I can't argue with this, as it is essentially why I (as Xzyem) suspected jefequeso on Day 2. I even made a post about it, saying that I was leaning scum on jefequeso until he posted something of substance. However, since I am now replacing him, it is pretty obvious he wasn't trying to fly under the radar; he was just too busy to play the game actively.

Thanks! :)

If the mafia is only two people, that would make perfect sense. However, if the mafia has more that two players, then getting a nightkill while you two faff about with your power-roles is entirely plausible.

I did notice that this 2 man-mafia +1 SK theory has gained a lot of traction. Which leads me to this post by Bazilisek:

In a 15 player game, having 4 scum (3 mafia and an SK) seems pretty standard (or 3.75 as Bazilisek says). However, survivor roles are not intrinsically anti-town, so they shouldn't be though of as 'scum' for the town vs scum analysis. Survivor just means they win if the make it to the end of the game; they are often pretty pro-town, because the faster the mafia is neutralized, the better chance they have of making it to the end of the game.

I find it much more likely in a game like this for there to be a 3 person mafia and an SK. Someone that pushes the 2 mafia +1 SK model too hard might be mafia trying to hoodwink town by making the mafia seem weaker than it really is. Bazilisek may just be giving an honest town opinion (he still reads pretty strongly town to me), but do pay attention to anyone that seems too fast to jump on this theory...

Well, yes. But they are not intrinsically pro-town, either, though they are admittedly leaning more towards that. When it comes to balancing, I'd count a survivor as 0.5 scum.

The great problem with survivors is that they don't know what's going on, either. They might be genuinely trying to scumhunt, but they are no better at it than any ordinary townie; most of the time, their play is likely to be nothing but opportunistic, because they honestly don't care very much. Survivors win with scum just as well as they win with town.

(Not that this is terribly relevant right now, or that the number of mafiosi still alive is a significant factor at this point. We can only deal with them one at a time, anyway.)

Ok...what? Did I miss something? Where did the Jack of all Trades come from? Why are you trying to make an argument that this is one faction that is capable of making 2 kills? Is this your argument? I have to be honest I'm kinda confused here.

[There was a quote by NFY Here, I don't feel like leaving it :P It's 3am here and I just realized I started writing this almost 7 hours ago <.<]

Or there's the chance that he didn't expect you to confirm it. Yes, I admit that this is kinda weak in the long run, but it's something that can easily be said. Or again, he could have given information about a possible block just so he had it done already, and you went to confirm it. It's a wine-y argument

Ok, this one I can shed some light on a bit due to how I played scum in Game 9. I took Baz's outting and believed that I could push the town against him, saying that a Day 1 claim for a Doctor was a good hiding spot to be Mafia (ok, I also believed this), so I argued against NKing him...yeah, you can all see how this turned out.

What's the lesson here? Just because the Mafia, a SK, whoever is hidden pretty well, it's a slip, a risky gamble, or just bad luck that can easily turn the game against them. If you can secure yourself a spot under the radar, it's worth taking. If you can give yourself a solid alibi, then it's worth the chance. It's also why I'm fairly suspicious about people and don't like making set lists or even saying that someone is 100% town or 100% scum.

I'm going to go with a gut feeling here (and pray that I'm hitting the mark somehow) and Vote Stoic.

I'll admit though, there's something nagging at the back of my head...not really quite sure what I'm missing from this though.

/raises hand

That comes from one of the more random shots in the dark of my Hypothesis Number Seven.

Ok.

I've gone back and re-read all the back and forth since the idea was floated that GoJays and Stoic could be cooking up some little scheme. GoJays block of a claimed vanilla was strange, but...

Stoic's posts make sense to me - they read well, they seem to be genuinely of someone who is innocent and struggling to understand why the suspicion is on them in the first place. His defence makes quite a lot of sense, certainly more than enough to make me doubt the scenario he is Scum.

GoJays not quite so much - theres still that niggling doubt about blocking a vanilla role. unless you were just checking that out.

Baz did a good job with his scenario summary, but then gave much more credence to guilty than innocent - i thought scenario 1 made the most sense, and taken with Stoics defensive posts i though most people would agree.

unvote gojays - still on my scumdar, because although it looks like he is a blocker, theres still no concrete reason to believe he isnt a Mafia blocker, but for now...

Vote TwilightBard

Something is getting to me about the Bards posts - little pushes like 'I do agree, I think we are going to have to take a chance here' (post#1526) - no we dont, we keep talking and thrashing it out till the last minute, only a Mafia would want us to take a chance.

Also, missing Baz bringing up JOAT, and going with 'gut feeling' - not paying attention, and flimsy flimsy....

I'm probably guilty of that, though I tried to present all the variants as equal. It's just that 7 is most interesting and takes the longest to explain, so it's hogging the limelight a bit. I don't think it's necessarily the most plausible one; in fact I would agree stoic's defence sounds quite genuine.

(Before anyone asks, I'm keeping my vote on him despite that for some healthy pressure and because all in all, he seems the best target to me right now.)

I have read and reread the stoic/GoJays2025/TwilightBard thing.

Day 2 was long, and I know I lost track of people's claims (soft and hard). I think i even forgot that stoicsentry claimed twice. It was probably because he has been in my 'firmly town' category since before I even took over for zxyem. In other words, I totally understand GoJays2025 making a mistake here. Moreso, this is not the way I would expect a mafia to play this situation in his position; it just draws too much attention and makes him look scummy (this is very WIFOM, I admit).

I have seen plenty of games where vanilla townies get messages that they have been blocked, especially when the flavor text is of them getting assaulted in some fashion. Sure, it might be a reason to review stoicsentry's actions in the thread more closely, but it, alone, doens't make him scum.

Lastly, there is TwilightBard. I admit that he is at the top of my scumlist, but not because of this. Giving the flavor text of a role-block, after he has already admitted he has a role on previous days, is what any player would do. Town has little reason to lie, and for scum the risk of getting caught out when lying far exceeds the pro-town gain from telling the truth. This isn't to say that TB didn't twist his role-block message a little to make stoicsentry look guilty, but I, again, don't think this is the case. Small differences in role-block messages are not unheard of; the flavor just needs to be consistent (which it is).

In other words, I the whole stoicsentry/GoJays2025/TwilightBard thing doesn't change my opinion of the three of them much at all. Stoicsentry seems a little more guilty to me because he fell in quickly to support Bazilisek's 2-man mafia theory rather quickly, but he still seems mostly town to me. GoJays2025 says he role-blocked a vanilla player, but, while this is a red flag, I still lean pretty strongly town for him. TwilightBard actually seems more town to me after this, ironically, since he is stuck in the same bad situation with people that are near the top of my townlist. I still think TB is scum (because even scum can get sucked in to these type of situations), but it does give me a slight pause.

My two top suspects are still TwilightBard and Robbeasy, and I am honestly having a tough time deciding which way to go. However, TwilightBard seems to have a history of stoking arguments between players (stoicsentry/NFY1 and GoJays2025/NFY1), and maybe he just got a little too close to the flames with the stoicsentry/GoJays2025/TwilightBard thing.

Vote TwilightBard

... confused..! Was there something you meant to address or was it a formatting issue?

Also, Baz, was the Primal thing really not worth sharing? Your vote with the promise of an explanation (#1472) then unvoting leaving us all none the wiser (#1522) is niggling me... It's almost like an inversed tell of "announce intention to vote -> vote", except you put this invisible case aside to focus on one part of the current hot topic.

The vote on stoic is because we get an idea of GJ after stoic flips, right? Even though you said this is a bit of a bad idea at this stage in the game? (#1522)

Formatting, sorry, was trying to be a bit goofy to make people at least laugh...guess I was the only one who even broke a smirk <.<.

Eh, missing the JOAT was less missing it, and more having a disconnect between the two posts due to RL things. It's not intentional, I feel pretty dumb that it happened, but, unfortunately these things do happen. I'm trying the best I can but sometimes you make mistakes, you think you've absorbed everything until it turns out you really haven't.

Going with my gut...is really a response to everything. Most of my trains of thought that I had going over the Night pretty much crashed spectacularly, and I'm sorta still picking up the pieces and trying to gather what reads I can and see what I think sticks.

I'm going to be honest. I'd rather see this day come to an end with a lynch happening BEFORE the deadline. There isn't a real analyzable lynch yet, since Damuna was mod-killed (While we can investigate the wagon, there's no way of telling what might have actually happened or who purposefully avoided it), and the Namecop lynch was pretty much at the wire to the point that people were claiming they believed namecop was town, but wanted the lynch anyway. Both of those are completely unreadable. I'd like to have a lynch wagon that we can look at and point fingers at.

@Krypsyn: You made this claim against me before...and I gotta admit that it drives me up the wall. What do you want me to be doing? Just ignoring the whole thing? Let them argue without getting involved so that any questions or things that are bothering me go unsaid? I just don't get your argument.

YES, I get involved in arguments and cases that 'Don't have anything to do with me', but guess what? THEY DO! No case or argument should be made in a vacuum, and in fact it's the town's job to make sure it doesn't happen. Why? To prevent 1 or 2 people from manipulating things. Cases should be called into question, oddball questions should be asked and brought up to keep people from falling into what amounts to scripts. It just feels wrong, and it makes me feel like I shouldn't be involved in the game at all.

Note: I hope this doesn't double post. The forum ate my last post when I tried to post it. Luckily, I always copy the text before posting in case of this eventuality. :)

I am not sure what you could do differently. The fact is that you have just been pinging my scumdar pretty heavily since Day 2. None of the reasons is 100% definitive that you are scum, but they all lead me in that direction. I'll list my reasons, and each of their pros and cons.

1) During Day 2, I rally got the feeling you were just sitting on the sidelines egging the NFY1/stoicsentry debate along, without even noting any other options. On review, I thought the entire stoicsentry/NFY1 thing just screamed two town players egging it along from the outside. As far as I recall, and according to a quick skim of your posts during that period, you didn't vote for either party, you just stirred the pot with arguments.

2) You were the only person to not give a list of your reads when I was asking people for them on Day 2 (except jefequeso, who was gone the entire time, pretty much). I know you gave reasons, and they might actually be totally innocent. However, it just doesn't sit will for me. In my experience, having people make definitive lists has more chance of tripping up scum (by limiting future wiggle room) than hurting town.

3) You continued hedging your bets until the NFY1/GoJays2025 debate started up. You ended up not taking a stand here for a while as well, but I find it interesting here that you ended up going after NFY1 again. You even said you weren't sure she was scum, but you are voting for her anyway. Yes, I did the same thing in my previous incarnation, but I mentioned several times how much I hated it and how sure I was that NFY1 was town.

4) Now you are in the middle of this stoicsentry/GoJays2025 thing. These are surviving two people from the debates you (in my opinion) seemed to be stoking on Day 2. For someone who will not admit to having strong feelings about anyone, and someone that refuses to make a list even naming his top suspects, this is a serious case of tunnel vision you have developed.

All of these things together just culminate in my mind as someone behaving in a very anti-town manner. It just seems to me that you are focusing on the same folks over and over, and you are not very open about your reasoning in general. At every turn you seem to be hedging your bets and refusing to get nailed down on any single opinion. I just don't like it. Maybe I am wrong, maybe I am seeing your actions in totally the wrong light, but I have to go where my instinct points. I went against it on Day 2 and voted for NFY, and I am still regretting it.

I am sure you won't agree with the post, but I hope it, at least, answers your question about why I am voting for you.

EBWOP

So many typos and errors in the above post. I don't know how I missed them all... *sigh*

In point 1), I write:
It should read (with added text in italics):
"On review, I thought the entire stoicsentry/NFY1 thing just screamed two town players fighting with other players egging it along from the outside."

In point 2), I write:
I left out QuadrAlien as a person that didn't make a list. I kind of forgot QuadrAlien even existed in this game for the little bit I was writing the above post. Now that NFY has taken QuadAlien's place, the subject of the list as it pertains to QuadrAlien is fairly moot anyway.

In point 4), I write:
It should read (with added text in italics):
"These are the surviving two people from the debates that you (in my opinion) seemed to be stoking on Day 2."

I think a made a few other mentor errors, but these are the ones that were really bugging me. I am pretty sure everyone else would have been able to figure out what I meant, but it would have driven me nuts. I am such an edit abuser normally, games like this, where I am not allowed to edit, really annoy me when I make silly mistakes. ;)

Oh, right. I put the part about giving reasons with 'pros and cons' and I totally forgot to list the point that had the pros and cons I was thinking about. Yeesh, I am batting close to 1,000 for incompetence in posting today.

5) You were the top suspect of my previous incarnation on Day 2. This is something I was fairly vocal about. Then I am lynched at night. As you say this is a WIFOM situation, however, if I imagine myself scum in your shoes, I think i would probably chance it and nightkill me. Sure, you might end up looking a little guilty, but you can always claim WIFOM (which you did), then distract people with other guilty looking parties (which you seem to be doing).

c'mon folks - interest had started to gather momentum, and posting was healthy, but it's all dying down a bit again....!!

Any thoughts on why TwilightBard is scum?

Stoic and GoJays still tickling the scumdar?

What about our lurkers? There must be some knocking about - any prodding to be done oh MOD?

Filler post - I suddenly realised I have 6 days to finish my conference paper.. :< Should be able to post something tonight.

Meanwhile, @Krypsyn2, any other suspects to be going on with? That was a pretty comprehensive attack on TB, and I know you FOSed Robbeasy too, but is there anyone else?