[TOWN WINS] Third Anniversary Fanfic Mafia - Game Thread

[Chibi Pika]

[[Town roleblock isn't even that weird--Dawning was one in Fall Mafia and Yellow was one in Role Overdrive, and several town Jacks have had a oneshot roleblock. I just find mafia!Inke a much taller order than mafia!Pano.

If Starlight is scum, then the scumteam better have 4 members because a 3 man scumteam with mailman is just hilariously weak. Unless that mail had some crippling side effect that we've seen no evidence of.]]

 

[DawningWinds]

Ask yourself, why have this many power roles when the scum team has one kill per night, no TP killing power, and the scum team used their strongshot early?

[[Just because scum used it early doesn't make it not a thing. Strongman is very powerful, allowing scum to take out a predictable and important kill without having to worry about protections. And we don't know what the 3p could do; as Dragonfree noted, a 3p with an antitown wincon doesn't necessarily have to be an SK, and it could easily have some sort of other ability. And it's not like all the town PR claims besides yours are 100% guaranteed to be town or even real, if you take out tracker or doc or even bodyguard it doesn't feel like nearly a lot to go up against a team of scum specifically designed for a role madness game.

 

[DawningWinds]

Town roleblock isn't even that weird--Dawning was one in Fall Mafia and Yellow was one in Role Overdrive, and several town Jacks have had a oneshot roleblock. I just find mafia!Inke a much taller order than mafia!Pano.

[[Town roleblock isn't nearly nonexistent, but every town roleblock I've ever seen has had a scum counterpart, and it's pretty common for scum to try and fakeclaim town roleblock in my experience. It's also really hard for me to see a role madness scum team without a disruptor of some sort, and as there are a grand total of two disruptors we've seen any sign of, one of them being me, its hard for me to see Pano as not the scum's disruptor.]]

 

[IFBench]

[[Alright, so, I do not trust Pano at all.]]

 

[Inkedust]

[[Reading over Pano's claim more, the more I find it falls apart. I've already stated why Pano's initial reason to go after me was just... straight up false but Pano's reason to keep blocking falls apart from a Town perspective the more I think about it. If you were a Town blocker and wanted to sit on your power until you had someone substantial to block why would you try blocking someone with an unconfirmed role with the hopes that they weren't a major power role (womp womp) rather than just...not using it until you had a target???

Additionally, this gambit/strategy comes off as trying to fish for soft claims. You expected an info/confirming role to mention a Blocker to give the Scum team a target the following night. The reason to repeatedly target me can also be explained by having no better option to block given how most others were claiming.]]

 

[Flyg0n]

[[I can agree with this reasoning.]]

 

[Starlight Aurate]

Archie took a pair of brass knuckles out of his pocket. The silver-haired man was hastily explaining himself to a group of people and Pokemon, all of whom--especially the Luxray--looked increasingly frustrated. Was the Champion guilty? Archie didn't know. But, considering the reactions of those around him, Archie was willing to bet that the others wouldn't try and protect Steven again.

Steven was facing away from Archie, moving his hands as he tried to explain his hare-brained--or genius, Archie didn't know which--plan throughout the game. Taking off at a run, Archie leapt and tackled Steven to the ground, delivering swift punches to his torso.

"Are ye proud of yerself NOW, Champion?"

 

[Panoramic_Vacuum]

[[Reading over Pano's claim more, the more I find it falls apart. I've already stated why Pano's initial reason to go after me was just... straight up false but Pano's reason to keep blocking falls apart from a Town perspective the more I think about it. If you were a Town blocker and wanted to sit on your power until you had someone substantial to block why would you try blocking someone with an unconfirmed role with the hopes that they weren't a major power role (womp womp) rather than just...not using it until you had a target???

Additionally, this gambit/strategy comes off as trying to fish for soft claims. You expected an info/confirming role to mention a Blocker to give the Scum team a target the following night. The reason to repeatedly target me can also be explained by having no better option to block given how most others were claiming.]]

[[Because if/when I ultimately have to claim and I've been sitting on my hands the whole game, and then I say "oh btw I have an active role" who is going to believe that? Of course when you're a Roleblocker, no one is going to believe you're anything but scum anyway so.

And again, there is absolutely no need to soft claim anything in order to alert the group that a block has occurred. Same as a swap or anything else. There are 15 possible roles that can notice a block has occurred to them, or even that there may be the possibility of a block having maybe happened but who knows it's just a theory, I don't know! Blame it on me for taking the role list as gospel and trying to play around that.

As for the initial reasoning, now that I think back it was actually your BP getting popped, which, why bring attention to that either?? I recall you bringing it very to the groups attention during Humble Vale, and I went "oh, Inke is good with alerting the group to gameplay happenings in the night" so I assumed a block would be no different.

The fact that every other claim and action log has been accepted without question is a little annoying, considering my log is confirmed twice over. This is my role, and what I've chosen to do with it. Are all the others so 100% factual there's no scrutiny here? Worst case scenario is 4 hostiles. Whether or not you believe me, someone has to be lying somewhere.]]

 

[Inkedust]

[[Claiming a popped Bulletproof and soft-claiming an info/confirming role are two very different things.]]

 

[Chibi Pika]

[[This is pedantic, but I do want to correct the misconception that so many roles might get feeback if they were blocked:

Absorber - passive, you might simply assume no one targeted you
Bus Driver - You can only know you were blocked if other people disclose their action log, by spotting a discrepancy.
Cop - inforole
Doctor - if I was a doctor and my heal target died, I'd assume bus drive/redirect, not that I got blocked (unless I had claimed)
JOAT - counts as whatever the oneshot power was
Mailman - okay, legit
Motion Detector - inforole
Oracle - inforole
Parrot - would only know if they targeted a known inforole
Role Cop - inforole
Seraph Knight - same as doc
Serial Killer - your target may have been healed
Tracker - inforole
Vigilante - your target may have been healed
Watcher - inforole

Overwhelmingly, inforoles are the only ones that can know for sure. The others (besides mailman) all have other explanations for why the observed gamestate might differ from the expectation.]]

 

[Starlight Aurate]

As Steven gradually stopped flapping his hands erratically and laid on the ground, whimpering, Archie looked up at the onlookers and slowly got to his feet.

"Thanks for not interfering this time. I've been telling ye all that this Champion was never up to any good. But it looks like I've got some clearing to do of my own."

He looked at Jet.

If Starlight is scum, then the scumteam better have 4 members because a 3 man scumteam with mailman is just hilariously weak. Unless that mail had some crippling side effect that we've seen no evidence of.

"I've been honest about my powers from the beginning. Yeah, I'm what everyone now calls a 'glorified Vanilla role.' I admit now that my abilities hold no use to the Town or the scum, except to drive everyone insane. If I was a member of that scumteam, wouldn't it be horribly underpowered, as you pointed out here?"

[[I just want to drive home the point (since more people are thinking that there are only 3 scum now) that if I am scum, there would only be TWO actual roles on the scumteam. And if one of the roles is just to kill each night, then scum would have only one actual power.

I know I don't have much to say in the way of clearing myself because I'm a freaking mailman and I didn't know how to use my power effectively like YellowJack did. That's why I started defaulting to just sending nonsense messages just to see if there was any swap. And yeah, I happened to send mail to the person everyone now thinks is scum, woops. If anyone wants me to send a message to a specified person tonight, I can do so, except that we know that DW's power can interfere with that and who knows if there are other ways to interfere? I don't mean to keep muddying the waters, but we TECHNICALLY don't know what Inke's role is. She's claiming something no one can prove or disprove since she's been (supposedly) blocked the entire game. And Chibi's power... is to tell if someone is fake-claiming? And I feel a little odd about Free protecting Chibi every night (with the exception of Muse who people think got Strongman'd after she claimed Watcher) when I have felt iffy about Chibi's play for the entire game.


So tol;dr: Starlight doesn't know what to do now.]]

 

[Panoramic_Vacuum]

[[Claiming a popped Bulletproof and soft-claiming an info/confirming role are two very different things.]]

[[sdfjlsddkfj am I the only one who thinks it's not an impossible feat to alert the group of a block without soft claiming anything?? I don't understand why that's so infeasible. Am I taking crazy pills??]]

[[This is pedantic, but I do want to correct the misconception that so many roles might get feeback if they were blocked:

Absorber - passive, you might simply assume no one targeted you
Bus Driver - You can only know you were blocked if other people disclose their action log, by spotting a discrepancy.
Cop - inforole
Doctor - if I was a doctor and my heal target died, I'd assume bus drive/redirect, not that I got blocked (unless I had claimed)
JOAT - counts as whatever the oneshot power was
Mailman - okay, legit
Motion Detector - inforole
Oracle - inforole
Parrot - would only know if they targeted a known inforole
Role Cop - inforole
Seraph Knight - same as doc
Serial Killer - your target may have been healed
Tracker - inforole
Vigilante - your target may have been healed
Watcher - inforole

Overwhelmingly, inforoles are the only ones that can know for sure. The others (besides mailman) all have other explanations for why the observed gamestate might differ from the expectation.]]

[[Isn't the Absorber informed of what power they get when they are targeted?? A lot of the other examples, yes, there are other explanations of something not going through (heal, swap, etc.) but I'd be on the look out for those, too. Knowing of any kind of potential interference is important as an interference role. Reporting any kind of interference seems useful to the group as a whole, and if me, as the blocker, have my target report interference of any kind, I'd assume that was probably me, no?

I'm so baffled why this strategy is suddenly so scummy and completely unviable?????? If someone said "hey something messed with my role last night" I wouldn't immediately jump to Info Role/Cop assumption??? Just me???]]

[[also sorry I'll RP in a minute, I'm just so entirely confused right now.]]

 

[Dragonfree]

[[sdfjlsddkfj am I the only one who thinks it's not an impossible feat to alert the group of a block without soft claiming anything?? I don't understand why that's so infeasible. Am I taking crazy pills??]]

[[It's not impossible or unviable, but it's not really a good idea by default for everyone to reveal when they've been interfered with, especially when they are information-related roles.

I don't think it's totally unreasonable to have thought they might, but you definitely shouldn't have taken silence as, "Cool, then there's no issue with me just continuing to block Inke for the rest of the game." Even if people might say something, that doesn't mean they will.

I don't think this is a mistake that'd be impossible to make as town, but under the circumstances it is very hard to take you at your word on your alignment.]]

 

[Chibi Pika]

[[The problem isn’t that it’s impossible for a town Pano to have had that train of logic. The problem is having that train of logic, and being a confirmed roleblocker in a game with little other disruption, and already being a suspect from earlier, and the unfortunate process of elimination making most other scum configurations extremely unlikely. It’s never just one thing. It sucks, being in that position, because it feels like everyone’s jumping in something that a town player legit could have done. But it’s never just one thing.]]

 

[Dragonfree]

[[Read through Pano's posts. I noticed this post:]]

[[If it's not going to help immediately, not sure why you'd want to claim right now? Seems like unnecessary risk? Even with the strongman shot, if we're assuming 3-4 scum team, that's still a lot of powers on the table. Still slightly concerned there's only been one kill a night. <Flashbacks to Namo's role madness intensify>]]

[[wherein Pano urges Inke not to claim after Inke mentions her role doesn't explain any of the night's results. Isn't that kind of the style of hint that Pano would pick up on...? Like, enough to possibly notice that it might mean Inke did notice being blocked?

She also got on Kichiro after Tetra's claim but prior to this wasn't questioning his much and prior to that had been gunning for Chibi, without addressing the case I'd been making on Kichiro at all. Think I'll go ahead and Vote: Panoramic_Vacuum for now.]]

 

[Panoramic_Vacuum]

[[Read through Pano's posts. I noticed this post:]]


[[wherein Pano urges Inke not to claim after Inke mentions her role doesn't explain any of the night's results. Isn't that kind of the style of hint that Pano would pick up on...? Like, enough to possibly notice that it might mean Inke did notice being blocked?

She also got on Kichiro after Tetra's claim but prior to this wasn't questioning his much and prior to that had been gunning for Chibi, without addressing the case I'd been making on Kichiro at all. Think I'll go ahead and Vote: Panoramic_Vacuum for now.]]

[[lol so I had to go back and see the context of the quote about Inke claiming because I legit did not know what the hint was. I entirely missed it if that's what it was. I wasn't sure what it meant honestly, and I definitely didn't assume "COP" upon wanting to claim either. I would be remiss to say that the fear of Inke being a TP and fake claiming wasn't always in the back of my mind (like it is every game, apparently).

Tetra's "hang on I have something" message was enough to make me wait on the Kichiro train. Based on her reaction I figured it had to be some kind of counter-claim or info role that was damning on Kichiro, and wanted her to say something first (because I have predicted things in other games and garnered sus for it because "how could I know?" and at this rate I honestly have no idea what makes things I do sus. Chibi has openly admitted to trying the same playstyle as mine from Banquet and called it "the scummiest thing they've ever seen", and when I was questioning their play in this game, I get told "it's not scummy". So. Which is it? But back to the Tetra thing...)

Tetra's claim was totally believable to me because of her odd/even night power. Way back, maybe D2? she brought the mechanic up in relation to wondering about Karo's powers (I think). No one else really reacted to it or went anywhere, which told me it was probably some kind of info she had and no one else did. That would have to come from her role PM. I didn't address anything earlier with Kichiro because I didn't have anything that I believed strongly enough to vote one way or the other. Inke, who I was suspect of based on my own paranoia, was so strong on Virgil. It didn't mean he wasn't mafia, but if he was a Vig, that was important to have if there was an SK in addition to the scum team. With Tetra's claim, I knew we had at least one Vig and was less inclined to believe Virgil's claim.]]

 

[Dragonfree]

[[What I took away from that Inke post originally was actually that she might be bulletproof - specifically, because she put it in a context of “might as well claim since they’ve used the strongman shot”. If you had also thought that, it would have sort of justified town!you feeling more confident in continuing to target her, but judging from your response, I guess not.]]

 

[Panoramic_Vacuum]

[[What I took away from that Inke post originally was actually that she might be bulletproof - specifically, because she put it in a context of “might as well claim since they’ve used the strongman shot”. If you had also thought that, it would have sort of justified town!you feeling more confident in continuing to target her, but judging from your response, I guess not.]]

[[Doesn't anyone, regardless of role, feel safer once the strongman shot is used? I definitely didn't assume any specific sort of role hinting from the comment other than "this is good, now our protective roles won't be bypassed any more." I'm not sure any of my logic is going to actually make sense to anyone since the whole basis of my play was off the flawed list of roles I assumed would respond to the block in any number of ways. I swear to you that regardless of alignment this is honest to god my train of thought for this play and if it means I'm the world's shittiest Mafia player than so be it.]]

 

[Inkedust]

[[When I made that post, it was done with a couple of intents, one was just I mentioned before: incite Follow-the-Cop, which would be possible with no Strongman. The other however was to tell the Blocker - who I assumed to be Town then because I thought it would be weird for Mafia to keep focusing on someone who didn't even attempt to allude to their role prior - to back off because I noticed that I was being blocked twice in a row and the only other person who would know that would be the blocker themself. I had hoped, that combined with Virgil's flip would be enough to take enough sus off me so I could actually y'know, do my job. Needless to say, I was not happy when I received a third No Result in a row, which was when I realised that the Blocker was not paying attention to my posts/had to be Mafia.]]

 

[Flyg0n]

[[you know I just want to say that if by some freak twist of events Pano flips town something really horrible is happening.

Also am I right in worrying that a mislynch now would end the game for now?]]