WW25 - Game Thread

[uberfish]

I do agree that novice has aligned himself with zak very closely and hasn't done much else. That's suspicious. Reinforces my feeling on day 1 that novice was scummy from the timing/lack of content of his two posts attacking me (Novice popped up about a page after zak said he didn't like one of my posts to votepark me.)

I'm not sure whether I should be more suspicious of Lewwyn. I keep coming back to the fact that he was tracked to a dead player, and killing ghoul Azza doesn't clear him of being a wolf. However he posts a lot of stuff that I agree with.

It's not a random group of six people though (and even if it was, there would probably be a scum in it). You and Pindi had been deemed scummy enough to be in the running for hte lynch. PLus, there was herd behaviour at the deadline, and I think wolves want to go with the flow to avoid standing out, which in this case meant voting MJW.

The problem with this reasoning is that wolves could better avoid standing out by just not moving their votes. I mean if MJW flips village being part of a last minute lynch on him is always going to draw scrutiny. Unless you think pindicator and myself are both scum, the fact that we both explained out votes along village self-preservation lines should make that a pretty plausible reason for our presence on the wagon.

BTW, obviously I'm concerned about the extra vote since someone evidently tried to use it to stealth lynch me on day 1. Not sure who was responsible though, I think that vote was simply placed on me just because I'm generally a difficult player to lynch.

[novice]

Damn straight I'm happy to vote BRick. He's been lying through his teeth, for christ's sake. As for not making a case, it was my questioning that caused him to admit to his lies.

OK so maybe I'm playing a bit lazily but honestly my lazy play is a lot better than "village plays" like BRick's (or Jowy's, for that matter).

And yet I see Brick has done more work hunting scum than you have. So why would I want to lynch the person who is hunting for scum over the person who isn't?

Has he really. I don't see it. I see a lot of noise generated over an invented post restriction, which he then spent a lot of effort trying to work with. Great way to contribute.

[BRickAstley]

Also, I agree that it wasn't really that much under pressure, but when you're figuring how to tell your teammates you've been faking a post restriction the whole time, there's a wee bit of a tendency for paranoia to seep in there.

That made me laugh out loud.

Rowain



zakalwe novice

What did you mean by this post, Brick? You left it out of the translations you were doing earlier.

Oh, that one wasn't consequential, so I didn't think to provide a translation earlier. The first one was comment on Rowain's saying "Pindicator is bad for the village". so I used an image from the meme "Pepperage Farm Remembers", kinda a lame and obscure joke.

The second one was also joking, at you and novice and the "accidental" post saying you're the same person, hence two pictures of the same person.

Brick: wtf, just wtf. The worst thing is I pegged you as the sort of player who wouldn't go around faking post restrictions. What I find suspicious is not so much that you faked up the post restriction. But rather that you claimed a sanity trigger for removing it, thus implying that sanity decrease would have positive (or at least, not all negative) consequences for the village and encouraging everyone to lower the sanity so that you, one of the heaviest posters, could talk properly.

I mean I can sympathize with you wanting to do something different. Literally every game where I'm village I get attacked because my play is supposedly incompatible with what I'd do as village and it's gotten very annoying.

However I want to know why you claimed this sanity trigger.

Thanks for at least understanding some of why I did this. The reasons I claimed sanity trigger were 1) Because that DOES have something to do with my actual power, and 2) Because it would help keep my post restriction looking believable. I can't claim that that means it was most helpful for the village, cause who knows what will happen when sanity bottoms out, but powerwise, i'm more useful to the village the lower it is, which is why I was not afraid to use that as a reason.

So is Brick a villager or is he scum using what I said earlier as cover? Personally... I think Brick has been pretty villagery. I think if he were scum he wouldn't have given up his post restriction. Uber makes some good questions about sanity, whic is one of the reasons I'm REALLY on the fence now. Why go into convoluted sanity connections to make your PR more believable? Why come clean? If I were scum I would have simply said, "the sanity meter moved far enough away from 20 that you're all insane enough to understand me now." But he didn't. Instead he came clean. Again though is that more suspicious or less suspicious? I'm on the fence.

I think my response to uber above should clarify your question here, let me know if there's a part to it you want me to comment on more.

I've been skeptical of BRick's claim all along, but was willing to give him tonight to let his alleged secondary ability do its magic. I thought maybe his initial, unjustified vote for Q today was due to a night action result, but apparently not.

His actual claim today disappointed to say the least. He's been confusing and misleading the village for two days, generating suspicion on other players that may be entirely unjustified. I'm happy to lynch him and blame him if he flips villager. I'd rather do that than lynch any "drones".

I think Uberfish and Zak may well both be village, since I can agree with the reasoning from both sides. I don't really have any suspects that feel more likely to be scum than not apart from BRick.

I placed that initial Q vote because I was wanting to look through players that I haven't been looking at, to ensure that I didn't just tunnel vision like I normally did. And no, it wasn't unjustified, I went ahead and composed my thoughts on why I voted Q right after that. You also can't claim that those were even "generated noise" because Q even verified what I was trying to say.

In regards to "generating suspicion on other players that may be entirely unjustified", that's an empty statement. Until we know for sure someone's alignment, we can't be sure if efforts to lynch them are correct, so that can't be what the statement means. When I've made cases on people, either I've translated it through Pindicator yesterday, or I did so in a way that tried my best to be as clear as possible, and in every case that I can think of someone responded with an affirmation that that made sense and summarized what I meant, so i'm not being incomprehensible, so that can't be what that statement means.

Have I been misleading the village? Yes, I have, and for the most part that has been bad and I apologize for that. Have I been confusing them? Well, I should hope not, and I don't think I have. After my initial romp of bad posts, I realized that I was drawing away attention from wolf hunting, so I told everyone to stop focusing on my post restriction, because that would only detract from wolf hunting, and then made a considerable effort to only really post when I felt like my opinion on an issue needed to be heard or when I have a case to make.

I see where a point could be made in regards to me having pulled off Grand Liarceny before, and I can't refute that because I have. It doesn't really point well for you doing so from a villager perspective though when you don't have much to back up such an accusation with.

To elaborate a bit on this, his stated motivation is very selfish - it was just to avoid heat on himself - and it's kind of unclear how that would even work. But he had no qualms about letting people be suspected for distrusting his post restriction, for example. When I said his PR looked fake, he ridiculed me. The tie to sanity, giving himself an out, must have been improvised as well. So as far as I can tell, he was prepared to fake the PR throughout the game, and act like anyone who questioned it must be scum. That's not exactly a pro-town game plan. It just seems a recipe for staying alive as long as possible while causing a lot of confusion and distraction in the process. In other words, it's something you might do as scum if you're not confident in your own ability to make it all the way.

How that would work is that I tend to get overexcited and put my foot in my mouth and my neck into the noose. I disagree that I have "act like anyone who questioned it must be scum". When people have come up questioning it, I haven't been scum-ccusing them, I've been trying to say "if you get caught up on this instead of genuine wolf hunting this will not help the village." I was prepared to keep faking it though, until I found a time where it would be helpful to drop it to lower the boom on a wolf.

I also think given how bad we are doing we cant afford a policy lynch at this point, he really does need to have a nice complete sum up post of all his views now so we can understand what he thinks on everything without playing around with his pictures anymore, then can review things from there

I agree with the second part, i.e. that this is his chance to redeem himself, now that he "can" post freely. I disagree that whether or not we can "afford" it should factor into the policy lynch decision. So maybe we lose this game if he's town. If so, that's the price we pay to enforce that policy, and it will pay off later in terms of reducing the chance that townies will lie to us. (On the other hand, if you don't mind playing in games where your teammates lie to you, then the "lynch all liars" policy probably isn't for you.)

I think it needs to be enacted every now and then, but as default button no.

Always as with everything its a grey scale. For example I could see a case when I claimed I had no power role when I was infact the seer. I would assume that you wouldnt apply lynch all liars at that point.

I mean, I kinda get what you're trying to say here zakalwe, but it seems too heavy handed. Yes, lying to teammates is bad and can be frustrating, but there are instances where it can be redeemable. Jkaen's Seer example is a prime example, of course the seer isn't going to say he's a seer if question.

Now, I'm not conceited enough to say that my lie was as important as that. But I don't think that we should uphold "Lynch All Liars" as a standard policy. There are instances where doing so CAN be used by a villager in order to help either hunt out scum or mitigate damage. Do we need to policy lynch Lewwyn because he at first said he didn't have vig powers visiting Azza and later he said that he did kill him? No, because I think it is quite plausible that he did that in an attempt to keep from having to give away everything to give scum more info.

[BRickAstley]

Has he really [done work hunting scum]. I don't see it. I see a lot of noise generated over an invented post restriction, which he then spent a lot of effort trying to work with. Great way to contribute.

Okay, if it's a short post that just has what looks like a simple emotional reaction, that's what it is. Other than those, I'll run through all of my important posts and provide a translation.

#12 & #14: Initial anger at my PR, and that it has to do with sanity.

#30 & #38: My PR can be removed if the sanity drops low enough. However, I have not been told what that exactly that threshold is. I'm guessing since Sanity started at 20 and went down, it would most likely be 10, though 15 and 5 are also clean numbers for it to be at.

#39: Pin already posted explanation.

#105 (I was aiming for literal translations here, looking back this was poorly thought out.) iPad, makes it hard, to post. But! MJW looks crazy. Statement at the end means when Sanity falls, I can talk.

#106: My post #39 is disconnected to sanity, it is connected to trying for a good use of a PR.

#140: STOP! I made everyone confused. That makes me sad. So I'm thinking. About how I can talk. So that everyone understands. And then all of us can shoot those motherfucking wolves, Pulp Fiction style.

#152: Mostly reactions to Jowy's posts. At the end, "WTF Jowy? Why are you not talking right? And, you're talking mainly just about my pictures, not about wolves. Wolf-Jowy!"

#153: I'm facepalming about me, and don't listen to me, that post isn't hunting wolves.

#176: Reactions to novice's posts, observing there's mainly him joking, and i'm not impressed at the others. At the end: "Novice, i'm not impressed. Village novice talks alot. Wolf novice is pretty subdued. I think i've found your evil scheme out."

#177: However, I feel twice as sure Jowy is a wolf than novice.

#180: Telling Slow I could use his name in red to refer to him instead of HAVING to have a picture.

#185: Trying to explain that; the twin babies are identical, so is posting slow's name and his picture.

#188: Nice conspiracy Jowy. I think, instead of what you said, this is just Wolf-Jowy running for his life?

#275: Longer post. The numbers on the dominoes are Post numbers, these are comments on those posts in particular instead of copying all of them. #209: "Yes, I want you to hunt wolves not talk about me" #221: "What? Idk what you're getting at..." #224/228: "Jowy, you're not talking much, not listening, and not hunting wolves, you're just running from accusations. I'm not impressed." #249: "Ooooooh. Jowy knew about 3 wolves? Wolf-Jowy."

#280: Pindicator- you're hunting Zak why?

#286: Okay, Ichabod has 13 posts. 4 are him joking. 4 are him talking about my PR. 3 are him going "Hahaha!" at MJW. 1 is him using that pic to vote Pindicator. 1 is him talking about MJW, joking, and just throwing out that Jowy and slow are innocent. Ichabod isn't talking about hunting wolves at all. I am not impressed and disapprove.

#292 / #294 / #296: Jowy as a pot calling the kettle black, and me freaking out cause i realized that there was accidental small text in the corner i did not realize. I was just given a warning for that since it was 1st offense and accidental.

#320: at that point, i didn't like any of the lynch candidates. I thought pindicator was village, Jowy 50/50 village/wolf, and uberfish 66/33 village/wolf. I am frustrated at that situation, and vote Jowy.

#324: Lol Ichabod starting on a new candidate?

#355: reasoning for my vote. how i felt about pind, jowy, and uber is the same, but i thought ichabod was a wolf. I voted for ichabod, but everyone else was mainly on the other three. So when Ichabod went after MJW, i had an idea. I would vote MJW too, because i had some feelings that he was wolfy, though not strong. If he was a wolf, awesome, wolf killed! If not, i think ichabod likely wolf trying to stir up trouble (and maybe save a fellow wolf...) So now, kill the ichabod.

#408: yeah, gazglum has been tight lipped...

That should be it, if there's anything else i missed you wanna know about feel free to ask me.

Okay, so today, after I exchanged pleasentries with Pindicator in the quicktopic and used him to explain some niggling issues about my post restriction for the day, I began my hunt. We had 2 night kills, and the instance of Lewwyn being "caught" at the scene of the crime. Since usually players that end up where someone dies have some guilt associated with them, I figured I would look for a connection there. So, why would Azza be killed by Lewwyn? Where's the sense in that? So, what did Azza do. 
The closest I could find was that Azza seemed to talk about Pindicator a good few times, not a small feat with his tiny postcount. #195, #264, #384, #388. This would have been a way to try and keep Pindicator free from one of his accusers in days to come, without attacking one of his high-profile attackers that might draw more immediate suspicion, which is a sound wolf tatic that I've used before as a wolf. Also looking through Pindicator's post history, his only interaction with Lewwyn on the first day is the back and forth about my post restriction, which is evidence of interaction but nothing "connecting" if wolfs trying to build a history. After the Lewwyn reveal today, Pindicator also kept defending Lewwyn in the quicktopic over and over, which drew my suspicion: 

Pretty sure that clears both Mattimeo and Lewwyn. Process of elimination is the silver lining to that cluster...

Okay, then I actually read the whole of Gazglum's post and I just said what he said. So crap, now I don't know about my reads on Lewwyn & Gazglum. Hard to see those two as scum buddies with Lewwyn pushing him today

I think you're right to give Lewwyn due diligence, but my take on his original reaction to Matt's claim was that he was trying to mitigate the damage done by Mattimeo's reveal.
The thing that does strike me odd is Lewwyn saying that his ability can't hurt villagers. For one, if there's ever two kills and both are village then he's a goner. Two, it seems like pandering to the village when he was hetting village leans from people anyway.
Am interested to see his response but it looks more like village pr at this poimt

Lewwyn is mostly based on his reaction right after Mattimeo. I admit that isn't a ton though

Lewwyn's response really makes me think village. Look at him describe his targeting of Azza: because he thinks he's village? He's not a common vig, he's something else, to have targeted Azza because he thought the guy was village...

With a few of those responses brought up at a time that made sense. For example, the last one was not in response to anything I said or asked, and wasn't posted around the time that Lewwyn debate was going on in the main thread, so it just seemed to be a poke to try and dissuade me from my suspicion of Lewwyn and vote on him. However after further questioning, Pindicator saved himself some face with 

Ok, I see where you're coming from (I re-read a bit). I'm trying to remember what prompted me to write [all] that, and I don't remember. I probably was just posting my thoughts after something in the main thread. Thinking out loud because I'm not in love with any one person as scum.

Which sounded believable. And besides the Lewwyn issue, Pindicator has been very helpful and well articulated in thread about any other discussion, and doesn't give me much other cause for suspicion. 
Also with Lewwyn, I was poking him alot during the day because I thought his situation was critical, and his responses all at this point sound plausible and worth giving him a chance on. A limited vig that can only actually kill non-humans? and some characters being mentioned that aren't "human" but are village-aligned? Well, I suppose I can buy that. I was really suspicious of why Azza, but I can agree that Azza is often a tough nut to read, and if you have the belief that your kill won't kill someone who is good, then that is believable. 
So I spent most of the day reading over these two and trying to piece this together, but when I had them each under questioning, they seemed honest and believable enough that I'm not going to try and push a lynch here. I still wanted to state all of this though, especially if something happened to me before I can talk regularly again, so it's in the records for the village. 

The zak/slowcheetah issue: Understand that this will be shorter because I thought I would have a great revelation to lead a Lewwyn crusade, but as of the last few hours I've had to go back and read more. I really think that zak would need to be believed here. First of all, just cause of the gossipers there was one town and one ghoul already, is no reason to assume that there's one wolf as well. Serdoa told us not to try and metagame this, and zak coming forth wit the QT as a wolf is an incredibly risky proposition, even if he did edit what was said in the QT logs. I will admit that I had reservations about zak after day 1, with him being close to the top in postcount, and his posts mainly being either reactions or quick questions. But the QT does help explain all that, even if he didn't talk there very much, QT convos take attention away from the main thread oftentimes (like they did for me today) and that can help explain some of his aloofness. 
Slowcheetah has also had a very poor showing in light of the zak attack renewed. He has only posted twice, #538 & #553, and in those posts were an attack on zak for repeated questioning jowy about his post style (which i understand from zak's POV, it is hard to fully understand), as well as a bunch of very short blurbs about other players, either "mumblemumble village lean" or "mumblebumble vote". Small post counts are fine yes, but why would you not make an attempt at a defensive stance against your attacker more than "Lewwyn's reasoning"? This seems like a slowcheetah caught wolf-handed, and i can see some parallels to him his last game where we were scumbuddies, which adds in a gut feel I have against him, which is why I'm fine lynching slowcheetah. 
So, I think that Slow would make a good lynch today, especially over the other options there. Zak due to being opposed and alot of the arguments on him being related to meta basis or the quicktopic post (fake edit: uberfish, i don't see zak getting pressure on him much before his QT post, i disagree that it was forced); ichabod due to this playing seeming more like the smartass Ichabod Morte (which is a compliment, even though all you do AGAIN is make fun of me ) from the last uberfish game and coming to the front with wolf hunting, and gazglum due to him coming back and offering some good insight to his feelings and instigating some wolf hunting instead of just standing around. 
So slowcheetah is my vote and I'm comfortable staying there unless we get any sort of new revelation. 

[uberfish]

yeah ok, so points in favour of brick

- If he was scum he didn't have to piss everyone off by admitting that he made the enitre thing up.
- he actually feels like he was scumhunting despite the self imposed post restriction

points against

- Lying and causing a distraction
- meta wise it feels weird for village to be picking up abilities as a result of lowered sanity. On the other hand... if he's scum, again, he didn't have to claim this obviously suspicious stuff.

My feeling is he's probably town trying to repair damage he caused. I know I've read brick wrong once already. If this whole thing is a super elaborate scum ploy he's pulling it off very well. But gut just tells me that he's town and happens to be convenient target of the day. Novice and zak wanting to drop other lines of investigation and policy lynch him on day 3 after we already had 2 easy-target mislynches just reinforces that impression.

[zakalwe]

i think zak not just mad, but also trying to lower my credibility by yelling, mimicking style, making sarcastic remark.
meanwhile novice do same to brick. if they succeed, two contributors silenced. if they get us lynched, at least one more villager dead, more likely two.

u are the one whose hurting ur own credibility
im just highlighting the stupidity

[pindicator]

Zak, what's your take on my case against novice?

[zakalwe]

It's not a random group of six people though (and even if it was, there would probably be a scum in it).

Bad reasoning. Since it's not a random selection, you shouldn't expect it to behave like one.

[zakalwe]

Zak, what's your take on my case against novice?

I don't see it. Though I haven't done that reread yet.

[zakalwe]

If you guys insist on letting Brick live, let's go for Gazglum.