Mafia Round 3

Thanks for the prompt, Hans, I'll do my best to live up to the high expectations. Firstly, last game was unique in several ways. I thought that the two players replacing others halfway through were pretty obviously town as mafia roles would be less likely to step away, but that was just my assumption. Also, I had a lot of voting history to look at and wasn't swayed by much of the discussion when reading through it. I'd say it was a little easier to read the situations.

I do have a few takeaways, though, so here goes (although, as has been pointed out, without hearing from 2 players yet, there's a right to change my mind in the future):

1) Still sticking with believing GM's claim as Miller. There's a lot there. Ghosty's snarky reply about the town imploding later was awfully pessimistic. We've seen that type of wording before from him and I put a lot of emphasis on it, so I think he's living into his town role quite well. Nihil's proposal, on the other hand, has largely been overlooked or dismissed by mostly everyone. Although I don't agree with him in lynching GM, I can't decide what it says about Nihil beyond him simply offering an alternative. Hmmm...

2) Otaku's talking a lot this game...I mean, A LOT. Compared to his prior game as mafia where he didn't say anything until he put his own head in the noose, I'd say that he's not overly suspicious. Same goes for Like9, without the placing of said head in said noose.

3) Beyond stating the obvious, Hugh has placed himself square in the sights of the town. The latest post is trying to clean up that image, but may be too little too late. However, I'd have to question: Is his behavior much different than KSS from last game? That's an honest question. Is he just imploding or is there enough to go on that he's really wishy washy?

4) My suspicions lie with Mack_Coffins. Fairly active at the beginning, trying to be humorous and somewhat participating. As soon as L9 placed his vote on Mack, utter silence.

5) I have to comment on Ralphie's nonsensical, bullshit hippie description of the perfect pizza. Figs?! I mean, the whole thing sounded delicious, but there's just some things you don't tell everyone about in a public setting.

Those are the thoughts that come to mind. I'll read back through and see if I missed anything. Again, once we hear from everyone and go through one lynch/night phase, we'll have lots more information to go on.

Alright, just to put this out there, yes I babbled like a goofy moron last game. I actually had a lot of fun doing it too. It was nice playing the "oddball paranoid investigator". That said, I'm trying to move past the style into something that lasts longer than day 1. So forgive my fumbling at times.

Hans- due to my above paragragh, I'm probably making a newguy mistake when I pointed at Otaku. It was because of this that I decided not to vote just yet. You're very watchful eye on everyone's posts further convinces me that you are Town labeled on my list. But that could easily be a trap. I'll just go with my instinct for now though.

I'll have to write a little more thoughts later as I am still working until around midnight.

I didn't respond for a day because I was relying on my phone to give me emails when a new post was made, google for some reason decided it wouldn't let me know of all the activity until 8pm today and on top of that it took me over an hour to read multiple long form posts on where the suspicion is.

First world immersion breaking problems aside I'll attempt to keep my response short and to the point and answer a few questions asked of me.

I'm not about to go back and grab quotes from the last 3 pages so here's the hard questions I could remember at the time of writing this. If I missed something let me know and I will get around to it.

I'm not confident in lynching anybody (L9Orhans aside) because he was first to sway the noose in my direction, and I will point the finger right back to any man who would try to take my life as a simple knee-jerk response, one I will stand by til I swing because I'm 10x more skeptical of somebody willing to hang over my own ego and preference on how to properly use tropical fruit and where it should enter the body.

In response to Hans, I'm not a fan of any bandwagoning, I prefer to be an outlyer and watch as things unfold, chiming in when I feel is necessary because I will be very upset if I cast the wrong vote on a whim (unprovoked mind you), and at current I have less suspicion on Hugh because I know Kevin and his personality, I see him being invoked through Hugh by proxy. I'll chock this up for the moment as him being somewhat new, perhaps overconfident in his moment of making a few posts when the spotlight had been turned on him and stringing together a few flaws that the information heavy hitters would quickly throw him under the bus for.

I'm not confident to say I'm ready for anybody to hang at current. I know this might make some people think I'm scum by association but aside from being labeled a narcissist for (attempting) to be in character for my forum persona I don't have anything worthy of chancing an innocent being killed this early on with many new players and 2 that have not come out of their hiding spots to give their input.

I'm most trusting in GM as miller only because nothing has come forward to counter what he says as a likely truth.

As far as who may be scum I'm suspicious of mutes and more apt to bandwagon on them at the moment if need be, I hate silence as much as the next man when there are murderers about, but not all enemies keep quiet.

I'm not particular on Hans's aggressiveness, this could mean he's forcing opinions out to turn the town on each other or actually trying to piece the puzzle together by actually asking the hard questions and what everyone thinks of their neighbors at the moment. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt at the moment, but there is an air of overconfidence that is either simply how he carries himself in usual banter (I can't be bothered at current to sift through the previous games at the moment to reference this, I would rather get a feel for everyone's playstyle as we go forward instead of studying up for possible tells one may have right now, like I said, it took an hour to read 3 pages of posts since I was out of the loop.) Either way it spiked my mistrust if just for a moment, just because I'm spiteful in the face of overconfidence and ambiguity.

God damn it I've written an essay just like the rest of you lot, so much for keeping it short.

I hold these truths to be self-evident.
1. Posting lengthy defenses of other players when you don't know their alignment for certain is a bad idea;
2. Using a vanilla town claim as evidence not to lynch somebody makes no sense, as any scum player can claim to be vanilla very easily;
3. Basing your decision on someone with an unconfirmed alignment based on somebody else with an unconfirmed alignment is probably the worst idea ever, somewhere between giving out your bank account details to Nigerian princes and placing money down that the Detroit Lions will be good this year!!!!
Now, with that in mind, watch as I do all three of these things. Hey, the Nigerian prince seemed legit.
 


I think DSilv was right on the money when he compared Hugh's behavior to that of KevinSafeSpacey last game. The precise reason for their actions are different, but nevertheless, I'm jacked up on even more caffeine than I normally am, and am going to take on the mysterious case of Hugh Jorgan. Call me Hans Gruber, public defender. This is going to be a two parter, the first being my case and the second being my new read, as well as answering a solid question that Ghosty asked.

In defense of my client, I offer to you exhibit A.

Hugh Jorgan wrote:Cant get this to quote anyone from my phone. But hans of thos 3 i would say L90 is the most suspicious.

I havent counted up the votes but i know im close to being lynched Thanks for having me this round whatever happens. Learned alot and had fun.

At this point, Hugh is assuming his lynch is inevitable. But look closely at the demeanor in this post. It's very similar to KSS's insufferable smugness at the end of day 1 last game, where he was waiting to point and laugh at everyone for being wrong. In this case, Hugh has accepted his death with dignity, and is essentially owning up to his mistakes, and not blaming anyone for (mis)lynching him. If that's not good enough, when he answered my question, he did not take the easy road of being suspicious of LiteralGrill, who several other players have voiced concerns about. Rather, he said he was suspicious of L9O, who basically nobody is suspicious of. He's horribly wrong, but as I said in an earlier post, you can be wrong and still be town.

Exhibit B is a meta defense. I do not like how fast this wagon sprung up. Just about everybody is either actively voting for, or at the least implying they soon will be, Hugh. There is no alternate wagon, and there's 0 non-RVS votes on any other player (other than Hugh's own, admittedly absurd, vote), unless Orphans is actually a double voter and that isn't just a bookkeeping mistake by Arc. I would wager there is at least one scum player actively voting for Hugh, with the rest of them either fanning the flames or laughing in the distance. This is a dangerously circular argument, but I hope I'm getting my point across.

Now for my final Exhibit C. I challenge everyone to read through Hugh's posts from two perspectives. First, read through them as though he was a town n00b, clear on the rules but unclear on the etiquette. Second, read through as though he was Mafia trying to deceive people. Then tell me how the second perspective makes a goddamn bit of sense. The only way that would even be possible is if scum don't have daychat, because otherwise, they could easily tell him to knock it off. No, the town perspective makes significantly more sense. The play may be terrible. But, as a corollary to my earlier statement, you can be terrible and still be town.

This concludes part 1, and also concludes my willingness to act as defense attorney. These are extraordinary circumstances, so I won't be defending other players again for the rest of the game. Hugh, repay my generosity. First of all, you can't count yourself in your top 2 townies. Who is your other one? Furthermore, your arguments against other players have boiled down to gut feelings, which is not doing you any favors. If you could find specific lines of text that you didn't like, that would be a good start. If you can't quote, just point out the post in question, and hopefully we can figure it out. Finally, quit being belligerent. I'm hopping off the bandwagon for now, but I won't hesitate to get back on if you give me reason to.

I see Mack has ninja'd me. Not hopping on this bandwagon gives him points in my book. Same with Nihil.

Now, for my new vote.

Vote to Lynch: LiteralGrill.

I mentioned in my previous brick that I thought there was at least one Mafia member on the Hugh bandwagon, and LiteralGrill is the one I suspect. Refusing to answer my question irritated me, but that's not why I'm voting. She's taken the absolute safest approach imaginable. First off, in her first post, she commented on nothing relevant other than GM's miller claim, echoing what everyone else thought, as Nihil and GM pointed out. That's the sort of cautious approach that is a null tell. Town could be confused and uncertain, scum could want to stay out of the crosshairs.

Flash forward to post 2. For all of her cautiousness and talk of a lack of information, she still proceeded to jump on the Hugh Jorgan wagon. This is a very opportunistic play. As I mentioned last post, just about everyone who has posted in the game had posted suspicions of Hugh at the very least, so voting for him is very uncontroversial. But there's two reasons that bothers me. Primarily, it's opportunistic. Piling on somebody with two or three votes on them is very popular for scum, especially inexperienced scum, because it allows them to fit in with the town while also bringing everyone one step closer to a mislynch. At the same time, it lets you dodge the fallout from the mislynch, as you can pass all the blowback onto the people that started the wagon.

Post 3 was the most damning. Here, LiteralGrill voices concerns about having random accusations thrown her way, and reiterates her concern about a general lack of evidence. But she just voted for Hugh, so apparently there's at least enough evidence floating around for that. Answering a question has a lot less impact on the game than bringing somebody 50% of the way to being lynched, as well. So her actions do not match her words. Finally, she makes an observation about me trying to manufacture evidence. I'm not sure if she means that as a good or bad thing, whether she thinks I'm trying to bring evidence to light and therefore town, or fabricating garbage cases and therefore scum. It doesn't matter which one she meant, though, because either way, that should be sufficient evidence to put me on the town or scum list, and yet she refused do that. All in all, I would say LiteralGrill's statements don't add up.

So, LiteralGrill. I have voted to lynch you, and at least two other people have voiced concerns about your behavior. Surely this is enough incentive for you not to worry about any potential accusations, because now you're going to have to deal with clear and present ones. List your top two town and scum, but leave Green Machine and Hugh Jorgan out of consideration. You can keep your vote where it is, if Hugh remains your top suspect.

FML I should have gone to sleep two hours ago. Quickly, Ghosty, I will answer your question. My top three scum reads have changed since you asked that question, but it remains a valid one. My top three scumspects are, in ascending order, you, Otaku, and LiteralGrill. Now for each combination.

Ghosty and Otaku: Plausible. I think he was too quick to clear you, which is one major reason why he's so high on my scum list. But I'm sure as hell not jumping down that rabbit hole right now.

Otaku and LiteralGrill: Very unlikely. If we lynch LiteralGrill and she flips scum, I'll be a lot more willing to cut Otaku some slack, as he was one of the first to voice suspicions of her.

LiteralGrill and Ghosty: Plausible. You two have almost nothing in the way of interactions. The same could be said of several pairings in this game, so that doesn't mean a ton. It does mean that if LiteralGrill flips scum, you two will be flipping spots in my power rankings.

You two meaning Ghosty and Otaku. LiteralGrill flipping scum would not mean that Ghosty is even more scum than her. That would be absurd.

My, oh my. There has been a lot of talk today. The action will probably continue and I'm sure someone is going to post before I get this one out. I try not to send you all fast food like a pizza delivery joint. Rather, I prefer to take the time and carefully construct a delectable provision and yet, keep it simple. This holds true for my banter in game one as well. So with two huge Goliaths posted, I'll try to dish out some of my own thoughts on the current state and then address anything that I feel needs addressed.

First things first, others have pointed out Hugh seems like he could be playing like I did game one. That is a good point. I even (sort of) hold the opinion that there is not really much of a reason to lynch Day One unless someone is spitting scum like a sewage drain. I also must confess I jumped on a convincing bandwagon, everyone had pretty decent points as to why "I" should pick Hugh as my "Number One Undesirable". Lastly, I think if I detract my vote I'll be ostracized and if I stay in my current vote, others may see that as an overall stupid too. But I think I'll keep my vote where it is. Now on to the more personalized section.

Mack- Thank you for finally hopping on and rejoining the game. You seemed rather suspicious and to be real here, I thought you were sitting back and playing Puppet Master. Controlling the game from behind the scenes. I'm still not convinced otherwise.

Ghosty- I'll keep it noted that you are unable to post today. I'm glad you are back to your novel posting self.

Hans- If you're town, you're rather aggressive lately . Which is fine but I think you may be going on the offense a little too much and you've sort of floundered around. That's not too bad I guess because we are all a little lost at this point. I feel like we are all trying to read into everything a little too much but maybe that's just a silly opinion of this newbie.

First I want to say real quick that - editing snafu aside - Otaku's latest post was exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to see from him. I'm backing off the scum read for now and putting him at neutral.

Now to the real meat of my post. Hans is on top of things, as usual. I will discuss my perspective on a few a his points.

I too had noticed how similar this was feeling to KSS on the first day of the previous game. There are a couple of differences. KSS was largely just screeching at one other player, while Hugh has been slinging shit everywhere. More notably KSS went down having never claimed his power role, while Hugh has claimed vanilla townie with nearly a week left in this day phase. Of course he did that while mounting something of a defense, which KSS didn't do last game. Overall the feel is very similar, and just as lynching KSS was inevitable last game lynching Hugh will be inevitable this game unless there is a serious change of course.

The speed of this bandwagon is not something I am terribly surprised by. There are a couple of other scum reads floating around, but Hugh has fallen into the category of "If you are town you are worthless and we won't miss you." He has some major work to do in order to get out of the grave he was digging for himself. I do agree with the suggestion that at least one scum is probably currently on the wagon. I was the first person to cast an actual vote for his lynching, and since the town had pretty much accepted me as confirmed town by then it is a very easy place for scum to put their vote. However it's important to note that this is true whether Hugh is scum or not; although I doubt more than one is on the wagon if he's actually scum.

I'm much less willing to consider Hans's Exhibit C as valid evidence. His conduct makes no sense as either town or mafia. He is first called out as suspicious by Hans early on page 3. He speaks in scum-tongues until around the middle of page 4, where he thinks his lynch is inevitable and kisses his ass goodbye. Then he finally sobers up and attempts a defense when he realizes that he might yet get out of this. This seems like someone who intended to play a certain way and was reluctant to change it, but that says nothing to me about their alignment. He was confronted by town and didn't change for quite a while, so it's entirely believable to me that his scum partners were also telling him to cut it out and he didn't listen to them either. I haven't actually been on the mafia side of the game yet, so I don't know how likely it is for someone to just ignore their scum partners like that.

I'm not sure whether not hopping on the bandwagon gives anyone points in my book. I maintain that votes are incredibly valuable information for the town to look back on. But with two players that haven't posted at all since confirmation (and thus are absolute wild cards) there is real concern that the day phase might end too early. Discussion is crucial right now.

Evidently this post of mine is only addressing the first of the four most recent posts by Hans. I'll read the rest and possibly add more later.

Green you say i "sling shit" yet you say nothing of any other suspect. You focus on me like some sort of schoolgirl crush.

Vote to lynch green machine

Reason hypocrisy

I've been terrible on the bookkeeping so far, I just realized I had missed a vote from Mack on page 2 as well as had Orphans down for voting twice. Oops.

Also as to the Otaku editing situation, unless someone demands I deal with the situation, I'm going to let this be the one warning the thread gets, if I see any other editing, it will result in either a mod kill or a replacement(if we can find one).

OFFICIAL VOTE COUNT: 8 TO LYNCH
Hugh Jorgan: 4-Green Machine, Like9Orphans, KevinSafeSpacey, LiteralGrill
KevinSafeSpacey: 1-Mack Coffins
Ghosty: 1-Nihil
Literal Grill: 1-Hans Gruber
Green Machine: 1-Hugh Jorgan

I stand firm to keep my vote cast on counter lynching L9O just to be clear, regardless of my page 2 vote which was initially a joke.

Checking on my older post I notice I just claimed to he suspicious of l9o instead of my initial poke at Kevin, felt I should clear that up.

I don't see where you voted since that vote on page 2 Mack, If I'm wrong I apologize, but as far as I can tell your vote is still officially on Kevin.

I only hinted suspicion, but I'll correct the record now

Vote to Lynch: L9Orphans

So, first off, I'd like to thank Arc for his mercy and apologize to everyone else for my choice to edit my post regardless of the actual innocent intention of my editing. It was a reflexive and idiotic thing to have done, and as a man who tries to learn from his mistakes, it won't happen again.

Moving on, I'll post updated readings at a later time, especially in regards to Mack_Coffins, as he's since posted.

In regards to Hans' defense of Hugh, I'm kicking myself over not thinking of something so stupidly obvious. L9O, how have we not think of this sooner?

GM: " I haven't actually been on the mafia side of the game yet, so I don't know how likely it is for someone to just ignore their scum partners like that."

Well GM, having been scum previously, I can say that being mafia means being entirely group-oriented in strategy. (Incidentally, not being able to talk to people about game strategy is driving me nuts right now...) In order for Hugh to be scum, a few things would have to have possibly happened:

1) Hugh has been unable or unwilling to contact his group. This is implausible, but not entirely impossible, given possible technical difficulties.

2) Hugh HAS been in contact with his group, but has been unwilling to listen to their advice. As you've said, it's possible and probably the most likely scenario if he's scum given that he's only taken to listening to the town's criticisms of his postings recently.

3) The scum group has actively ENCOURAGED Hugh to continue his erratic behavior, as it serves as a good distraction and can be used to leverage innocence for the rest of the group, either by describing how they were against a scum player, or how they didn't jump on the bandwagon. Overall, I think this is the least likely scenario given that Hugh's been trying to defend himself as of late, but not impossible if the scum group perceived that Hugh wouldn't last long in the game anyway, and wanted to capitalize on that as much as possible.

Overall, I'll do some thinking about this, and come to a proper conclusion later. I will say that he's gone down significantly in terms of scumminess, so he's no longer at the top of my list.

"How have we not think of this sooner?"
ALREADY THERE'S UNYIELDING ENGLISH MAJOR RAGE!!! FUUUUUUUUUUCK...

I will reiterate, because my withdrawal of a vote has not been noticed.

Vote to Lynch: No one.

Sorry havent posted yet been busy ill reply better tonight

Hugh Jorgan wrote:Green you say i "sling shit" yet you say nothing of any other suspect. You focus on me like some sort of schoolgirl crush.

Vote to lynch green machine

Reason hypocrisy

This is a major backstep for you Hugh. Your claim that I have said nothing about other suspects is demonstrably false, just ask Otaku1889 or LiteralGrill. I'm focusing on you more than the others because you have been by far the worst player. Take that personally if you want, you'll be just as dead at the end of the day if you don't change course. I'm not only keeping my vote on you, I'm a hair's breadth from encouraging everyone to lynch you even if they think you are town, just to put you out of our misery.

I'm less willing to believe a Miller who would execute his own, brazenly at that, I might be as skeptical as the next guy as Hugh but that is scummy even if you are town, and especially after Hans had to plat devils advocate on his behalf.

It would be best to lynch scum, sure. But based purely on chance our probability of hitting town is 72%. Discussion is crucial to improving our odds, but realistically I don't think we have a better than 50% chance of actually getting a scum day one. So one factor in deciding who to lynch is figuring out who we wouldn't mind mislynching if they are actually town. Hugh fits into this category perfectly.

I can agree in that regard, but not for the sentiment.

GM- I think you are the one who just took a major backstep. I agree it's best we hit a person that's confusing us but in reality we shouldn't just hope that the confusing autist is scum. I'm going to retract my vote. On several grounds but the most important being that I would like to see how Hugh handles day two. His Day one antics mirrored mine and in the end I did tell everyone they shouldn't lynch me. I gave a few points but everyone ran the bandwagon til the end just because "theres no other choice" and not a single person was talking much. So here I am, willing to give Hugh a chance to grow and develop a more friendly mindset.

Vote To Lynch: No one

I will be trying to post tonight if not I will drop my text nuke tomorrow.