A Perfectly Average Game [Mafia Win!]

drandahl wrote:I'm not by my motes right now, but here are some thoughts:

We've been acting very lynch-hesitent this game. There's also neen a lot of talk about theories around the meta, this being a "Perfectly Average Game." Both of these things I feel are keeping us from digging into individual player behavior.

I think there's a lot of information in the Rasei near-lynch we should look more closely at. Tiki, based on voting information in that phase alone, who do you currently suspect?

Edit: actually, scratch that, Tiki. @Anyone, can you provide thoughts on this? I'd like to hear from Tiki, Lucas, Ezz, and She-ra

I'm around, but not sure exactly what you want to hear thoughts on? I voted Rasei because at the time Rasei and Tiki's behaviour was the most suspicious seeming, based mostly on vibes/the tone of their posts and other people's spec, really. And I came in kind of late and Rasei already had the votes and I didn't want to do a no-lynch just because, in general, I feel like we need to act and we hadn't had any deaths yet so. Idk. I am new at this, and tbh I'm fine that we went no-lynch and I'm not sure I still suspect Rasei though I feel like we haven't heard from her in a while?

I...honestly have a tendency to try to take from other poster's spec a lot more than "dive in" on my own since I'm still kind of learning the common strategies and playstyles and whatever. Obviously it can bite me in the ass (stares at nautilus in music maf) but this game has been sort of confusing. Well. More confusing, I guess.

Before this rollover I was feeling fairly okay about five, lucas, lux, vowels and katagi, and we know five was town at least. but now that there's been a recruit I feel like literally nothing is safe again?? I've never played a game with this mechanic. =/

Plus Lux's post is giving me second thoughts about my read on katagi earlier. Then again, Lux coulda been recruited? o_o

Um, if there's anything else you wanna know ask away.

edit: I'm princess of average now instead of she-ra (princess of power) if anyone was wondering. I thought it was funny. why pagetop with this lame joke of a username.

Lux, I actually hope you're Maf, just so you can prove you can be "TLDR" no matter your alignment, and get that monkey off your back. =D

But, I still think you're pretty Town. I think Rasei is, too. And because of that. reading into the Lux thoughts on Vowels and Katagi, coupled with their votes on Rasei (who tends to be an easy target to mislynch and get away with it), I'm leaning toward one, or both, of them.

I also don't think Rasei would be a convert, considering how close she was to "winning" that lynch vote last day phase, either.

If Vowels, and/or Katagi flip Town, then I'd look more closely at Lux as a Maf suspect.

I am still kind of :|c at lux, but her recent long-ass post has definitely assuaged my suspicion evene if its just a tiny tiny bit...

i havne't played with sammiya in forever so i don't know if her quietness is still typical or not, but typically when people don't respond to my fos (even if it's a semi-RNG inactivity-based poke), it is a little iffy for me

hmm i dunno. still some time left beforee rollover anyway

I saw no reason to respond to it since it was, as you said at the time, a random poke. Random pokes don't necessitate a response since they are normally based purely on activity.

And the past few days I've been having pretty bad allergy-related headaches, so my focus's kinda been everywhere.

But the recruited mafia member probably would be a player the mafia would think would be either unassuming (either in not normally attracting a lot of attention or someone not normally found suspicious), or a power player of some sort.

Ok, first off: based off what rollover confirmed, I'm no longer that hell-bent on necessarily always lynching. (Though I do think by now we should have enough leads to lynch, or at the very least we should seriously discuss lynch targets, as that is not only normally town's primary weapon, but also a great source for picking leads and reads.)

Also, these were my targets:
1. Luxaria (but I was jailed)
2. Katagi
3. She-Ra (but I was stunned)

Secondly, regarding the apparent recruit. Yes, that very likely means one of the players on most "would not vote for" lists is now mafia. But I think it's a fairly bad idea for us to get all caught up in focusing on that recruit - when there are still three other mafia out there that haven't changed their alignment from the start. We can always weed out the recruit later, when we'll have more posts to read off, and we can go back and see if someone's behaviour seemingly changed in any way. Yes, we definitely need to keep in mind that there is a recruit and not everything that has been clear before is as clear now - but most of it still is, and we're only going to be losing time and running around in circles if we focus on the recruit too much - see Katabasis, tbh.

I will honestly going to be side-eyeing anyone that's been in that game and is now focusing on the recruit instead of keeping calm and going back to finding the three starting mafia. Us panicking about nothing being "safe" or "clear" anymore will only serve to aid the mafia, and will lead us nowhere.

Though if we are talking recruits, I'd like to remind us that there's a possibility that the recruit was changed upon having a NK failed on them, meaning we might want to look at last night's targets. It would also... explain sudden four attempts, assuming one shot from each alignment + NK, if the fourth shot was actually a "recruitment shot" of sorts.
(I'm aware that this implicates me as well, but I want us to consider all possibilities - and to be fair, for various reasons I highly doubt mafia would ever want to recruit me.)

Luxaria wrote:I was actually just about to ask why people have a lead on mafia having the jailer, because while I think I know that reasoning (town has the stuns; mafia has the jails), I'm not 100% sure since I don't see what everyone else has. I feel like as weird as this game is, it'd be unlikely for no one on town to have a jail and no one on mafia to have a stun.

I personally so far believed the jailer is mafia partially by elimination and primarily because there has always been one jail, while there were multiple stuns, connected with what I suspected about the game.

I find the issue of stun/jail origins very interesting in correlation of last night's kill attempts, though. I doubt any of us would have shot Five at this point, so I'm willing to believe the two attempts on her were both mafia-originating. I can see the attempt on myself going either way, really - I know I've been fishy to some apparently, and I can see why they would shoot me, but I can also very well see why mafia would want me dead, esp. having said I'll be playing more aggressively this game, and not being a likely protect target at this point. Either way I'm grateful to whomever thought I was worth keeping around.

The attempt on Lux is interesting because of the simultaneous jail, which I've been assuming is mafia-originating for the previously mentioned reasons. In that case, that would make the attempt on her town-originating, though - and yet she's been possibly the most vocal player so far along with Five, and no one seemed to have suspected her at all, which is... just hella weird tbh.
So, in short:
a) the jail is mafia & the shot on Lux was from town;
b) the jail is town & the shot on Lux was from town; unlikely tbh;
c) the jail is town & the shot on Lux was from mafia;
d) the jail is mafia & the shot on Lux was from mafia; unlikely tbh;

I dismiss townjail and townshot as unlikely primarily because it combines two situations that are low on my list on possibilities. Mafia jail & mafshot both on Lux is an interesting gambit, but I do not see it happening on N2, and with the current ratio. Mafia would be desperate to get people killed, not clear someone who's already seen as primarily not suspicious by the thread.
I have so far believed that the jail is mafia, which is why scenario a is most likely to me, but I do admit that Lux's behaviour has been highly pro-town so far, which is why I am willing to consider scenario c.... even if that turns a good part of my spec and thinking so far upside-down. HOWEVER, if we have a more solid reason to believe the jail to be maf than my reasoning so far, I'm highly inclined to believe Lux is mafia because I seriously doubt any townie would shoot Lux without a very good reason.

Another thing that I find interesting about the jail is that the targets have literally been in the same order as the player list - it might be a coincidence, but if it's not, it honestly rings more like a mafia jail to me, trying to mess with the thread and waiting to see when they'd notice :I

I'm... willing to hold off opinion on Lux for now, primarily because her spec has been very pro-town, but definitely pushing her into the unsure tier on my list for now.

I'm also going to remove my self-imposed voting restraints as of now, such as not wanting to vote Sammie bc she hasn't played in a while, and not wanting to vote Tiny bc new player. It's been enough phases for each of them to get a hold on the game.

I'm still suspicious of Katagi, though less now than before - but I think one out of Lux and Katagi is very likely mafia.
So atm, I'd be willing to vote: Sammie, Katagi or drandahl, and maybe Rasei; though mostly on vague reads /gut feeling, to be fair.

Also I think there are still people who haven't posted and/or claimed their targets, and I'd like to see what info we can glean from that before actually deciding on a vote.

Backreading, spending some time collecting info. For now, here's the voting patterns on D2:

High Seraph -> She-Ra
drandahl -> Ezz
(3.5 hours before phase end)
katagi -> Rasei
ezz -> Rasei
TLF -> Rasei
Rasei -> NL
Tiki -> NL
She-Ra -> Rasei
(20m before phase end)
Aeiou -> Rasei
High Seraph -> unvote, NL
Sammiya -> NL
Lux -> NL
TLF -> NL

Quickly claiming before I backread people's posts
N0: tiki (but stunned)
N1: tiki
N2: tiki

I promise it was all nice things tiki ;-;

E: Adding a thought, if everyone has 1 bullet/killproof and the mafia has converted someone, ideally wouldn't they want to convert someone who still has their kill/bulletproof?

* claimed after potential alignment flip

N0:

D1 - Votes:

N1 - Actions and claims:

D2 - Votes:

N2:

Hm, 3.5 hours to go.

I am currently backlogged half-way through the thread. I don't want to jump to any conclusions based off of incomplete speculation, so I am hesitant to push anything too quickly while still reading. That said, I don't want us to enter the last stage of this phase without more coherent reads from each player, so.

I've been reading the first two phases to see if anything sticks out to me considering what mafia likely had at their disposal and may have done as a strategy. For full disclosure, here are the thoughts I've been entertaining regarding role distributon:

First off, I started to dig into this in my most recent post. Very obviously, I believe we all see there's a lot of vigilante shots, probably around 12, but maybe less depending on if the recruitment effect is at all like ezzelin theorizes. Thus, a lot of protects have appeared, presumably as a balancing duality: Everyone or mostly everyone might have innate protection and innate kill. Okay, cool, this makes sense.

Shooting mafia and being able to kill them instantly would be a little imbalanced all things considered, even if town can shoot more of town than mafia statistically. I'm willing to believe mafia has some form of ability to protect themselves. I concluded this previously, but I am saying more clearly: I think mafia has their own protection from kills, and I'm assuming it's not just the jail.

Now, the reason I keep asking about the jail digs into why I was proposing my weird alphabetical lists. So I'll be blunt about it. My theory was whether or not the players had some combination of roles... let's say there's Stun, Jail, Doctor, and Cop in the game, with everyone having bulletproof as the extreme amount of failed kills suggests.

Town 1 might have Stun and Cop + Bulletproof
Town 2 might have Jail and Doctor + Bulletproof
Town 3 might have Stun and Doctor + Bulletproof
Town 4 might have Jail and Cop + Bulletproof
Town 5 might have Stun and Jail + Bulletproof
Town 6 might have Doctor and Cop + Bulletproof

I proposed this because from my perspective, I have no way of knowing what anyone else might have, as opposed to the alternative of a black and white town has stun, while mafia has jail. Thus, I said this:

Luxaria Quote:

Five's response was this:

Five wrote:Anyway, Luxxxie-cutie, I'm not sure if I follow with your A/B + C or... whatever that is... but more like the former setup than the latter?

So Five and I were both thinking there was a chance everyone had some random combination of role powers, with perhaps a favoring for Stun given their presence in rollover.

So, with this said, I see the logic of the lesser presence of jails being indicative of probably belonging to mafia. It would also make sense for several other reasons given what people are saying (alignment pending), which I'm not sure if I can be more blunt about given the rules. So that said, I have been asking for definitive proof on people suspecting the jailers were all mafia. It's one of my several theoretical possible role distributions at this stage, however I haven't seen anything that clearly rules it out beyond just, "There aren't many jails, meaning it has to be from mafia." Paraphrased.

So now this proposes another interesting thought.

If mafia has the jails, do we believe there's only one split between the three of them? Or do they also follow the proposed pattern of multiple roles, but they might also have a stun or some other effects? It's possible mafia might not have roles like town does, which lends credence to Five's suggestion to claim targets if they have an effect (an important one, at that). I feel like Hayley would not make a game so blatantly obvious if mafia were lacking roles, so I'm left wondering what they have. They apparently did have a recruit, which proposes that very obviously mafia does not follow the presumed cookie cutter mold of town.

For the record, I am inclined to believe in my first outlined distribution of roles simply because with twelve total players there have not been enough controlling effects to make enable it such that everyone has a stun or jail. Thus, if the distribution isn't identical or there aren't wildly varying conditions between all of them, I don't see an absolute guarantee that mafia have the only jails. This is just my analysis of the situation based on a claimless game and what little we know from rollover. And given that I am pretty sure Five and I have been roughly on the same wavelength all game, I am sooner inclined to trust Five with her assessment and overall agreement.

The reason I am harping so much on this jailing business is because it's very much tied together with how we process the likely role distribution, which returns me to the statement that it seems clear everyone has kill protection. I actually need to check on something with the host before I propose a further strategy regarding one particular aspect, however I will comment on the following:

It is my opinion that it is probable one of the kill targets in the game is probably mafia, and I would sooner lean towards Aeiou or katagi than ezzelin, but I need to re-read ezzelin some more because my opinion on her has gone back and forth. That said, I do 100% agree with her that there's no sense in immediately dumping all reads or overreacting just because of a recruit, and I say this every time it happens: There's still 3 mafia and 7 town that have not changed their alignment from the start of the game. Thus why I am intrigued in following this theory on the possible soft/fake clear via a mafia NK onto another mafia. But I want to back-read a bit more to see if any comments stick out, in addition to people trying to be tricky or twist something favorably.

So to that end, another thing is to consider the attitudes around lynching. People that wanted to lynch without much reasoning just jumped on my list. Why? Because if mafia are aware (based on their probable bulletproof + vigilante combo) that town is going to be really difficult to chew through, inarguably forcing lynches is going to help them kill town quickly. But it's tricky because people lynching is arguably pro-town in nature and gives more information, thus why I want to look at people who just did a vote for the sake of doing it or said they wanted a lynch without much convinction or thoughts on who that ought to be. Further, if we want to pull recruitment role into consideration, it's also worth assessing what a mafia strategy might be in a game like this. It's very easy to clear people as town (submit a NK on them) and later recruit them, but it's also easy to go for someone relatively low on the radar (like Tiny, Tiki, etc.) and pull them onto mafia. There's always the possibility of mafia just recruiting a threatening or vocal player, which is naturally why I am going to be looked at suspiciously, and so to that all I am going to do is continue as always: Push leads, hunt mafia, convince you otherwise.

Bear in mind, the recruitment avenues rely on it being a straight-forward recruit. If it operates at all like how ezzelin suggests, or if someone is a traitorous town role, then things get a lot more complicated--though possibly narrows down suspects if it has to be a failed NK. It could also be an invisible one, so.

I'll post more thoughts after I finish back-reading the thread. Will try to do so in the next 60 - 90 minutes.

@ drandahl
This is quite good. I am building up my own list in my notes, but I will also comment that I mentioned my targets a page or two back. I can repeat them here if necessary.

Afk back-reading.

That NL train in the end was pretty last-minute. There were several votes piled up in time, which seems weirdly coincidental to me. I'm leaning either Lucas or Sammiya for a lynch right now.

vote: Sammiya

I'll step in an hour or so from now to check on thread, will be afk until then.

Tinylightsflash wrote:Quickly claiming before I backread people's posts
N0: tiki (but stunned)
N1: tiki
N2: tiki

I promise it was all nice things tiki ;-;

E: Adding a thought, if everyone has 1 bullet/killproof and the mafia has converted someone, ideally wouldn't they want to convert someone who still has their kill/bulletproof?

I like you.

Tinylightsflash wrote:Quickly claiming before I backread people's posts
N0: tiki (but stunned)
N1: tiki
N2: tiki

I promise it was all nice things tiki ;-;

E: Adding a thought, if everyone has 1 bullet/killproof and the mafia has converted someone, ideally wouldn't they want to convert someone who still has their kill/bulletproof?

Hmmmm. Tiki every night? Is there a reason behind this as best you can describe without role claiming (as per rules)? I usually find such things to be an unusual claim.

Mafia would in theory have no way of knowing which player shot off a vigilante, but it's true they might favor someone still with a bulletproof. I actually hadn't considered that might be the case. It effectively would lower the amount of kills they'd need to perform by two instead of one...

HMMM.

@lux wouldn't it be beneficial for mafia to have more NL so that they can churn through townies and their killproofs at night without having to push one way or another in the discussion?
Also I'm gonna be super honest I kept acting on tiki because its similar to the name of a character in a manga me and Hayley read and I was clinging to familiar names (plus my action failed the first night so I did it again on the second night).

I might be a lot more active this rollover because my students gave me the plague :)

Tinylightsflash wrote:E: Adding a thought, if everyone has 1 bullet/killproof and the mafia has converted someone, ideally wouldn't they want to convert someone who still has their kill/bulletproof?

Traditionally, when someone is converted, they turn vanilla bc recruitment on its own is very strong. So while that's good thinking, unless this is one of the exceptions where the convert retains their abilities, them having kill/bulletproof is not relevant.