Spoiler: Mastin really is struggling with this LYLO
Well fuck.
As if I needed more reason to consider Reasonably Rational scum, their power (which Titus stole) is hands-down a scum power. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a power scum had! Not stupid/naive enough to blindly assume that, least of all in a Varsoon game.
Towns are gonna have powers that scum normally have; scum are gonna have powers that town normally have.
Yet. This is exactly the power I'd expect scum to have, especially since it fits the flavor of Army. Like...it really, really fits the flavor of Army. Like, RR if scum would be ranting at just how much their abilities match the flavor of Army. Especially since I still don't understand how that flavor would fit Sadie.
I mean. If Reasonably Rational is scum. You can go celebrate that I have more reason to think them scum, sure. Otherwise, you have every right to be despairing right now because it took every ounce of my willpower upon seeing that claim to not just flat-out vote them immediately. That blocking power, especially when thinking about the powers we've already seen from both alignments, just screams scum.
I've thought that the scum should have some form of blocking power the whole game.
I know that Eyeball (Skybird) had one, via the Pearl account. Yet for all of their bravado, Reasonably Rational is right about one thing:
The scum this game have a ridiculous vulnerability and inability to counter powers. The vast majority of scum's powers this game have involved either kill enhancement (to counter the myriad of protections), or confirmation actions meant to confirm the slot as town. There was DGB's ascetic, and Skybird's eventual-theoretical-nonconsecutive-roleblock, but otherwise, all of their powers have been focused on kill enhancement.
Where's their power to shut down town synchronization? Kill enhancement isn't enough. And by the time that Skybird would have access to Pearl, a nonconsecutive roleblock would be too little, too late. DGB's cutoff from the scumteam with an ascetic making her hard to catch would be an asset they couldn't harvest easily. The scum, simply put, actually do have a shortage of power.
It's not much of a deficit. It's not so strong of a deficit that I think there'd be two scum left. But the scum should have some way of immediately shutting town power down...and Reasonably Rational's permablock claim would offer them exactly that.
There's also something I noted about their claim.
And it's an important detail they're not addressing.
Farside's roleblock.
Farside's roleblock, in particular, specified it couldn't block factional actions. Reasonably Rational, the mechanics-based player, the person who is normally so thorough about these things, didn't include this vital piece of information. So am I to assume they could shut down a scum permanently from acting...or that they neglected to provide a very key detail in their claim?
It feels egregious. Like an elephant in the room, even. Why didn't they address the farside roleblock if they were town and knew the mechanic of their own roleblock? Yes, they no longer had the ability anymore--but they started with it, and thus would know how to ask questions about it. Am I to understand they deliberately did nothing to PM Varsoon about their own role, and to try and trap farside in a lie? Am I to understand that they didn't PM Varsoon to maybe see if farside was, instead, telling the truth about how hers worked?
Because that was the implication I got from their claim, and it's incredibly troubling. INCREDIBLY. Like, really, really disturbing. When I said it took every ounce of my willpower to not vote them on the spot, I meant it. But I think I owe them some level of space--I need to see Drixx's side of the story, his description, to confirm this. I also need to check out their posting across the whole game in regards to farside once she claimed the block.
I owe them that much. You might moan about that if RR IS scum. Or be thankful I'm not entirely a lost cause if they're town. (Just mostly.) But I do need to do this "the slow way", because I absolutely need to weigh all the angles, here.
If I make the right choice, it will only be because I put all this work in.
If I make the wrong choice, it will be a wrong choice I made after devoting so much time and effort into figuring it out. It would still be my fault, of course. And in some ways, worse than impulsively voting wrong: instead of being wrong without a thought, I put thought in and still came to the wrong conclusion, making me a rather shitty player. But it'd be easier to live with.
Making a wrong decision on impulse is something there's no excuse, no justification for. It's bad play all-around. Making a wrong decision after carefully weighing the options allows growth as a player, because it allows me to see where I went wrong.
And boy do I know that I've gone wrong.
It doesn't matter who the scum is at this point--I can say I've gone wrong because we've got this situation in the first place. Technically speaking, FOUR names to slave over in determining who they are scum. Literally the whole game aside from me, as a possible scumspect. With today being lylo, with today deciding the outcome of the game no matter what.
You can't deny that's a fuckup. Maybe some of it, I can't take blame for. (Was the no-lynch my fault? Maybe partially, but I don't think you can rightfully blame that on me entirely; everyone dropped the ball, there.) But a lot of it, it was most definitively my fault, and it's not a matter of whether it was my fault or not, but rather, HOW MUCH of it was my fault.
And in that regard: an informed decision, even if wrong, is better than an impulsive decision that's wrong. Because by going through this process, by going through this final check, I'm effectively going through a final summation of all of what I've done the whole game. Which makes it easier to process, which makes it easier to see, what I messed up on.
Again, I apologize it's taking this long--doubly so if RR's actually town and thinking they're scum even more is dragging out a failure-of-a-game-we-were-meant-to-win. While it's technically safer, while it's technically more thorough, I think that if I'm fully honest with myself, dragging it out and doing the analysis is more for me than for anyone else.
I need to be okay with losing. You in the dead thread, you've had time to settle down and take a stance: by this point, I'd be surprised if you hadn't taken a stance. That you're okay with losing. Or maybe that you're not okay with losing. But given that I cast the game-winning decision, or the game-losing decision, I'm not yet at the point where I am okay with losing. Else I'd have voted already.
And I guess that's what I'm working towards. Being okay with losing. Being okay with having made the wrong call. I'm not okay with it yet. If Reasonably Rational is town, this was a game-long tunnel that was beyond costly and I have nobody to blame but myself. That's true regardless of whether I lynch them or not, sure, but it'd be much, much stronger if I just voted them now.
Basically, I'm deeply, deeply afraid right now. Terrified of making the wrong choice, and the consequences thereof. How would you feel if five months of ~20 other players' efforts went down the drain all thanks to you making a bad vote? If 500 pages worth of work was wasted in a split second off of impulsive behavior on your part?
Probably pretty shitty!
And I honestly don't know what to do right now. Everything is telling me it's right to vote Reasonably Rational. Everything is telling me it's okay. That I don't need to worry. That even if it was wrong, you wouldn't rant at me. But while I know that rationally, I still don't know how to feel.
I can't vote until I do.
As if I needed more reason to consider Reasonably Rational scum, their power (which Titus stole) is hands-down a scum power. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a power scum had! Not stupid/naive enough to blindly assume that, least of all in a Varsoon game.
Towns are gonna have powers that scum normally have; scum are gonna have powers that town normally have.
Yet. This is exactly the power I'd expect scum to have, especially since it fits the flavor of Army. Like...it really, really fits the flavor of Army. Like, RR if scum would be ranting at just how much their abilities match the flavor of Army. Especially since I still don't understand how that flavor would fit Sadie.
I mean. If Reasonably Rational is scum. You can go celebrate that I have more reason to think them scum, sure. Otherwise, you have every right to be despairing right now because it took every ounce of my willpower upon seeing that claim to not just flat-out vote them immediately. That blocking power, especially when thinking about the powers we've already seen from both alignments, just screams scum.
I've thought that the scum should have some form of blocking power the whole game.
I know that Eyeball (Skybird) had one, via the Pearl account. Yet for all of their bravado, Reasonably Rational is right about one thing:
The scum this game have a ridiculous vulnerability and inability to counter powers. The vast majority of scum's powers this game have involved either kill enhancement (to counter the myriad of protections), or confirmation actions meant to confirm the slot as town. There was DGB's ascetic, and Skybird's eventual-theoretical-nonconsecutive-roleblock, but otherwise, all of their powers have been focused on kill enhancement.
Where's their power to shut down town synchronization? Kill enhancement isn't enough. And by the time that Skybird would have access to Pearl, a nonconsecutive roleblock would be too little, too late. DGB's cutoff from the scumteam with an ascetic making her hard to catch would be an asset they couldn't harvest easily. The scum, simply put, actually do have a shortage of power.
It's not much of a deficit. It's not so strong of a deficit that I think there'd be two scum left. But the scum should have some way of immediately shutting town power down...and Reasonably Rational's permablock claim would offer them exactly that.
There's also something I noted about their claim.
And it's an important detail they're not addressing.
Farside's roleblock.
Farside's roleblock, in particular, specified it couldn't block factional actions. Reasonably Rational, the mechanics-based player, the person who is normally so thorough about these things, didn't include this vital piece of information. So am I to assume they could shut down a scum permanently from acting...or that they neglected to provide a very key detail in their claim?
It feels egregious. Like an elephant in the room, even. Why didn't they address the farside roleblock if they were town and knew the mechanic of their own roleblock? Yes, they no longer had the ability anymore--but they started with it, and thus would know how to ask questions about it. Am I to understand they deliberately did nothing to PM Varsoon about their own role, and to try and trap farside in a lie? Am I to understand that they didn't PM Varsoon to maybe see if farside was, instead, telling the truth about how hers worked?
Because that was the implication I got from their claim, and it's incredibly troubling. INCREDIBLY. Like, really, really disturbing. When I said it took every ounce of my willpower to not vote them on the spot, I meant it. But I think I owe them some level of space--I need to see Drixx's side of the story, his description, to confirm this. I also need to check out their posting across the whole game in regards to farside once she claimed the block.
I owe them that much. You might moan about that if RR IS scum. Or be thankful I'm not entirely a lost cause if they're town. (Just mostly.) But I do need to do this "the slow way", because I absolutely need to weigh all the angles, here.
If I make the right choice, it will only be because I put all this work in.
If I make the wrong choice, it will be a wrong choice I made after devoting so much time and effort into figuring it out. It would still be my fault, of course. And in some ways, worse than impulsively voting wrong: instead of being wrong without a thought, I put thought in and still came to the wrong conclusion, making me a rather shitty player. But it'd be easier to live with.
Making a wrong decision on impulse is something there's no excuse, no justification for. It's bad play all-around. Making a wrong decision after carefully weighing the options allows growth as a player, because it allows me to see where I went wrong.
And boy do I know that I've gone wrong.
It doesn't matter who the scum is at this point--I can say I've gone wrong because we've got this situation in the first place. Technically speaking, FOUR names to slave over in determining who they are scum. Literally the whole game aside from me, as a possible scumspect. With today being lylo, with today deciding the outcome of the game no matter what.
You can't deny that's a fuckup. Maybe some of it, I can't take blame for. (Was the no-lynch my fault? Maybe partially, but I don't think you can rightfully blame that on me entirely; everyone dropped the ball, there.) But a lot of it, it was most definitively my fault, and it's not a matter of whether it was my fault or not, but rather, HOW MUCH of it was my fault.
And in that regard: an informed decision, even if wrong, is better than an impulsive decision that's wrong. Because by going through this process, by going through this final check, I'm effectively going through a final summation of all of what I've done the whole game. Which makes it easier to process, which makes it easier to see, what I messed up on.
Again, I apologize it's taking this long--doubly so if RR's actually town and thinking they're scum even more is dragging out a failure-of-a-game-we-were-meant-to-win. While it's technically safer, while it's technically more thorough, I think that if I'm fully honest with myself, dragging it out and doing the analysis is more for me than for anyone else.
I need to be okay with losing. You in the dead thread, you've had time to settle down and take a stance: by this point, I'd be surprised if you hadn't taken a stance. That you're okay with losing. Or maybe that you're not okay with losing. But given that I cast the game-winning decision, or the game-losing decision, I'm not yet at the point where I am okay with losing. Else I'd have voted already.
And I guess that's what I'm working towards. Being okay with losing. Being okay with having made the wrong call. I'm not okay with it yet. If Reasonably Rational is town, this was a game-long tunnel that was beyond costly and I have nobody to blame but myself. That's true regardless of whether I lynch them or not, sure, but it'd be much, much stronger if I just voted them now.
Basically, I'm deeply, deeply afraid right now. Terrified of making the wrong choice, and the consequences thereof. How would you feel if five months of ~20 other players' efforts went down the drain all thanks to you making a bad vote? If 500 pages worth of work was wasted in a split second off of impulsive behavior on your part?
Probably pretty shitty!
And I honestly don't know what to do right now. Everything is telling me it's right to vote Reasonably Rational. Everything is telling me it's okay. That I don't need to worry. That even if it was wrong, you wouldn't rant at me. But while I know that rationally, I still don't know how to feel.
I can't vote until I do.
