mini 814: OVER!

[Locke Lamora]

Hello everyone, sorry for my absence, just wanted to let everyone know I am around and will have a proper post up later.

[Locke Lamora]

Apologies once again for not being in this game from the start, I should be a regular contributor from now on. Points I wanted to make on reading through:

The Two Truths and a Lie suggestion seems very odd to me. Sure, it'd be a nice way to get to know people, but I don't really see how it furthers the game at all. At least the other set of questions were mafia based and had actually created a dispute that was already bringing us out of the RVS.

I can see how Starbuck would have missed the questions, that was pretty easy to do with the Henrz quote placed as it was. In that context, DNW's post 21 reads more to me like an unfounded push on Starbuck. If Starbuck didn't notice the questions were for everyone in the first place, then he 'found the need' to answer them later because he realised they were. That wasn't something that needed to be asked and it gives off the impression of stretching to put pressure on someone.

My own responses:

What is your opinions on the random voting stage?

I can do without it. One of the games I've played already had no RVS and quite a lengthy discussion about both the concept and the player who suggested the strategy. I think it can be useful for getting things going but it often goes on for too long and people seem to be focusing on thinking up silly vote reasons instead of scumhunting.

Why did you pick this game in particular?

It sounded like an interesting concept and now that I've completed a few fairly simple games here, I tend to look for the more unusual set-ups or themes that I think will offer a different experience. Also, I had a fun game with mykonian in my first newbie and I thought I'd come and see what he's like as mod.

Who do you expect to be the first person to be lynched this game, and why?

Starbuck or DNW. Depending on how people interpret their positions on DNW's line of questioning, I think pressure could build on one or both of them.

Who do you want to be lynched first this game, and why?

I haven't played with anyone else here so I don't want anyone in particular. Lurkers or especially brief posters (zwet, Empking, Data, for example) frustrate me, so if anyone displays those tendencies then I would say them.

[Locke Lamora]

DNW: my point was that it didn't need to be probed. Starbuck missed the line that said the questions were for everyone, saw it later and decided to answer them. It wasn't that he'd deliberately avoided answering them (or if he did, he lied about it, which you have no way of knowing anyway). That's why I thought it was a bit of a pointless question and the beginnings of an unfounded attack. If he'd said 'I don't want to answer the questions' then changed his mind, it would have been more relevant.

[Locke Lamora]

Apologies! I'm playing another game where a guy has an avatar of a girl and I keep having to change the shes to hes when I'm writing the post. I think it might have carried over to this one.

[Locke Lamora]

Anyone around at all? Has that prod gone out yet?

Vote: Claramata

for that strangely phrased response and general lurking.

[Locke Lamora]

I've prodded her too. Message is still in my outbox so she hasn't picked it up yet.

[Locke Lamora]

Tarballs: what is your opinion of your neighbours?

[Locke Lamora]

I meant just myself and Hernz, but I agree things are stalling in a major way. We need to make them more interesting.

Unvote; Vote: Droideka

for not playing aggressively as he claims he tends to when town.

[Locke Lamora]

Other people have commented that I generally come off as pro-town, so I'd say that's a fair comment.

On Hernz's self vote: not really sure what it was he thought we'd discuss; Tarballs pretty much covered the main points. Backing up Droideka and then self-voting seems a little odd to me, especially at this stage of the game.

Unvote; Vote Hernz

Hernz: were you referring to my vote when you said the random vote doesn't really help? It wasn't random; admittedly there wasn't a big case behind it, but I did have a reason for it.

[Locke Lamora]

Unvote; Vote: MonkeyMan

I didn't notice that he'd voted for Hernz when I did. I don't see how drawing attention to yourself is not pro-town in itself. Still got my eye on Hernz and Droideka now that Droideka has defended Hernz too, though.

[Locke Lamora]

Neither do I. Drawing attention to yourself could be used in a pro-town way and helpful in scumhunting later on.

[Locke Lamora]

(4)

Other people have commented that I generally come off as pro-town, so I'd say that's a fair comment.

I don't like this. You're basically patting your own back here.

I didn't intend to. I don't think that it's a good thing for it to be a null tell when I play in a pro-town fashion.

Neither do I. Drawing attention to yourself could be used in a pro-town way and helpful in scumhunting later on.

Scumhunting is pro-town. Not scum-hunting is anti-town. It's pretty simple.

I'm suspicious of anyone who thinks self-voting is pro-town generally.

So if Hernz self-voted to see who was going to jump on his own wagon in order to scumhunt, does that count as pro-town? Also, I was talking about drawing attention to yourself, not self-voting specifically. Were you directing that suspicion at me? Spinach? ODDin? All three of us?

[Locke Lamora]

I would agree that there are more preferable ways of stimulating conversation to self-voting. That's not what I'm contending here. Monkey's arguing that it's very black and white - either you're scumhunting and pro-town, or not scumhunting and anti-town. I'd like to know if he will concede that you could still scumhunt from looking at who jumps on your own wagon, defines self-voting to scumhunt as anti-town regardless of outcome, or if self-voting to scumhunt is a total impossibility in his book.

[Locke Lamora]

Voting is a tool to find scum. If you vote for yourself, you are either misleading the town or saying there's a good chance you're scum. The town should pursue cases against those that are voted on, be it self votes or otherwise. It seems obvious to me.

That doesn't sound quite right to me. The town shouldn't just pursue cases against those who are voted on. If there is merit behind the votes then sure, the town should look at cases. What you did was pretty much jump on the back of Tarballs' vote with an odd reason for your own vote. The town should also pursue cases against people who make bandwagon or poorly justified votes. I'm happy with my vote where it is.

[Locke Lamora]

I had a very similar discussion about this in Newbie 779 over whether sirdanilot was scummy for suggesting we skip the RVS. I agree with Droideka that it's unlikely Hernz would bother drawing attention to himself if he was scum. However, it is WIFOM-y and we shouldn't base any cases on it.

Droideka: do you think Starbuck is scummier than Monkey?

[Locke Lamora]

Starbuck: reading back, pretty much all you've been doing since Hernz self-voted is talking about Hernz and self-voting. In fact, you haven't done any other scumhunting at all since that vote, and the vote itself is based more on a personal principle than it is on Hernz being scummy.

FOS: Starbuck

[Locke Lamora]

I think other people have been scumhunting: going after you, for one. There's also been plenty of pressure on Monkey for the way he jumped on Hernz's wagon and his subsequent justification. When I read back your posts, all you've really been doing is defending your own anti-self-voting stance, not looking for scum.

[Locke Lamora]

So do you find anyone else scummy apart from Hernz? What do you make of the case on Monkey?

[Locke Lamora]

Starbuck has continued to avoid scumhunting and hasn't bothered to answer either of my questions, staying on the defensive and trying to push Droid off her. I think it's time to:

Vote: Starbuck

[Locke Lamora]

Sorry, that should be:

Unvote; Vote: Starbuck

[Locke Lamora]

Good to see we were spot on with Starbuck. I don't see what the point of the rant about us ruining the game was for. I even gave her a chance to voice her suspicions and she didn't even indicate she was writing up a big post until after she was hammered. I don't know how she went from Monkey's hammer to deciding that we all don't care either. Personally, I based my vote on the lack of scumhunting and trying to get Droid off her with the tunnel vision comment.

As bad as that Monkey hammer was, I don't think he's scum. Scum hammering their partner without even giving them a chance to claim on D1 is ridiculous. I think it's just awful town play. On to who Starbuck's scumbuddy/buddies might be:

Claramata/Tarballs: As we know, Claramata only made one post and didn't say anything much at all. Tarballs makes a few comments towards Starbuck about the self-voting situation but none of them call her scummy. The strongest thing he says against her is that she's 'pushing a bit too hard'.

Spinach: disagrees a couple of times with Starbuck over self-voting but never calls her scummy, just saying that Starbuck did nothing to stimulate discussion. Starbuck's random vote is on Spinach but there's no interaction on her part aside from that.

ODDin and DNW went after Starbuck quite aggressively and I'm ruling out Monkey for the reason indicated above. The only other possible candidate is Hernz, who would only make sense as Starbuck's partner if he wound her up by self-voting to the point that she decided to put him back at L-1. Given the incredibly principled stance Starbuck took against self-voting, I'm not ruling this out. Her partner self-voting could also explain her outrage and the PM sent to myk. However, Hernz does go on the attack more strongly against her later on: in post 136, for example, he actively focuses on Starbuck and tries to push the discussion back to her.

In conclusion:

Vote: Tarballs

Let's hear from you. Who's scum with Starbuck?

[Locke Lamora]

I've only played with a silencer once before and it wasn't here, but in that case it was a mafia role that had the power to completely prevent someone talking in the game for an entire game day. In this game it could also be to silence people from day-talking with their neighbours. As everyone has spoken today it doesn't look like anyone's been silenced.

Spinach: I'm interested in why you think the mafia's goal is to hamper communication. Sure, it's possible that they were aiming to do that with the Droid kill but it's also possible they killed Droid for a completely different reason and didn't even think about isolating someone in the circle.

[Locke Lamora]

ODDin: yes, I know the silencer's role could be exactly that. I wasn't ruling it out, I was merely commenting that nobody's silenced in-thread. Also on the topic of the Tarballs vote: if this was a larger game and a larger scumteam then not voting for Starbuck wouldn't be as significant. In a 9-player game I think it's pretty good info. Sure, someone could be bussing, but on the reread I felt it was much more likely that one of Tarballs and Spinach was scum with Starbuck and Tarballs seemed to be trying to gently push Starbuck away from her attack on Hernz rather than calling her out on it.

Spinach: have you used your day-talking powers much? I've mostly used them to prod people thus far. I don't really think that stopping prods is a major scum goal.

[Locke Lamora]

Spinach: why would the day-talking become more useful towards end-game? What were you planning to do?

[Locke Lamora]

Stalling doesn't quite begin to cover it! Anyone else playing here? Might as well mix things up a bit:

Unvote; Vote Spinach

Your hampering communication comment seems contrived to me. It reads like it was constructed to make Tarballs look scummy, particularly as you admitted you haven't used day-talking much anyway.

[Locke Lamora]

Mod: can we get prods for everyone who isn't me, Tarballs and Spinach?

I'm guessing MonkeyMan's going to get replaced but the other three still haven't been prodded, as far as I know.

Here's a question for both of you: if one of your neighbours came to you and told you they had a role and what it was, would you believe them? Would you tell them what your role was?

[Locke Lamora]

Hello again, Kitty. Couple of questions for you:

What do you make of your predecessor's play?

Why do you have both ODDin and Spinach as neutral?

[Locke Lamora]

ODDin: if you've managed to catch up, who is your top suspect? Do you still find Fluffy scummy for voting for Tarballs after I did? What do you make of the Spinach votes?

[Locke Lamora]

I'm definitely leaning towards Spinach at this point. We need to hear more out of him and Hernz in particular.

[Locke Lamora]

What do you mean I thought it was either me or tarballs? How could one make that assumption so early in the day? And it could easily be someone besdies me or tarballs for the lynch today. And the only reason I didn't vote because it would be a) Bandwagoning and b) Put Tarballs at L-1.

Because both Fluffy and myself had indicated you and Tarballs as top suspects and we'd both voted for Tarballs. I had made it particularly clear that I thought it was you or Tarballs. Once Fluffy had voted for Tarballs too, you then suggested your theory, further implicating him but without actually voting him as this would, as you say, have put him at L-1, thus looking incredibly scummy.

[Locke Lamora]

I didn't flat-out say 'either Spinach or Tarballs is scum', no. What I did say was that neither of you really attacked Starbuck like other players were doing, I didn't think ODDin, Fluffy or MonkeyMan were and I figured Hernz was an outside chance. I didn't think I needed to help you along any more than that. I was indicating that Hernz included you and Tarballs among his top suspects, not that you were the only people he thought might be scum.

As for the scum comment, I think three scum in a nine-player game would be pretty harsh and would also give them quite a lot of influence in the circle.

Kitty, Hernz: I don't think we've covered this; did either of you say anything to Starbuck, or get anything back? I don't know if you get told what Monkey said/received, Kitty.

[Locke Lamora]

Not attacking someone based on dumb reasons is not a scumtell, no. However, someone not attacking a player who flips scum is not something that should be ignored, I think you'd agree. If I read through and said 'well, all these players voted for Starbuck but Tarballs and Spinach didn't...but the reasons were stupid anyway, so they're not likely to be scum' then I think I'd be guilty of ignoring some pretty obvious voting evidence.

[Locke Lamora]

You're not in this game any more, Monkey. KittyMo has replaced you.

As for Hernz's case on me and ODDin and Spinach weighing in on that, I didn't say anything to Hernz because I didn't see the point of repeating myself and stating the obvious. If you insist, though: I posted my vote three minutes after Monkey's. If you honestly think I did see his vote and decided to hop on myself to put Hernz at L-1 in the space of three minutes, there's not much I can say to you. I went to reply before Monkey had posted, his vote went on before mine and I didn't see it. After that, I'm 'defending' Hernz because I'm disagreeing with Monkey's reason for voting for Hernz and I know I wasn't the only one who thought it was a poor reason. He already made the point about me voting for Starbuck at the end; it's WIFOM-y to speculate about whether I would or would not do that as scum. Look at the amount of votes on MonkeyMan and Starbuck at the time I switched my vote and draw your own conclusions.

On to Spinach, who I think has tried to boost Hernz and ODDin's suspicion of me with what is a pretty poor case, taken completely out of context. Here's what he said about me:

And about the LL case: I'd like to point out the if you look at his posts in isolation, notice posts 7, 8, and 9 all contain Unvote, votes. Votehopping much?

I'll quote the three posts to illustrate just how out-of-context that comment is:

I meant just myself and Hernz, but I agree things are stalling in a major way. We need to make them more interesting.

Unvote; Vote: Droideka

for not playing aggressively as he claims he tends to when town.

The game was stalling, nobody disputes that. I was trying to get things moving, I think that's pretty obvious. Droideka's response was perfectly reasonable and I didn't see anything scummy about it. Next comes Hernz's infamous self-vote, which actually comes about because he thinks my pressure on Droid doesn't help. I thought this was a strange play and indicated as much in my post:

Other people have commented that I generally come off as pro-town, so I'd say that's a fair comment.

On Hernz's self vote: not really sure what it was he thought we'd discuss; Tarballs pretty much covered the main points. Backing up Droideka and then self-voting seems a little odd to me, especially at this stage of the game.

Unvote; Vote Hernz

Hernz: were you referring to my vote when you said the random vote doesn't really help? It wasn't random; admittedly there wasn't a big case behind it, but I did have a reason for it.

While I was writing that post, Monkey posted his vote with a terrible reason that I didn't see. When I realised that Monkey had voted, I found it pretty scummy and thought we were onto something, so I voted for him:

Unvote; Vote: MonkeyMan

I didn't notice that he'd voted for Hernz when I did. I don't see how drawing attention to yourself is not pro-town in itself. Still got my eye on Hernz and Droideka now that Droideka has defended Hernz too, though.

So we've got a vote on Droid to try and make things happen when there was some major stalling, a vote for Hernz for his selfvote and buddying up to Droid, then a vote on MonkeyMan for his scummy hop onto the Hernz bandwagon with a poor reason for his vote. Spinach leaves all of that out, doesn't look at any of the content in my posts or the posts in-between and says I'm votehopping, as though I was just jumping on the nearest available wagon each time. Not only that, but he hasn't once indicated he thought I was scummy until the doubts from both Hernz and ODDin.

[Locke Lamora]

Spinach: weighing cases correctly has nothing to do with it. Your comment about my votes was entirely unwarranted and completely ignored the situation in which each of them were placed. I thought you cast some poorly-reasoned suspicion on Tarballs through speculation on the set-up after Fluffy and I voted for him, then you cast some poorly-reasoned suspicion on me after Hernz and ODDin stated their doubts. If you'd made those points independently without them following other peoples' suspicions, I might have thought they were less scummy. The fact that you were trying to fuel that suspicion, both times by reaching much too far, makes me think you're very scummy. You can't just reach on a point like that then when I call you on it say 'oh, it's not supposed to be the best case in the world'.

And I'm voting for you. I'm waiting for other people to stop messing around and get on with it.

[Locke Lamora]

Seconded. A lot of people have been fairly quiet today. What does everyone think of a Spinach lynch? If you don't like it, who do you want to lynch? If you do want to lynch someone else and haven't voted for them, why not?

[Locke Lamora]

I think it's 3 for Spinach (Tarballs, myself and Hernz) and 2 for Tarballs (Fluffy, Spinach). ODDin and Kitty aren't voting, unless I've missed something too.

[Locke Lamora]

I'd like to hear Kitty's view on Tarballs, she hasn't given us that yet. Other than that, I'm fine with the hammer, deadline's on Monday so I have no problem with it at this stage.

[Locke Lamora]

What's off about it, Kitty? Did you find his earlier comment on my apparent self-congratulation strange too?

[Locke Lamora]

Agreed. Read Mini 819 if you want a more extensive scum game of mine. I didn't do that good a job of looking pro-town in that one, especially on D1. Archon's flip helped me a lot and I got lucky at the end.

Spinach's resignation just strikes me as odd. It's not very pro-town, for one, and it's not as though he even had more votes than Tarballs when he gave up. He didn't even bother to make much of a case on Tarballs, which I would think a townie looking for scum to get lynched after their own demise would put a lot more effort into. I welcome the hammer at this stage.

[Locke Lamora]

Spinach makes some good points, several of which is why Tarballs is going to be at the top of my suspect list if Spinach does flip town, although I think he's reaching way too far with some of them again. The 'something to hide' comment, for instance - even being a vanilla townie is something to hide, because it gives the mafia the ability to narrow down who's a PR. Some of the points are good, but sometimes he blatantly misreps Tarballs' statements and claims almost every single thing he says is scummy, then randomly gives him minor town points for asking a couple of simple questions.

Kitty, you can stop being indecisive now if you like

[Locke Lamora]

Hang on, how does ODDin know there's going to be a tomorrow? Seems scummy to me that he's setting up a Tarballs lynch even as he hammers Spinach.

[Locke Lamora]

It was the fact you said 'will be brought into consideration tomorrow'; there was no uncertainty there, it just read as though you were sure you'd be looking at Tarballs tomorrow. If Spinach is telling the truth, it looks like there will be a tomorrow, so I'll have my eye on you.

[Locke Lamora]

Great job, everyone. I kept tabs on this throughout and it was quite frustrating to read when you were debating whether I'd tracked Monkey or not; in hindsight maybe I should have left more clues, but you figured it out so no harm done. It was very satisfying reading when Sanjay figured out that it didn't make sense for me not to have tracked Monkey. I probably focused a bit too much on Spinach and Tarballs on D2, so I apologise for that one. Thanks to those who replaced in and helped get this one to the end as well as everyone who made it through the whole game, and thanks to myk for modding! I agree that the neighbour mechanic would have worked much better if you'd had two to talk to the whole game.

[Locke Lamora]

One more thing: Fluffy, if you're still about, what was the reason for killing me?

[Locke Lamora]

That's why it was frustrating! I hoped that my clear change of direction on Monkey at the start of the day would be enough for people to look back and work out who I'd tracked if I died.

[Locke Lamora]

No problem, it made for quite an interesting read, it was just difficult to watch and not be able to do anything! I've never been in the situation where I've been a dead information role with an undeclared result in an ongoing game. It was fun to watch you reasoning it out. What I actually thought I slipped up on was my comment about whether neighbours would trust a power role claim through daytalking. I don't know if that affected Fluffy's decision but as soon as I posted it I was concerned it would attract a nightkill.