Alright, I just finished the reread and my head is buzzing. I need some time to get my thoughts in order, but I'll be back with you shortly. The pizza smells delicious.

Hah, I do remember reading that but took it as a weird joke implying they were incompetent. Your reading of it seems worth bearing in mind as the game develops even if it's not conclusive.

Pre-post edit: I wrote the first part of this post yesterday while attempting to catch up, but didn't manage to finish. I've just kept the post window open all this time.

Does that mean they're currently winning despite being dead?

Yeah, sorry about that. =/
I've been noticing my play getting worse and worse, but recently (this game particularly) I've been terrible. The string of gigs I was stressing out about are all done now though, so hopefully I'll improve. If not, I suppose Joe will have to replace me (not that I want to be replaced).

I have to ask (the players in general) what was with lynching TB? IIRC the deadline had been moved due to someone getting replaced so there was no hurry. Maybe it just seemed quick because I was so absent?

Anyway, I've decided that we as a community have become far too analytical so to counter this I will be playing with Reckless Abandon™ now.

Vote nmillar

Have you read the case against him and his defense? Do you think it was rushed lynched and in the same post support Reckless Abandon?

Why the vote for nmillar?

Reckless Abandon™.

And to be honest I didn't see much of a case against him. Could be because there wasn't one or because I skimmed the thread badly, who knows? Can you summarise the main reasons apparently everyone thought he was scum?

And yes, I can question the lynch and support Reckless Abandon™ because as far as I know, people weren't deliberately playing with Reckless Abandon™ and therefore I assume there must have been an actual reason.

Also the vote for nmillar was partially random and partially just because I'm just finding him suspicious. I'm attempting to go back to the way we used to play mafia back in the halcyon days of late 2010.

Sorry. :-p

and [url=http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/gog_forum_mafia_unlucky_13_gog_forum_mafia_landmark_13th_game_celebratory_retreat/post379]this one if you are able to read it.

It is irrelevant now, though, and I don't like much how much are you distancing from this mislynch.


You mean the times when you were mafia? ;-)

Btw. It's interesting, how we are adoring the Good Old Times when people were active, while Game 1 lasted 3 months and sometimes there were only several posts made per week.

But I don't understand why are you not playing, SPF? Before lynch happened you promised to post and then I saw you posting around forum several times throughout the day but yet you didn't post here. Have you lost interest in mafia or something? I ask because, I liked playing with you but this is just aggravating.

I don't really need to distance myself, I'm as distant as I can get without trying considering I wasn't on the wagon and I wasn't actively reading or posting when it happened. :P

Good point, although you can't deny that earlier games were more fun than recent ones have been. Perhaps me being mafia was what made the game fun?


Well that was part what I was saying earlier about being stressed. I'd go onto the forum to check the mafia thread, get distracted because of my worse than usual attention span and then the unread portion of the thread would grow and become ever more intimidating (sorry, it must have been pretty frustrating to see me posting anywhere but the mafia thread).

The annoying thing is, I still very much like mafia but I don't seem to be enjoying playing it as much as I used to. Still, I'm attempting to consciously and deliberately alter my playstyle. I don't know what'll happen but hopefully it'll at least be interesting.

Pre-post-edit:

Whoops, forgot to say that I see what you mean about TB now. Baz's argument doesn't convince me that much (but that could just be in hindsight), but I think I missed TB's response on account of the formatting being all weird. I can see how it seemed like a good idea at the time I suppose.

Yeah, that happens to me fairly often, too. But that's how it works.

Seriously, though, admitting you haven't even read the arguments for the lynch and calling it too quick (FYI, I posted my case on 18 September and Red_Baron dropped the hammer on 27 September) – WTF?

Long post from me coming soon.

I've finished my reread and right now, everything seems to revolve around one person: Telika. And I'll be damned if I know what to make of him. And I've been pondering how to tackle this, because there's some sensitive stuff I've pieced together here, but I decided going all in would be the best route. All of this already is present in the thread, after all; I merely pulled it together. But I fully expect to be accused of fishing anyway. Here goes:

Telika has claimed "Robbeasy" (#201), and gave flavour for it (#270) that the real nmillar found first hilarious (#272) and then incriminating (#293, #305). This flavour was later backed by Vitek claiming "nmillar" (#311). I think we can safely conclude Telika and Vitek were telling the truth here and that those indeed are their names. But here comes a more interesting point – there seems to be a general consensus floating around in the thread that Telika claimed Vanilla (Robbeasy in #372 and #383, Vitek in #373 and #482, Krypsyn in #374, and probably some others as well), but as far as I know, he never did that (if I just overlooked it, please correct me here), nor did he ever bother to fix the misconception.

Why am I saying this? Because this is bugging me:
Emphasis mine in both cases. Does this sound vanilla to you? It certainly doesn't to me, either of those. Besides, does anyone seriously believe that in this setup, names of the two most experienced mafia players would be given vanilla roles? Not me. (See why it is a bad idea to claim without any pressure now, Telika?)

I think this establishes that Telika and Vitek are unknown entities right about now; there is some connection between them, that's for certain, but the rest of us have no idea at all what it could be. Note also that neither of them was able to confirm the other is town, they just claim to think so. With that, let's proceed to TwilightBard's wagon, which is another case where Telika's behaviour raises all kinds of warning flags.

The dynamics of the wagon has already been described. I went first (L-6, #361), followed by Vitek (L-5, #367) and Rob who at first defended the Bard, for some inexplicable reason or other, and then pushed him to (L-4, #383), and Krypsyn soon afterwards (L-3, #384). At this point, the wagon takes a break in which we find Telika's #388 and #393, very much a "How do I suspect thee? Let me count the ways" affair concluded with a wonderfully decisive "Hm" (is it comfortable, the fence you're sitting on there?). Then Red_Baron replaces in and votes (L-2, #420), TwilightBard claims and Telika offers his #447. Now I already said so in #448 – I think the point raised in #447 is very valid (about TwilightBard insisting that some names are more town than others while being notorious mafioso "Red_Baron"), but that doesn't change the fact that Telika just puts it out there, fanning the flames more and more while doing his best to stay out of the heat (see also his #453 and the fairly incredible "At L-1, we're pretty close to get a day abruptly ended by a hammer strike. Which won't come from me, as I'm not comfy enough with the Twilightbard case"). And when the hammer falls (nmillar L-1, #438; RB unvotes to L-2, #456; Gazoinks L-1, #465; RB hammers #469), Telika takes his distancing to a logical extreme in 478:
Yes, we saw.

Night falls, day breaks, we get a corpse and the first thing that happens is, of course, Telika again hinting pazzer may have been killed by some other than scum, potentially a vigilante. Some people have already commented on this (I believe it were primarily Krypsyn and SPF), but the fact remains: this reeks heavily of someone knowing something about what happened at night. And frankly, it sounds an awful lot like confused scum trying to figure out why their selected target didn't turn up dead the next morning and wanting to lure out the real killer. It really doesn't help that Telika gets ridiculously defensive over this (c.f. his sarcasm at the end of #525) and pushes this angle with enormous conviction considering how much of a guesswork he paints it to be (#531). Throwing your weight behind a hypothesis, that's fine, and we all do that (and I'm doing that right now). But doing with with such a very flimsy one tells me there's something more to it than meets the eye.

All the cats are out of their respective bags. I absolutely do not believe you are vanilla, Telika, and I am convinced you know something about the events of this night. With all of the above, I am also finding it almost impossible to believe you could be on town's side, but I'll reserve my judgement until I hear an answer to this: what do you know that you are hiding from us?

vote Telika

1) The flavour is indeed something I would expect from a specific role (not sure about "powers", but at least specific winning solutions), I'm a bit surprised myself that it's just flavour. It says indeed that I obsess over nmillar's safety, but... I didn't feel any in-game incentive to do that (plus it's even less specific than Vitek's text : Vitek's mentions my innocence, mine doesn't mention his, so, if he hadn't voted for me, I'd still be suspecting him). Nothing I can say here. I have to deal with the strangeness of what I'm being given, the strangeness that already alarmed Nmillar ("what !? robbeasy would NEVER care for me, IT IS A LIE !!").

2) Yup, I was largely attacked by TwilightBard, and I tend to suspect people who suspect me (always the question "am I really interpretable as scummy, or are they just trying to pin something on me knowing very well who is and isn't"), and I tend to overcompensate this. Lately, Twilightboard and Krypsyn have been the most accusatory, and I had to to a little effort to see the townie aspect of it and not fall into the "scum YOURSELF" trap. Even in the moments where I have no patience for some accusations, and for some reasoning (I'm sorry, it's the case for the "all line of investigation must be transparent" belief because it is simply obviously technically wrong, and I don't care much about having offended Krypsyn about that to the point where he wants me to be scum now).

In the case of Twilightbard, yes, I'm completely distancizing myself from the vote. I saw this bandwagon build up very fast, and it made me ill at ease, as it was mostly a reaction to his behaviour towards me. I was implied, I was weary of counter-accusation reflexes, so I was careful about interpretating him as townishly as I could, and, actually, this was making me doubt of his guilt a lot. There was room for reading his stance as a mistake more than a strategy. And the bandwgon built up was weirdly fast there (but I think it was speeded up by the deadline, whether that one was real or postponed). There was even a line of argumentation by Nmillar that I found very weird, and that I started questionning. Robbeasy answered on his behalf, but his answer didn't really match Nmillar's stance.

However, while trying to make sense of that, I found some oddity in Twilightbard's position, and this distracted me, and I made a huge post about it. This allowed Nmillar to not answer my point. Given the increase of suspicion on Nmillar, I regret it.

So, I didn't vote TwilightBard, and I wasn't surprised by his innocence. I didn't vote Krypsyn either, for similar reasons : I fine his accusation mobiles and reasonning very wrong, but I consider there is room for "wrong not on purpose" in this game, even if people obviously prefer to be accused of having a secret plan instead. Also, you are wrong about my level of conviction for how things happened tonight, and, typically, this raises the question of how "honestly" wrong you are. But many of these are mistakes I often see in non-mafia contexts (in real life), so I can't base much on it.

Right now, just for the update. I tend to let myself pulled towards suspecting Nmillar and Gazoinks, trusting Pazzer and Vitek, and matching their suspicions with the history of TwilightBard's lynch. But I'm annoyed by two things. First, I still suspect JMich for the unchanged original reason. And it seems to be a bit either Nmillar or JMich. Secondly, Sirprimalform's "reckless abandon" here looks like convenient bandwagoning, and a scummy bandwagoning against Nmillar, which townises a bit Nmillar to my eyes as it scummizes Sirprimalform's a bit.

Also, I sometimes feel that I'm bascally the only one playing and pushing the things around, in a game where not posting at all is the best way to look pristine to the eyes of everybody. I get a bit fatalist about that.

Hmm - another mainly well constructed argument Baz. You did the same on day 1, unfortunately it was on a Town Vanilla...;o)

The only thing putting me off Telika as Mafia is the fact he couldn't understand why Pazzer was an almost perfect candidate for night-kill. You theorise he's a confused Mafia trying to lure out the real killer - truly?? We have had one night, one kill. In my book, that usually means Mafia - where is any evidence its 'other'?

I love how you've pre-empted anyone calling you out on your post by getting in there first - 'i fully expect to be accused of fishing' . Yes, you are fishing.

I do agree there is something different with Telika / Vitek, and their claims - but I'm still highly against the name - role connection. I still believe the names were handed out randomly, and the roles were assigned to names randomly as well....we have had NO evidence at all otherwise, so when you say..

'Besides, does anyone seriously believe that in this setup, names of the two most experienced mafia players would be given vanilla roles? Not me. '

YES. I can believe it, and so should we all. Bringing up the name/role connection to support your theory only weakens it for me, sorry.

Also - all the stuff about the two - why not bring it up on Day1? Why wait till Day2 if its bothering you that much?

pre-post edit : I see there is a response from Telika already.

@Telika - you don't mention Baz in your return at all, do you not find any of what he has said as suspect at all?

This is exactly what Baz is saying. We have no reason to believe it wasn't a mafia kill. However, see post 510:
Also, since I fear I may be misunderstanding you, you say that Telika not understanding why Pazzer was a "perfect nightkill" makes him look townie, or mafia? Because Telika is the one that suggested it might not be a mafia kill.

But that's the entire point of my argument – there isn't any evidence, yet Telika acts like there is. From which I deduce he knows something, because from where I'm standing, I absolutely don't see where his conviction comes from.
…
In this case, there actually is some evidence to support this theory. If player names (meaning the in-game player names) are linked with the flavour (and from TwilightBard / "Red_Baron", we know they are), then it only makes sense that this flavour somehow ties to role. And Red_Baron actually said so in #566 (people are leaking information left right and centre in this game, and I can't begin to tell you how annoyed I am by that).
Re-read. I was chalking a lot of Telika's oddness to his newbie status. But now he's out of probation period, and it hasn't gotten better. Quite the opposite, actually.

I'm always careful about my feeling on people who accuse me, so, I don't know really about his last post. There are a couple of points where I kinda agree, actually. I was doubting TwilightBard's guilt and was a bit alarmed by the bandwagon buildup, but I had no specific reason to point out in his defense (I really think he had played badly, but I also felt it could easily be mere errors from him), and, suddenly, I had found something that made him look even more strange, and I pointed it out. It was one element against him, not sufficient to convince me, but I felt I had to mention it (maybe he was indeed mafia). It felt a bit weird, as I felt I was arguing against my impression, but with the idea that my impression could be wrong, and the voters could be right. So, in a way, Bazilisek's post is quite accurate on that : it echoes very well the feeling I had. I had indeed the impression of fueling a fire that I was positionning myself mostly against. And I felt a bit responsible to encourage a lynch I didn't really want. This is exactly the position that a mafia manipulator would have. But, I felt I had to share that one element, even if it was going a bit against these impressions of mine - especially as I wasn't trusting my impressions either.

And then, I try to imagine myself, if I was a mafioso having voted for someone else, and seen Pazzer killed instead. I would be confused, and quite sure something complicated had happened, and curious. Would I have posted about it ? I'm not sure, because I'd have more elements, enough to have a better view of the night events, and not require to raise the question and ask for opinions. But "if's" are difficult, and maybe I would have tried to launch a collective (direct or indirect) investigation on power roles. So, I think that Bazilisek's point here is also justifiable. This makes his post, well, not particularly scummy.

But again, I'm too implied to read it objectively, so, maybe I overcompensate my tendancy to consider my role obvious by now. Ah, also, yes, I have claimed town vanilia a few times. Forgot to answer this.

As for the rest of Bazilisek's behaviour, I don't know. I get no real reading from him, or Gazoinks (plus, I tend to mix up their names, so it adds a little necessary effort from me, to not merge them, or let my impression on one contaminate my impression on the other). But lately, I've started re-reading the thread systematically, and listiing all the futile town/mafia factors of each character, just to not forget insignificant details, and see if they accumulate somewhere. Bazilisek and Red_Baron/Quadralien happen to be those with empty entries so far (it's work-in-progress), which is due to their position on my to-do list, but also the fact than nothing 'strikes' me enough to pop in my mind immediately, so far. Or nothing that I remember right now. So, he's neutral to me for now.

Something else : sitting on the fence is seen as scummy. I must say, I find hyper-convinced accusations more suspect. But the fun thing that gets me thinking is how these matters echo real-life attitudes, and real-life oppositions between various attitudes... I find Mafia very interesting for that.

Could you provide post numbers please? I went over the thread very carefully trying to find that, but well, you tend to write a lot, so it isn't hard to miss things.