Stars Aligned II - Game Over!

[Nicodemus]

I heard no noise, and cast no ward.
I sat in my cave and stayed quite bored.

(I'm posting this from my creative writing lecture and the muse gripped me )

[Nicodemus]

The reason for claiming that you did not ward is so that you can say whether or not you can explain your noise or not. This allows people with rez kits to find targets that are more likely to be killed.

I'm not sure I understand this. Does warding someone cause the person who warded to hear noise? Because otherwise it seems like the people with the res kits would need to know the targets of the wards before they could know which noises were worth protecting, regardless if people were warding.

[Nicodemus]

The reason for claiming that you did not ward is so that you can say whether or not you can explain your noise or not. This allows people with rez kits to find targets that are more likely to be killed.

I'm not sure I understand this. Does warding someone cause the person who warded to hear noise? Because otherwise it seems like the people with the res kits would need to know the targets of the wards before they could know which noises were worth protecting, regardless if people were warding.

Nevermind, reread the set-up and warders do in fact hear noise. Please disregard this post.

[Nicodemus]

*raises eyebrows at ani*

That seems like a really strange strategy to me, and it doesn't strike me as all that pro-town either. Are there any actions that cult could take night one that would gain them an insanity besides launder that ani could be covering up for? I don't care for your appeal to "badness" either.

Would it be worth testing Ani's claim to ask him to try to hammer at the end of today?

[Nicodemus]

I give up. I stalked Adel.

Reasoning:

Adel is a good player -> What if he's cult -> If he is we're all screwed.

Lying about your night actions + preparing to murder a player N1 = murderer in the making/cultist fake claiming night actions ~

Vote: animorpherv1

[Nicodemus]

Proving his insanity is now pointless. He stalked you. There is no reason to doubt his honesty about his insanity choice. From my view he is obvInvestigator that chose to stalk. It is better to try and lynch scum than to lynch those who are investigators. No way around it.

I'm not quite sure where you get the certainty to make such bold statements. How do we

know

that Ani isn't cult fake-claiming an insanity so that he can kill in the ritual tonight? How are you so sure that Ani is telling the truth about his insanity this time, as opposed to another lie? I am far from convinced that Ani is "obvInvestigator" as you say.

In other news, I think it's silly to lynch anyone other than Ani today. While I understand where Sajin is coming from with the grave robbing, I really would like to refrain from giving such an anti-town and outright scummy player a free ride into D5 or 6, as it would give him far too much time to murder/ritualize if he were so inclined.

[Nicodemus]

Vote: Ellibereth

Mod: can you please confirm that the day has not ended?

Ani: Assuming you survive, you will rob graves every night. Furthermore, you shall not take any action that causes you to gain an insanity (my addition, but I stand by it). Any deviation from this course will lead to your lynch.

....but robbing graves would gain him insanities....?

[Nicodemus]

@SlySly: Why aren't you playing under your "crypto" alt in this game? Do you still think that I am scum?

Oh my, sly is crypto?

*visions from the Rocossi Winter read-through I did flash through my head*

Yikes...

[Nicodemus]

EBWOP:

@Adel: I don't have an alt. Yes, I still believe you are scum.

nevermind...

[Nicodemus]

If Adel's strategy is going to increase our chances of winning significantly, then I

support

it, although to be honest I have no idea what the strategy actually is

[Nicodemus]

@VP:

on ward/noise - i heard no noise, and i didn't ward.

Something Nicodemus said early on rubbed me the wrong way, namely the way he fundamentally misunderstood the way ward worked. I realize that some people are less prone to carefully looking over the rules than others, but I know that I examined the Investigator actions very carefully and only skimmed the Cultist actions. Of the 'lurkers' (it's a bit early to call people lurkers, so I say it with scare-quotes, but he's not among the prolific posters so far and he hasn't contributed much yet), I'm most sure he is scum.

I'm not sure that forgetting that warding causes the warders to hear noise = fundamentally misunderstanding the way warding works. I looked over the available night actions as soon as I got my role pm, decided on one (which wasn't warding) and submitted it.

[Nicodemus]

Unvote: ani

My biggest concern with ani was that he was lying about his insanity to allow him to participate in the ritual tonight with no apparent change in insanity count. Now that this has been alleviated I see no reason to vote him as he is verified town.

@Nicodemus

-- what did you think was the point of claiming noises? (Since you didn't seem to understand what exactly makes noise and what does not).

To see who was warded/stalked/fetish'd last night. I just didn't remember that warding causes noise for yourself as well as your target.

I still support any strategy that will increase town's chance of winning. I also support the town/not town list that Elli has submitted (with one obvious exception ).

@Elli: why isn't sly on your list?

[Nicodemus]

This is the main case against me. Answers to the case are in

bold

.

Case against Nicodemus, through notable posts:

*raises eyebrows at ani*

That seems like a really strange strategy to me, and it doesn't strike me as all that pro-town either. Are there any actions that cult could take night one that would gain them an insanity besides launder that ani could be covering up for? I don't care for your appeal to "badness" either.

Would it be worth testing Ani's claim to ask him to try to hammer at the end of today?

The first portion kicks off with tentative language - Ani had just claimed to have laundered and Nico states that it "seems like a strange strategy," as if it were only slightly unconventional. See E_K's post #76 to see what a townie reaction would look like - a townie would be like "Oh, what you did there was kind of weird," but rather more along the lines of "What the hell were you thinking?"

You're right, I was tentative, because I wasn't sure if laundering was a smart action for town to make, or not. This is by far the most complex game of mafia I've ever played (or even heard of) and I was struggling, as evidenced by my later posts and current state of mind, to wrap my head around all the intricacies of the set-up. Just because someone admitted to laundering N0 does not put him anywhere close to being scum in my book, it only opens the possibility that he could be.

The next portion with trying to figure out why possibly Ani could be lying is appropriate, but his reluctance to call Ani scummy is most suspect.

Because, once again, I didn't know if laundering or some other N0 action would qualify him as scum. I was just listing the possibilities as I saw them, and hoping for feedback before making up my mind.

His final question is scummy as well - a townie would most definitely believe that it is completely necessary to test Ani's claim. I can't imagine a townie thinking "Wow, this guy's probably lying. Should we test his claim?"

I guess I did phrase this wrong, but only because I didn't want to be accused of being "too eager" or anything like that. I know some people can lead town effortlessly (VP, DGB, Adel, etc.) but I am definitely not one of them, and it always makes me feel more confident when I get some backing for my ideas. Once again, I was throwing the idea out there as a possibility, but trying to stay away from being too overconfident in my reads and ideas.

Lying about your night actions + preparing to murder a player N1 = murderer in the making/cultist fake claiming night actions ~ Vote: animorpherv1

At this point, Nico has decided that its safe to jump on the Ani wagon. His stated reasoning, however, betrays his insecurity. The two items on the left side of the equal sign very neatly indicates that Ani was probably a murder in the making, but nowhere does he indicate the reasons why Ani could be a cultist false claiming. In fact, Nico does not even make mention of the debate on whether a Cultist could be trying to explain future insanities, nor the debate on whether a daytalking Cultist group would let Ani give such a poor excuse (Admittedly, this could be excused by the speed the thread was growing and the fact he probably didn't check the thread during that debate, but this post was not too late to voice his thoughts on its likelihood). He is blatantly just throwing that part into there.

What this all means is that Nico is compiling reasons to jump on the Ani wagon, but he does not actually believe/follow the used reasons.

*Sigh* I guess I'm just going to have to chalk this up to my usual obscure posting style. I'm trying to get better at posting snappy, simple statements that are easily read and understood, but I'm nowhere close to that right now. The "lying about your night actions" was supposed to cover the cult aspect of my accusation as well - If he admitted to lying about laundering, who's to say he's not lying now about stalking - but obviously it didn't come out that way. I was now confident in voting for Ani because he had admitted to lying, and I am of the school that liars = scum, as townies have nothing to hide. I wasn't ready to lynch Ani when I thought he had laundered - it was stupid, and anti-town, but not scummy - but when he came out with the lie I saw the course of action clearly.

If Adel's strategy is going to increase our chances of winning significantly, then I support it, although to be honest I have no idea what the strategy actually is

The problem with this post was pointed out by a lot of other players - not only does it indicate the obvious (Barring SlySly arguments), it also indicates no intention to actually understand the plan (Or a statement that he is not going to attempt it). Actually, this is really more laziness however, than scumminess, since I'd reckon that the Cultists would be pretty interested in figuring out this plan that supposedly screws them over.

I am always in favor of strategies that increase the town's chance of winning. At that point Adel was only asking for a support/don't support post, and so I wanted to get my stance out there. I figured that there would be plenty of discussion about the details of the strategy after we decided to implement it, and I would be able to figure out what was going on then.

Unvote: ani

My biggest concern with ani was that he was lying about his insanity to allow him to participate in the ritual tonight with no apparent change in insanity count. Now that this has been alleviated I see no reason to vote him as he is verified town.

@Nicodemus

-- what did you think was the point of claiming noises? (Since you didn't seem to understand what exactly makes noise and what does not).

To see who was warded/stalked/fetish'd last night. I just didn't remember that warding causes noise for yourself as well as your target.

I still support any strategy that will increase town's chance of winning. I also support the town/not town list that Elli has submitted (with one obvious exception ).

@Elli: why isn't sly on your list?

The first part of this post is fairly strong evidence that Nico is scum. Not only does he feel the need to excuse his jumping off of Ani's wagon, he also states that his biggest worry is that Ani was faking his Insanity in order to preemptively excuse future insanities.

Once again, *sigh*. I knew that making an explanation post could be viewed as scummy, but I thought that if I unvoted with no explanation at all then I would get called out for that. In the end I just decided that more information = good, so I went ahead and put my justification for unvoting. And yes, Ani faking an insanity was my biggest concern. The fact that Ani had already proved himself capable of lying made me very suspicious of the possibility of him lying again to cover for future insanity gains. And, if he wasn't cult, then we were still getting rid of a lying, would-be murderer. When it was proved that he did have the insanity, and he was looking less and less likely to go murderer, however, I unvoted.

If you've been reading this case, you'll see that this is inconsistent on two fronts. First of all, as pointed out in the analysis of #153, Nico did not even participate in the discussions, nor mention it in his post accusing Ani of being either a wannabe Murderer or a Cultist. Suddenly here it has became his primary worry - he's just using this argument to formulate an excuse he believes is necessary to cover his dropping off the wagon.

Answered above

Second of all, he noted here that his concern was alleviated by testing Ani's claim. Yet, as we noted in the first analyzed post, Nicodemus's attitude towards testing Ani was most peculiar -

Nico earlier stated that he was not even sure whether or not the test that he now claims to have mitigated his concerns was necessary!

Also answered above

To finish this analysis, Nico continues to avoid discussing any specifics on the plan, although this time its proven not be just laziness as he follows this statement with one voicing agreement with the lists proposed by Elli. In order to agree to the lists, Nico must've understood the plan (Which was basically one list alive, another dead), and is purposely avoiding discussing specifics, preferring to voice general, safe agreement.

Mostly answered above. I just wanted to get my general support of breaking/advantage-bringing strategies out there, so that if we decided to move forward with them I could then start to understand the specifics. This time, though, I did understand the bare bones of the plan (have the town group stalk and kill the questionable group), so I felt confident in voicing my agreement with those lists as well.

Also, I guess I'll apologize to everyone for my "lurking" this weekend, although I'm not too sure how not posting friday or saturday night is equivalent to lurking. But, since that seems to be another point against me, I'll throw it out there and promise to be much more involved with this game from here on out.

Re-reading now to post something relevant to the game and not just a defense of myself.

[Nicodemus]

Yeah, sorry I didn't get to this game today. I had a ton of homework come due this week and midterms are this weekend for two of my classes. I'll do my best to get something useful up tomorrow.

[Nicodemus]

Just finished my readthrough of the thread. Below are posts that stood out enough for me to comment on, and base most of my suspicions on (which are at the bottom of this post).

---

I think the dramonic wagon, though understandable, is a bit premature. No one is a murderer yet, but there are scum already. We should be trying to lynch scum, not a later potential 3rd party.

I think the point is that dram either rolled cult -or- he rolled investigator who will choose to become a murderer. Why are you not thinking about the scenario where dramonic rolled cultist?

vote slysly

This is extremely weak. Elvis's reasoning for continuing to push the dramonic wagon is nothing more than "dramonic might have drawn scum"? Sly had already said why he wasn't pursuing the dramonic wagon, but E_K tries to bully him onto it anyway with shoddy reasoning. Seriously, if the only reasoning we need to vote for people is that they "might have drawn scum", well, we might as well just go home now.

He could have gotten the insanity from Laundering as he says, which has to the worst possible night one play for either faction. Percy even advises against using this as an action for night zero in the Q&A section.

He could have gotten it from stalking, which means that he currently HAS to be town, since psychopathy cannot be taken as a first insanity. If this is the case he is likely being honest about his current insanity choice. He may be considering or planning to go murderer.

Or he could be fabricating this as to allow for an explanation of a future planned insanity gain as cult.

SOG has made several posts like this throughout the game, where he offers lots of options but not a lot of opinions. He does a great job discussing game theory, but a rather poor job actually hunting for scum. And now I see he's jumped on my wagon. Convenient.

I believe that it is essential to lynch ani at this point. Riculaulsly anti-town play requires dicipline and punishment by lynch.

Giving people a pass for being "too scummy to be scum" isn't going to help us win.

He can't

prove

that he can't hammer, so his claim is not verifiable.

I know that I was in the lynch Ani camp as well, so obviously this wouldn't be as powerful as if someone else had brought it up, but...How would Ani's claim not be verifiable by any stretch of the imagination? Verifying if a vote counts or not is a very simple thing to do, and I find it hard to believe that Adel of all people missed this. His eagerness to lynch Ani here could very well have been scum motivated.

you are missing that 5 cultist picked Craft Fetish last night

Target: Up to two non-Cultists.
Effect: You create a Fetish of your targets.
Prerequisite: You must be a Cultist to choose this action.
Side Effect: Your targets hear Noise.
Notes: Fetishes are not equipment, and once made are available to the Cult as a group. This action will fail if your target has also been the target of Pass Fetish.

Not quite sure where Adel got this number from. This coupled with his scum team line up comments is very interesting, but I just find it hard to believe that a player with Adel's experience would make these kind of slips. Worth noting though, I guess.

on adel's plan - i would

oppose

this, simply for the fact that i would much rather get a good journey and bad ending than a shitty journey and a good ending. i would like to play the game, not breeze through it in 3 days.

I would be okay with this if Drench had provided some reasoning for his decision, but all he seems to say is "I'm opposed because I don't want the game to end quickly." Others had concrete reasoning for opposing the plan, but Drench just smears the plan ("shitty journey") and opposes it.

DGB, I would like to know whether you still feel that SlySly is scum in light of the fact that he calling for modkills on two townies.

Where did you get this information? (I realize you are one of the players, but you

know

that Adel is town?)

Something I just noted from the OP that may change our warding decisions.

Those who Ward AUTOMATICALLY hear noise, no matter what else happens.

How have my questions about warding been so scummy, but stuff like this flies completely under the radar? We'd already pretty heavily discussed warding and its properties, so why does VF feel the need to throw out this (completely useless) bit of information while all of the Ani stuff is going down? Active lurking?

unvote

finally caught up.

Here's my BIGGEST problem with the plan that no one has brought up. Cultists can daytalk. That means they can coordinate in their thread exactly how to manipulate us to get as many cultists as possible on the Shoot list.

There's something else to note...cultists, due to their daytalking abiilty, are much more likely to be involved with the game than a normal investigator would be. This means potentially some of the people who are most involved with the game, and therefore looking more town, are actually scum.

Cultists have a big advantage over normal scum in this game in that they can see a problem that comes up during the day, discuss it, and react to it all without us knowing what they're thinking.

How are we, as a town, going to counteract this for Elli's plan?

Except that VP just brought this up in his post right above yours. Seriously, viking has done next to nothing in this game besides lurk and throw out useless information. Can we lynch him now please?

Vote: Vikingfan

---

Overall reads:

People who are town: Ani, Sajin, VP, slysly, iLord
People who are neutral, leaning town: Phate, Magua, Iecerint, Katy, Wicked
People who are neutral: DGB, Chaco, dramonic, Sarag, Startransmission, Faraday, CSL, Ellibereth
People who are neutral, leaning scum: Drench, E_K, Hayker, evilsnail,
Diescumdie: vikingfan, SOG

[Nicodemus]

I think the dramonic wagon, though understandable, is a bit premature. No one is a murderer yet, but there are scum already. We should be trying to lynch scum, not a later potential 3rd party.

I think the point is that dram either rolled cult -or- he rolled investigator who will choose to become a murderer. Why are you not thinking about the scenario where dramonic rolled cultist?

vote slysly

This is extremely weak. Elvis's reasoning for continuing to push the dramonic wagon is nothing more than "dramonic might have drawn scum"? Sly had already said why he wasn't pursuing the dramonic wagon, but E_K tries to bully him onto it anyway with shoddy reasoning. Seriously, if the only reasoning we need to vote for people is that they "might have drawn scum", well, we might as well just go home now.

This is wrong and misleading on a number of levels.

First of all, I wasn't even voting dramonic. So I was hardly pushing the dramonic wagon.

Second of all, I wasn't saying people should vote dramonic because he could have rolled a scum role. Seriously. Look what I wrote. It does not say what you're saying it says.

I was saying:

I think the point is that dram either rolled cult

-or-

he rolled investigator who will choose to become a murderer

If he rolled cult, he's scum. If he rolled investigator, he will turn scum. Either way: scum. At the start of the day, I did not mind peole voting on this (as good a reason to start a wagon as any). I think I was even thinking about joining myself. However, it's basically a policy lynch, and I don't feel that policy lynches yield that much info, so I would rather scumhunt, so that I can better judge reactions and such, and have more to go on.

Sly's post was mostly about whether he thought dram would turn murderer. Which ignores the other possibility: that dram is cult. I didn't know why sly wasn't thinking of that possibility -- was it because sly already knows who is in the cult (meaning sly is cult)?

I will give a similar example. When I see players looking for a specific type of scum early in a game, they are usually scum themselves. For instance, early in a game, if a player calls another player "the SK" instead of just "scum." This is a signal the accuser is either the SK themselves, or they are mafia looking to lynch the SK. Early in a game, scum are nearly indistinguishable from each other if you're a townie, so getting too specific, or ignoring one type of scum in favor of another is a scumtell.

Now that I have explained why this is a valid scumtell... I feel like I have to also explain that I don't think Sly is scum anymore!

I was picking on something that I thought *might* be a scumtell in the early part of the day, so that I could get more info to better read sly. His answer was something along the lines of "I was not talking about cult because I didn't think anyone else was either... the main argument seemed to be about him going murderer." Which I think is a misunderstanding of the argument, but it's an okay explanation to me. And taken with his other behavior, I don't see him as scum. He seems to be scum hunting and looking out for the town's best interests, and entirely faithful to his world-view, not worried about pissing people off. Scum tend to want to suck up more. So I'm not too worried that Sly is scum.

Eh, fair enough I guess. I read it more as "I know you don't think that dram is murderer, but you should still be voting him because he could be scum," and that was what I found suspicious.

And yes, I am very aware of what I'm saying, and I'm doing my utmost not to look suspicious. It doesn't help the town at all if I get lynched today for giving false scumslips just because I was lazy or obscure in my posting, so I try to make them as clear and honest as possible. I still have not found the best way to post as town for me, and until I do I'm trying to watch what I say so that I'm not giving any false scumtells for opportunistic scum or overeager town to latch on to.

[Nicodemus]

@Nicodemus- What are your top 6 suspects for cult please? A short reason why with each would be awesome too.

1. vikingfan: lack of scumhunting/little original content
2. SOG: see viking
3. Drench: opposition to the plan without offering any actual reasons for opposing it
4. Hayker: Adel's earlier posts/scumslips + hayker's lurking
5. evilsnail: see SOG
6. E_K: more gut than anything. Still, a few of her posts have seemed off to me

@Katy: Thanks, I'll keep that in mind

[Nicodemus]

I believe that it is essential to lynch ani at this point. Riculaulsly anti-town play requires dicipline and punishment by lynch.

Giving people a pass for being "too scummy to be scum" isn't going to help us win.

He can't

prove

that he can't hammer, so his claim is not verifiable.

I know that I was in the lynch Ani camp as well, so obviously this wouldn't be as powerful as if someone else had brought it up, but...How would Ani's claim not be verifiable by any stretch of the imagination? Verifying if a vote counts or not is a very simple thing to do, and I find it hard to believe that Adel of all people missed this. His eagerness to lynch Ani here could very well have been scum motivated.

you are missing that 5 cultist picked Craft Fetish last night

Target: Up to two non-Cultists.
Effect: You create a Fetish of your targets.
Prerequisite: You must be a Cultist to choose this action.
Side Effect: Your targets hear Noise.
Notes: Fetishes are not equipment, and once made are available to the Cult as a group. This action will fail if your target has also been the target of Pass Fetish.

Not quite sure where Adel got this number from. This coupled with his scum team line up comments is very interesting, but I just find it hard to believe that a player with Adel's experience would make these kind of slips. Worth noting though, I guess.

...Plus his early assertion that there were definitely players from Stars I on the scum team.

[Nicodemus]

Essential view of Nico:



He attacks Semi with poor, poor meaning and clumps him with Vikingfan. Not only do I not see the connection but it seems like a definite odd vote at the time. Plus, that's about all he's done.

Incant: Nicodemus

Well that's not really necessary.

In other news, I give up. You guys have my scum list, so good luck in the rest of the game.

Vote: Nicodemus

[Nicodemus]

Awesome game, although I'm still embarrased I got lynched on D1. Totally my fault though, and major props to town for getting me.

Also major props to both SOG and Magua. As many others have said, the fact that this game went from an almost-certain town win to a scum victory was really impressive.

Biggest props though go to Percy, who organized a fantastic game. I loved the flavor, the mechanics, and the modding. Great game to all!