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[INNOCENTS WIN] First Anniversary Fanfic Mafia - Game Thread

Sike Saner

fundead
Location
*aurorus noise*
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. glalie
Whoops, I think I'd best clarfiy this bit a little more; I can already easily imagine it being misconstrued:

I have no way of knowing exactly who'll be targeted; all I can do is guess, or pick at random, and hope for the best.

What I meant there is, I have no way of knowing who'll be targeted by the mafia. Who I'm targeting isn't random or outside my knowledge at all. The only thing I can't say for sure is whether or not the person I target to defend will stay in that position. Again, I can't prevent my action from being rerouted by someone else.
 

NonAnalogue

Losing her head
Location
Yes
Pronouns
she/her
Code:
-- Conversation initiated with WitchesBlue [FORTUNATA, FIAMETTA] --

[WB] whoaaa yall are movin real quick
[WB] tryin to follow everything here
[WB] okay okay okay
[WB] so what im understandin is
[WB] chibi got eliminated from the game overnight
[WB] can i get a f in the chat for respects
[WB] and then we got ntairow claimin to be protectin people
[WB] side note i cant believe my speech to text got that name right
[WB] im fuckin impressed
[WB] and the professor is sayin that swappin was goin on
[WB] and like okay
[WB] so that means that lauchzelot shoulda been the target not chibi
[WB] holy shit another speech to text win
[WB] axsis straight killin it over here
[WB] side note yall got some wild usernames goin on
[WB] mine feels kinda boring now
[WB] anyway
[WB] so
[WB] like
[WB] there could be more than one swapper too right
[WB] and more than one protector
[WB] hell they might could even be on the mafias side right
[WB] i mean maybe not the protector
[WB] not even sayin thats the professor or nothin
[WB] just if theres more than one swapper in here suddenly things get a lot more complicated
[WB] goddess above my head hurts from all this
 

Namohysip

Dragon Enthusiast
Staff
Partners
  1. flygon
  2. charizard
  3. milotic
  4. zoroark-soda
  5. sceptile
  6. marowak
  7. jirachi
I literally just switched the last two people on the list, so SparklingEspeon and Chibi.

So Espeon and Chibi were switched by you? Gah! So Chibi is the target of a ton of things that were flying around, or became the target. Picking off Espurr right at the start... That's a maybe from me. Night 0 kills are usually totally random except for meta knowledge, right? So I'd've guessed a power player from last year would've been a target instead. But if Espurr had been swapped with Chibi...

With all the evidence in place, I can't make heads or tails of the mafia's logic. I'm gonna stop for now until more info is known.
 

Sike Saner

fundead
Location
*aurorus noise*
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. glalie
So Espeon and Chibi were switched by you? Gah! So Chibi is the target of a ton of things that were flying around, or became the target. Picking off Espurr right at the start... That's a maybe from me. Night 0 kills are usually totally random except for meta knowledge, right? So I'd've guessed a power player from last year would've been a target instead. But if Espurr had been swapped with Chibi...

With all the evidence in place, I can't make heads or tails of the mafia's logic. I'm gonna stop for now until more info is known.

If the matter of those two being switched night 0 is true, it basically confirms that Espurr was indeed the mafia's first target. If Chibi had been the target, and was switched with Espurr, we would've seen Espurr killed night 0 since I had targeted Espurr for the defend; by being swapped into Chibi's position, Espurr would have left my protection and gone right into the line of fire. Neither of those two died night 0, which tells me that in all likelihood, regardless of any switching going on, the mafia and I both targeted Espurr.

About the only way I can imagine that the mafia didn't target Espurr night 0 was if whoever was carrying out the kill got blocked by another doctor, or else some other type of roleblocker. But those possiblities do assume that we even have another doctor or a roleblocker in play.
 

SparklingEspeon

Back on Her Bullshit
Staff
Location
a Terrace of Indeterminate Location in Snowbelle
Pronouns
She/Her
Partners
  1. espurr
  2. fennekin
  3. zoroark
Eliminate the powerful opponents first. That made too much sense. Worse, the situation had been muddled over many times after it had first came up. The others were currently too loud for Espurr's tastes, so (as dangerous as being alone in a time like this was) she had taken a moment to herself to think out what she had been given.

What did she know?

She knew that Chibi had been allegedly killed last night (she did NOT know what had happened to the body. That perplexed her). Her trusty floating scoreboard hovered above her, displaying all the necessary information as bright as day:

Players killed (1): Chibi - Innocent

Assuming this scoreboard was to be trusted (And it was, judging by everyone else's reactions), that narrowed the list of mafia down one more player.

And she'd be taking the gamble that everything Professor Finnar had claimed was true, meaning both she and Launchzelot were likely innocent.

So now to put it all together. That cleared Launchzelot, Chibi (Obviously), and possibly the Professor. Espurr would need more information on who the mafia members might be in order to draw any further conclusions. And that meant going back to the crowd.

She could still hear the arguing all the way from the borders of the town.

"...And we know that the mafia targeted Sirfetch'd last night. Why."

"If what the professor claims is true, then assumedly because the Mafia wanted to cause confusion," Espurr said. "They all know who they are, right? They wouldn't have to worry about who's on which side. The only thing the Mafia has to worry about is being too blatant. And Sirfetch'd was the only one wanted to lynch Chibi yesterday. With the knowledge in hindsight that Chibi was in fact innocent-" Espurr pointed to her floating scoreboard companion pointedly "-I can only assume they wanted us to think Sirfetch'd was on the right path and Lynch Chibi for them. Switching them both and lynching Chibi makes no sense, unless either Chibior Sirfetched were Mafia. And Chibi clearly wasn't Mafia, and we have the Professor's word that Sirfetch'd was innocent as well. And that means if the professor was lying about switching them, then someone else did. Someone who can call out the professor. And if we have no-one here willing to do that... then it's probably a safe bet to say the professor is innocent."
 

elyvorg

somewhat backwards
Pronouns
she/they
...DawningWinds, you agreed with my suggestion to not reveal who you switched on night 0 a few posts back, and then you suddenly changed your mind and revealed it anyway, without explaining why the change of heart. What's up with that? I don't suspect you, because I'm pretty damn sure you're mechanically confirmed innocent now as I'm about to lengthily go into, but... ????


Before I lengthily go into that, though, let me just clarify why I think it's very unlikely for the mafia to waste their most powerful weapon so early in a situation like this. Yes, Chibi Pika is a skilled player, but there was no proof that Chibi had a particularly powerful night action, nor that anyone else thought Chibi was so powerful that they'd almost certainly want to protect him. Ntairow's reasons for protecting Chibi last night were in-character reasons, not because Chibi Pika is a skilled player, so it was essentially chance. It seems very unreasonable to me that the mafia would want to waste such a powerful one-off power on that when they had no reason to believe they would need to.

If the mafia was so scared of Chibi Pika and so determined to kill them just because they're a skilled player, never mind Chibi's role power, then I feel like that'd probably be something they would have tried to do in the first place, on night 0. If they'd done that, and failed, then maybe I can see them still being so determined to remove this particular player from the game that they tried again with the strongman kill last night, to pierce whatever had stopped them before. But that'll only hold water if anyone speaks up to explain how Chibi could have survived being the night 0 target, since we know that one wasn't Ntairow.

Admittedly, this one's all just my judgement of what I think the mafia would do and not actual proof, but I think it's really, really unlikely, and we almost certainly still have the strongman kill to worry about.


Anyway, that aside, I have been doing some serious Logicking to try and confirm to myself that, yes, Finnar, Lauchs, and Ntairow (I'll be using the character names for this) are basically all confirmed innocent by this turn of events, except for if some very, very unlikely edge cases are happening.

...Well, actually, I don't think Ntairow's claim is mechanically confirmed by anything in particular. But the way she built up to that roleclaim across three posts, including the initial lack of clarity thanks to bewilderment over seeing her protection target dead, strikes me as very genuine and difficult to fake. So even though I don't believe there's any explicit proof of her claim right now, I really don't think she's lying. That and I can't even think of any reason to lie about that particular claim, and when I try to think her having done so, the hypotheticals I'm about to go into get even more complicated and I can't quite untangle it. If anyone else can come up with a potential reason for Ntairow's claim to be fake and wants to do the mental gymnastics over that, be my guest.

(I won't be RPing this, because it's difficult enough to get my own words around it, and because Tefiren isn't the type to give long explanations like this. But if anyone wants to pretend he made basically these points in some form or other so they can respond to it in-RP, go ahead.)


So! The possible scenarios that I can think of:

Scenario 1: Everyone involved is innocent and telling the truth, and the mafia targeted Lauchs.

Ntairow protected Chibi. The mafia shot at Lauchs. Finnar switched the targets so that Lauchs was protected and Chibi died instead. This means Lauchs is innocent as well, because the mafia wouldn't shoot themselves while not expecting it to be redirected.

This is by far the most likely scenario.


Scenario 2: Finnar is lying; she is actually mafia. No switching happened at all last night, and the strongman kill is what pierced the protection on Chibi.

My personal thoughts on how unlikely it'd be for the mafia to use up their strongman kill here aside, there would only be two possible motives for a hypothetical mafia-Finnar to lie here.

One would be to explain why Chibi died with a reason that wasn't the strongman kill, to make us think they still have it when they don't. However, I doubt this, since Finnar claimed before Ntairow had even directly spoken up about protecting Chibi. Until then, none of us even knew that Chibi's death was an apparent impossibility, unless they were very good at reading between the lines of Ntairow's vague softclaiming.

The second reason why a hypothetical mafia-Finnar would lie about swapping Lauchs and Chibi, which would apply before they even knew Chibi was definitely protected, is that this was a gambit to make Lauchs appear to be confirmed innocent. Which would mean that Lauchs is also mafia along with Finnar. That seems a very risky gambit, though, because if it fell through and one of them was found guilty at any point, we'd then basically know that the other has to be, as well. (Also, I have my own reason for being almost completely sure this is not the case, but I'd rather keep quiet about precisely what it is, at least for today. It's not that important, not when I think this is pretty damn unlikely regardless.)

---Scenario 2b: Finnar is lying and actually mafia; someone else who hasn't spoken up yet coincidentally switched Chibi with the mafia's actual target last night, and therefore only a regular kill was needed to kill Chibi. But this would give the exact same reasons for Finnar to be lying as the regular Scenario 2.


Scenario 3: Finnar is telling the truth about having swapped those two last night, but she is a mafia bus driver, and the mafia killer targeted Lauchs knowing it would hit Chibi instead.

The reasons for the mafia to do something so convoluted would be a similar thing of wanting to pierce through potential protection on Chibi, this time without using up the strongman kill. But this again carries the same issue of why they would even be so sure Chibi was going to be protected in the first place. And this would also cause a game balance issue - if the mafia had a bus driver and could pierce protection this way, they wouldn't even need the strongman for anything except bulletproofs and a possible town roleblocker.

This scenario could also still be for the bonus purpose of clearing a hypothetical mafia-Lauchs, in that the mafia actually shot at themselves while knowing it would land on someone else. But they could just as well have used Lauchs as a springboard for this even if he's innocent; it's not like they'd need to use one of their own for it.


I guess Scenario 4 would be that a strongman kill was aimed at Chibi even though Finnar did do the switch, and strongman kills also pierce switching. But I really don't think they do. The whole point of a Hider role being the only thing to block strongmen is that the target isn't even there where they should be, meaning nobody dies. And in the case of bus drivers, the intended target isn't where they should be, but a different person is there instead, so it follows that that other person should get killed.


So, yeah. I realise this doesn't get us any actual suspected mafia, but at least it narrows down the pool of potentials a bit.

(Also, if anyone innocent happened to roleblock Ntairow such that it'd actually be perfectly possible to kill Chibi with a regular kill targeted at him, or if they roleblocked Finnar, either of which would change some of the logic here, please speak the hell up.)
 

elyvorg

somewhat backwards
Pronouns
she/they
(Wait, no, disregard the first paragraph of my last post. It was Equitia who agreed with my suggestion to not have DawningWinds reveal who they switched, and I somehow got them confused and thought that post was DawningWinds too. My bad.)
 

DawningWinds

Ace Trainer
Partners
  1. hawlucha
...DawningWinds, you agreed with my suggestion to not reveal who you switched on night 0 a few posts back, and then you suddenly changed your mind and revealed it anyway, without explaining why the change of heart. What's up with that?
I never said anything about not wanting to share who I targeted? Can you quote what made you think I did?
 

DawningWinds

Ace Trainer
Partners
  1. hawlucha
(Wait, no, disregard the first paragraph of my last post. It was Equitia who agreed with my suggestion to not have DawningWinds reveal who they switched, and I somehow got them confused and thought that post was DawningWinds too. My bad.)
Oh wait. Never mind then.
 

Dragonfree

Moderator
Staff
Location
Iceland
Pronouns
she/her/hers
Partners
  1. butterfree
  2. mightyena
  3. charizard
  4. scyther-mia
  5. vulpix
  6. slugma
[[This morning, Dave skipped the coffee and proceeded straight to beer. From the void he could summon nondescript glass bottles whose labels he couldn't quite read, the lettering convincing from afar but actually nonsense up close, like something generated by a neural network.

The contents were pretty bland, but honestly at this point he'd go for anything alcoholic. Maybe tomorrow he could get the place to make something stronger. Wouldn't that be something.

The feathery Pikachu was gone. The lab coat woman was claiming to have switched him with the Sirfetch'd so the mafia had really targeted him. The Wobbuffet-xenomorph was claiming to have tried to protect the Pikachu, which'd have meant actually she protected the Sirfetch'd. The Archopy was running around pointing out where everyone was wrong, which was nice because then Dave could just sit and massage his eyelids and finish the bottle in peace.

"All right," he said at last. "Look, I'll be honest, my first thought on the 'Oh, I totally swapped the Pikachu and the duck, so Sirfetch'd is clearly innocent' was that it could easily be a ploy, the two of them working together hoping to coast on the 'proof'. You know? It's a bit bold but it's not that risky a thing to do. Buuut then Ntai-whatever-the-fuck corroborated it by saying she protected Chibi. So either they're all, you know, the fucking mafia together, or Lab Coat is telling the truth. Whatever. Sure, let's say they're probably innocent for now. But if anyone can check, you know, that'd be great."

He glanced at the Archopy muttering to himself in the tree. "Also, I'm pretty sure fossil over there is genuine at this point. He's way too invested in rooting out the mafia."]]

That's a real read; I've been watching elyvorg playing Tefiren pretty closely and I think she'd be playing him kind of differently if he were actually mafia (and would be having a harder time of it).
 

Tanuki

Friend of All Chu
Location
Rhyme City
Pronouns
He/him/his
I switched Chibi and qva last night, which means the Mafia were initially targetting qva. This confirms qva as town, unless the Mafia thought it was smart to target one of their own.
[[Desper clenched his paw. "Y'wanna run that by me again, Ginny?" His oversized hat failed to hide the rage in his eyes. "Y'went'n decided that cute lil boy's life wan't worth 'nuff?" Narrow eyes looked up at the monster. "Did ya know yous was gonna kill 'im? Or was that just a special little bonus to yer decidin' who gets to live or die?"

His paw twitched over his holster 'fore returning to the brim of his head holster. "Yer kind make me sick." All this rage, he barely heard the raufflerousin' about "abilities" every'un'd gotten. "Aw, well, ain't y'all special!" he mocked. "Why, they sh'ge't'Fornia'n mine s'm gold'n ge'chu all medals! Oh, yeehaw! Wouldn'cha know it? I gots me'n abilitay's well. I calls it Coveralls! Makes it s' no one! Is dyin'. On my watch."

That giddy grin went mighty sour'n'e spat into th'earth. He pointed at the wetened ground. "Y'all's jabberin' means much as that to me. Y'all're all's in'cent as hatchlin's born in spring 'cuz you says you is?" His lips puffed 's if he were blowin' th'same smoke's them. "Y'ain't doctors're whatever just like I'm not a dandy pair o' dungarees just cuz I says I am."]]

OOC: No bad blood, Winds, lol. Just Desper being Desper. Main meat is I'm wary of everyone all the sudden claiming their abilities. Sure, broken window theory, but it's just strange. I'm more suspicious of anyone who's claimed a role than anyone else.

Translation: Dungarees are blue jeans/denim. Coveralls are sometimes made of dungarees, so he's saying he's not a pair of pants because he says he is. If coveralls is a real role, that was just a coincidence, lol. There are a lot more roles in this mafia than the one I used to play.
 

Dragonfree

Moderator
Staff
Location
Iceland
Pronouns
she/her/hers
Partners
  1. butterfree
  2. mightyena
  3. charizard
  4. scyther-mia
  5. vulpix
  6. slugma
Lots of ninjas here, including elyvorg's longpost. I definitely agree that there's no good reason the mafia would've wasted a strongman kill on Chibi now (they'd want that for when they want to kill somebody like a claimed cop), and that there's no way a strongman kill somehow works through a bus driver switch - that doesn't make any sense.)
 

Dragonfree

Moderator
Staff
Location
Iceland
Pronouns
she/her/hers
Partners
  1. butterfree
  2. mightyena
  3. charizard
  4. scyther-mia
  5. vulpix
  6. slugma
[["There's'a tavern'n these parts? They got'ny oil?"]]
[[Dave gave the inexplicable cowboy Raichu a deadpan stare for a moment, then shrugged. "You can generate whatever the fuck you want out of thin air in here. Won't necessarily be any good, but it's something. Try it. Silver linings, huh." He took a swig of his bottle, finishing it, then tossed it carelessly over his shoulder; it smashed on the featureless ground. Another bottle appeared in its place.]]
 

elyvorg

somewhat backwards
Pronouns
she/they
That's a real read; I've been watching elyvorg playing Tefiren pretty closely and I think she'd be playing him kind of differently if he were actually mafia (and would be having a harder time of it).

Haha, I'm really glad I am innocent, because I'd definitely be having a harder time with all the RPing if Tefiren were somehow mafia and I had to somehow hide this. I have no idea how anyone who is mafia can get by in an RP game like this, short of just essentially RP-lying and playing the character as if they were actually innocent. Or just by not having the character think about any of the stuff that would involve them thinking about being mafia, to sidestep that issue? I feel like that was kiiinda how Dragonfree played mafia-Dave in the last game. That might be something to keep in mind when trying to get reads on people, because I'm really struggling to do so for those who've basically only been RPing and not talking about the game much. Then again, that's still not necessarily indicative of anything either way. (This is why I prefer focusing my playstyle on the mechanical side of things instead, hence the longpost.)

...Dave hasn't precisely been behaving in a way that I'd peg as any more innocent than he was in the last game, but that's probably just because he's so Extremely Done with this whole board-game-deities dimension altogether and wouldn't really give a fuck whether he was innocent or mafia at this point.
 

Dragonfree

Moderator
Staff
Location
Iceland
Pronouns
she/her/hers
Partners
  1. butterfree
  2. mightyena
  3. charizard
  4. scyther-mia
  5. vulpix
  6. slugma
Or just by not having the character think about any of the stuff that would involve them thinking about being mafia, to sidestep that issue? I feel like that was kiiinda how Dragonfree played mafia-Dave in the last game.
Basically. As it happens Dave is already a character who is pretty adept at not thinking about things he doesn't want to think about and being selective about his inner monologue, so it flowed pretty naturally. Even here, Dave manages to think entirely around the fact he was mafia last game and seamlessly divert the topic away from that bit when pressed on what happened there. So far it doesn't feel very different playing him town vs mafia at all, although that could change as the game goes on, if he manages to get more invested.

Meanwhile, I have no idea how I'd go about RPing somebody like Mark as mafia in a way that wouldn't just give him away very obviously. He's so transparent and genuine that it's just kind of impossible to have him hide anything. I probably could make May work, though.
 

Persephone

Infinite Screms
Pronouns
her/hers
Partners
  1. mawile
  2. vulpix-alola
[[ You blink. And then again. Well, uh, this has been a lot. And ugh you just got off the trail and your headache isn’t going away. Someone died. That’s not good. At least it was only a pokemon. Would’ve been terrible if a human died.

Maybe the mafia are just Pokémon thieves? Then no one dies. I mean, they’re criminals, which isn’t good, but at least they’d leave you alone.

No. They wouldn’t. They’d try and take Sir Bubbles away. You have to fight them. Plus you can’t run anyway.

Then everyone started claiming that they had powers like Cuicatl and—

It’s too much. Surely no one will mind if you close your eyes for a bit... ]]

finals are over but a lot of stuff happened today and I still have a headache from a week of stress induced sleep deprivation. I have a more substantive post but I’d like to look over it tomorrow morning to make sure I actually understand what’s going on.

thank you for being understanding. Finals just ended so these problems should be much reduced in the very near future.
 

elyvorg

somewhat backwards
Pronouns
she/they
Basically. As it happens Dave is already a character who is pretty adept at not thinking about things he doesn't want to think about and being selective about his inner monologue, so it flowed pretty naturally.

...To be fair, Tefiren is very extremely one of those characters, too, so I could probably have figured out a way to get him to work as mafia. It'd have been trickier, though.

[[He glanced at the Archopy muttering to himself in the tree. "Also, I'm pretty sure fossil over there is genuine at this point. He's way too invested in rooting out the mafia."]]

[[Tefiren noticed the messy Human's comment about him and huffed. Well, of course he was invested in rooting out Them; he wanted to win this game like always! ...Maybe the messy Human did know how to make sense sometimes after all, if he'd at least managed to realise that. Maybe Tefiren would keep an eye on some of the others first, rather than on this guy, while looking out for Them.]]

I suppose I might as well put it out there (the above being the best I can do to get Tefiren to acknowledge it in-RP) that I'm starting to feel something like 75% confident about Dragonfree just based on people-intuition, since there's no mechanical evidence around her yet. She's the only person in this game that I'm going to be any good at that with because I know her so much better than anyone else here, and my good feeling isn't just because we've just been having a fun chat about writing our characters.

Her vouching for me kind of out of nowhere like that, just because she's been getting an innocent read from my RPing (which nobody else left alive could do, I don't think, since I believe the only other player who's read Tefiren's fic is Chibi Pika) seems like a very unnecessary move for her to have made if she were mafia. Also the bit yesterday where she pointed out that there's no way to guarantee a completely random lynch when there's always the chance the person claiming to have chosen randomly is mafia was something nobody else had brought up, and if she were mafia, it'd have been easy to just not mention it at all, in case things really did end up moving towards a lynch.

Those things could be a ploy to try and subtly gain trust, but I've watched/played more other games with Dragonfree in than anyone else here, so I'm pretty sure that isn't her playstyle when she's mafia.

Then again, she did have nearly the whole playerbase with a townread on her as mafia-Dave in last year's game, and since I spectated that while knowing she was mafia I don't know if she'd have had me fooled too, so maybe she's managing to fool me here. But I'm pretty sure she's genuine.
 

Tanuki

Friend of All Chu
Location
Rhyme City
Pronouns
He/him/his
"You're the one who got in my way?"
[[“Got in your way?” Desper snorted. “Only thing in yer way’s yer own big mouth. Might’s well smack s’m red on those lips’n do a night patrol. Do ya more good’n talkin’.”

A sly smile slid across his lips. “I mightn’t a known that whippersnapper long, but ‘e ‘ad a pure sheriff’s heart, ‘f ever there was such a thing. ‘T’s ‘is heart what’s keepin’ me s’bent on savin’ wh’ever I can.”

Desper’s paw hung on his iron. “Y’didn’t protect nothin’. Matter o’ fact, y’just admitted t’bein’ at the scene.”]]

OOC: All right, thing about Sike being protector is... I had an inheritance role, and I got protector from Chibi. Unless there can be multiple of the same role, one of us is lying and, well. I mean, I would say it’s not me, but it is not me.

If it turns out there can just be two protectors... heck. Guess I just put a target on my head, but I’m extremely suspicious of Sike now.
 
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