Werewolf 7 game thread

[Serdoa]

Ok, I tried to sort my thoughts a little bit:

Roland: Too long posts to not be a villager.
Meiz: Acting like in the last WW-game. Villager.
Ichabod: Few but good posts. Villager.

Sareln: He has a way of getting himself killed, so he is in line with what to expect.
catwalk: Also acting like I expect it from him according to last game.
TT: Again, acting like I expect it. He could be a wolf just being upset that he has to defend all the time but I don't think so. Also some posts (like the last one, asking why nobody looks into the uberfish reactions) are so easily used to point suspicion his way that I don't think he would write them as a wolf.
Erebus: That fakeedit makes me worry again. But other posts seem villagerish. Right now I am torn on him.

Injera: I have no clue right now.
Jkaen: No input.

Gaspar: He writes stuff yeah. But somehow... I still wait for something that really stands out. I don't know. Why do most players feel I am a villager? Why do they not feel the same for Gaspar?

zakalwe: The same as for Gaspar. Even more so tbh. Gaspar is not known for giving big villager vibes but zak? When he is a villager you know it. I don't get that from him - not the slightest. He does post stuff which READS villager but it doesn't FEEL villager. I am not good to explain that, but basically - and I wonder how Meiz feels about it as he knows it from last game as well - zakalwe doesn't feel like last game, doesn't feel like villager. I mean TTs post about uberfishs gambit and that no one looked into it again? He has a valid point: Do I believe that a villager zakalwe would not have had thought about that - and shared his believes with us? No, actually, I don't believe that.

zakalwe

[zakalwe]

Serdoa, you're being unusually paranoid. You never answered my question from earlier either; do you really feel that I have been making more jokes than normal? Since then you have also been accusing me of posting too little, and now for not following up on some perceived obvious line of investigation. I don't think any of this criticism is fair.

The game as a whole has been quiet; I cannot just keep posting in a vacuum, I need to wait for others to post too so we can actually interact. I think the fraction of posts and content coming from me should be about normal. At least, I haven't consciously tried to deviate from my usual level of participation except to shy away from fruitless, prolonged bickering with Rowain and Roland, and a few hours of silence today, wanting to observe a bit before introducing my theories on Erebus and MNG.

Regarding what TT suggested; I think there is a lot to learn from rereading and watching how people have interacted with the known innocents. I did reread quite thoroughly on night 1; it would certainly be a good idea to do so now, too, with 3 known roles. Personally, I won't have time for that until night 2.

However, like I said on day 1, I don't think the Uberfish gambit held any intrinsic value in terms of catching wolves; it was just another thing to talk about. So yeah, we could go back and see what happened around that, but I don't think it's necessarily any more revealing than rereading other parts of the thread. That's why I asked TT if there was anything in particular he wanted to draw our attention to. (Also, because it was such an open-ended question, which reminded me a little of Erebus' call for people to go look for clues in a specific place.)

So the conclusion that I didn't think to look into the Uberfish gambit again (if that's what you were saying) is wrong. I did look into it again, along with everything else that happened on day 1, and it's what formed the basis of my post on night 1.

[Twinkletoes89]

Serdoa,

I do see your points about zakalwe and I do also have an odd feeling about him that I can't quite put my finger on. However, given I had a similar feeling about him for quite a while in my other game, I am hesitant to act on it as I was wrong the last time. His style in playing is always pretty similar, he puts himself out there and tries to lead discussion. With a reputation like that it is one of those problems - he is well practiced at it so could use the same tactic even as a wolf & people would notice, but if he is innocent he is playing as he always does so ends up semi-suspicious early doors until he (normally) proves himself.

He possibly comes up worst from looking back at the initial reaction to uberfish's gambit

He was first to say that lynching him, innocent or not would be helpful. I also supported that, but he then attacked me for saying it whilst 'forgetting' he said it first. In a hilarious twist of irony, he even said in his suggestion of lynching that 'I'm sure Twinkletoes will agree' and then attacked me for, in essence, agreeing!

He was (I believe) the only one who, when the first bandwagon started, suggested explicitly that the vigilante should kill him and they go after someone else - perhaps trying to capitalise on the momentum to get a wasted vig kill (not needed in the end unfortunately) and perhaps take out another villager at the same time.

Its not good, but its not execution-damning either. I just am really uncertain on him and an uncertain vote is not a good thing to throw out there. I still think zak is closer to innocent than guilty right now.

I see a lot of hazy semi-suspects and noone really standing out yet. Right now I would advise us all that unless something really damning/incriminating comes up, we should look on any bandwagon forming with suspicion. We must make the most of the time we have to delve further and discuss things to try and clear things up if we can.

Uberfish's gambit caught a lot of us (if not all of us) on the hop and I think that it may have perhaps managed to confuse people (and hopefully wolves) into posts that may not have been totally what they were wanting to say, with such an early chance for wolves to get a mislynch on a player whose skills are quite respected.

While there isn't anything hugely incriminating I can see yet at first or second read, I think some more people looking and discussing could draw out some things from it or at least have as much of an understanding as we are unable to get.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

When I said:

So... is Injera innocent connecting two dots that are unconnected? Or is he a wolf trying to force two things together?

I meant:

I think Injera's logic is flawed, especially this last post. zakalwe provided very clear reasoning for both his original assessment of uberfish (based on past experience), and the change (based on lack of helpfulness during the day, basically dismissing accusations as idiocy). I don't find it to be particularly wolfish behaviour to push this hard for an innocent to hang. If either of us were wolves, it'd be much safer to jump on later and let others take the lead.

I don't mean it as an insult so I hope you won't take it as such, but how much WW have you played in other settings? If this is your first game you seem very sure of yourself, and I'm getting a feeling you're following wolf orders. If you've played a fair bit elsewhere, please disregard the comment.

(Emphasis added)
This post comes from very early in my last night read, but Injera comes to the top of my suspicion list after my reading of his previous posts. Seeing Catwalk confirm what I was reading makes my suspect list look something like this:

*Sareln
*JKaen
*Injera
*Scooter
*Catwalk
*Twinkletoes

In no particular order.

[Serdoa]

Serdoa, you're being unusually paranoid. You never answered my question from earlier either; do you really feel that I have been making more jokes than normal? Since then you have also been accusing me of posting too little, and now for not following up on some perceived obvious line of investigation. I don't think any of this criticism is fair.

The game as a whole has been quiet; I cannot just keep posting in a vacuum, I need to wait for others to post too so we can actually interact. I think the fraction of posts and content coming from me should be about normal. At least, I haven't consciously tried to deviate from my usual level of participation except to shy away from fruitless, prolonged bickering with Rowain and Roland, and a few hours of silence today, wanting to observe a bit before introducing my theories on Erebus and MNG.

Regarding what TT suggested; I think there is a lot to learn from rereading and watching how people have interacted with the known innocents. I did reread quite thoroughly on night 1; it would certainly be a good idea to do so now, too, with 3 known roles. Personally, I won't have time for that until night 2.

However, like I said on day 1, I don't think the Uberfish gambit held any intrinsic value in terms of catching wolves; it was just another thing to talk about. So yeah, we could go back and see what happened around that, but I don't think it's necessarily any more revealing than rereading other parts of the thread. That's why I asked TT if there was anything in particular he wanted to draw our attention to. (Also, because it was such an open-ended question, which reminded me a little of Erebus' call for people to go look for clues in a specific place.)

So the conclusion that I didn't think to look into the Uberfish gambit again (if that's what you were saying) is wrong. I did look into it again, along with everything else that happened on day 1, and it's what formed the basis of my post on night 1.

Maybe I am paranoid zak. I was going in this game being sure that I would at least have an easy time with you as I felt it should be obvious when you are a wolf. But now I start to doubt that. Yes, I believe you did make more jokes then last game. Is that alone enough reason to vote for you? No, not really. But with stuff others pointed out and most importantly with my feeling about you it is. Can my feeling be wrong though? Surely it can, thats why I ask others which I trust what they think.

Anyway, we won't find an easy solution to that and I want to sleep now. Maybe tomorrow more people will have posted.

[Roland]

I don't feel like sniping at Roland right now, I think he's innocent and there's no point in arguing about whether or not I'm contributing. Either I am, or I'm not, and no amount of assertion will change that one way or the other.

True. Actions speak louder than words. Which is followed up nicely by the rest of your post.

Perhaps Lewwyn being killed implies that either Meiz or I is a wolf (or vigilante)? It doesn't. Or at least, I don't think it does. Here's why.

If I were the vigilante, killing Lewwyn makes no sense at all. He's basically proved himself innocent to me with his taunts (awful risky for a wolf) and his high profile and frequent updates mean there will be plenty of opportunities later to try and suss out his true alignment. Additionally, I'm not worried that I'm going to be killed in the night. That same flaw which makes me always seem suspicious also means that I'm very likely to survive the first night as the wolves either go hunting for power roles or try and knock off "cleared" or "trusted" villagers.

If I'm a wolf, then killing Lewwyn is even more boneheaded. He outright tells Ichabod he wants to set up an early train on me the next day, and then all of a sudden he's killed in the night. That would never set off anyone's warning bells now would it? It's all too convenient.

As it is, I'm a villager, suspected as usual . I don't know if the wolves chose a frame-up as their likely play, or if they just felt that Lewwyn was too obviously a villager, but I'm currently working under the idea that Lewwyn was the night kill and Rowain the vigilante (see previous post for reasoning there).

I have to say, you lay a pretty convincing case out right there, particularly the bolded part.

@ Injera/Zakalwe - My TT -> Uberfish vote, why give the wolves more cover? I parked my vote on TT to try and draw a response from him and got an answer which satisfied me. At that point the vote is between Uberfish and TT with Uberfish giving a half-hearted defense. I suppose I could've pushed for Zakalwe or Injera, but Zakalwe is reading innocent to me and there's always the danger that a partial run on Injera from Uberfish could leave a 3 way race where the wolves pick who they want to hang (Uber, TT, Injera), and there was still the outside possibility that Uberfish was a wolf (probably vanilla) himself. Given those options, I voted Uberfish. I think that cover-wise, the most telling lynch votes will be the later day ones, where wolves make up more of the voters and movements are easier to see.

Save for your last line (which I agree with), this argument makes no sense to me. You start out by saying "Why give the 'Wolves cover," which is exactly what we're asking of you! By the very action of moving uberfish even further from the realm of safety you provided the very best cover for the 'Wolves to hide behind! Also, I don't ever remember Injera coming anywhere close to being lynched as Twinkletoes and uberfish were, so I'm not buying that bit at all. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it just seems weak - straw man.

As for picking on JKaen, he's being quiet and I want to push him a little and see what pops out. At the very least he'll bring a fresh perspective to things if he comments, but the only way to really guarantee a comment is to slap a vote on someone and see how they respond. Quiet, by itself, is not a problem. It's when that quiet is allowed to be left alone for too long that we need to do something about it.

He's already stated his availability is very limited for the time being. Unless you want to take Serdoa's advice and kill all the inactives - which I think is virtually insane - I suggest you find someone better to press. As much as I want Jkaen talking, you can't get blood from a stone, and you can't get information from someone who isn't here. If you had chosen MNG I wouldn't have batted an eyelash, but you didn't.

I'm sorry if I seem to be harping on you, Sareln, but I'm just not at all convinced by your defenses. It's not that I'm ignoring them, it's that I don't follow the logic. Right now zakalwe's putting up a better defense for you than you are, and it's his words of caution that are keeping me from wanting to lynch you more - that, and I actually watched you get lynched in the last game, and I could hardly believe it. So, overall I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I can't keep that up forever. I'm also not trying to seem altruistic here - I'm not self-important enough to feel like I'm doing you a favor. I'm just following my feelings and explaining them as best I can - nothing more, nothing less - and so far you're still pretty high on my suspect list.

[Roland]

Oops. That wasn't supposed to be a separate post - it was supposed to be attached to the end of this one. I guess it doesn't make a difference, though.

And now, since I would love to at least figure out if everyone else thinks I'm completely insane for suspecting zakalwe, let me ask the village: 1) Do you think my suspicions against him have any weight? and 2) If you think zakalwe is basically a strong innocent, what makes you think that?

Until I hear some opinions from the other villagers on that I'm going to put my vote on zakalwe again.

1) No, not without anything more to back it up. I respect your efforts, though, and it is worth following your gut - so long as you can eventually recognize when you're on the wrong path versus the right one.
2) I think I've expounded upon this enough, but the gist of it is that I've seen 'Wolf zakalwe and Villager zakalwe, and so far he's coming up Villager.

I don't think you're a 'Wolf. In my opinion, you're trying too hard to be helpful to the Village to be a 'Wolf, and being that this is your first WW game I'm even less inclined to believe you could be capable of pulling off the "helpful 'Wolf" bit. No offense. :neenernee

@Meiz...

I'm curious to read Meiz's response. I think I'm starting to understand why he keeps making me want to go back to him, but I'm going to wait to see what more he has to say before commenting (I still haven't read his monster post, so I don't want to shoot my mouth off only to find something in there that would change my opinion).

Vote-wise for now I want to put my vote on JKaen. In WW5, we let Pling get away with too many excuses about being unavailable to play, and I don't want to repeat the mistake.

JKaen, what do you think of all this?

Picking this post to respond to, but the gist of it boils down to low signal-to-noise ratio coming from you Sareln. I'm not getting the feeling that you're trying very hard (if that's unfair, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to tiptoe around my suspicions just to avoid some hurt feelings). Everyone in the Village is looking to you to provide something more concrete, and I fail to see you doing that in each and every post. Your efforts in explaining your theories with regard to Lewwyn / Rowain and how each was killed were notable, but I don't feel as though they advance the discussion in any meaningful way. The rest seems to be trying to slowly build a defence preemptively by saying Lewwyn was killed to draw suspicion to you, and that we shouldn't follow that avenue. Personally, I never made the connection, and even if I had it would have been so minor as to be easily dismissed. Yet you seem to want to make a big deal out of it. I find that to be very suspicious, and I'm growing tired of trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here.

I know I'm coming across as harsh here, but it's because I've let you slide for so long. With more people reaffirming their innocence in my mind, those who haven't are becoming all the more prominent, and you're high on that list. Nothing personal. Just a process of elimination. The fact that you're taking the "safest" vote out there isn't helping your case any, either - just as it didn't when you went to vote uberfish yesterday.

I still think Ichabod is too quiet for my tastes but I can see nobody is very interested in that. So I have to say Catwalk seems to be trying really hard to chum up with zakalwe, even leaping to his defense virtually unprompted. I recognize this behavior from doing it myself in previous games when I played wolf.

Care to explain why you think you need to carry zak's water for him, Catwalk?

I can't say I see Catwalk jumping to zakalwe's defense "unprompted." Personally, I see him trying to tie himself to a person generally regarded as innocent, thus either ensuring his own safety, or at least creating the possibility for a mislynch if he does turn up a 'Wolf.

I would need to look back to find the posts that gave me this impression, but I find myself oscillating pretty wildly on Erebus. It seems about half his posts give me a good villager feeling and the other half make me pretty suspicious. Anyone else feel this?

I'm starting to get the same feeling about him myself. Yesterday I was pretty suspicious of him (although it was only Day 1), but then I moved away from that. The points raised by zakalwe, though, made me curious about him again. I honestly will have to reread his posts over again to see where I see him, because right now I don't have a solid reading.

I just want to warn you that Sareln has a somewhat unusual baseline, which could make him harder to evaluate if you haven't played with him before.

I can't say I find that a convincing enough argument to wave my suspicions away, but I'll keep it in mind.

Concerning most of the rest of your points, I'll have to plead inexperience.

Well, this is probably the first post where I can see myself calling you a Villager. One post, especially this one, is not enough to remove all my suspicion, but it's enough to delay my trying to lynch you for awhile (I was seriously considering following Gaspar on you, even though I didn't expect many others to follow me).

While the evidence may be poor, I'm not stirring a witch hunt. I tried to provide arguments for some of my suspicions, they did not concern you alone. I find this a little suspicious, similar to when zakalwe made a slight accusation of you along with other people and you jumped at him with fangs bared :neenernee It sounds like that's a question of playing style, though.

Yeah... my playing style probably comes across as a little... bipolar. :neenernee My fight-or-flight instincts are pretty much pegged at "fight"; it's just my nature. I'm also very reactionary - if I see someone pushing against me, I tend to push back just as hard if not harder. If they back off, I tend to follow suit (unless they really ticked me off). I'm sure it makes me look a little... off, but I don't like to fight, so if it passes I'm generally inclined to let it go. I'm not afraid to fight, though, and I do tend to be a bit more... cavalier online than in person (I'm usually a very restrained person, though not for a lack of temper).

I guess what I'm saying is that in these games I'm confrontational. If that makes me suspicious to you, so be it, but you're free to ask around - I doubt anyone will be hesitant to bring up the myriad times I've gone after someone's throat (whether I had good reason or not is another matter entirely... ).

Something I don't seem to see us doing (or at least discussing) is now is looking again at the fallout from uberfish's gambit, now that we know (pretty much) what he was trying to do and that he was a villager.

One of the main reasons for his lynching was so that we would have this information to use, but I don't really see any of us using it.

I think that's probably because, as several people pointed out, his 3 reactions pretty much could encompass the entire Village - and it did. I still don't think it was a terrible gambit (although it certainly ended terribly), but maybe that's because I think I understand what he was trying to do. Maybe I'm just being too nice, though, and should really say that it was a flawed experiment from the get go, and now there's probably not much we can learn from it. It'd certainly be nice to pull something from the ashes of that inferno, but I honestly didn't find much the first time around - and I was looking.

Still, it's a topic to discuss, and more (constructive) discussion can only help the Village. I'll try to give it another pass.

I have to say, this must be one of the strangest posts I've seen so far in the WW games; it's almost on par with Uberfish' opening post in this game. Why would you fake edit a sentence in this manner, instead of just removing the whole sentence?

Echoing the sentiment, because that was my first reaction. It was so out of place in his post that it jarred me right out of my thought train. I won't call it 'Wolfish, but it was definitely "odd."

The issue with Rowain is that I and him are pretty differently in how we engage in this game. Or at least we have a way to clash with each other. When I read his posts, I didn't take that into account. That's what I meant with clash of personalities. I clash easily with him and if I don't take care about that, I will peg him as wolf simply because I WANT him to be a wolf.

I think Rowain has that effect on several people. Look at him and zakalwe, for example. It's not just you. Hell, until my last game with you I felt the same way about you! That tends to happen more than we realize, I think, so I'm always trying to take that into account when reading certain people's posts.

[zakalwe]

He was first to say that lynching him, innocent or not would be helpful. I also supported that, but he then attacked me for saying it whilst 'forgetting' he said it first. In a hilarious twist of irony, he even said in his suggestion of lynching that 'I'm sure Twinkletoes will agree' and then attacked me for, in essence, agreeing!

I have to agree, that is kind of funny. Obviously, the reason I added the "I'm sure Twinkletoes will agree" comment is because you deliberately lied to me in WW1, which made me heavily biased towards lynching you, which almost lost us the game. (Unrelated side note: I'm still kind of annoyed that Krill, who was the one who originally advised you to go ahead with that stupid plan, claimed that I would be to blame if the village lost.) So anyway, it was a jab, and I didn't actually expect you to agree, as such. (More accurately: I didn't really seriously consider whether or not you'd actually agree.)

Anyway, when I was called out on that double standard, I backpedaled pretty fast and put my vote elsewhere. I can understand if people think that is wolfish, but it was actually a case of me having an (allegedly) rare moment of level-headedness and realizing that my initial hunch on TT might be wrong.

With that, I am off to bed. Still feeling pretty good about my Erebus vote. When I get back, I hope to hear some more convincing theories from those who have other lynch candidates. In particular, JKaen seems to be a pure inactivity lynch, even though he announced his absence before the game started. Feels like a crapshoot to me.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Seems like he just decided that he wanted to vote for Roland and saw his previous innocent read on Roland as an obstacle that he had to somehow dismiss, rather than a reason to reconsider. In contrast, he later has no qualms about trusting his innocent reads and using them as a basis for further arguments. For example, he later attacked Injera based on the fact that I was "clearly innocent". (On the page before that, I was listed as "probably innocent", btw.) With this post, MNG leapt right back up on to my suspect list. He didn't comment further on why he had voted for Roland when he switched off him, either, which I would expect to see if he was just voting on a whim to generate a response.

The Roland vote was a joke, and a bit of a jab at myself. It wasn't a serious vote. To use Roland's phrase, it was a "stock MNG joke". I do however like your reason for suspecting Erebus from earlier in the same post. Trying to get Sareln framed and then frame the villager that took the bait? That's the kind of double-reverse-psychology that makes me love this game.

[Serdoa]

Save for your last line (which I agree with), this argument makes no sense to me. You start out by saying "Why give the 'Wolves cover," which is exactly what we're asking of you! By the very action of moving uberfish even further from the realm of safety you provided the very best cover for the 'Wolves to hide behind! Also, I don't ever remember Injera coming anywhere close to being lynched as Twinkletoes and uberfish were, so I'm not buying that bit at all. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it just seems weak - straw man.

Roland, he rehashed what he was asked "Why give the wolves cover?". It was not part of his defense but part of the question asked by others. Bad english by me but I hope you understand. Reread it and think of it as "Your question is why I did my TT/uberfish vote as it gave the wolves more cover. I answer the following".

As for his low signal-to-noise-ratio I have to say that I think that is unfair by you. Look at what was provided by zak or heck even myself. Or Gaspar for that matter. I don't think that was so much more then what we got from Sareln. And those guys are known for coming up with the good stuff, Sareln isn't.

Lastly you picked on his defensive about the Lewwyn-kill

The rest seems to be trying to slowly build a defence preemptively by saying Lewwyn was killed to draw suspicion to you, and that we shouldn't follow that avenue. Personally, I never made the connection, and even if I had it would have been so minor as to be easily dismissed. Yet you seem to want to make a big deal out of it. I find that to be very suspicious, and I'm growing tired of trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here.

I don't think he did make a big deal out of it. As far as I remember others came up first with the idea that this might have been the tactic of the wolves. That he uses it as part of his defense is understandable I think.