WW 31 Game Thread PARANOIA

[Qgqqqqq]

And Q, I appreciate the scenario play but you lost me with some of that, sorry.

Care to elaborate?

It wasn't clear to me that he was going to die last night, and nor was I certain he was innocent. Why are you so sure he would die?

He was our only "doctor"-type role left? He was proven that his role works? There was really not much reason to suspect him and he was certainly more in the town-camp than 3/4 of the other players.

He was one of my stronger town reads, but look at it from my perspective - the previous day I had watched novice, who I still have some misgivings about and seen Rowain, who I had an instinctive town read on killed. Thus, I thought it best to watch the person who I felt most strongly to be confirmed. I also still thought the scum would be in a wifom situation, which is why I've kept switching who I targeted.

And as for your last post - Though given that we expect him to be scum too the target to watch as well as the targets to watch for are imo not well chosen at all. - If we, myself included, suspect him to be scum, then why is he a bad target to watch for? The same for Ichabod - in my place, who else would you have watched for?

I would have watched Merovech for visits of Mattimeo and you. If none happen, sunrise and Ichabod are both anyhow the targets of the day, so if no other evidence is brought forth they are the most likely lynches.

I disagree with the logic of this but I get where you are coming from. Why do you think Ichabod is particularly likely to be scum?

@Ichabod: Care to elaborate?

The same for you, Space, what is it you don't like of what I've said today? I don't recall you pointing anything out?

[Mattimeo]

Serdoa:
N4: Jowy - rendered useless by everyone being reduced permanently to one clone at end of D5
N5: You. Unless my updated orders didn't process, since I'd initially picked Jowy again as being extemely useful once everyone was on only one clone. Did you have two watches last night?
N6: I'll pass on revealing this, since it would tell people who has two uses of their ability in the coming night. They should know who they are though. Unless the fact that I accidentally titled the PM with orders 'N5' rather than 'N6' invalidated them :/

[spacetyrantxenu]

What is there to elaborate? I didn't understand some of the if-then vortex you took me down in that hypothetical scenario post.

As for what I don't like, I don't think it's very helpful to the town for you to not reveal your results, even if you don't think they're significant. No one has complete information, but if we pool all of our information maybe someone can take all the pieces and have a bit of insight that you would have missed on your own. I don't know what that would be, but for instance if you're watching for two people and don't find value in the result/no result perhaps your disclosure of the no result could have helped Serdoa as he tracked someone different. I don't know all the permutations of it to make sense of it, but a more practiced player than me probably could. Anyway, withholding information certainly doesn't help the town.

Then there's the targeting. I get that it's hit or miss only being able to follow two people, but playing roulette with who you follow doesn't seem like the best way to be likely to hit upon something. I would have watched for two people targeting Merovech last night (yeah easy for me to say now that he's dead, to preempt a counter on that point) but that's because he was arguably the most valuable likely town person we had left and he needed to live as long as possible. No one else can stop a kill from going through, so he was our best bet to stop someone from dying in the night. Given that, it should have been obvious that scum would try to kill him next. Now we don't have any idea who they'll try to get next, I don't see who left would be any more valuable than anyone else, so you probably lost your best chance to have a very good idea of who they'd target. I admit that even if you had targeted Merovech and someone killed him you only had a 2/N chance of seeing the killer visit, but you surely have your suspicions of who is scum/village by now and could have reduced the pool of suspects from that.

I guess the implication of your actual play was that you felt like Serdoa was the clearest town aligned player left alive, and that Sunrise and Ichabod were your two highest liklihood scum candidates, so I can understand why you played it like you did from that perspective. But I think your failure to acknowledge Merovech as town and correspondingly try to watch him (since he HAD to be the obvious scum target last night) was a big failure. Even if you had targeted him and watched for different people, that would have made sense. But I don't really agree with watching for Serdoa -- just because he's "confirmed" town doesn't make him the best guy to try and protect, that HAD to be Merovech in my opinion since he was the only player left who actually could protect anyone.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Q, That's a crosspost with Mattimeo.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Headed home from work, don't be suspicious if I don't reply for a few hours.

[Jowy]

Merovech was the most obvious night kill target, but Serdoa isn't far behind.

[Qgqqqqq]

What is there to elaborate? I didn't understand some of the if-then vortex you took me down in that hypothetical scenario post.

I was stating how I would've played that scenario as scum with two villagers on the block, with the assumption that I am trying to wring town cred out of it/prepare a follow-up lynch on you. Do you think I would've played it differently or do you disagree with that as a play? I'm not sure what would of lost you, or perhaps more importantly, what your point was in pointing it out?

As for what I don't like, I don't think it's very helpful to the town for you to not reveal your results, even if you don't think they're significant. No one has complete information, but if we pool all of our information maybe someone can take all the pieces and have a bit of insight that you would have missed on your own. I don't know what that would be, but for instance if you're watching for two people and don't find value in the result/no result perhaps your disclosure of the no result could have helped Serdoa as he tracked someone different. I don't know all the permutations of it to make sense of it, but a more practiced player than me probably could. Anyway, withholding information certainly doesn't help the town.

Honestly, I didn't really think about my results. I consider them all-but useless and didn't really think it was worth it.
I mean, for your idea, I assume you mean the novice result, no? Well how would knowing that Surnise089 or Ichabod didn't target someone who wasn't killed have effected his tracking desicion? Unless you mean knowing that I didn't have a smoking gun, in which case I don't see how that is of more value to the village then scum? At the end of the day, knowing all the factors can be more helpful to the scum rather then village and I don't see how this is a tell in either direction, unless we fall under the assumption that I am faking this role, in which case why not just say Jowy (not going to be using another role so won't be caught in a lie but remains a decent person to watch for) and sunrise (who you're assuming is my scumbuddy)?
While I'm on the subject, why would I as a communist, claim watcher when Bob already had it? Why not make something else up? Something which would be easier to fit into "Matter Eater" (like a bomb which eats all that attacks it) and less likely to lead to a confrontation with fellow scum?

Then there's the targeting. I get that it's hit or miss only being able to follow two people, but playing roulette with who you follow doesn't seem like the best way to be likely to hit upon something. I would have watched for two people targeting Merovech last night (yeah easy for me to say now that he's dead, to preempt a counter on that point) but that's because he was arguably the most valuable likely town person we had left and he needed to live as long as possible. No one else can stop a kill from going through, so he was our best bet to stop someone from dying in the night. Given that, it should have been obvious that scum would try to kill him next. Now we don't have any idea who they'll try to get next, I don't see who left would be any more valuable than anyone else, so you probably lost your best chance to have a very good idea of who they'd target. I admit that even if you had targeted Merovech and someone killed him you only had a 2/N chance of seeing the killer visit, but you surely have your suspicions of who is scum/village by now and could have reduced the pool of suspects from that.

I guess the implication of your actual play was that you felt like Serdoa was the clearest town aligned player left alive, and that Sunrise and Ichabod were your two highest liklihood scum candidates, so I can understand why you played it like you did from that perspective. But I think your failure to acknowledge Merovech as town and correspondingly try to watch him (since he HAD to be the obvious scum target last night) was a big failure. Even if you had targeted him and watched for different people, that would have made sense. But I don't really agree with watching for Serdoa -- just because he's "confirmed" town doesn't make him the best guy to try and protect, that HAD to be Merovech in my opinion since he was the only player left who actually could protect anyone.

Firstly, I have actually never played roulette, but I didn't choose my targets randomly, I went for those I thought most likely to be nightkilled and targetted the players I thought would attack them. Secondly, lets make this explicit, I didn't believe Merovech was the most likely to die last night. Now perhaps thats me being out of it, outright stupid or whatever, but it is what it is. (The last sentence of the first paragraph is outright insulting - why yes, I do get how my ability works thank you very much! Good golly gosh, I should watch for people I am suspicious of?!? Genius!! :rollseye: ). And from here on in, yes we do have a good idea of who the scum will target, maybe, I don't know the people who are confirmed town?
I thought Serdoa was far and away the clearest town-aligned player left alive, and practically confirmed. And I didn't think Merovech was cut and dry town either, certainly it seems odd that the scum don't have a roleblocker and I didn't have a particularly strong read on Merovech independent of his role.

[sunrise089]

Maybe the best strategy for me to avoid a mislynch would be to just keep my head down since I got pressure so early in the day, but without going off into internet rage land, the early votes on me seemed incredibly lazy.

Look, if you want to make a relevant argument against me you can take a few angles. You can go back and look at my posts and voting record and point to things you view as scummy, which is the strategy we're all using during the game absent additional information. One word posts with my name in red don't exactly demonstrate a thorough case on me IMHO nor give me much of a chance to answer any questions you might have.

Or, you can certainly ding me for not being active enough. I can't really argue there...I've read every post and voted and used my ability thoughtfully, but I've certainly not made it a priority to keep the thread current and be part of every debate. I've tried to maintain my level of activity in a non-annoying way, not making a bunch of excuses and not advertising planned absences to try and shield myself from votes. But the level of activity at this point is what it is.

I don't think you can make a legitimate argument for me being scum based on night actions, bonus abilities, etc. I've been completely honest and completely transparent about my ability, flavor, targets, etc. I do give props to zak though for having the nerve to call me out for meta reasons while being a secret faction that crosses village/scum lines the entire time

The other thing I don't think you can make a legitimate argument against me based on is that I've been "non-committal." I may have committed incorrectly at times, but I've certainly committed. Yesterday I voted (correctly as it turned out) based on a seer claiming to have caught scum in a lie. Prior to that I voted for candidates who I thought had some generally scummy action/post or had a scummy defense in response to accusations. While I've not been authoring pages of textual analysis on candidates, I've not felt that's been really necessary this game between the powers/factions and the reality that given my time constraints it wasn't worth trying to over-think every post and ignore the most obvious reads. I've certainly not though generally just voted for the top vote getter, voted late in the day with a super short post, or voted just aping another's argument. I may have been wrong about Rowain for several days, but I still saw scummyness there. I've gotten a little flak for noting I'd move off Rowain one day and onto a top vote getter if my vote would end up a waste and would be deciding otherwise, but that's been very much the exception and it happened the day after some specific calling out of wasted votes.

Ichabod, you voted for me via a single word and no support. I know you switched to Q, but that's still not the coolest...

Jowy, you voted for me right after Ichabod and without much if any supporting text. Were you convinced by his arguments?

Anyways, unvote because pure retaliatory votes are dumb.

[sunrise089]

@serdoa - A few pages back you were listing clone kills. Did you leave the kill on me out intentionally? I'm not taking issue if you did, I just want to make sure you didn't overlook that datapoint.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Do you think I would've played it differently or do you disagree with that as a play? I'm not sure what would of lost you, or perhaps more importantly, what your point was in pointing it out?

My point was either that I didn't understand everything you wrote in the scenario post or that I must be an idiot because I didn't understand everything you wrote, I suppose. It was an observation, what other reason do I need to say so? I don't know if you'd have played it differently or not, this game is all I know of your WW style. Besides, you probably covered just about every hypothetical situation possible, or impossible, in that post anyway. If you are (or were you) scum, those were the scenarios as you saw them. Evidently you saw more scenarios than I do because I didn't follow all of them. So what of it? Mountain(molehill). Everything in this game is fodder for that it seems.

As for what I don't like, I don't think it's very helpful to the town for you to not reveal your results, even if you don't think they're significant. No one has complete information, but if we pool all of our information maybe someone can take all the pieces and have a bit of insight that you would have missed on your own. I don't know what that would be, but for instance if you're watching for two people and don't find value in the result/no result perhaps your disclosure of the no result could have helped Serdoa as he tracked someone different. I don't know all the permutations of it to make sense of it, but a more practiced player than me probably could. Anyway, withholding information certainly doesn't help the town.

Honestly, I didn't really think about my results. I consider them all-but useless and didn't really think it was worth it.
I mean, for your idea, I assume you mean the novice result, no?

I don't mean any result in particular, I mean all results in general. If the point of the game is to build cases against people so we can convict (lynch) them, I would think we could use all available information to make the best case in order to have the best chance of convicting (lynching) the right player. We've been dreadful at that so far, and who knows if better information could have helped? We really can't have done worse, honestly. The first real win we had was Catwalk yesterday and he wasn't even a communist! (That claim assumes Bob handed us on day 1, which is contestable I'll grant -- so maybe Catwalk was our second win). But to your question, I meant all information you could have given, I wasn't thinking about a particular case.

Well how would knowing that Surnise089 or Ichabod didn't target someone who wasn't killed have effected his tracking desicion?

It couldn't have effected Serdoa's tracking decision, he turned that in the same night you turned in your watching decision, independent of you I assume unless you guys are able to coordinate somehow that the rest of us aren't aware?

Unless you mean knowing that I didn't have a smoking gun, in which case I don't see how that is of more value to the village then scum? At the end of the day, knowing all the factors can be more helpful to the scum rather then village and I don't see how this is a tell in either direction....<snip>

Ding ding ding, this is what I meant. It's not about a tell. It wasn't about what you knew or could figure out, it's what the entire village could do with the information, crowd sourced and pieced together with whatever information town players may have gleaned from their actions the previous night. I'm not good enough at theory crafting this game to say what could have happened, but maybe Serdoa is missing one vital clue to having some kind of insight that could lead to a great question to ask of someone, and your no result was somehow the clue he needed to get the investigation going down the right track. Do I know what that would be? Of course not, if I knew that I could be good at this game or maybe would be able to catch someone (as in, who wasn't an obvious liar...Catwalk ). But playing village is a team game, it isn't just surviving, it's killing the enemy at any and every cost until you win the game. If the cost is giving up proprietary information that maybe exposes yourself (somehow? How?) but could help you catch scum, seems like that would be worth it. But maybe this is getting too far down the worm hole for a guy playing in his first game, maybe you're right and bringing more information into the light is worse for village. But if that's the case it sure is counter intuitive, because in a courtroom the prosecutor brings the hammer when he sees a nail.

...unless we fall under the assumption that I am faking this role, in which case why not just say Jowy (not going to be using another role so won't be caught in a lie but remains a decent person to watch for) and sunrise (who you're assuming is my scumbuddy)?

I never said or intended to suggest you were faking the role. I said that I'd have done it differently, irrespective of whether you believe my rationale was convenient 20/20 revisionism or honestly given. And I wasn't lamenting your choice of people to watch for, it ought to have been whoever you thought was the scummiest and most likely to try and kill someone, which is presumably who you chose unless I missed it in your last wall of text (and I know, pot meet kettle with this post...What can I say, wife and kid both already went to bed and PB11 is joyfully OVER, I have time tonight).

While I'm on the subject, why would I as a communist, claim watcher when Bob already had it? Why not make something else up? Something which would be easier to fit into "Matter Eater" (like a bomb which eats all that attacks it) and less likely to lead to a confrontation with fellow scum?

Because maybe you both really were watchers? I'm not getting into meta arguments about how duplicate roles in this game effect the rotations of the moon, or Brick's state of intoxication (or not) when he assigned roles, or whether he used random.org to pick teams or let his infant son pick for him. Why would I claim a title named something as weird (or boring) as Detect Mutant Power? It's just what Brick wrote on the sticky note before he slapped me in the forehead with it. Just go with it.

Firstly, I have actually never played roulette, but I didn't choose my targets randomly, I went for those I thought most likely to be nightkilled and targetted the players I thought would attack them. Secondly, lets make this explicit, I didn't believe Merovech was the most likely to die last night. Now perhaps thats me being out of it, outright stupid or whatever, but it is what it is. (The last sentence of the first paragraph is outright insulting - why yes, I do get how my ability works thank you very much! Good golly gosh, I should watch for people I am suspicious of?!? Genius!! :rollseye: ). And from here on in, yes we do have a good idea of who the scum will target, maybe, I don't know the people who are confirmed town?
I thought Serdoa was far and away the clearest town-aligned player left alive, and practically confirmed. And I didn't think Merovech was cut and dry town either, certainly it seems odd that the scum don't have a roleblocker and I didn't have a particularly strong read on Merovech independent of his role.

So we disagreed about who we both thought was most likely to die. Too bad the one of us in a position to possibly do something about it was the one who was wrong. That's not the issue, I'm not trying to hatchet you for being wrong, you had to make the call you thought was right (if you're town), or "reveal" the results least likely to be refuted (if you're scum). And I wasn't trying to tell you how to play your role, or how to play the game. You're not the turnip. I was saying that it isn't so impossible to hit on a possible killer with this few people left, considering how many people you surely could have ignored given their likely town-ness. If there's 5 scum alive they'd have already won, right? So there's max 4 and possibly only 3, depending how how Brick's son issued the roles. If you had just under a 50/50 shot guessing blind, striking Serdoa and Merovech and maybe one other strong town lean of yours off the list of suspects, maybe you just have bad RNG luck, or the commies are clever, or they hunt villagers with silencers on their pistols. I'm not criticizing the results, I'm criticizing the process (damn you Nick Saban!). Maybe I'm being unfair, if so, sorry. I just don't see at all how their next target will be any more obvious than it was last night, so your odds of catching them with the 2/N targeting is lowered by the fact that you don't even know who to watch the next time around.

As for Merovech himself, I agree with you in that I also didn't have much of a read on him from his posts in this game. In fact, right now I can't really remember a single thing he ever said that stands out. But I got a STRONG town read on him from his ACTIONS. That was what made him so valuable, and what would have made targeting him with your watch role so obvious. It's better to have a 2/N chance of catching the killer than 0. Sorry if that rankles, but if there's only one bullet proof vest in town why wouldn't the enemy snatch it away at the first chance?

Sorry for the wall of text. I think this passes for investigation around these parts. Preview edit: this is cross posting with sunrise.