VtM:M - Vampire the Masquerade Mafia

[Yakumo]

I'm sorry if you think denouncing all the attacks so far as pointless doesn't count as content, but that's what I saw.  Nothing leapt out and looked scummy to me.  It's not like I ignored the cases, I don't see merit in them.  Need I remind you that it's still day one?  Yes, we have flips to look at, but looking at a third party flip and a guy who was treated as town by pretty much everyone isn't likely to be much help.  Well, maybe looking at the people trying to discredit him, I guess that might help...

[Luther Lansfeld]

Well, VSM vs. Excal is very interesting. VSM hopping on what a minor detail. I believe that when you are posting, sometimes you forget the original intent of your post. I agree with VSM that this seems like scummy behavior, mostly because it's easier to forget a point when you don't actually have one (i.e. you are trying to bring up things artificially as scum). However, Excal doesn't seem especially nefarious at this time, since I don't see the trying to remember tactics you used as scum as really a scum tell or a town tell, so that drowns in a pit of neutral. One thing that caught my eye about Excal is that he voted to "Rat" Otter rather than actually voting for him, which... I dunno. Since Rat said he wanted votes specifically, it feels like he might be trying to evade the records with this but still putting his two cents in?

VSM... his earlier paranoia I find bothersome. There was one statement in particular of VSM's that I found extremely weird, but I don't have time to look for it right now. When he was arguing with Rat, he said somethign along the lines of "Well, then you can kill someone and say it was just the town's vote!" as a reason to think Rat was suspicious with his claim. To me this feels like reaching for major straws, and I don't really like this at all. Other than this he's seemed to have some tunnel vision, seeming to only acknowledge the cases that he has in his mind and nothing else.

I'm going to have to err to the side of saying I agree that the Governor roleclaim is suspicious. It... I dunno, I guess it makes sense to have a Governor in this setting, since we did have a Prince and all? I'm not sure if this is a townie role, even. Let actions speak louder than roleclaims, regardless. I want to hear from Ciddy again. Heck, Governor could be a scum role perhaps, considering that we do have a Daykill Vig? I'd like to say that that's just... ridiculous, but I pretty much doubt anything being TOO ridiculous these days.

Feh, I am not sure. The thing that has caught my eye is Shale vs. Andrew. But goddammit, I'm out of time. I'll hop on a few minutes before I leave and elaborate on this.

[Yakumo]

...so I guess I'll go take a look at that.  My point though was that I haven't really seen anything that looks scummier than lurking.

Sorry about the break, PSP character limit.

[QuietRain]

OK, quick post now that I'm awake.  I have to drive the rugrat into school and an early morning meeting means I won't get back to post more for another ~2 hours.  I have a post half worked out, but time is up I have to go.

I seem to recall somewhat of a push to lynch a lurker and then just.... undo it. If you were going to undo the lynch anyhow, why would it really matter who you lynched? Could an unlynched person slip under the radar more than a person who simply has low content?

Just because the actual quote above I don't recall being answered.  If it was...well, a second reitteration never hurts I guess.  Because IF the Recurring FF Character is fibbing, then we don't want to lose someone who is participating and might be useful.  We would want to lose a lurker who isn't doing anything anyway.

[Corwin]

Now that I think about it, QR, wouldn't Cid himself be a better target than a lurker? If he's indeed lying, we lynch him and don't have to wait for the next day to lynch him for lying.

[Shale]

According to his roleclaim, he can't block his own lynch.

[Corwin]

Ah, I see.

Shale, I don't see you voting for anyone. Who would be your lynch candidate for day 1, if you had to decide at this time?

[Lady Door]

It's Day 1.

It doesn't excuse anyone for anything, but I'm hoping it reminds people where we stand. We have a day-kill that took out a third-party and a townie. As Yakumo says,

Yes, we have flips to look at, but looking at a third party flip and a guy who was treated as town by pretty much everyone isn't likely to be much help. 

I pretty much agree with that. Confirming things is pretty far out of our reach at this moment, as we have nothing concrete to bounce things off of. The reactions to Carthrat's role-claim did not seem unreasonable to me, and Otter's being third-party pretty much helps no one since any reactions to him are, as I understand it, fairly independent of any affiliation.

I don't believe there's no one to look at, and I do with Yakumo would weigh in on exactly why he thinks the arguments that have been cropping up on non-arguments. If they are, I certainly don't want to waste my time on them. Otherwise, I'm going to be a little suspicious of the impartial silence. 

With less than 12 hours left to the lynch deadline, I want to remind everyone that no majority vote means no lynch which I think has been pretty well hashed out to be bad juju for us. My thoughts:

- vsm makes me uncomfortable with his argument against Excal. "I mentioned this thing, but you didn't actually do this thing! Your defense against it must mean you're being defensive which must mean you're scum!" seems like a fair, if hyperbolic, distillation of the bulk of it. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

- Yakumo seems to have a sort of absent presence. I can forgive this because, well, not only is it Day 1 but it's been an extremely long day 1 which he popped into near the tail end. I don't really like the "there wasn't anything to talk about" argument, because I sort of figured Day 1 -- even one like this one -- involved grasping at straws and drawing people out, which is kind of hard to do if you sit back and shrug at everyone.

- Andrew's got my eye because ... well... he hasn't come off the Governor argument yet. Yes, he backed down off his argument about testing Cid, but his posts still are completely about the Governor. I understand wanting to hash out the whys and hows of logic against his initial feeling (boy do I), but considering the last real meat of his contribution is withdrawing a vote on Alex simply by virtue of his roleclaim (and "elaborat[ing] on some stuff I had problems with"?) and pushing suspicion on Rat -- not "Rat is scum!" suspicion, just "hey, I'm putting it out here -- don't mean anything by it, just saying... but, that Rat guy looks kinda off" -- just as the vig deadline was drawing near... mmm. Rings a little off to me.

- Excal for examining scum from scum's point of view I can forgive conceptually, because it's decent argument tactic to try and figure out what the opposition might be thinking (even if it does go WIFOM real quick). I'm a little less cool with referring to another game as if saying "I was scum here! This is what I did!" would clear him from being scum here. I realize there are few ways to answer the question I posed without delving into that territory, though I would've been a little more satisfied and less suspicious if he'd argued from a gameplay point of view rather than a "When I was scum in this other game..." point of view.

We had VSM pegged on Day 2.  He survived until Day 8.  Do not mistake early notice with his inevitable doom.

If I read correctly, this is referring to Discworld mafia, and you mean that vsm survived the game. The way I read the endgame (I confess heartily to not going through the 30-some other pages), this was because scum didn't see a need to eliminate him or his power. Is there ANY reason to confirm a power role so early, other than to test a roleclaim which might prevent a lynch? It seems absolutely insane to start marking important people to give scum a chance to prioritize their list of NKs effectively. Is that just me? I see that a roleclaim provides more incentive to direct a kill than nothing, but confirming it just seems to put the governor's head continually on the block. "Is it wise to take out the Governor now, or do you think we still have another day before he becomes useful?" is not a choice I feel like it would be wise to provide.

---

Right now, I'm not sure any of them come to the top of my list. They are who I'm looking at. I'll be more or less around most of the day until deadline, so I'd really like to see some discussion about them and maybe a few others, but... honestly, what I really want is some focus. NO MAJORITY = NO LYNCH and there doesn't seem to be much direction at the moment. That's not cool.

Time to push for it. Is it better to lynch a lurker or someone who seems off? Keeping in mind it's still Day 1, of course.




 

[Shale]

Carthrat: Probably Excal, although VSM jumping on him farily hard for what amounts to answering a trick question is making me wonder about him.

(The second "him" is VSM)

Re: VSM surviving to endgame in Discworld; he was also a doublevoter, a power that most definitely is double-edged. Did that factor into your play, Excal?

[Sierra]

... just in case my crazy scenario turned out and we ended up having to lynch the person anyway? Or maybe in case Cid didn't act in enough time to prevent it, or some crazy Role Madness thing kicked in? I dunno, I'm kind of curious about this too, now.

Semi-caught up. I will be waylaid by the dread Meeting in fifteen minutes, but I wanted to answer this point first: me not acting in time doesn't need to be an issue. I can send standing orders to the mods in advance, to automatically overturn the lynch in case I'm not around to make a timely post about it.

Anyway, people seem to want me to sum up flavor stuff, so I'll toss that out in the next post.

[Sierra]

Hokay. Flavorwise, I am the Keeper of Elysium, and of the clan Brujah (who I thought were kinda loners, from what little I recall from reading about V:tM:B, but I could be wrong). Apparently it's my responsibility to break up fights, determine who gets to talk and who doesn't (though this doesn't appear to be factored into the mechanics of the role) and keep mortals out of Elyisum (I can only assume I was asleep on the job when Otter snuck in).

Power-wise, my role PM describes the textbook Governor. Not much to add there that I haven't said already.

Thoughts on suspects later. Smodge's minimal posting  is suspect, though, so for now:

##Vote: Smodge

[Yakumo]

Frankly, day one, the people I tag are the ones that refuse to take a stance on anything, the arguments on day one are usually overreacting paranoid townies.  Before you start saying that's what I'm doing, I am in fact taking the stance that those arguements are all about things that aren't really scumtells in the first place, so there's no point to me poking them and risking them blowing up and obscuring everything else.  I mean that I look at people that mention the arguement but somehow avoid...

[Yakumo]

saying what they actually think, merely parroting points and not coming down hard on either side.  So far, none of the current discussions gives me any reason to believe they actually caught scum, and I don't have enough evidence on anyone yet, so I'm continuing to pressure Drac, who hasn't said anything really solid so far.

[QuietRain]

I don't recommend mentioning that push, VSM, it tends to upset Alex.   Moreover, suggesting it, and daring to place arguments in its defense is what got attention on myself and Andrew.

Anyways, some response as to what you think of current events would be wonderful.  Especially your thoughts on possible extention as well as who you think would make a shortlist for lynching and why.

Arthur’s Sword is raising a few alarm bells with me.  Some statements looks more and more suspicious to me the more I read.  For examples:

Rat, there's a reason that I haven't voted for VSM yet.  Despite all of his talking, he's happily sticking his foot in his maw over an argument of how to play correctly. 

Now, while saying ‘He’s the Faceless Wonder and he always does this’ is never a good thing (free passes are bad), saying he’s messing up enough all on his own that I don’t think I need to bother seems…not goodness.

Alright, I'm about to go to bed, and given I'm only going to have one more period to react and vote seriously before Rat pulls the trigger, I want to set this up now so as to give my target some time to respond.

##Unvote: Andrew, ##Vote: Corwin
Simply put, given it's half of a day I have to vote off of, I'd feel bad voting for some who hadn't had a chance to see the topic before I leave a lurker vote I cannot remove.  So, I need to vote for someone I can see.  VSM...  Like I said before, I see his arguments as bad town more than as scum per se.  This only leaves two people who've left anything worthy of looking at closely at the moment.  Otter, with his initial assault on Rat, and Corwin, who jumped on Otter for it.

Otter was hard to press, for something trivial too.  But pressing for details is something to appreciate, not scorn.  Which makes me wonder why Corwin was so quick to jump.  So, scant though it is, it's Day 1, and that's as good as it gets.

Why do you say that the Water Mammal looked suspicious  for doing something, and in the same sentence say that someone else was suspicious for picking up on how odd the Water Mammal was for doing it? Now, not saying that I don’t find the Corax suspicious because I DO, but the logic of finding the latter suspicious because you BOTH found the former odd is hitting some alarm bells.

He has consistently pushed that using the Governor ability gives us a ‘confirmed townie’ despite arguments to the fact that it doesn’t do that at all.  All it clears up is whether the Recurring FF Character is lying or not. 

I find him suspicious enough that after pulling my vote on Fluffytails to give him time to prove his power, Arthur’s Sword IS the gold medal for me at the moment.

##VOTE Arthur’s Sword

Although, I do agree with his vote and 3x3's push on Zammis to produce content.  This needs to occur.

[Lady Door]

But Yakumo, you have been refusing to take a stance on anything. Stepping back and "taking a stance" that you're not going to take a stance...? To me, that makes YOU more guilty of what you're looking for than Drac, who has basically said what you've said anyways:

Obviously I want to hear some stances out of the replacements (Yakko and Drac).

I'm finding it difficult to get over my initial aversion of judging people on opinions that seem mostly to be poor judgments and difference of opinion and without any previous reference on how people play, it leaves me with little to comment on.

As the most suspicious characters (according to votes at least) seem to have either been killed off, or given extra breathing time to proove themselves. I think that if we as a group intend to try for a hammer based on suspicions we need extra time to rethink our positions. Though, judging from current trends of wanting to lynch the lurkers i don't think we need extra time to discuss, argue and pull hair >_>.

I think we are reaching the bottom of the barrel in this day and because i don't see anybody other than a lurker having any chance to go under the hammer today, so as such, i don't think that the extension is needed.

I do, for the record, agree with your reading on Drac not saying anything really solid yet. I just think there's a bit of the pot calling the kettle black there (... somewhat ironically).

Regarding QR's take on Excal...

I'd like to hear from him again before deadline. I think I'm leaning more toward vsm than I originally thought, though. His return didn't provide a whole lot of content until a really weird vote that seems to hang on the behavior Excal exhibited when VSM made a mistake, and then he pushed to have other people look into Excal about it. I'll have to do some more reading and think about that. If Excal doesn't offer a valid defense, though, I'm more inclined to look in his direction as we get closer.

##VOTE VSM

By the way, I noticed the anonyvote seems to have traveled with VSM. That doesn't confirm for me that it's his, and it has no bearing on whether I want to vote for him (not at this point, anyway), I just thought that was worth noting.
 

[Yakumo]

I'm taking a stance that lurkers are a bigger problem than the pointless arguements we've had so far.  My stance on those arguements is that they haven't got any real substance that makes them worth debating, when I know from experience that scum are unlikely to get themselves on the wrong side of one of these day one arguements.  I could go over all of them with a fine-toothed comb, but I'm sure I'll come up with the same result: not enough evidence to support picking one of them as scum over the...

[Yakumo]

people that aren't participating in the discussion at all.

I need to get my laptop fixed. <_<

[Ranmilia]

Mmkay, back.

As Ladydoor just said, it looks like the anonyvote is tied to VSM or controlled by someone who wishes us to believe so.  This says nothing about VSM, though.  My read on his playstyle continues to look like paranoid, scumhunting VSM.  I thought Excal's answer to his question was odd, but chalked it up to misunderstanding on both their parts since I couldn't even articulate the issue well when I tried to write about it.  I can see where VSM's initial question came from, where Excal thought he was going into the gov discussion, and VSM's latest response looks to me like paranoia jumping on Excal not thinking things all the way through.  In short, VSM looks good to me, and Excal at least doesn't look scummy from that exchange.

I can also see where Yakumo's coming from, it's a decent and valid stance.

----

We need to lynch someone today, and in fairly short order.  My top candidates right now are Excal, El Cid, Andrew and Drac.  I do not agree with the case on and do not support a lynch on VSM today.

[Lady Door]

Yakumo: What is it you want Drac to do to "prove" himself, then? He's already admitted the same things you've just said for justifying why you are where you are. I just don't see what option you're giving him.

Alex: I'm not too sure about being so quick to let vsm off the hook. But, you make some compelling arguments on his behalf and I'm not sure enough about ANYONE to doggedly fight to keep them on the block at this point.

I need some other people to chime in here! We're, what, 6ish hours off the hammer? This is not the time to be shy. It may be Day 1 and we might not have much to go off of, but we need to get SOME information so we don't run into this exact same problem tomorrow.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Okay, back at a computer, even if this one can barely read the boards. I will be trying to locate what Ii found so weird about Andrew, is there anything in particular you'd like to add, Alex? (Since you said he was a top three candidate for lynching.)

[Excal]

Grah, this is mildly frustrating.  I find myself on the block, but...  I can't blame too many other people for their points because I seem to have developed a taste for Mama's Homebaked Foot Pie.  So, I'm gonna tally up the votes and see if that forces my hand in any way.

So, to begin, Yakumo, you're doing much the same thing that you claim is scummy in others.  You're dancing around the issues of the day without actually saying anything, using that dancing and explaination of why you're doing what your doing as justification in and of itself.

Next up is QR.  I'm glad I finally got to see what your nick for me is, pity it had to be under such circumstances.  However, it seems that the bulk of your case is based off of my very, very early reasoning from the first twelve hours.  The reasoning for VSM is that, although I found him suspicious, I've come to the conclusion that going after lurkers on Day 1 is better than going after people who produce content.  It's like Yakko said, townies are usually the ones who misspeak on day 1 as the scum try to avoid saying anything too contentious.  So, I usually use that line.  Leave this person alone because he's flailing now, and will likely continue flailing later.

As for your second point.  I was being thorough and mentioning everything I found odd enough to consider for a vote.  Given that at that point I figured I would only have one more chance to post before Rat did his kill, I wanted my prospective target to have some time to respond.  Make of that what you will.

As for the argument that there's no proof that Governor is town.  Bleh, it still seems insane for it not to be, but I've reconsidered my position and yes.  I am willing to accept that it's possible it's not town.

As one final point, QR.  I think I've come to somewhat better appreciate the experience you had with some shooters recently.

As for the remaining arguments...

Cid, those details fit.  Sadly, that doesn't do anything much to clear you, just doesn't give us an excuse to go for the throat.

Shale, it mattered somewhat.  That said, I hope you don't mind if I'm eagre to drop this line of argument.  It's seems to be akin to saying "I'm sorry, sir, but the noose isn't quite tight enough yet."

VSM...  Isn't around much, which is troubling.  That said, Alex, despite it fitting into his personality, I'm wondering why you're being so easy on him.  His two brief stints with activity saw him jumping on a very small twisting of words and clinging to that.  And his first one involved him making a passionate arguement against our source of daykills, and the using of them.  I hope you don't mind if I find that mildly noteworthy, and am inquisitive as to why you find that isn't something worth looking into.

Andy...  He has a knack for making bad plays that draw attention.  But...  scum can do that as well as town.  I suspect I'll spend some time reading his posts.

Right now, Drak and Yakko I'm interested for not posting much of import, while VSM and Andy look like good secondary choices. 

[Yakumo]

Alright, I'm getting sick of this.  Tell me just what in these arguements I'm ignoring actually points to someone being scum.  All I see is differences in the way they play the game and arguements that boil down to "They don't think like me, they must be scum!" as if the scum are going to be stupid enough to try and get town to do something dumb this early, when odds favor the mislynch anyway.  Seriously, I don't understand why I'm under so much fire for this.  I think LAL has a better chance of hitting...

[Yakumo]

scum today and getting a consensus before the deadline than trying to find anything concrete in arguements where none of the participants are setting off any scum alarms to me.

[Lady Door]

Unofficial, possibly errorific vote count edited to include active votes only:

El Cideon (1): Sir Alex
Excal (4): Veryslightlymad, Anonymous, Corwin, QR
Smodge13 (1): El Cid
VerySlightlyMad (2): Smodge13, Lady Door
Drac (2): Yakumo, Excal

Less than 5 hours remain.

7 makes a majority. Excal's currently taking the lead, but of course there's no lynch without a majority so that means NOTHING.


Yakumo: What I've said, and Excal said, is that you're accusing others -- namely Drac -- of lurking when they're doing exactly what you're doing. So why Drac and not you, other than the obvious point of you not wanting to lynch yourself?

[Excal]

Yakko?  See what Lady Door said.  It's not that you aren't argueing a valid point.  It's that you're saying we should dismiss the issues and look for someone who is finding excuses not to talk about the issues.  The best thing to be said in your favour in this position is that you weren't around when most of these issues were current.

As for Andrew, who I've just taken a quick look at.

Shows up late, makes generic anti-VSM arguments and then votes OK for LAL.  Then moves on to support Alex in avoiding Deadline scuffles.  Makes a decent post about Alex, though most of it is in response to his being fingered as a lurker.  His comments on Otter/extension seem like a tangent.  Makes a good post on subtle implications of Rat's LYLO policy, and then rouses suspicion of his being third party.  Andy then has his case where he argues that Cid should Gov, even has he argues against Gov necessarily being a town power, which all of the other people who want to use it at least believe.  At this point only comments are along the lines of defending his position on Cid.

Makes a post after the bomb calling out Smodge, specifically for noting OMGUS in a previous Andrew post.  This is his last post that has nothing to do with Governor defense, though his first response to QR on the issue does have some questions as to why curiosity should be so thoroughly punished.