Holy shit, the lesser half of Tyrene is in the thread almost 24 hours after he indicated he would be. Let's throw a party, guys!

...no?

Seriously though, I am sorry. I'm good to go from this point forward, but I probably wouldn't have replaced in if I had known I would be so delayed yesterday.

But that aside, let's dive into things. Irene will probably hunt me down and lynch me IRL if she was right in all her reads and I go against them, but, well, I'm here and she's not, so lets do this. Warning: this is almost certainly gonna be a little stream of consciousness. Sorry, I just finally got to be town and I have so many emotions. :fire


Newcomb, Plans, and Lump
I like Newcomb, and I like his plan. I've seen a little talk about why it's not a good idea, but none of it seems particularly legitimate, if I'm being honest. Let's look at it:

1. We vote someone lump - I like Newcomb, because he's reasonable (and goddamn some of you are prickly this game) and my top town read, I think, and because our thought patterns have been similar and I'm a selfish bastard who hates staring at a post for 10 minutes because we think differently and I can't follow the reasoning.

2. Clown/oracle/priest all target said lump (okay, yeah, sure, don't tell PRs what to do, and I get that antifun plans are bad. But you know what's fun for town players? Town winning the game. It's nice. We're talking about one day, and despite the fact that Newcomb is probably my top townread right now, I would certainly check him if I were priest and he was voted lump. It seems like the sort of hubris that motherfucking Napoleon would shy away from to risk a Demon Mayor situation because you think you have a good read on someone before we even get to D2.)

3. -

Seriously, that's it. We get a factional flip D1 this way. Clown gets protection. Priest gets their check in on a divisive vote and an extremely powerful player.

If we lynch town, obviously the resultant angel should protect the lump. At this point, we have 2/9 town players protected. Not incredible, and if we pull the lump since logically the witches wouldn't target the lump if we mislynch, then there is a 1/8 chance that the hit the clown which would be safe because of this plan. Obviously that's not perfect, but it's better than the odds otherwise. Plus in this scenario we have a town lynch with VCA available since because of the oracle we essentially get a flip.

If we hit scum, well, we're already at 2 scum to 10 town. Not only that, but we have still have a lynch that essentially flips for VCA. Clown is still protected. Admittedly, lump will probably die, but that's okay. At that point we'll have a conftown lump to analyze interactions with, a flip on the D1 lynch, and only 2 scum left. That's a pretty damn plus town situation.

-I feel like people are underselling the value of a D1 flip, in the way that I want to kneejerk lynch anyone who backs the idea of letting a judge lynch end day one. Guys. Guys. Plz. Votes are important. We can use those. That's what the oracle does. It takes a flipless game, and gives us factional flips. That's huge. And yeah, I see that you're saying that we should vote on who the judge should lynch and let him do it, but that's bad in the same way fence sitting is - logical analysis works best if players are forced to take firm positions because then we can hold them to that position. If we do the judge lynch thing we lose the vig shot AND we let people say "oh, the judge was going to decide anyway, so it was less important than if it was a normal lynch. Judge gonna judge." We know this, because PRs gonna PRs is the strongest argument so far against this plan, and it is being accepted as valid. Why is that? Jesus, are we children? Yes, having your game dictated to you is no fun. This is one play, and we are perfectly willing to force it on the judge. It's not like the priest or any other role worked for the role in a way that the judge didn't.

-Obviously it's ideal if the clown has a way of knowing who the other 2 of the big 3 are targeting because NK immunity. Don't think anything else needs to be said. This makes the plan work for the clown.

-The priest either checks a scum player trying to slip into more power, outs him, and we take someone out, or lends enormous credence to the idea of a town lump. This is super important, because giving twice as much lynching power to a scum role leads to a short and sad game for us.

Issues:
1. Priest gets shot and scum player is elected - in this scenario, we're pretty fucked. Buuttt. If Newcomb had the priest pegged by his first post he is a filthy cheat or a mafia god the likes of which has never been seen before. Since he suggested the plan, and Irene, the pro souper, was town because now we're Tyrene and I'm town and well pleased, I'm not worried about the priest being pegged. I know there are other great players in this, and I'm not that great, but I doubt that scum hits the lottery and NKs the priest. And if they don't the plan shifts the game towards town. The chance that they could fuck us keeps the game from being utterly unbalanced, but this is still a strong mechanical move.


2. -

That's basically it, right? I see other minor things, but in the face of the pros column I don't see any other cons that are relevant, relatively speaking.

Sooo... I think that's it. I'm sure there was a facet I meant to discuss and didn't but if there's a hole let me know. The plan seems solid, and it's as good a plan as we have to utilize our PRs, so why not?

UnLumpVote
Lump Vote: Newcomb

 

I was hoping for something more along the lines of thoughts on my alignment. Give it your best guess.

And I'm male.

 

Now, to other stuff:

Tyrene
Newcomb

These two are town. Well, I think they are. Boy won't my face be red if Newcomb is scum and I've yolo'd in and done all of this when she so thought he was scum. I know that at least half of them are town.

Jan

This is the best scumspect that I have currently. Not for the fonti push, because I followed her reasoning but that read a little Narutomafia Mathblade-y to me. Just... I don't know. Ironically my initial twinge of suspicion was because I actually followed what he was saying better than normal. I feel like that's a weird reason to be more suspicious, but there was a style change there. And, well, this is his 3rd forum game. It's not a slap in the face, but it's there. And then he was pedantic with Cobalt, who I actually thought was pretty scummy around the time I took over but whom I have mellowed since. And he pointed out flaws in the Newcomb plan that, like, weren't flaws. And then he suggested the judge thing which just seems like lunacy to me. His game has just been kinda gross to me. If nobody is on any time soon, I'll probably iso him and get more than a feeling, but I'd bre cool with a Jan lynch.

Moving on.

Fonti pushed hard on Jan on something that felt sorta pedantic, and I didn't love the Sesc stuff earlier because I remember Sesc being taciturn early and posting more and more over time in the like one game I played with him. I think he agreed with some reaches that came from my slot that I didn't like, but I could see him doing that as a gambit to see how responses would come in (and, as an aside, can I just take a moment to say how much I hate gambits? Mafia is an info poor game and the witches are actively lying to us. Must we lie to one another too?). That said, I liked everything else that came to mind from her, so... I don't know. I think that she is more than skilled enough to be hard bussing Jan, then back off in the right moment and separate them. Also there is a connection to Cobalt here that I feel weird about. Not so much that fonti went so hard in defending Cobalt, but more that he didn't get uncomfortable with being defended in such a way. If Newcomb's read was tinged with the yellow of paranoia, mine is characterized by the flashing orange of abject terror

So... maybe an super early scum team of fonti, Jan, and Cobalt? I like Jan for scum on what is written in his paragraph, I like fonti for potential scum because of hard connections with pushing (maybe bussing) Jan over some of the less scummy stuff that he's done and because I'm terrified of her and know that she knows that if she shoved on something somewhat pedantic it would make people sympathetic to his righteous anger, and I like Cobalt for scum because I feel like he should be more concerned at fonti's defense as well as because I think that a player new to the group diving in and being abrasive and firm almost to the point of muleheadedness is an excellent tactic to come across as towny.

Umm...

I can't decide how to feel about Sesc. Didn't like him at first, like him more with time. Delaying this read unless somebody wants it, because I just don't have a ton on him.

Kalas has been pretty quiet. Don't know if he's just busy or trying to scum lurk his way into victory. It did almost work in Naruto.

Snow... you know, I never know what to think of you because you entertain me, but I rarely find any meat in your posts. Like, my gut is that you're doing that thing where you drop in and don't really say anything and slip back out that you did when we were scummates in Naruto, but at the same time you do have way more posts here. Let me ask you this, Snow: if you were the lump, what would you do with it? Where does the pressure go?

Riley has even fewer posts than me, which is a thing, but RL is a bitch so no judgement until I hear from him.

Taure has been doing a weird thing, which has to some degree influenced this version of Typhon that you see, but I actually really like a few of his posts. He's maybe my number three town, after me and Newcomb.

And I'm about to go eat, so excuse me for a minute. I'll look at the others when I get back.

 

My problem with Newcomb's plan (priest, oracle and clown all visit the lumped player) is as follows. The lump player is known publicly. The priest has to out themselves to confirm the lump as town or to out them as a witch. So we have both the priest and the lumped player out in the open. The angels can only protect one person. There's therefore a 50% chance on each night that the town loses one of its two strongest players.

I suppose we could minimise the risk by saying that the priest should only go public if the lumped player is a witch. The downside to that idea - that the priest is already dead from day 1 lynch - is quite unlikely.

And if we get lucky and lynch a witch on day one, then no villager is going to have protection on night one, speeding up the deaths.

There's also the problem of whether or not it's a waste of the priest's investigation. Presumably we'll give lump to someone we feel is town. Of course there's a chance that read is wrong, but even with totally random selection, the odds are in the town's favour.

It also seems to be a waste of the oracle's ability, because on night one it's almost certain all the witches are still alive.

Perhaps Newcomb's plan would be better for mid-game, when knowledge of number of remaining witches will be more useful, where final confirmation of the lump's loyalty should be made as a pre-endgame security measure, and where village angels can definitely outvote any witch angels.

The danger of waiting is of course that one or more of the roles is killed.

---------- Post automerged at 01:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:43 AM ----------

Also, please define the meaning of "flip".

 

I'm unsure what is unclear to you. My #20 was ninja'd by Irene's continuance of her case, you vote and a few other posts, and my #27 was a direct response to Irene's question on my thoughts about Jan because I saw a notification before I left for work.

Long story short, I wasn't in love with Newcomb's opening, but didn't think it made a much sense from a scum perspective, and subsequent posts have made me comfortable reading towny!Newcomb.

---------- Post automerged at 08:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:52 PM ----------

Flip = role/alignment revealed upon death. Some games are flip upon death in which the role/alignment of a lynched/killed players is announced when they die. In this case, if we use the plan, we could confirm if the D1 lynch was a town or scum player through the oracle's power

 

Moderator note: While not strictly necessary, making vote and elect votes on a new line, and colored would make my life a lot easier. See Citrus' post #16.

Vote Count #4
Nae'blis (4): Snowvon, Fontisian, Citrus, Taure
Fontisian (2): Nae'blis, Jan
Snowvon (1): Waco
Taure (1): Cobalt
Typhon (1): Newcomb

Abstaining (4): Kalas, Riley, Sesc, Typhon

With 13 alive, 7 is soft lynch, and 10 is hard lynch.

Lump, the Friendly Panda Elect #4
Newcomb (4): Newcomb, Nae'blis, Taure, Typhon
Citrus (3): Jan, Cobalt, Citrus
Snowvon (2): Snowvon, Fontisian
Sesc (1): Sesc
Waco (1): Waco

Abstaining (2): Kalas, Riley

Lump Elect is decided by plurality.

(Let me know if there are any mistakes, or just clarify your vote in your next post if it's not what you think it should be)

Day End Timer - 24 hours remain!

 

We do not want the oracle to out d2 if not needed.

This is still a soup-game.

 

There would seem to be some kind of semi-allegiance between fonti and Cobalt, especially on the Sesc section of the day. Not sure what to make of it yet. I certainly wouldn't jump to the conclusion that they're both witches. They could be villagers who just really love each other right now, or it could be that fonti is a witch who is backing Cobalt simply because most people agree Cobalt is town, and fonti gains credibility by appearing to contribute towards the establishment of a "dead cert" town player.

I'm particularly not convinced that Cobalt not objecting to his own defence (from fonti) is a good reason for the accusation. You start building up all these expectations of what players have to do to prove they're town--object to people defending them, not defend others, always answer questions with long reasoned opinions, always ask people lots of questions about anything mildly unusual, or even something too usual--and this growing mountain of expectations is quite onerous. It becomes incredibly easy to end up looking like a witch just because you missed something, skim read, or simply didn't have the energy to pick up on every single minor detail of hundreds of posts.

So in short, on the topic of not calling out someone defending him, I'd probably say "give him a break".

 

Agreed, was just trying to spell out the flip concept, and how it'd work in this game

 

Reverse order: a flip is when a players alignment and role is revealed upon death. A factional flip, of course, is when you just discover alignment upon death, which is really all that matters to us in this case anyway. More information makes us imminently soupable.

And I'm not at all espousing the priest reveal themselves unless Newcomb (or whoever the lump is) is scum and the thread won't consider a lynch.

This way, assuming a town lynch D1 (that isn't the priest), scum have a roughly 13% percent chance of NKing the priest and no chance of killing the lump. If no one outs the lump as scum on day 2, we can reasonably safely assume that the lump is a town player, and use the flip, courtesy of the oracle, to know for certain if we hit a witch.

Although frankly, as likely as not the Oracle won't have to claim. We will be able to see pretty easily what happened, barring funny business. If the lump dies, we lynched scum (no angel protect). If the lump lives and the priest doesn't pipe up, then we lynched a town player. The oracle should speak up if there is any funny business, I suppose, but the most important thing is that only one player should claim, because scum have three soups and this is a low population game.

 

So, worst case scenario, priest, oracle and lump are dead by night 2.

Best case scenario we identify and lynch a witch with lump... and priest, oracle and lump are dead by night 2.

Most likely scenario, priest stays quiet because lump is town, oracle outs themselves to ID the day one lynch target. Angels can only protect one of oracle and lump, 50% chance that one of them dies each night. Or oracle dies straight away from soup.

Sounds pretty costly to find out that which is already likely: lump is town and day one lynch was a mislynch.

 

Preferably no players should claim, of course. If we have the death of a strong player, a surviving lump, and no word from the priest, it's a safe bet that the most likely case occurred (lynched town D1, lump is town, all witches live).

 

The real winner of the whole scenario seems to be the clown.

---------- Post automerged at 02:24 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:20 AM ----------

The thing is, saying that no players will claim is all but admitting that the plan is redundant because they'll find what we expect. I guess it all comes down to that balance: is the extra certainty worth the use of the powers?

Still, I'm not completely opposed to the plan, given a structure that means silence = lump is town, lynch was town.

The one thing I'm not 100% sold on still is the oracle part. Even if we do lynch a witch day one, is it worth the loss of the oracle (to soup, if nothing else) to know that right away? It's useful information for sure, but perhaps it would be better for the oracle to way a day or two, get a couple more chances to use their ability, before they out themselves.

 

Well, no, not unless I'm missing something. The obvious best case is that we have a highly likely town lump, info about D1 (no reason at all to come forward as the oracle if D1 is a mislynch, we'll be able to intuit that, but if we actually hit scum and the lump lives and the priest doesn't come forward to sat the lump is scum by, say halfway through D2, then the oracle should probably come forward to update us on the gamestate), and NK protection for the clown which could potentially make the scum team waste the NK.

---------- Post automerged at 08:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:25 PM ----------

Sorry, we keep ninjaing one another.

And honestly, I'm in the air about it. Ideally the lump has a minor role, because what should happen is that if we lynch a witch D1, the lump dies. No angel protect spells death. Then the oracle wouldn't have to out. If that doesn't happen... I don't know. I think, we're I the oracle, I would consider letting people know the witch count D2, but sit on it till D3 if the thread was going the right way.

So yeah, it really doesn't change much to follow the plan over doing it as we normally would. The difference is simply that we have a guaranteed clown, the player we elect to the lump position is somewhat vetted, and we do have information such that if the scum team tries to lead us off in a strange direction, we can reset at the cost of one life.

---------- Post automerged at 08:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:32 PM ----------

Mother of god, 34 people viewing? Now I feel all self concious

 

There is one very unlikely other possibility, if the lump survives: day one lynch was a witch, but the lump was given to the clown, who throws a pie at himself as the priest and oracle investigate him.

---------- Post automerged at 02:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:34 AM ----------

All right, off to bed. Remember what I said about being afk -- this exchange will probably be my last substantial posting until 3rd September. Will try to keep an eye on the thread via mobile and switch my votes if required. Just don't expect long justifications if I do.

 

Hmm... in this scenario, I think I'd advocate the lump/clown to come forward himself, and no one else. It is extraordinarily unlikely that it would be an issue, but even if he were to be the recipient of the death curse from the dead witch and souped or just killed regularly the following night, it would be worth his loss and the loss of lump to know that there was a lynch on a witch D1, with all of the VCA that comes with that, and that everyone else was still alive. If the clown can make the scum burn even one kill, he's done enough.

Haven't really thought about that like I have the rest, though, so I could be missing something there.

---------- Post automerged at 08:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:46 PM ----------

Wait, no, that wouldn't work. The clown doesn't receive notice he survived a NK. Damn.

Hmm...

Maybe have the oracle claim, which would be a hit but let the clown keep his silence? Then the clown/lump could be the clown or the gambler as far as scum knew, which would be enough, maybe, to keep scum from making a move to soup.

---------- Post automerged at 09:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:57 PM ----------

Thinking on 349. I want to agree with Taure's reasoning, because it is sound, but at the same time those slips can be the only clue you have to actually catching scum.

Bah. I'm far less confident in the Cobalt read than the Jan one anyway, so that can go on the backburner I suppose.

I am going to

Vote: Jan

though, because I forgot to before dinner. And now I'm going to grab a quick shower before finishing up my brief reads on the other players in the game and doing that Jan iso if I'm still talking to myself after the shower.

 

So many words, so few useful things. Tsk tsk

---------- Post automerged at 09:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:53 PM ----------

This'll be fun.

Unlump citrus
Lump snowvon

 

Saw Thyrenes Post earlier, made me laugh.

The Jan-Fonti-Cobalt world might be the best mafia team ever - bussing from the start in a game without flips without any outside pressure.
One of us kills the other one, the priest is likely to just check the survivor, what would be the gain?

Anyways - I am in a weird mood for the 2nd day in a row now, so i am gonna call it early. Will reread some stuff when i wake up, so i should be around.

 

Someone, Jan I think?, asked me for my thoughts on Sesc/fonti so better late then never.

Obviously starts with Sesc's #19, agreeing with everything Irene said. In his 57 exchange with Citrus he's starting to back off the Irene support (given there's been several more Irene posts at this point not unreasonable) but then says he was ninja'd so.. hmm.

Post 63 sets off the initial vote on Sesc from fonti. Sesc questioning Cobalt on why he misremebered the post order seems reasonable, especially with Citrus making the same mistake. At this point Sesc's opinion on Irene has done almost a full 180 as well, possibly picking up on the bias Typhon posted when he came in and the fact that she also made the same mistake with the posts (that many people with the same mistake is Weird. Full stop).

Post 72 fonti starts laying out reasons for her Sesc vote, the first I disagree with and the second was incorrect at that point. Not fonti's best post.

Sesc and fonti have a little bit of a no U back and forth after that which isn't helpful but it reads more exasperated then butting heads so, at this point at least, they both seem willing to listen to the other.

131 has Sesc fully ending any support he had left for Irene's push on Newcomb, as well as the fonti/Sesc debate picking up again. The main point of contention still seems to be the Citrus/Sesc post order point (fonti did you really not find this weird on Citrus' part?) and the Irene/Cobalt interactions. fonti misrepresents Sesc's words a little bit here but I get what Sesc was getting at, the interactions were weird, mostly stemming from Irene.

After this fonti/Jan takes the stage for a while before starting up again at 170. Sesc prods fonti on having tunnel vision and the Citrus vote thing starts up again. fonti being of the opinion that it was a simple mistake and not worth mentioning, Sesc that with the number of times the mistake was made and other factors that it's worth pushing on, something I agree with Sesc on.

(Jan asks me for this post) Sesc then gives more explicit reasoning of his question, fonti explains her counter reasoning with a more subdued tone and then the exchange essentially ends with fonti moving her vote to Nae'blis.

Thoughts: I find myself agreeing with Sesc a lot throughout this, that there's a point where the same mistake being repeated so often crosses from coincidence to something suspicious rings with me. I don't agree with fonti's read but her pressure remains consistent which is fairly nice to read. I'm not liking her acceptance of Irene/Cobalt as town on town.
fontisian I don't think I ever saw your thoughts on Typhon's 149. Specifically this bit:

What are your thoughts?

---------- Post automerged at 12:23 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:12 AM ----------

This reads weird. Worst and best case scenarios aren't correct, shallow scenario analysis from Taure is not what I expected.