WW21 - The Professor Is Dead [game thread]

[zakalwe]

About the perceived redundancy of my role. With no information revealed upon death, I think my ability may be intended to balance things out for town, since scum could otherwise just make up whatever abilities they wanted, with no meta to contradict them. Gazglum got alignments, but not abilities, and I got abilities, but not alignments. I'm not saying it makes perfect sense, but I do know I'm innocent and we don't have the complete picture yet. Maybe scum have a godfather who was immune to Gazglum's investigations, and maybe there are some more town roles among the dead that would help complete the picture.

I will admit that I did think I was the closest thing we had to a seer. That's why I wanted the mass claim on day 2.

Anyway, I think the scum team is probably Mattimeo plus a superwolf.

Back later.

[Mattimeo]

Not sure that's a point I'd be raising, zak, given the primary argument for your guilt at this stage rests on alignments and roles being somewhat linked.
If that is the case, though, it would also effectively confirm Lewwyn as town, since commuting would be rather useless for scum.

I'd be more confident about joining the "it has to be one of the vanilla claims" if we had claims from everyone in the game. Having exactly one vanilla townie is something of a thing, but it's harder to determine if that's likely with two missing claims.

Still, looking likely to be zakalwe and Serdoa at this stage.

[Mattimeo]

(referring to "Azza rigged the roles")

[novice]

Alignments and Roles were randomly assigned to characters, who were in turn randomly assigned to the players.

You're right Zak that roles do not seem to be randomly assigned to characters. Although who knows how creative Azza can be in justifying a character having a given role.

I was going to sum up what we know, including the dead players, but I have to run. Anyway, remember that the dead players had roles too:

Game State: Night 2. Deadline at 1200GMT, Tuesday March 19th.

Players
Alive
zakalwe
novice
Lewwyn
Mattimeo
Serdoa

Dead
Qgqqqqq - Scruffy (lynched day 1)
Jkaen - Cubert (killed night 1)
Ryan - Zoidberg (lynched day 2)
Gazglum - Leela (killed night 2)

[novice]

Lewwyn, how many shots does your ability have? Zak, same question.

[Serdoa]

What is your conclusion on Lewwyn zak? You did switch away from him so you believe his claim? Or are you simply more certain on Mattimeo?

Also, you posted this on D2 about novices power

With just 2 out of 9 scum (surely there are not 3), then maybe they got a minor boost to their voting power.

I didn't think much about it at that point but I recently thought about the setup and remembered that post. Now, look what we know now about the setup besides that 22% of the players are wolves (I think we can be certain that it is not 1 and we would have already lost if 3, so it is 2 wolves)

We have the following roles:

Alignment Seer
Role Seer
Doublevoter
NK-immunity for 1 night (?)

So, 22% would be slightly on the low side maybe, but not by much. Imo it feels fine. But now the roles come into play. And I feel that those 4 roles are too many to be all village. Now, what are the obvious expectations (or already facts)

Alignment Seer = village (we know that)
NK-immunity = obviously village
Doublevoter = ?, but I lean village here
Role Seer = ?, but I lean wolves here, as a way for them to find the alignment seer

Also look at D1. All 4 voters of zak are now dead while all 4 votes for Q are still alive. Yes, there is certainly a least 1 wolf within us 4 and I know I am not it. Lewwyn can't be it either if we believe his claim (and if he lied that would mean zak is his wolf-buddy anyhow, covering for him). So that leaves novice and zak.

If I have to decide between the two, meta tells me that zaks role is suiting a wolf much better than novices imo. Or rather I don't see the reason for this role for a villager. I mean you don't gain anything by it as town. Nobody claims his ability name normally and if you directly ask for it you already give away your role. So you won't catch anyone in a lie or at best only if you give away your role first - it stands to reason that a wolf would answer such a question honestly and just make up what the role does (if even necessary). For the wolves though, this role can help identify the seer or NK-immune guy. Given the role-names are not really giving much away (well, influential family does after the first official vote I guess and get bend might if you know the series). And that of course presumes that zak is being honest and telling us the truth.

Ok, so thats the meta. Now I reread his posts and I'd ask anyone to do the same (well, reread the thread, not just one person imo). Some points I noted:

If I am lynched, you will be able to deduce my role

That was written shortly before D2 ended and it is not true. Except for novice no one would have been able to deduce his role. I still don't get why zak asked for claims and when asked to claim himself explained that we would know it if he dies when clearly we would not. novice was the only one at best to know it. And if he really believed that it wouldn't matter either way, why hint at it all the time while asking others to reveal? What would he gain by them revealing their role (not their role-name, he never asked for that all thread as far as I checked)?

Then he posted on why he does not claim already:

I guess it's possible, if there's a vigilante among us. I'm just saying it would lend more credibility to my claim if we're both alive, though. And it would be a bit unfortunate if I die, and the person I'm trusting to decode my breadcrumbs turns out to be scum. Then again, it's not like my role will break the game, so I think the risk is acceptable.

Now knowing his role I really ask myself what was all the fuss about? I get the feeling zak simply tried to play up his importance to get a possible vigilante to reconsider him. He was two days on the block so a Vig might decide to shoot him, especially with it being obvious that we have Lylo today so a Vig might decide to take things into his own hands. Yes he was asked about it, no question. But he was the one playing it super-cryptic so that others would actually get interested. He could as well have claimed, that wouldn't have been any issue at all, he is not an alignment-seer. I think the reason he did not claim was that he was fearing someone would get to the same conclusion that I got to: That this role makes more sense for wolves.

Today now on why he scanned Lewwyn:

So while I could hope to catch one [Mattimeo or Serdoa] of them in a lie, I decided to hold off with my claim and hope to catch you or Gazglum in a lie, instead.

Clarification in [] by me. I don't understand that at all. Why not scan one of those claiming vanilla? Thats actually the best way - especially if you are suspecting Mattimeo anyhow and even wanted to lynch him yesterday already. I mean why scan someone claiming to have a role? Just so you are told "yes he has a role, called xxx"? And then what? Scanning vanilla to see if they really have no role makes imo much more sense and actually the only sense for a town role-seer. You don't have anything from knowing their role-name, nobody will lie about those.

And actually, looking now at all that

zakalwe

Especially the last point (whom you decided to scan) leaves me with several ??? over my head. novice talked about how to use a role pro- or anti-town earlier in the thread and he was right, thats a way to differeniate scum from town. And your use imo was anti-town.

[zakalwe]

I have unlimited shots, Novice.

Serdoa - I am inclined to believe Lewwyn's claim, yeah. Scum could have a roleblocker, but my "no result" combined with his claim would still be quite a coincidence if he just made it up. Keep in mind that he claimed before I revealed my role. This is exactly why I was so torn about whether or not to claim last night. If I had first claimed, and then asked Lewwyn "so what's your role?", he would obviously just have told the truth, regardless of his alignment. You are acknowledging that yourself, even though you're spinning it as a reason for why my role is useless. So I wanted to scan Lewwyn, and then push him to claim before I did. How is that anti-town? I'm not following you, at all. I think it was making good use of my role, i.e. pro-town. If I had chosen to claim last night, then yeah, my only reasonable options to scan would be you or Mattimeo, because you had already claimed vanilla. So we agree on that part. But I wanted to scan Lewwyn, and so I held off on the claim.

When I said "If I am lynched, you will be able to deduce my role", then you are right, I was probably stretching the truth a little. The reality was that Novice would be able to deduce it, and would presumably share it, perhaps even regardless of his alignment, just for town cred. I could have said "If I am lynched, Novice can tell you what my role is", and I actually considered saying that, but I thought it would be too much of a giveaway.

I also disagree with your meta conclusions about my role; that there's no reason for me to have this role as town. We've had town name seers and role seers before, and they have even caught scum red-handed in their lies. And as noted, that's what I was trying to do, too.

Don't rush to a conclusion here.

[zakalwe]

So, a question to Novice. How could you possibly miss that breadcrumb about your influential family? I'm not saying it's a scum tell in itself, but I just don't get it. Was it a case of skimming the thread, skimming your role PM, or just lousy pattern recognition?

I really felt like you were backing me up during all of day 2, and particularly after I dropped that breadcrumb. So I figured you endorsed my plan to push for a mass claim, with me claiming last. Was that really just all in my head? Why did you say I would be a poor choice for a lynch?

[novice]

So just to flesh out the list of claims:

zakalwe - Hermes Conrad - Audit - Role Cop
novice - Amy Wong - Influential Family - Tiebreaker
Lewwyn - Bender - Get Bent - Commuter
Mattimeo - Fry - vanilla
Serdoa - Lord Nibbler - vanilla
Qgqqqqq - Scruffy - unknown role (lynched day 1)
Jkaen - Cubert - unknown role (killed night 1)
Ryan - Zoidberg - unknown role - doc? (lynched day 2)
Gazglum - Leela - unknown role name - Cop (killed night 2)

I guess Ryan was a (nerfed) protection role, since Zoidberg is an (incompetent) doctor.
JKaen and Q may well have been vanilla, although Q did talk about "noticing his role" on several occasions, so he may have had an ability with a name. It probably wasn't a powerful ability, given his eagerness to get a mass claim going. So I have to admit I'm a bit suspicious about our two vanilla claims. Lord Nibbler also seems like a very colourful character to have no ability.

So yeah, I think both Serdoa and Lewwyn are capable of being scum here, so I'm not convinced on Zak. I've mentioned before though that if Zak is scum, Mattimeo almost has to be the scum buddy. And I doubt two out of Lewwyn/Zak/Serdoa have been able to play this well as scum. So I guess I'm willing to lynch Mattimeo first.

Opinions?

[novice]

So, a question to Novice. How could you possibly miss that breadcrumb about your influential family? I'm not saying it's a scum tell in itself, but I just don't get it. Was it a case of skimming the thread, skimming your role PM, or just lousy pattern recognition?

I really felt like you were backing me up during all of day 2, and particularly after I dropped that breadcrumb. So I figured you endorsed my plan to push for a mass claim, with me claiming last. Was that really just all in my head? Why did you say I would be a poor choice for a lynch?

I guess it was a combination of lousy pattern recognition and skimming my role PM. I had actually forgotten what my role name was. It did trigger the first time I read the post, but I thought I had read the same phrasing on wikipedia, when in fact it was from my role pm. The Wikipedia article just says "Biography: Amy comes from a very rich Chinese family;". (I had googled Amy Wong for my avatar. BTW google image search for Amy Wong is NSFW )

Also - I was looking for a breadcrumb that would be catchable by all, so I spent a fruitless hour scouring the thread for hidden messages in your surface text...

I suppose I was backing you up during day 2, but that was just due to your play and a bad case being made against you. I said you were a poor choice for a lynch because people were arguing that you had gone off on a noisy "When Q flips scum" tangent, when that was in fact in direct response to questioning by Gazglum.