Mafia 2: Cage Match

Okay, so I was just going to come in and place a vote on Eyesack now that the deadline looms near, but I come home from work to find something interesting has happened. Before I touch that subject, however, I have to first deal with a iron I put in the fire last night. It's a shame there isn't more time in this day phase for it to cook, but that can't be helped.

So, I didn't mention it in my last post, but Eyesack asking who everybody thought the Mafia might target tonight is, as some people have already noted, suspicious. That's information which is more useful to the Mafia than it is to the town, and in fact sharing it could even be dangerous for the town since it can mislead important town power roles like a Doctor. But I didn't call Eyesack out on it, because I was very curious to see how other people would react to his question. More specifically, I wanted to see which people attempt to shut the topic down, which to me is indicative of townieness- scum don't even have to answer the question, they get value out of the situation just from letting other people answer it.

Green Machine immediately pointed out why this question is bad for the town, which makes him seem more like town. It's a bit unfortunate that someone else (someone who isn't all but confirmed town already) couldn't have chimed in first, but I guess that just makes us even for me derailing his ploy earlier during day 2. Similarly, Otaku voiced concerns about the question, but the second instant of someone calling that question into question is less indicative of town than the first. After the first person explains why that's a bad question to ask, most of the town will fall in line and suddenly the scum need to object to the question too or they stand out (this is the reason I refrained from immediately pointing out the problem with the question myself).

This doesn't really make Otaku look notably scummier, since he could have just been a townie who didn't have a chance to reply until after Green Machine. It does make Green Machine look less scummy, but... Well, that wasn't super necessary at this point.

What DOES make Otaku look notably scummier is his current claim as cop. Green Machine has already zeroed in on this too, and I think he has done so for the exact same reason as me. It's because Otaku has claimed to be a cop, yet only a role cop would be able to ID my exact role as vanilla townie, isn't it?

Given this development, I'll still be placing a vote today, but it's not going to be on Eyesack.

Vote to Lynch: Otaku1889

Even if, somehow, Otaku really is a cop (which is at least theoretically possible, if Hans doesn't know that a cop who detects roles instead of alignment is normally called a role cop, but I find that extremely unlikely), we will have at least affirmed that his investigation of me wasn't fabricated. There's really no reason for me not to put my vote on him now, since this little gambit of his just shot him to the top of my scumlist. However... I will happily remain as unconfirmed town all game if it means we're lynching scum today.

Yes Ghosty, you have my reasoning correct. I'll again point out that my experience is limited, but from what I have read the information Otaku was claiming to receive would require three types of cops to obtain. A flavor cop would get the character name, a role cop would get the role name, and a standard cop would get alignment. Critically, even a role cop can only assume alignment if the role they discover is exclusive to one side; both vanilla townies and mafia goons return a result of "vanilla". Which is why I'm very curious to see what role Otaku flips as. I'm tempted to believe he was a role cop who was actually honest about who he investigated. Of course he should know that he didn't receive that level of information from his investigation, but perhaps he thought cop was strictly superior to role cop. In which case he was trying to earn Ghosty's trust by revealing information about him that is truthful. It would also explain why PurpleRam was killed on night 2.

Also I can confirm that our moderator does in fact know how the cop role works. My shot of it returned only Arc's alignment, not his character name or role name.

Ah, so that's what that meant...

The quote says this: "You are Balthazar (Sorcerer’s Apprentice), role cop."

The way I read it, I thought it mean that my role was "cop." Like "role: cop." Didn't realize there were different types of cops.

So, since it looks like I'm a Role Cop, I think there's been some miscommunication as to what I can do. "At night, you can target a player. You then learn what that person’s role is, both name and effect." I'm assuming Vanilla Town is a role, not an alignment thing? Am I wrong on that?

Being new to this game and frankly not having tons of time to post to it during the week I was trying to throw a wrench into the whole situation. This in an effort to get the Mafia second guessing themselves on who they think a protection role would pick for the night time. I did not think about it confusing the town more too. Which in hindsight is an oversight on my part.

GM: I did not vote for Ghosty as it would not help in more information gathering. With no one really listening to my arguments and still defending him besides yourself it would have started a bandwagon on myself as it would make me look scummy. I was already getting information back from him as he was defending himself to the points I called him out on. I am not 100% certain he is scum either. I was applying pressure though in the form of quotes and counter arguments to what he was saying. Then listening to his quotes and counter arguments.

You started a bandwagon with a role admittance and sure information because of your cop shot. I haven't had the luxury of being certain yet because of my role.

Bumbling scum here. I'm out. I clearly was in over my head here, tier-wise. Turns out I'm no good at being bad.

In the interest of going out cryptically, I'll leave you a helpful note that'll lead you to my fellow scum: I only ever lied three times this entire game. Do with that what you will. Or just go ahead and die now. Whatever.

Vote to Lynch: Otaku1889

Official Vote Count!
5 votes required to lynch.
Otaku1889: 4

Two hours. Two hours is all I can spare for the likes of you.

Well, that didn't go too well for Otaku. However, reading through the posts, I love the effort to really dig in and try to stick with the lie. Valiant effort! And you did all that creative thinking while on the toilet? We should all aspire to that level of commitment whilst pooping.

Okay, so back to the issue that was present in the last vote... I have yet to cast a vote. While Otaku was not on my radar (I still have suspicions about Eyesack, mainly), I can cast my vote now and trigger the lynch or I can wait to see if there is more information to gather. What's the play?

I would only be ending this an hour and half early, but don't want to "trigger any suspicions" by voting to end the day, nor do I want to continue drinking and Netflixing, forget to vote, then "trigger suspicions."

My vote: Otaku1889

I'll allow it this time, but in the future, please format your vote as "Vote to Lynch: X" . It makes it easier to find everyone's votes, although that has not remotely been an issue in the game so far tbh.

Vote to Lynch: Hans Gruber

Are we in Russia? I thought the outfit was just a cagey outfit...

"I have the power to see the truth!" Nicolas Cage shouted as he backed away from the crowd of Cages. "You peasants just don't understand!"
Undeterred, Nicolas Cage pushed him into a conveniently located trash compactor and turned it on.

Otaku1889 has been lynched. He was Balthazar (The Sorcerer's Apprentice), Mafia Rolecop.

It is now Night 3. Do not post here until day 4 begins, which shall be no later than Sunday at midnight. Please get me your night actions before that.

I am not here. You can no more lynch me than you can lynch the concept of Austrian economics. So there.

The Cages awoke to a bloodcurdling scream. Rushing to the source, they found Nicolas Cage impaled on a wooden stake. For some reason, he was wearing a set of plastic fangs, for reasons nobody could hope to decipher.

RedBeard has been killed. He was Peter Loew (Vampire's Kiss), Town Miller.

It is now Day 4. With 6 players alive, it takes 4 votes to lynch.

The deadline has been set to Monday, August 21, at midnight. You may now begin the interrogations.

So with only one scum left I feel that now is the time to make a mass roleclaim. It seems like it should be easy to sniff out the liar. I'm open to discussion on the point if there are good reasons for us not to do that, but if people agree then we should all say what our roles are and how those of us with night actions have used them each night. You all already know that I'm a jack-of-all-trades, but despite what I am requesting of others I will not be revealing how I have used my actions until everyone else has done so. I promise that I have a good reason for this.

FFFFFFFF--------

I missed it again. Oh well.

I admit I'm really confused now. Otaku appeared to be lying in order to protect Ghosty, but the act of doing so was first debunked by Ghosty himself. So either that was a brilliant sacrificial play or Otaku overextended himself when Ghosty called him out.

Otaku was about to be lynched, so he lied to protect himself: if we had believed his claim about being the town's cop, we would obviously not have lynched him. The fact that he WAS a role cop meant he did have information only a role cop would have, which would make his claim look more credible. But he messed up his claim because he said he was a cop, not a role cop- two similar but distinct roles that function differently.

Phone-posting, for reference. Keeping things brief (by my standards).

By the way, if anyone tries to argue that we don't have a cop after seeing someone flip as town miller I may be forced to slap them. If our moderator put that in there just to possibly fuck with my one-shot cop power then I will bestow upon him an appropriate amount of dick-punching, but I have a high level of confidence that no dicks need to be punched. I just hope that the cop has investigated people who are still alive. Still waiting for everybody to either claim or tell me why a mass claim is a bad idea.

Okay, so help me understand this...I'm trying to tell if there's some sort of connection between Otaku's role as a role cop and the town miller being killed back to back. How would RedBeard have showed up to a Mafia role cop if investigated? Even on Wikimafia it's a little unclear as to how he would show up to a Mafia role cop. GM, at the risk of having said dick punched...are you saying that there is for sure a cop in addition to Otaku?

Anyhow...I don't see a problem with the mass role claim. After all, with only one Mafia scum left, we should be able to do some great detective work to find the outlier. I have some ideas on how I will take in the information and I will leave it at that. So, GM, you directing this thing if it passes?Or is the mafi, I mean Ghosty, going to lead it? Nicolas Cage laughs his Nicolas Cage, crazy-eyed, laid back, toothy, gutteral laugh and awaits the group's decision.

I've spent much of this evening trying to think of whether a mass roleclaim is the correct play to make at this point or not... and ultimately, I cannot come to a decision.

The main disadvantage of a mass roleclaim is, obviously, revealing to the scum who and what our power roles are. This disadvantage is minimized when there are few or no night phases left in the game for the Mafia to take advantage of that information. We have, at most, two night phases left before the Mafia will win, obviously excepting the unlikely scenarios where the Mafia's nightkill is blocked in some way.

I'm not certain whether it's beneficial at this point to start a mass roleclaim, but Mafia is rarely a game of certainties. There's a lot we don't know, after all. But there's something I DO know, and that is that it's bad for the town to sit around silently. Nobody wants to be the first person to claim in a mass roleclaim, so I doubt anyone will volunteer to start things off before we've definitively decided to proceed with mass claiming. On the other hand, if everybody is going to silently wait for the town to decide not to mass roleclaim before they risk speaking up, we will get nowhere. I can't make the decision for the town that we won't do a roleclaim, but I can make the decision that we are going to do one, by getting the ball rolling. And, coincidentally, I'm probably one of the better people to first role claim because I'm a Vanilla Townie. Otaku1889 did have that right. My flavor is Rayford Steele, from Left Behind.

Since I just revealed my role, I'm going to take the liberty of picking who reveals their role next in order to force things to move along. Eyesack, it's your turn. After you reveal your role, you can choose someone else to go next.

A rolecop would return the role name, which in RedBeard's case would have been "miller", just as a godfather would return "godfather". Millers show up as "mafia" when investigated by normal cops. There is no reason for one to exist without a cop in the game, and a rolecop is a different role than a cop. So yes, since cop is a town specific role I am certain we have one. Also there is absolutely no connection between the rolecop being lynched and the miller being killed; the mafia would much rather the miller stay alive, as it is a negative role for a town to have since it confuses the cop.

Are you asking if I'm going to lead the mass roleclaim? In a way I have already done that by asking for it, but beyond that I am just going to analyze the results everyone gives, which each person here should do anyway.

You seem to think that Ghosty is the remaining member of the mafia. I truly wish I had more time on Friday to dig into why Otaku was claiming to know Ghosty's character name. Is our moderator giving that information as part of what is revealed for a rolecop? Or was that an additional part of the gambit by someone who thought that was what a regular cop got to learn? Or maybe Ghosty was going to tell Otaku that information and make his scum partner look more credible? I really doubt it was the third; Ghosty knows enough about this game to realize that Otaku claiming to be the cop with that information was suicide. If that is what happened then he has truly outsmarted me here with that bus. But I expect Ghosty will say that he is vanilla town if he roleclaims, as I think Otaku was being honest that Ghosty was vanilla, and Otaku knew that Ghosty is town because Otaku was part of the mafia.

Slightly ninja'd! And I was correct about Ghosty's claim.

I would like to add that I considered asking people to go in a specific order, but that seems like it will discourage people who aren't "taking their turn" from talking at all. So I'll just encourage you all to claim as quickly as possible so that we can move on to the next stage of discussion. Don't forget to list how you used your night actions each night, if you have any.

Hello all I am Town Bodyguard. I do not know what Alkeriece did the first night. My first night, night two, was to target Green Machine. I did this because he was one of the leaders of the town and I thought protecting him after his role claim would be good since the Mafia may want to stop his other JOAT abilities.

The third night I targeted L9O. I just tried to guess who on the fringe would get targeted by the Mafia. But I guessed wrong.

I would ask that TNS post role next.

Not posting my role out of turn, just following up with Green Machine. First, I suspect EVERYONE in the game, Ghosty was just an easy one to prod since I knew I would get a response (and, subsequently, was wrong that he would reply). Second, I want to return to this Otaku role cop, RedBeard Miller situation. As you stated, you are positive that there is a town cop. And, if investigated by the town, the Miller would return a "mafia" label to the town cop. So, it's clearly an advantage for the mafia to keep the Miller in the game if only to cause confusion. Instead of rambling on about all the scenarios, I can only conclude that they hadn't investigated RedBeard, assumed he had a power role, and now are pissed that they wasted it on the one role that would have provided some cover. What I'm getting at is...who do we think they investigated that steered them towards randomly selecting RedBeard? My guess is that they didn't find a protective role (bodyguard or doctor), they used one on Purple Ram (can't remember her role) and maybe one on Nihil? Thoughts on that topic?

Otaku said who he investigated, PurpleRam on night 1 and Ghosty on night 2. He wasn't alive on night 3, so those were the only two investigations he got. I definitely believe him about the PurpleRam investigation on night 1, as that explains why she died on night 2. As for Ghosty, either he is telling the truth with that as well, or Ghosty is mafia and Otaku was trying to create a cover for him. For reasons I've already explained I currently believe Ghosty is actually a vanilla townie.

As for why the mafia killed RedBeard, I think that's because several players had him low on their list of scum suspects. The only player whose role they knew was Ghosty, and since he is vanilla they preferred to hit pretty much anybody else. Fortunately for us they hit what is (hopefully) the only role less useful to us than a vanilla townie.

Also, go ahead and claim if you want. Same goes for L9O. TNS may not check this board for days, and we can't afford to stall the conversation that long.