny, Smodge, Andrew, Otter
3) Tai
4) EvilTom (0): <Dhyer>
5) Smodge (1): <Excal>, Alex, <Meeple>
6) Dhyerwolf (1): <Meeple>, Tom
7) Alex (0): <Carthrat>
8) Carthrat (0): <Tai>
9) Yakumo (0): <Alex>
10) Ciato
11) Meeple (0): <Andrew>
12) Andrew (0): <Otter>
13) Excal (0): <Smodge>
14) Zenny (4): Quietrain, Dhyer, Excal, Tai, <Otter>

Sorry about the bit of lateness.  Anyway...

NIGHT ACTIONS ARE NEEDED!  SEND THEM IN!

[OblivionKnight]

The forces of good and justice were one step closer to stopping the forces of Tesla.  One down, and some odd number to go. 

However, after they all had went to bed to prepare for more mob rule the next morning, they heard a very girly scream in the middle of the night.  Waking up, they looked to the ground to see the words "fe suxorz" sprawled on the ground in front of Carthrat...who now styled red hair, a blue set or amour, a really ugly smile, and a massively overcompensating sword"

Carthrat (Elitard, the worthless FE Lord who couldn't get any even if he tried, GOOD AND JUST) has been killed overnight!

The Dead:
1) Otter - Shion, EVIL BITCH
2) Carth - Elitard, USELESS BUT GOOD

It is now daytime, and time to talk again. 

You have ~48 hours (so Sunday @ ~6pm EST) until the next killing.  This killing will also be performed at the deadline, with the highest vote person getting killed. 

The usual things apply.

Happy Hunting.

[Luther Lansfeld]

DING DONG THE BITCH IS DEAD THE WICKED BITCH IS DEAD!

[Yakumo]

Current circumstances suggest that the hypothesis stating the Rodent is always attuned to the forces of evil has been rather violently disproven.

[Ranmilia]

We win forever!
Thought it was just Otterstart
again, but not, eh?

[QuietRain]

ASIDE: Man, if there was ever a compelling reason for me not to play a game it's everyone's immense hate for that girl.  I've only watched Gate play the first one, but man the HATE for her is thick.  2 & 3 must be horrible.

TO THE MATTER AT HAND: Well.  Let's see.  That tells us just this side of nothing.  But luckily, just this is side, is still better than nothing.  In looking over the day 1 shennanigans regarding Carthrat,

1-Carth votes Alex on the bases of haiku hate
2-Tai joke votes Carth saying that he stole his favorite number slot.
3-Carth makes snarky come back to smodge's promise that his comment was not a scum ploy
4-Ciato mock calls Carth scum when he fails at quote tags
5-Carth says he re-read smodge's posts after the role conversation debacle.  Asks Alex to explain why he's coming down so hard on smodge when it doesn't look to him like smodge is asking for role claims so much as wondering out loud.
6-Carth lays out his thoughts http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=300.msg3055#msg3055

This is the last we see of Carth before day end.  Now, interestingly enough for me, his last post was where he voted for Otter.  His is the 3rd vote on the water mammal.  Now, at this point, the only vote on Zenny was my own joke vote (well, I think at that point, I had made it a serious vote).  Now, after this third one on the water mammal is when all of a sudden, votes for Zenny come out of the woodworks.  To me, this seems like a scum ploy to save one of their own.  And when it seemed it was not going to work, Otter killed himself, revealing his scum alliance.  This is also very reminiscient of what super did in the NR game.  He hammered himself and much chaos ensued.

So, my concerns are for the first few votes after me for Zenny: Dhyer, Excal & Tai.  I would like you guys to give your reasoning for finding Zenny more scum-worthy than the water mammal.  Especially now that he was revealed to be, himself, scum.

[Dhyerwolf]

I didn't find either of them innately more suspicious, it was the usual prompt for lurkers to post more. At that point, people only seemed to be voting for 1 of the lurkers when there were pretty much 3.

[Cotigo]

Well.  That was unexpected.  Very good for Camelot, but unexpected. 

Now.  Let's see, the people who did vote for Brave Sir Robin need to be looked at... maybe.  If it were that simple, the scum would really suck at this game.

I'm frankly more concerned about the people who voted for Otter.  What better way to try to distance yourself from scumbuddies than to vote for them?  I'm not sure who's more suspicious in that group.  Smodge seems fairly suspicious, but I have a gut feeling that he's town for reasons why I blew off the debate he was in earlier:  debates that take up the first day are often between townies. 

In any case, we don't necessarily get too much information off of Otter's scum-alignment because he got voted out for lurking.  Bleh.

[Yakumo]

One must note, however, that of the aforementioned trio, only one was observed to be active in other circles, causing suspicion that aforementioned lurking was deliberate rather than coincidental.

[QuietRain]

I definately agree that there was likely at least 1 vote on Otter by another scum.  We shouldn't be looking just at the Zenny-voters, but I think that's a good place to start.  Scum will arely put all thier voting eggs in one basket.

Of course, it occurs to me that with Otter's Shion hate, I could just see him begging his fellow scum to kill him off to end his misery.  It sows confusion and makes them look a little better later on when votes are reviewed a little more thuroughly. 

[Smodge13]

Alright 1 down, X to go.

Of all the people out there one that i feel most cautious about at the moment is Tai.

Tai - He joke votes for Rat, who then dies (not worth much), Minorly Comments on the Smodge/Alex fiasco, but doesn't give opinions either way, Then Votes for Zenthor but doesn't list any reason other than "hatbot told me Otter" all in all not many posts from Tai with much content. So
1. Minor Lurkage
2. Joke Vote on Rat who is dead
3. Part of Zenthor train but doesn't give a reason why picked Zen over Otter

All in all we haven't gotten many opinions from Tai.

I'll relay thoughts on others a bit later.

[Meeplelard]

Well, good start, but I'm not sure what direction to take.  The one thing I am considering now is Otter's line when he hammered himself...

Is it something he was being kind of serious about (like did he intentionally play badly at the request of his scumbuddies to die, and thus play mind games with everyone) *OR* was that just a facetious statement of "Screw it, I'm Shion, this is just too insulting and not worth surviving with."

Worth noting that Otter didn't really play a good game; the out and out lying ("I was in chat for only 20 seconds, I didn't have time to spend on Mafia!" which Yakko called him out on being BS since he was clearly active in chat for much longer than that, to the point where "20 seconds" wasn't an exaggeration that could be overlooked) is NOT something a townie EVER wants to do, barring maybe a role claim to hide their role powers and avoid being scum targets (again, we went over this and something that maybe should only be done early in the game if you're really pressured into role claiming.)

Anyway, I'll go back and look over things but I'm a bit pressed for time at the moment.  I don't know who to really look out for at the moment due to not doing my homework (ie reviewing the past day), so yeah, sorry for lack of contributing much.

[EvilTom]

Hey guys, back now, sorry for the wait. I actually got in an hour after day 1 hammer which was annoying, but it looks like you did good anyway. And since then I've been waiting forever for OK to start day 2; I counted to infinity... twice!

My thoughts up till hammer? Some players have been lurking (myself included, obviously). We need to fix this; we already nailed one that way, so let's keep it up.
It's hard to make anything of the first half of day 1 at this point, so I'll come back to bad vibes later on when I have something more substantial... and then I'll kick them in the face.

On the Otter hammer:
Obviously Otter knew he was a goner. It's possible for a while that it could have been pushed onto Zenny, but it didn't go that way. As we all know, the last to hammer is going to be under suspicion, which is why it is a good scum strategy to self-hammer. It cuts off discussion (which is the tool of the town), but since the time limit was up anyway this is not the reason here. The real reason must be that it removes (some) suspicion from whoever voted last, allowing for an easier bus. If this is the correct circumstance, I then look to Andrew.

But first, let's examine the timing.

With around 5 hours to go, Otter and Zenny are trying to pin lynch on each other.
With around 3 hours to go, Andrew says he will vote for one or the other, after eating food.
Smodge votes otter.
At the 11th hour: Andrew votes for Otter
Two minutes later, Alex posts:

Reasons to vote lurks...
Insufficient for my taste.

Within 8 minutes, Otter self-hammers.*

*Seems like about the correct amount of time to find the picture of his character and self-lynch.

So, what do I make of this? Otter was in serious trouble by this point, and as Quietrain and Zenny have also said, one of the Otter voters was probably scum.  To me, it looks as if Andrew is going for a safe 'hammer' by getting Otter to self-hammer the -1.

Others:
Alex: I'm not sure if Alex's haikus were there to help obfuscate, or if it was coincidental... but it's a possibility that should be considered.
Smodge: Despite some early accusations on him from Alex, he sounds neutral-to-town to me. On that occasion, Smodge pulled discussion out of joke-votes and into serious discussion. Alex accused him of assisting scum, and C-Rat succeeded in defending Smodge. Further, Smodge's vote on otter was around 3 hours from hammer.

More on Alex:
I don't know what's acceptable on DL forums wrt mafia speak, but the haikus are damn annoying to read. I find myself skipping your posts and having to go back and force myself to decipher them. Sure, it's poetry, but we're trying to catch scum here, not write literature. Well, at least some of us are... Basically, you're making your posts harder to read, harder to understand... why? You've offered no explanation for an act which, as far as I can tell, can only benefit scum. It's damn hard to make stuff out of your posts, and it's even harder to notice that there's nothing there. Whenever I try and read your posts, I'm not sure if you've said anything or not, because it mostly seems like fluff.
Your posts are technically understandable, but I could write my posts in Greek or French or binary and they'd still be technically understandable too.
What I'm trying to say here is that your posting style is a pain to read, and damn unhelpful.
When Smodge pointed it out earlier, you flared up and accused him of trying to find out roles for scum, and gave the whole townie-wrotism talk, hiding behind the 'newbie lecture' defense. Carthrat came to Smodge's defense as mentioned earlier, but if he hadn't, I wonder if you'd have been able to push things against Smodge easier. Funny how the Rat is now dead.

Anyway I've talked enough; time for action.
A summary for those who don't like my wall of text: I think Andrew is bad for his -1 to hammer, followed by an almost immediate self-hammer by scum.*
But I think Alex is generally bad for his overall behaviour and haiku-screen.

##Vote: Andrew

FoS: Alex

Let's hear from you both. I'm sure people will have questions (and flames) for me too, now.

*I'm well aware that this could also be a scum tactic to frame Andrew, but that's WIFOM, and I'd rather stick with that I know. Even if I can slam a revolving door, doesn't mean I'm going to.

[Ranmilia]

So you hate haiku.
I think your objections are...
unfounded, really.

I haven't changed much,
except the meter format.
Ignore the line breaks.

Read my posts out loud
and I think you'll find that they
are standard English.

I've posted content,
in fact been the most vocal
except perhaps Smodge.

Whether you agree
with what I said about him
is your decision.

Today I'm with Rain.
Dhy, Tai, Ex and Quietrain
herself - vote logic?

Dhyer's already
answered, with "lynch all lurkers"
which is good but eh...

At some point, I think,
it became clear that the votes
on Otter were real.

Did you not notice?
Were you just okay with it
since he hadn't spoke?

[Dhyerwolf]

Assuming the last part was directed to me, Otter had spoken before that (Just a throwaway joke post, like the other two). At that time, they were pretty much all in the same boat. If Otter hadn't spoken at all, that would have changed things, but he had.

Alex's haikus don't feel like anything to me, other than possibly an evil mod having fun by making it so that he has to post in haikus.

On the ordering and timing on Otter's self lynch, it feels like that whole area would be massive-WIFOM bait. Sure, he and another scum could have worked together to engineer something like Evil Tom described, but that could also be reading into something that we really have very little info on. Not only scum framing Andrew is WIFOM, but the whole thing is.

[QuietRain]

Good point, Alex.  Just because my joke vote was before things got fun, doesn't mean I didn't turn it serious.  My reasoning was as follows:

Zenny makes 2 quick joking votes on page 1 (the first just a joke vote response to my joke vote on him, the second just to comment that Alex' haiku's reminded him of Cap's previous ones).  A page later the water mammal adds in his silliness phase post (voted Andrew on the running joke that he's always scum). 

After that?  No one hears hide nor hair from either until they start posting again on page 6.  Totals lurkers.  No content and not even trying to participate.  It's not until they're tied at 4 each (half the needed to be lynched) and just 7 hours from lynch that they start moving and posting real content.

Now, why Zenny over the water mammal?  Because I'm NOT a fan of needless roleclaims early in the game when it serves no purpose.   A roleclaim of vanilla means=jack s*** to me this early.  Especially when no one is pressing you to claim and it's still half way to a lynch for you or the second closest person.  SO, have to decide that either I believe him (in which case my view is a bad town player) or I don't (in which case my view is either a bad town player trying to cover for a power role OR a bad scum player, take your pick).  In either case, it's a better read than my neutral read off the water mammal.  Thus the vote.

Now in hindsight, Otter=scum doesn't shock me to my core.  He was lurking hardcore.  Right now, I'm still very suspicious of Zenny, but concentrating my attention on those who voted for both lurkers to see what I can decipher.

[Smodge13]

Ok Current Thoughts on people other than Tai.

QuietRain - Giving a strong Town feeling to me, not much to comment on, started the Zenny train but it was originally a joke vote and the switch to serious had a decent reason behind it.

Tom - He went away for most of day 1, checks have confirmed he was legitimately on holiday (yes Tom i checked) so i tend to believe his excuse, Neutral feel for now.

Dhyer - Didn't Involve himself in the Alex/Smodge discussion, Didn't talk much, Placed a Vote on Zenthor because Otter had pressure on him already, fair enough reason Neutral to Scum read but more on the neutral side of things.

Alex- Overaggressive and unforgiving as usual, Haiku format obfuscates things slightly, but the key thing that gets to me, he didn't even place a vote on either train, with minutes to go why wait until the deadline? why not just hammer it, unless of course he knew Otter would hammer himself.
Scum feel to me but it could just be Paranoia/OMGUS feeling.

Yakumo - Robotspeak also obfuscates things but only very slightly and not worth concern, actively took part in Alex/Smodge convo, Although Meep Suggested it first, Yakumo more strongly pointed out Otters lie however jumped on the Otter train without even looking at Zenthor...... why?, Neutral feel to me.

Ciato - Defended me, but then attacked me when i accidently incriminated myself further so the flip-flop had good reason, was the Beginning of the Otter train, this is what disturbs me slightly, although her vote had grounds both carth and Yakumo follow suit without even looking at Zenthor, Neutral to Town feel for me.

Meeple - My gut says Scum and i don't know why but theres no reason behind it, just a hunch, so i'm ignoring it for now and going for reason, Meep observed and minorly took part in Alex/Smodge discussion but this is what gets me.

...though, Smodge is feeling a bit suspicious.  Its not much to work with

he said there wasn't much to go on and that he will remove his vote because joke phase is over, he then Adds the vote to me, sure there was reason, but it was little at the time and he himself said so. Probably just paranoia and survival instinct with that one, He pointed out Otters lie first, and was on the Otter train. Neutral feel to me.

Andrew - Minor Lurkage, said he was going to read over and then vote for a lurker, which would have tipped the scale, makes me wonder, if i hadn't voted for Otter would that scale have been tipped by Andrew onto Zenny. Scum feel, he lurked, he votted Otter but it was Hours after he said he would and would have been the decider if i didn't jump in first, gives little reason on why the vote for Otter jus t"he looks worse" also his vote didn't come in until after Otter was busted on his lie. Major scum feel.

Excal - Did a running commentary and only minorly gave his own thoughts, was part of the Zenny train, could be scum trying to save Otter, looks even worse because Tai followed suit 1 post later. Excal got any input other than a running commentary?. Neutral to scum feel from me.

Zenthor - i find it hard to believe both lurkers would be scum, but is is a possibility, this would further add to confusion a lot though, he roleclaimed vanilla, which would be a safe claim for scum on day 1 because they have no idea what powers are out there. Complete Neutral feel for me at the moment.

Thats my Thoughts, no vote from me yet, will decide later.

[Smodge13]

Oh one thing i forgot, looking at Zenthors Roleclaim, i tend to believe it as there is a similarity between his character and Rats, due to this be random mafia and no actual flavor i can see there being a possibility that scum didn't receive a sheet of safe name-claims, however there are similarities between the 2 characters (despite this being random) and so i have a tendency to believe his claim.

[EvilTom]

i tend to believe it as there is a similarity between his character and Rats, due to this be random mafia and no actual flavor i can see there being a possibility that scum didn't receive a sheet of safe name-claims, however there are similarities between the 2 characters (despite this being random) and so i have a tendency to believe his claim.

Wouldn't that be a stroke against him, if it were truly random? Similarities would be odd, if anything.

Zenthor - i find it hard to believe both lurkers would be scum, but is is a possibility, this would further add to confusion a lot though, he roleclaimed vanilla, which would be a safe claim for scum on day 1 because they have no idea what powers are out there. Complete Neutral feel for me at the moment.

When you put it like that, it's not neutral, from my perspective anyway. That sounds very scum. And I don't see why both lurkers wouldn't be scum, it's just as easy to believe, and shouldn't be ruled out.

Your take on Zenthor, along with QuietRain's previous post.. makes quite a good case. I'll leave my vote on Andrew till we hear from him, though.

[AndrewRogue]

*cracks neck*

Okay, I want to establish this. There is very rarely a good reason for a self-hammer. Especially on day one, where you can potentially cast off suspicion with a timely role claim and get a panic lynch on another person or get a power role to reveal themselves. Yeah, you sign your own death warrant, but you also set the score at 2 townies, one scum, putting the ball firmly in your court.

Second, hammers are powerful tools. Scum bussing tends to be a clear on day one (trust me, I've done it a few times) and keep your nose clean. Hammering scum, especially when there is no need to, looks GOOD most of the time. Further, this is the kind of logic that encourages people not to hammer. Remember, SOMEONE has to be the hammer. If we start looking down on every hammer, well. It just doesn't go great places. It can be useful, yes, to check out who hammers, especially in conjunction with their voting records, but it isn't that often an OMG auto-suspicion thing. I've won games (and almost won games) because I LOVE to hammer my scum partners with zeal. Killing scum = town action! Simple logic for an unsuspicious look.

Third, I'm also going to say that post timing is very, very, very circumstantial as far as evidence goes. Trust me. Most other board games I've been scum in? We chat it up, inform each other we just posted and to go ahead, wait or whatever. More to the point, if hammering looks suspicious... then why would I have wanted Otter to self-hammer when we could have let town go for it?

Really, there is nothing to associate me with that whole mess beyond voting Otter (who was even with Zenny in suspicion, right up until he didn't try much to defend himself and Zenny did) and, even then, good strategy, play history and a little bit of meta all scream that I'd hammer Otter's rear end. I'm not seeing a good argument here at all.

However, I do have a question! Why did you drop a vote before you knew you were going to be gone anyway, especially in a phase that is prone to rapid changes and not having much to go on?

On Alex, I really think people need to get off the haiku thing. Quit speculating about, quit wondering about what sort of tell it is. It is utterly neutral.

And to amend, since three more posts dropped in: it took me a while to vote because I got distracted by WoW and GF while grabbing lunch, then the damnable boards failed to load for me, preventing me from voting. On the note of my reasoning for Otter... uh... looking worse is kind of a good reason when there are two decent suspects. Again, Zenny defended himself. Otter didn't. Townies have no reason to not defend themselves. This looks bad. :p

[Yakumo]

Furry aquatic mammal was original target of choice due to fact that similar pattern to his play was noted in Discworld Mafia game.  Mammal failed to arrive in game at all until day 2, posted virtually nothing on any day, yet survived until fourth game day.  Mammal acknowledged to have been aligned with forces of good in said game, yet knowledge that said "strategy" was found effective for that long based solely on reputation made mammal significantly more dangerous a lurker than the other meatbags.