WW21 - The Professor Is Dead [game thread]

[zakalwe]

Thats not how Serdoa plays ya? I attacked him and he responded aggressievly and so did Zak to the rest of you.

Oh yeah, here it is.

[Gazglum]

[quote='Gazglum' pid='352347' dateline='1363424784']
We have room for one more mislynch, as I count it. Right now we're down to the Q-voters (Serdoa, Lewwyn, Zak, NOvice), me, and the lurkers (Ryan/Matt).

I know I'm innocent, and I think it's very unlikely that Ryan and Matt are the wolf pair.

Why? Neither has done anything to make me believe he is not scum. Why do you believe they can't be a pair? Was there some interaction I overlooked?

Sorry, I could have been clearer there. First off is just probability: if my maths is right there are 15 possible scum pairings not including me. That’s 6 possible scum pairings out of Zak/Novice/Serdoa/Lewwyn; 10 if you assume one wolf of Matt/Ryan; compared to only the 1/15 chance of Ryan/Mattimeo.

Also I don’t think it likely that both wolves would have missed an opportunity to go along with the Q attack.

I think it’s a lot safer to assume wolves in the Q-voters than to assume there aren’t wolves Serdoa. I don’t understand why you seem so reluctant to go along with the idea, even as a thought experiment. Why are you so sure Zak can’t be scum? Or novice?


I will admit that on reflection, you guys are right that Jkaen’s death can be spun so many ways that it doesn’t help us that much. I do stand by my Occams’ Razor theory that the simplest explanation – he was a threat to vote for a wolf, whether Mattimeo or Zak, is likely right.

Why not have the watchers/scanners/trackers/whatnots focus on the alleged super wolves, and lynch the lurkers? You're taking a pretty unusual stance here, really. It's hard enough to get a lurker lynched as it is, in my opinion.

Well, you and Serdoa are in agreement here, so maybe I’m viewing this wrong (or maybe you're scumbuddies :P). But it just seems to me that if someone has a power that will give them information, they should use it on targets we have the least information on.

I know I've hardly built a watertight case, but at least it’s a case. Right now the only alternative I’m seeing is Serdoa’s “let’s lynch the lurkers”, which I disagree with.


Also, sorry that I'm messing up the nested quotes above, I'm still puzzling out the system there!

[zakalwe]

I've reread up to post 85 and am not much wiser so far. One question for Zak:

I don't know if there are any particular characters that strike me as much more likely to be scum than the others. I guess there are a couple that seem likely to be town, though. It's not clear to me how "outing" these characters will be useful.

So it's kind of scummy that [b]Qgqqqqq urges this on[/b] as something to just get out of the way.

Why was that scummy, Zak, when Q clearly didn't know the theme?

Role claiming may favor scum, or it may favor town. Q just urged it on without considering which it would be. That's what I found scummy. It's an elaboration on the post I made before that, where I said:

So you definitely agree that we need to hurry up and character claim, even though you don't know anything at all about the theme?

Then what makes you think there is anything to gain from the mass claim?

If you don't know anything about the theme, I would expect you to say something like "Hey guys, I don't know the theme at all. Are there clearly defined bad guys? If so, then I agree we should go ahead with the mass claim".

But Q just unconditionally endorsed it, and even said we should hurry. I thought that was scummy. Or at least scummier than anything else I had seen until then.

[Serdoa]

Well, from my last interactions with Ryan I think he is a good target, not just for the lurking but also for his play when he decides to chime in. Like today when he decided to search confrontation with me. He did not once try to hunt scum. He chimed in, declared zak and me scum because zak voted him and that was it basically. Everything afterwards is just bullshit (for example him telling that I am scum because I did a short vote post on D1).

So tbh I feel pretty good voting him now, because he did not give me any reason to believe he is innocent but gave me several reasons to believe that he has no interest in helping the village.

As for your part about probability Gazglum: That seems mathematically sound, but what has it to do with them both being scum or not? Of course the chances are higher that you find 2 scum in 4 out of 7 players than in 2 out of 7. But if I spin that further down, with the same logic we can conclude that the chances that zak and I are scum are also only 1/15 so you should not pursue that angle either. And the same is true for novice and Lewwyn, so don't look at them... oh wait, no one left to actually be scum, guess the village wins

Seriously, as stated above of course the probability goes down if you reduce the number of players you look at as a pairing. But it makes no sense to look at it from that perspective. Every player has the same chance to be wolf or villager. So every kind of scum-pairing is as likely as every other pairing. Might we lynch a villager if we lynch Ryan? Yes we might. But without looking at what anyone did his chances are as good as those of zak or you or me. Therefore we do look at what everyone did and hope to interpret it correctly as either villagery or wolfy. So imo excluding anyone makes no sense. But that is what you did. You excluded both of them by stating that you believe they can't be a pair and focussed solely on the other 4 players. At least thats my feeling.

For your other point on that topic: I'm not sure I agree with that. IF we believe that both players on the block were innocent, it made no difference for the wolves on whom they are. They might even try to force a split so that this will be discussed and shifted back and forth than to bring one candidate so far into the lead that someone inevitably will ask if maybe the wolves just try to get him killed. Was their anything special on the Q-attack that you think wolves would want to join it? I mean quite honestly, imo Q is not considered the best player around here, so as wolf I certainly would rather get zak lynched (if he is a villager). And even if I don't suceed with that, being able to point back to that attack is great, because it can be used as "something a wolf would never do".

Lastly for your point about tracker/watcher etc.: It is imo better to get more information on a target you already have information on and get rid of those that you can't read at all than the other way round. At least in this small game with nearly reached lylo already. Assuming we have no seer, if a tracker tells us he saw someone visiting player x (which died in the night) what do we do? This tracker could be a wolf, trying to get us to mislynch someone or a villager being honest. With a lurker, it is next to impossible to decide on that, even worse if BOTH lurkers are involved in that shit. But with players that you have some kind of read on already it gets easier to decide who says the truth.

[novice]

Now what was I going to add about the case against Zak? Go back and look at his attack on me. I'm going to refer to this post because I think, as I have said before that it is the scummiest. Put don't look at the post itself look at when it was written and think about what Zak was trying to achieve. Just before the post, Ryan has voted for Zak and then Gaz wrote an attack post on Zak as well. Zak then responds with:

Alright, let's do a little analysis, then.

He then proceeds to rehash what has happened and then "look for Q's scum buddy" he's not looking for scum, he's looking for the scum buddy of the person he's voting for. [...] It creates the aura of scumhunting.

Like Zak said, you're leaving out the fact that the preceding attack post by Gazglum ended with

Maybe if you gave your reasoning behind your thoughts on who to look to next, I would feel more comfortable following your lead on this one. Until then, Zakalwe.

So I really don't think Zak can be faulted for that post. About JKaen's death:

One thing Gaz does that I'm not particularly fond of is analyze Jkaen's death. You criticized that Serdoa, but I think you missed the main reason its useless is because wolf kills are naturally going to be confusing because maybe they're trying to frame or reverse frame someone, who knows. [...] And personally I think it is distracting.

I actually disagree in this case. First of all, this is a nine player game so I think the wolves will play it straighter than normal. Just straight out defend your buddy and get the required mislynches, and kill off the ones that are on to you. So Serdoa + Zak is a possible pairing, and I would say that JKaen's top suspects are looking more scummy from JKaen's death. Secondly, Mattimeo and Ryan can pretty much see the lynch-a-lurker train coming, so it's pretty important to derail that train onto the other player. For the record, here's JKaen's suspect list:

ok so thinking my way through the notes we have:
Zak - seems a bit lazy, but contributing so do not want swinging yet
Serdoa - I think seems like normal
Matt - Seems to be casting round alot, happy to vote here
Ryan - null read
Novice - minor question, but not enough to vote
Q - I think is a panacing villager
Lewwyn - worried about the backing off from the case in the light of I think weak arguments from others

Ordering that gives me
Matt, Lewwyn/Zak, Novice, Ryan, Serdoa, Q with the uncommented gazglum about at ryan position

Too late for a Matt bandwagon, so Zak

So yeah. Crossposting with Serdoa.

[Azza]

Current tally;

zakalwe (3) - Gazglum, Ryan, Lewwyn
Ryan (2) - Serdoa, zakalwe
Lewwyn (1) - Mattimeo
Mattimeo (1) - novice

[novice]

Thanks Azza. I was already doing a tally, so here's the sequence of votes on day 2:

Lewwyn

Gazglum

Ryan

Novice

Ryan

Lewwyn

Serdoa

Lewwyn

Zakalwe

zak

Zak

Mattimeo

[novice]

Just 12 hours left until the lynch unless I'm mistaken. I think Zak is a poor choice.

[Lewwyn]

A lot of people responded to me while I was asleep so I'm going to try and respond in kind...

I think either you are a hardline villager who believes Zak is innocent but refuses to admit he believes it because there isn't really any evidence for it, or scum who either wants to keep scum buddy Zak safe or buddy up to innocent Zak. I'm having a difficult time deciding.

I believe that there is no good reason to vote for him right now and that we are better off voting for lurkers whom we can't read at all because they don't post.

I think there is a good reason to vote for him based on his post. If the lurkers were to post are we still not going to lynch them if we don't like what they post? Isn't the whole reason we want people to post so that we can analyze those posts? I don't disagree that lurkers are dangerous. I just think that Zak slipped up.

What you two say is basically that lynching zak is even beneficial if a mislynch because we know more afterwards. That is not true, because obviously in case of a mislynch we don't know more than before.

Also the second sentence of yours makes no sense at all. Of course we have to lynch him if he is guilty. And? What has that to do with my point? Nothing at all. You guys argued that even a mislynch is good for us (basically the least worse option) and I don't agree with this faulty logic.

This is just a circular argument and one I should have never taken part in. If Ryan is innocent do we gain any information? Its the same as if Zak is innocent. I don't know if knowing Zaks innocence is more or less worthless than knowing ryan's but I do know I suspect Zak, and that I'm better at reading Zak then I am Ryan.

He then proceeds to rehash what has happened and then "look for Q's scum buddy" he's not looking for scum, he's looking for the scum buddy of the person he's voting for. He doesn't know Q's alignment! Do you think Village Zak would be "so sure"? Do you think he'd start throwing suspicion on people based on an alignment he doesn't know? But what does this achieve? It creates the aura of scumhunting. It also allows Zak to throw suspicion on me without voting for me because he's "still got to reaffirm Q's alignment". This way he gets to shed suspicion on himself, throw some on me and he doesn't have to take his vote of Q thereby endangering himself to a vote. He was under pressure and I think this was his response.

I think it would have been completely in line for a villager to keep his vote on Q to not get himself lynched. After all he only knows his alignment for certain and I would expect every villager to save himself. So that argument of yours makes imo not much sense, as he could have kept his vote on Q with much less hassle as well.

As for the part of being certain: You seem very certain that he is scum too, don't you?

You know whats funny is that in the past a village tell has been a willingness not to vote to save yourself at lynch time. I think the thing that bothers me most about what you say here is that you completely dismiss the idea that Zak was under pressure and that the argument that he makes on me doesn't make sense. You instead focus on the fact that he posted. Also the difference between me and Zak being "sure" at this point is that I'm not trying to link anyone to Zak in order attack them. I have suspicions either way but until Zak is confirmed either way I don't see the point in postulating off on a tangent. If this; then that statements are dangerous because you're setting up chains.

As for the part of being certain: I'm not, but he is top on my list, he is not the only one on my list. I think its hilarious that this game I've been attacked by different people for "being too certain", and for "backing down". Too opposite descriptions of my play pretty much being espoused concurrently.

[Lewwyn]

Missed this when responding to Serdoa.

The way the lynches are happening are : Q into me and then Prob Gagzulm next. Better kill all the mislynchables

Ugh. I actually agree with Serdoa here. Don't play the martyr. Both you and Q were scum last game.