Game 71.5

[Kat]

Appear, cast a vote for a suspicious player with a seemingly decent rationale (provided by other people's cases) and leave. It's pretty much the same.

I agree, even though I haven't read that game. (Was Lady Gaga really presented as a demon? I loooooove her.) Although he has said he doesn't have as much time to play on weekends.

[Kat]

Gah, look at the time. I have to go out for a bit. I will consider this more while I'm gone. But I would like to hear from Mal on who is a better person to lynch than LC today if we don't lynch Mina. The answer had better not be Kat, because I'm not voting her today.

[Mentat]

It's not that simple. It's more complex question which is known as safety. Linching both Pebble and Mina, we are 100% to get rid of a guilty; lynching Pebble only, we take 60-70% of success, which is extremely worse.

In fact, Mina herself said the same thing: we should vote out her if we aren't 100% sure of her innnocence. Are you?

Eh... no? But I think she's likely to be innocent. Most of the night killed players trusted her, she has put a ton of effort into this game, she has held unpopular opinions and defended them vigorously. She does tend to take things to the extreme, but that's just in character for her. Last game I vigged her because I thought she was guilty, I was right. This game I think she's innocent. Maybe she's just playing that much better, but if I leave logic aside (something I feel much more inclined to do after last game...) and place my trust in my gut and my mafia instincts... I feel we shouldn't lynch Mina.

Of all choices, this one looks most unappropriate to me.

Why? I thought you were fairly suspicious of LCOTNW. I seem to remember you were more suspicious of Kat, but I just don't think she's likely to be evil at all.

I agree, even though I haven't read that game. (Was Lady Gaga really presented as a demon? I loooooove her.) Although he has said he doesn't have as much time to play on weekends.

Other than placing his false finder clues, he hasn't done much otherwise. And yes, Lady Gaga was presented as a demon. I'm quite partial to her music videos, myself, though she didn't seem to be too popular...

I wish Sir Thursday came back, by the way.

[Sir Thursday]

OK, I'm back now. Mentat, LCOTNW and Kat are the choices, so I'm going to take a look over them and see what turns up.

[TheMalcolm]

Who looks more appropriate?

Mentat, you, Thursday, anybody. Somehow I trust LC more that all of you in sum.

I'm almost willing to come out and say that if Mina is innocent, Sir Thursday is too. I have no idea why else he would say he doesn't want to lynch Mina today, unless there's some Thursday-Mina partnership we haven't considered.

It's reasonable. Unless he is preparing going after me at final three.

If he is evil, he knows Mina that is innocent and defending her makes him looking better. Especially since it's evident that Mina will be lynched without any help from him. Due to his timing, he knows there is enough votes to end her.

Mal, do you think Mina has a partner?

Most likely, no.

I hate to say this, but _{it makes equal sense to lynch "Pebble's partner" (if she was evil) and then Mina, as it does to do it the other way around. Grrrr. Hate deviating from the plan.}

Unless we can't be in any way sure who might be Pebs' partner before a couple of more nightkills. All five of you are extremely unlikely.

In fact, I still hope for the game to end after Mina's lynch. Yeah, I know this is rather inconsistent with may statement she is 60-70% innocent... but the trouble is that everybody else is 80-90% innocent.

And good night, everybody.

[TheMalcolm]

Why? I thought you were fairly suspicious of LCOTNW.

You are confusing me with somebody else. I always trusted LC, till day 2, since 1) he can't be partnered with Spidey and 2) I strongly liked his idea of vig-killing Spidey and lynching somebody else, it was very beneficial for innocents. It's two reasons to trust him, whilst for other players I have one reason at most to trust.

Now, actually gone.

THe day ends at 11AM my time, i might return before this or might not. I leave you all to make a choice. Just, please, don't go to night because of one more last-minute reveal, ok? :)

[Mentat]

You are confusing me with somebody else. I always trusted LC, till day 2, since 1) he can't be partnered with Spidey and 2) I strongly liked his idea of vig-killing Spidey and lynching somebody else, it was very beneficial for innocents. It's two reasons to trust him, whilst for other players I have one reason at most to trust.

You're right, I was recalling your tiers in a previous post but had them mixed up.

Now, actually gone.

THe day ends at 11AM my time, i might return before this or might not. I leave you all to make a choice. Just, please, don't go to night because of one more last-minute reveal, ok? :)

Can't make you any promises there.

[Sir Thursday]

Right, Mentat first. He brought the possibility of LCOTNW being a finder out into the open here. Talking about this sort of thing out in the open is anathema to me. Roled players need protecting, not being shoved into the limelight like this. Then there's this post:

Okay, at this point I'm pretty sure that barred extremely eccentric FM play you're going to be targeted to die tonight, Mr. maybe finder. Maybe there's a healer alive. If there is, I urge him to heal LCOTNW. But maybe there isn't. If there isn't, and you die tonight, and it's number 3, we lose a CI, which may not be of much use to us tonight, but might be a determining factor tomorrow or the next day or whenever we reach endgame.

Which really rubs me the wrong way. If this game had symps, I'd be going all in on Mentat being one after this comment.

Did you read my post? How do you know you'll survive the night? Give us your CI if you have one.

Not a huge fan of this either. Killers are going to be afraid of the heal, so they'll want any finder info as soon as possible so they can plan accordingly. Having said that, the healer threat is a problem Mentat himself raised...

Having said all that, Ment's general tone seems quite inno-ish. I mentioned that were there symps, Mentat would be one of my top suspects for that position, but the lack of them makes me feel quite good about him overall. It's an aggregation of a number of statements like the underlined below, that lead me to that conclusion, I think.

Ouch! What a spamfest...

I'm quite firmly in the Mina camp, and thus would rather lynch Pebbles. I don't want her lynched before I have a chance to go on a mammoth re-read looking for possible partners. I now think the chances of Spider being evil are almost 100%, so at the very least we'll get 2 FM before we go down.

The logical thing would be to lynch both claimants. I want to see how likely the different partnerships are, though, to see how many options we have.

I'm definitely voting Pebbles today barring some extreme weirdness (LCOTNW, this would be the perfect moment to come out and say, actually, I WAS the finder, tadaaaaaa!!!!).

That's something I'd generally expect an inno to say.

So for the moment, I'll lower Mentat on my list of suspects. I would like to ask him a question though: here you say you trust Kat. Since I'm about to do a reread on her, any chance you could elucidate on why that is?

[Mentat]

I would like to ask him a question though: here you say you trust Kat. Since I'm about to do a reread on her, any chance you could elucidate on why that is?

We agree on many things, and her tone seems pretty carefree. I think her game play until now has been pretty consistent, and seemingly sincere. None of the night-killed players have been specially suspicious of her either. My only problem with Kat is that she hasn't been aggressive enough. I'd like her opinions to seem more distinctive and deductive... and I'm not sure they always are. Despite this, I do trust her. I'm not sure where Malc is coming from, but I find it irritating he behaves with such conviction without putting forth enough arguments. Whatever.

[Sir Thursday]

I trust my partner to send in the night action to kill me just to confuse everyone. So I'm going to go investigate the inside of my eyelids.

Wait, what? :blink: I don't understand this joke as there doesn't seem to have been any context to it. I'll assume it's a joke for the time being though.

Coming out of the end of Day 2 discussion about whether or not to switch to Lany, Kat looks pretty good to me. She didn't want the distraction, which seems like the right mindset to me. Plus, she was holding her ground and generally being decisive and assertive.

Fuck it. I'll vote for Lany, even though I don't really suspect her. I suspect Thursday a lot more, but it's way too late in the day for me to do anything about it, but I can totally see why Mal almost pushed a lynch mob on him.

My entire case on Pebble was already made by Lany earlier, and revolves around Pebble being the most likely candidate for Spider's evil partner, but as is probably 100% obvious, I'm unsure about whether Spider was evil and can't get it out of my head. I'll quit suspecting Mentat short of an evil result on him, because everything he says I agree with, and my suspicion of him is mostly driven by paranoia.

If the bad guys turn out to be Sir Thursday and LC, I don't even want to go into spoilers. But I'm continuing to stand by my original plan to lynch someone who could be evil independent of Spider, for principle's sake.

Lany. Sorry. You're not my #1 suspect, but I can't lynch my #1 suspect.

This is rather weakwilled - a sudden change from the assertiveness of the previous day. Going with the flow tends to be something I associate with scum, since it's a safe and easy option when things aren't pointed at you. Particularly when you claim to have other suspicions.

Here is her later explanation on that subject:

I said I'd address this and now that I'm done with the parade, I'll try to explain.

So on Day 3, I thought the most likely roles for the innocents were a finder and a vig. That's it, no healer, but there obviously was one, so I guess I was wrong about at least part of that. Anyway. Having that particular role combination meant there were most likely only 2 FM, which...I hope it's true, because otherwise if Pebble was evil and Mal is her partner, then I don't know who their third partner would have been since we haven't lynched anyone else, which means if we lynch you today, then we're finished. Back on topic, on Day 3, under that assumption, either Spider was evil and his partner was you or Pebble, or there were two independent evil people. You may recall that I pushed lynching Gertrude and vigging Spider because I thought one of them was evil but couldn't discern which one. On Day 3 I still wanted to lynch someone who couldn't be Spider's partner, whereas everyone else seemed content with trying to lynch Pebble or you as possible partners to Spider. My goal was to lynch someone independently suspicious, but of all of the people who fit that profile, Lany was gaining momentum but I suspected her least. Then, LC was doing his annoying not-finder routine, and that pushed the lynch so late in the day that all of the possible lynch options were people I didn't like. Being stubborn about my lynch strategy, the only person that fit into that was Lany. I'm glad we didn't lynch her now, in retrospect, considering we now know she's innocent, but I wouldn't have felt super bad about doing it then.

Playing under the assumption that there were only 2 FM at that point seems like bad play to me. You go by the worst case scenario unless you've got a good reason to discount it. I don't see a good reason here.

Well, if we did have all those roles, we obviously totally fucked up our hand.

This quote shows that she had considered the possibility of the innos having more roles. She doesn't sound especially dismissive here, so what lead her to dismiss the possibility of more killers in the game to match?

On the subject of lynch plans: I hate them. They promote tunnelled thinking, and if that tunnel is not pointing in the right direction, you're doomed. They also give the killers concrete scenarios to strategise against, which I dislike doing - the killers have to steer the ship if they don't know where it's heading, and it's much easier to catch the killers when they're steering. Kat, on the other hand, really likes plans. This is more of a philosophical difference than anything else, but I nevertheless don't like it.

Going to do a read of LCOTNW before I come to any conclusions though.

[Sir Thursday]

OK, so the focus of any investigation into LCOTNW should obviously be his pretend finder hints. I note that most of these come on Day 2. Then we get to late Day 3 without a finder reveal. There's an obvious void there, and one would have expected the scum to try to exploit it - people were just begging for a finder to reveal themselves, so why not take a shot at it? If LCOTNW was scum, surely he would have chanced his arm after having laid all the groundwork like that? The only way it's not going to work is if there's a counterclaim from the real finder, and even with that, there'd be enough doubt on the real finder that they'd probably be able to get him/her lynched the next day. I just don't see the percentage in him backing down and saying he made it all up.

Sorry for the lack of quotes here, but I'm running out of readthrough energy at the mo, plus this question is the central one, I think. Can anyone think of a good reason why LCOTNW would have backed down from revealing if he were scum?

[Sir Thursday]

I need to go and clean my kitchen. When I've finished that, I'll cast my vote. Leaning towards Kat at the moment - it's between her and Mentat (unless someone comes up with a good answer to my question) and I've got better vibes about Mentat as it stands.

[Mentat]

Sorry for the lack of quotes here, but I'm running out of readthrough energy at the mo, plus this question is the central one, I think. Can anyone think of a good reason why LCOTNW would have backed down from revealing if he were scum?

It was pretty obvious there was no finder by that point. LCOTNW could have revealed, but even if we had believed him we would all be wondering why he wasn't dead after 1 or 2 days. By backing down he ensures he can make it to endgame without his finder claim getting in the way.

I'm not really suspicious of Kat, and I don't think I'll be able to make it back before the day ends. I think I'm probably going to leave my vote where it is. Odd-even rule means we won't lose a day if we lose a lynch anyway.

There just was no chance to discuss amongst ourselves. Kat appeared too briefly and Sir Thursday got into action far too late for me.

[Kat]

That other thing was clearly a joke. :P

Kat, on the other hand, really likes plans. This is more of a philosophical difference than anything else, but I nevertheless don't like it.

Well, have you noticed that I have a hard time sticking to my plans? <_< It's a play style difference; I've been playing with other people who like plans since I first started playing, which was a long time ago. Whiskeyjack is the king of plans when he's innocent, and considering he wins just about every game ever, I don't think it's unreasonable to want to emulate that playing style. Of course, he's also much less lazy than I am, and better at just about everything, but I can write down names well.

I ask you, since you're thinking about voting for me: who would my partner(s) have been? Mina? Pebble? Spider?

I agree with Mentat on his reasons for LC's not-finder-claim. The later story of, "Well, I was just messing with you because I hate role speculation" really rings false to me. So I'm going to vote for him today.

LCONTW

[LCOTNW]

It was pretty obvious there was no finder by that point. LCOTNW could have revealed, but even if we had believed him we would all be wondering why he wasn't dead after 1 or 2 days. By backing down he ensures he can make it to endgame without his finder claim getting in the way.

I'm not really suspicious of Kat, and I don't think I'll be able to make it back before the day ends. I think I'm probably going to leave my vote where it is. Odd-even rule means we won't lose a day if we lose a lynch anyway.

There just was no chance to discuss amongst ourselves. Kat appeared too briefly and Sir Thursday got into action far too late for me.

Got back earlier than expected. I was out of town this weekend for family obligations. I just have a few minutes now, but I should be able to return in about 3 hours which is before the deadline. I understand why I am a viable lynch target after the finder nonsense, but I am disappointed that the case against me is apparently gut and meta-based, rather than based on partner analysis (other than Mina's), or other specific actions, which makes it difficult for me to defend myself. To Mentat in particular, I will say this in my defense:

Why would I bring up going to night as an option on Day 1? I did vote Spider which made his lynch dangerously close if I was partnered with him. If I was guilty, but not Spider's partner, why wouldn't I vote for Gert who had more votes? Also, I don't recall you commenting on my plan to have us build lynchtrains rather than lynch Spidey. If you believe Mina is innocent, then you have to believe that I am partnered with Pebbles who would have to be guilty. Do you really see me as a more likely partner to Pebbles than anyone else?

If there are any other questions, I'll try to respond with as much time as possible before the deadline.

[LCOTNW]

That other thing was clearly a joke. :P

The later story of, "Well, I was just messing with you because I hate role speculation" really rings false to me. So I'm going to vote for him today.

KAt, you are misrepresenting what I did. Again.

MINA was speculating that I was not roled. That was incredibly poor play on her part. I put the smileys in to try and send a subtle message. Obviously that did not work out like I hoped, but instead of criticizing that decision will you look at why it benefits the innocents?

Okay, I have to run for a couple of hours at least. Please don't lynch me!!!!!

[Kat]

KAt, you are misrepresenting what I did. Again.

MINA was speculating that I was not roled. That was incredibly poor play on her part. I put the smileys in to try and send a subtle message. Obviously that did not work out like I hoped, but instead of criticizing that decision will you look at why it benefits the innocents?

Okay, I have to run for a couple of hours at least. Please don't lynch me!!!!!

Look, we were all expecting a finder reveal on Day 3. Everyone was. Except for you. Pretty much everyone had eliminated themselves as a candidate for the role by that point, all speculation about each other aside, so making a point was kind of pointless, wasn't it? From the POV of an innocent, can you see why being messed with would really be irksome, considering how much it affected our lynch choices that day? It didn't benefit the innocents at all; it just stalled us and stalled us.

Sir Thursday- Everyone talks about there being 3 FM, but I haven't seen anyone except for Mina discuss who the 3 people on that team would have been. All the partnership speculations have been just that: partnership speculations. Plus, as soon as you introduce the term 'worst case scenario' into things, it means you buy into a strategic way of playing the game, which you said you don't even like. So.... :rolleyes:

[Mina Martell]

I'm...not lynched?

Yay. :D Now I'll beat Gertrude in post counts. (I'm already far ahead of her in word count.)

I...dunno. I already thought Kat and mentat were innocent, and Sir Thursday's turnaround on me makes no sense if he was evil. He could have easily got me lynched today and LCOTNW or Kat lynched tomorrow.

Well, LCOTNW was my second suspect after TheMalcolm, so I could compromise on him. And of course, he never answered my most recent questions. I will feel bad if he's innocent, though, because if I hadn't badgered him over his "role," he would have been killed on N3.

But dammit. I was kind of hoping that after my lynch, Malc wouldn't be able to explain his own survival. Now everyone will say, "Oh, they just left him around to keep Mina occupied."

If I'm in endgame, then sorry, guys, but I'm going to fight like hell so as not to get myself lynched tomorrow. I think I've done a few things beyond attacking Malc that strongly imply my innocence (oh, yeah, mentat, I've got a KICKASS defence to those who think I could be Spidey's partner). The whole "resigned to my lynch" thing only applied if you lynched me AND had one last lynch to catch a baddie afterward.

But guys, I know you all think this is just Mina with her tunnel vision and crazy theories again,...but if the game doesn't end with an LCOTNW lynch, can you at least consider Malc as an option? Like, at the very least, just reread him, the same way you reread all the other players today? And maybe downgrade him from "CI" to "VPI"? It's frightening. You all keep on saying, "Wow, this is bad logic," or "Malc, I don't agree with you." And Malc keeps on changing his position on me to fit with that of the group--from suspecting me more than Pebble, to suspecting Pebble more than me, to thinking I'm evil, to thinking I'm a deluded innocent. And yet, people keep referring to him as a CI. It's like everyone has a collective blindspot. LCOTNW has a good point that giving an extra vig kill to the FM is overpowered, but everyone has been saying all game that 2 FM vs. 10 innocents was a lot, right?

[Sir Thursday]

Look, we were all expecting a finder reveal on Day 3. Everyone was. Except for you. Pretty much everyone had eliminated themselves as a candidate for the role by that point, all speculation about each other aside, so making a point was kind of pointless, wasn't it? From the POV of an innocent, can you see why being messed with would really be irksome, considering how much it affected our lynch choices that day? It didn't benefit the innocents at all; it just stalled us and stalled us.

Sir Thursday- Everyone talks about there being 3 FM, but I haven't seen anyone except for Mina discuss who the 3 people on that team would have been. All the partnership speculations have been just that: partnership speculations. Plus, as soon as you introduce the term 'worst case scenario' into things, it means you buy into a strategic way of playing the game, which you said you don't even like. So.... :rolleyes:

Well, it seems quite plausible to me that the three FM could have been Spidey, Pebbles and one other. I felt like I could dismiss the possibility of there being three scum left alive prior to us lynching Pebbles because of the way things went down. That was my Worst Case Scenario, but I felt I could eliminate it. Besides, I have nothing wrong with playing strategically. I'll always keep in mind the state of the game, the number of chances we've got to lynch correctly, etc. But having a concrete "We will lynch X then Y then Z" just doesn't sit well with me for the reasons I've previously stated.

[Kat]

I don't know if we're actually going to manage to lynch someone today, and probably not LC. He's not going to vote for himself, and Mal is probably asleep by now, and Sir Thursday won't lynch him apparently. <_<

Hate this. I just want to lynch people and have the game end, right? How come we've had fewer lynches than non-lynches?