WW37- For Whom the Bell Trolls

[Gazglum]

Well this is fun! I accept your pressure, as it shall turn my faults to diamonds. Nobody else want to pile on? Fenn, you are talking the talk but not walking the walk, where is the red vote?

Would anybody on me like to explain for the class what, exactly, the case is? That I didn’t vote Goreripper, a player I didn’t want to vote? I was on through deadline, I would have jumped to Gore to save myself. I didn’t want to vote him, Agnes, because I was making a point that I thought it was a bad lynch. I think I made it clear I didn’t want to vote Mattimeo either.

At this time it looks like we'll have a no lynch, but it could still very easily have swung either way, or even onto you. With last-minute lynches being what they are, it was by no means guaranteed that you'd be able to vote Gore in time.

I only ever had three votes, and was always 2 votes behind the swing. I was hitting refresh, I assure you. If I had got another vote I would have defensive voted Goreripper.

Why didn't you want to get your hands dirty, though? Novice was an unbelievable lynch, even with Fenns vote. Why were you holding back? Why didn't you want to take a stand?

What were my other options? I was already taking heat from Pindicator for my vote jumps, I didn’t really want to add fuel to that fire by jumping onto another lynch that I didn’t believe in. If I voted Matt I would be spending today answering why I wanted to lynch our protection role. Voting Goreripper would be more obviously defensive, but I thought it was a crappy policy lynch and didn’t want to be part of it if I didn’t have to be.

Related, general question, would you have preferred no-lynch over Matt or Commodore being lynched?

In a perfect world, probably no-lynch, but the only way I could have tried for a no-lynch would by voting Matt and putting him in danger of anybody else switching. And the Mattwagon was stinky cheese.

Good post on novice, though...doesn't this at all remind you of last game? Or if you have long enough memories for it, WW27, when Zak/I used a non-engaging town novice to win?

I voted Novice twice last game too. But point taken, if Novice shows me towniness I would be willing to move off him. He hasn’t yet. Still no thoughts on –anybody- being scum, Novice?

I agree, the size of the train on Gazglum is quite disconcerting. Does no one have any other suspicions to bring forth? Any thoughts on his content - on the novice case, for example?

Sooo....disconcerting, but you'll hang around me anyway. And what are YOUR thoughts on the Novice case?

[Lewwyn]

Lewwyn, who are your other two suspects?

I would have liked to hear more from Gaz first, but I guess I should just get on with my top suspect.

Let's start with Fenn.

I have in particular three issues with Fenn. His opening salvo of posts and vote on me. Disappearing for almost the whole day 1. Then voting for novice for insinuating Commagore is scum rather than survivor, before deciding to vote with novice and lynch Commagore.

First:

Not exactly rethinking, but even in a role madness game D1 mass claim is far from guaranteed to out scum; it's probably better than not doing a mass claim, though it means frontloading a lot of risk onto the selection of who should claim first. I wouldn't go so far as to say that scum would welcome it either, since it's entirely possible they get one or more of their members caught out.

I suppose if we don't have anything to go on soon (not feeling strongly about Agnes or novice as scum), having one or two people claim wouldn't be a terrible idea. Looking back over your posts you didn't quite argue for a mass claim today. I personally would not prefer a meta where Day 1 claims are expected to happen. In this case where we have a light Day 1 it might be a good idea.

Except, now I'm not sure where to place my vote. Lewwyn, your idea for Day 1 is interesting, but "let's discuss less" is not the towniest of proposals.

The first paragraph is basically meta. The second as well. But the second paragraph actually comes to a conclusion that perhaps a light day 1 is a good idea? OK! Now where to vote? Let's vote for Lewwyn who said let's all talk less (in an attempt to start conversation). Contradictory? No problem, watch me disappear until the deadline.


Second:
He then comes back and makes some observations on the day which are basically summaries of what's happened. I'm not going to quote the whole thing. But its where he votes at the end that is interesting:

snip

Survivor sounds suspiciously like scum in this description.

If you stretch much farther you'll pull a muscle novice. What was the point of this?

Yes Goreripper is probably the default lynch choice absent any strong lynch candidates (which I don't have), but this post is just bizarre.

The colorful description of novice talking about commagore here results in the vote for novice, but then it is followed up with BUT YOU"RE PROBABLY RIGHT! Contradictory? Forget about it.

Third:
I've made my feelings known that I don't believe commagore to be the best lynch. Fenn has the dubious honor of being the one to break the tie and lynch him:

Fuck it, Goreripper. I like Mattimeo's claim better than his.

And so Commagore the non affiliated seer is lynched.
Fenn remarks:

Goreripper's flip wasn't ideal (ie scum), but still a net positive for town. Though I doubt the scum would be too heartbroken over seeing a claimed seer die.

Net positive for town! Scum would be happy a claimed seer is dead too! Win-Win! Contradictory? I think I'm beginning to see a pattern here.

Fenn

[Shadeun]

I'm a bit pushed at work this morning but wanted to weigh in.

The pile-on Gazglum seemed swift and I don't read to much into minor inaccuracies in reasoning.

It did feel (as Gazglum pointed out) that Novice honed in on Gore. Playing a very attacking game early on, but I don't think Gazglum is scum/cultist/whatever-the-hell-is-going-on.

Will get more into things tonight hopefully (after markets close in London). But for now: Novice

Spends a lot of time questioning others credibility and would like to see some more discussion from him on the cult and thoughts. Very open to changing my mind though.

Meta: I'm confused as to what happened over night (and if we can do anything about it?) maybe someone was a seer or something? (not my power). Seems everything revealed so far just increases ideas of how strange the game setup really is.

[Lewwyn]

X-post with Gaz

What do you think of my Fenn suspicions?

[Lewwyn]

I also want to clarify a bit here:

First:

Not exactly rethinking, but even in a role madness game D1 mass claim is far from guaranteed to out scum; it's probably better than not doing a mass claim, though it means frontloading a lot of risk onto the selection of who should claim first. I wouldn't go so far as to say that scum would welcome it either, since it's entirely possible they get one or more of their members caught out.

I suppose if we don't have anything to go on soon (not feeling strongly about Agnes or novice as scum), having one or two people claim wouldn't be a terrible idea. Looking back over your posts you didn't quite argue for a mass claim today. I personally would not prefer a meta where Day 1 claims are expected to happen. In this case where we have a light Day 1 it might be a good idea.

Except, now I'm not sure where to place my vote. Lewwyn, your idea for Day 1 is interesting, but "let's discuss less" is not the towniest of proposals.

The first paragraph is basically meta. The second as well. But the second paragraph actually comes to a conclusion that perhaps a light day 1 is a good idea? OK! Now where to vote? Let's vote for Lewwyn who said let's all talk less (in an attempt to start conversation). Contradictory? No problem, watch me disappear until the deadline.

I might be reading the last bit of the second paragraph a bit wrong. But the thing that bugs me most is that Fenn puts a vote on me based on the idea that my "proposal" nobody discuss anything was serious. Now I spent the entire last game trying to get people to talk. I think that Fenn deliberately misinterprets my post and uses it as an excuse to place a vote on me. For reference here is the post:

So who wants to jump off the edge, do something stupid and provide some actual content for us to discuss?

Or we could do an experiment where we just vote to lynch without actually discussing real content. I mean that's how they do it elsewhere. Basically everyone just keeps talking to a minimum, votes shift and then the actual hunting gets done based off the Day 1 lynch and Night 1 kill.

The first part is talking about getting conversation started by doing something stupid. I proceed to give my version of stupid in the next paragraph. Personally I think that the point of the post is clear given the inherent "who's going to jump off the edge" preface to the idea. Given that Fenn's decision to vote for me hinged on that post, it feels like scum trying to find something to accuse someone of.

[Gazglum]

I have no problems putting my vote where it was before the end of day. Gazglum still has a lot to answer in my book. He talks about how he only has as many votes as other people, but glosses over how shallow those votes were. He also fails to address why he kept constantly seeking dirt on me, despite the fact that he supposedly found me to be ok. Until he answers those to my satisfaction, or someone messes up enough to somehow appear more scummy, my vote is likely to stay where it's at.

By 'constantly seeking dirt on you'? I assume you mean this:

Also, Jabbz danced his way to post-count lead, now he's restricting himself to making comments on Lewwyn's sobriety.

Novice, what gives you a town read on Jabbz?

I voted you for a weak case on Agnes. I told you I thought your logic was bad, but that was balanced by you being engaged and sounded Jabbsy. After that you went to sleep, but when you came back you seemed to ignore what was going on in favour of talking to Agnes a bit more and calling Lewwyn drunk. That apparent shift felt mildly scummy, so I pointed it out, and then ignored you.

So what do you want me to answer? That you think my votes were shallow? It was Day 1, I was looking to pressure people.

What do you think of Novice?

[Gazglum]

X-post with Gaz

What do you think of my Fenn suspicions?

I think its a good case. Fenn is on 11 posts, and doesn't have the 'I'm on holiday' excuse of Dtay. And his one post today,

That message was probably written by a player (possibly even Goreripper posthumously, who knows if he left anything out about his role) - doubt the GM flavor posts would so directly hint at a cult. Most likely, we have a player out there who thinks there's a cult about, or at least wants everyone else to think so. There's no way such a player could know one way or another on N1, so this message doesn't help too much. If we're betting, I'd say a role madness game about trolling sounds like the natural habitat of some kind of cult.

About lynching Goreripper, I only really considered Gazglum's sangfroid in hindsight when others pointed it out; at the time it seemed to me that he was getting run up for throwing his vote around to elicit responses, something which I don't think is scummy D1 and was anyway something that I was pretty much doing too. Mattimeo was out of the question too, so for me it came down to Goreripper vs No Lynch. On balance his posting/fishy claims tipped it over the edge for me. It's not so bad that our neutral party was lynched; consider that if we had no lynched and had the night phase proceed as it did we'd have no deaths and almost nothing to go off of.

As it is...Agnes is right that Gazglum's claim to have not voted for Gore for want of a Novice lynch is dubious when it's deadline time and a Novice wagon is not going to appear out of thin air. I get if you want to stick with who you think is scummiest, but deliberately not doing anything to materially effect the outcome of the lynch is not towny imo.

Would still like dtay to explain why he never revisited his Mattimeo vote even after he promised to. Night everybody.

Meta, then he starts considering my 'sangfroid' in hindsight. What does that mean Fenn? Are you arguing that I didn't care about dying? Scum care about dying as much as anybody, its the universal condition of mankind.

So he jumps onto me without bringing anything new to the table, and won't even place a vote. So yeah, Fenn would be one of my top suspects.

[novice]

OK I reread day 1 and I'm sorry to say, Gazglum, that it didn't leave me much wiser.
Although worst case, if the setup is cult-based there may be just Goreripper and one other scum present on day 1.

Upon rereading I can see why Gazglum caught some heat, he does come across as slightly overaggressive. I think it's just townglum trying to step up his scumhunting though. His reads don't feel faked, it's just that he's lowered the bar a bit.

I also like the Fenn case. Lewwyn's already covered the Lewwyn and Novice votes, here's his Zak vote:

Zakalwe has only posted about role-claiming meta aside from initial joke vote. And I find his argument for a mass claim assumes that
A. Scum won't have towny roles to claim
B. Scum will be among the first to be chose for claiming on Day 1
which doesn't inspire confidence. The risks outweigh the potential rewards, and I (again) think It's Just Lame.

I said we should force someone to claim and take it from there. It was not really an argument for a mass claim, but it was immediately countered with some "claims are bad" rhetoric which I think is slightly suspect.

Again, if I were scum and drawing heat on day one, I would prefer if "claims are bad" is the established meta.

Also, your last post said that mass claiming would probably be the right move for town. Did you rethink?

Not exactly rethinking, but even in a role madness game D1 mass claim is far from guaranteed to out scum; it's probably better than not doing a mass claim, though it means frontloading a lot of risk onto the selection of who should claim first. I wouldn't go so far as to say that scum would welcome it either, since it's entirely possible they get one or more of their members caught out.

I suppose if we don't have anything to go on soon (not feeling strongly about Agnes or novice as scum), having one or two people claim wouldn't be a terrible idea. Looking back over your posts you didn't quite argue for a mass claim today. I personally would not prefer a meta where Day 1 claims are expected to happen. In this case where we have a light Day 1 it might be a good idea.

He is voting Zakalwe for something he didn't do (advocate a mass claim), and he's confusing himself with regards to whether or not a mass claim is even bad in the first place.

Like his other votes, this vote seems very constructed. In quick succession Fenn voted Zakalwe, Lewwyn and me, and quickly backed out of all three. Three counts and you're out.

Fenn

[zakalwe]

Would anybody on me like to explain for the class what, exactly, the case is?

I got some minor tryhard vibes from you on day 1, somewhat akin to Dtay in the last game. And after the lynch I looked back and one of the first thoughts to occur to me was that "huh, Gazglum played that remarkably cool". Which (ouch - stretching a bit here) doesn't jive so well with your earlier "nonchalance" towards claiming.

You do have a point about effectively having a 2-vote buffer to go on, and being on-line to save yourself. And Novice has a point that you wanting to save the noble and forlorn princess of neutrality fits with your romantic character.

Your case against Novice is OK in terms of convincing me that you're scum hunting. It's not really convincing me that Novice is scum, though.

Maybe Fenn will prove to be less slippery.

[Rowain]

Third:
I've made my feelings known that I don't believe commagore to be the best lynch.

Before the lynch happened?

And so Commagore the non affiliated seer is lynched.

If we believe Commodore which I find hard todo. What with his pledge to play pro-scum all the way?

It is strange I can see your reasoning part1 and 2 , I can see novice reasoning to vote Fenn and I can see Gazglum's reasoning but I don't really like your attack part 3.