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[MAFIA WIN] Second Anniversary Fanfic Mafia - Game Thread

Inkedust

Harbinger of Sunrise
Location
Pokémon Square
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. ninetales-inkedust
  2. solgaleo-inkedust
  3. xerneas
  4. zoroark-inkedust
I think that we're starting to galaxy-brain a bit much in regards to the N1 kills. I legitimately don't buy the idea that Lexx was an Arsonist kill because of inefficient play and the fact that they didn't bother going after Nefari, who (as potential Firefighter) would've been Arsonist target No. 1. Yes, there is the possibility that they primed Lexx N0, but then why waste time igniting N1 instead of priming more victims (especially Nefari)?

So here's what I think are the most likely explanations (in no particular order) for the Lexx kill:
  1. Chappie is Innocent, swapped blindly and the Mafia targeted Spark. Unlikely. The only explanation for the Mafia going after Spark is that she's an easy target, however this is a bad strategic play on the Mafia's end. It'd be a lot easier for them to fly under the radar if they were up against more inactive players than active ones, such as Lexx.
  2. Chappie is Innocent, swapped blindly but was blocked, so Lexx died anyway. Either the Mafia shot blindly and hit that 1/18 chance or they did some galaxy-braining of their own and decided that Chappie was the safest person to block based on some flavour text that they inferred to be related to her role (in a similar way that Starlight Aurate did during the first anniversary game). If Chappie flips innocent, then I will lean more towards this theory than the one above.
  3. Chappie is the Mafia Bus Driver and used Spark as a pawn to ensure a safe kill on Lexx. Her claim on D2 was a ploy to make her look innocent. However, this explanation begs the question of why bring it up in the first place? Wouldn't it have been safer to keep quiet about it?
  4. Chappie and Spark (now Braixen...?) are both Mafia and her claim was ploy to make her and Spark look Town. This would explain why Chappie brought up the fact that she swapped the two, as it had the potential of clearing two Mafia players. If Chappie flips Mafia, then I'll be more inclined to believe this theory than the one above.
Rascal is still a bit of a mystery but it's safe to assume that she was something like a Hider who targeted Spark or Lexx.
 

Dragonfree

Moderator
Staff
Location
Iceland
Pronouns
she/her/hers
Partners
  1. butterfree
  2. mightyena
  3. charizard
  4. scyther-mia
  5. vulpix
  6. slugma
[[Tefiren's not in the mood for logicking right now, so hi, Dave, Tefiren's patron board game god here - how does that explain how Rascal died, though?]]
Dave looked up at the air above the tree, scowling. He usually tried his best to ignore the fucking god-entities so they could just get on with it, but it was harder with these shitheads actually addressing him. "I mean, it doesn't, but we've got nearly twenty people in this thing and who knows what anyone's role is. I'd be convenient if every death was caused by some of the shit we already know about, but we can't know that."
 

Dragonfree

Moderator
Staff
Location
Iceland
Pronouns
she/her/hers
Partners
  1. butterfree
  2. mightyena
  3. charizard
  4. scyther-mia
  5. vulpix
  6. slugma
I legitimately don't buy the idea that Lexx was an Arsonist kill because of inefficient play and the fact that they didn't bother going after Nefari, who (as potential Firefighter) would've been Arsonist target No. 1. Yes, there is the possibility that they primed Lexx N0, but then why waste time igniting N1 instead of priming more victims (especially Nefari)?
"I mean, if it was the arsonist, there's no possibility about it, he must have been primed on night zero, when the arsonist didn't know about Nefari yet. So obviously that would've been just as likely to be someone non-Nefari. And igniting N1 is suboptimal but if they saw Lexx as a serious threat, they wouldn't have figured they had to get Nefari immediately, because she said she wouldn't get the firefighter power until night four or whatever it was. I'm not saying it's likely but the only bit that stretches disbelief in there is the arsonist thinking Lexx was that big of a threat, which is a lot less of a stretch than some of the other stuff. Like, why the fuck would the mafia block Chappie at random when there were actual people who'd claimed or implied they had inforoles?"
 

Dragonfree

Moderator
Staff
Location
Iceland
Pronouns
she/her/hers
Partners
  1. butterfree
  2. mightyena
  3. charizard
  4. scyther-mia
  5. vulpix
  6. slugma
"And again, it's not that I think this is likelier than Chappie just being mafia, but it's something vaguely sensible to work with if she's not."
 

Inkedust

Harbinger of Sunrise
Location
Pokémon Square
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. ninetales-inkedust
  2. solgaleo-inkedust
  3. xerneas
  4. zoroark-inkedust
"Like, why the fuck would the mafia block Chappie at random when there were actual people who'd claimed or implied they had inforoles?"

"Fuck if I know. I have no idea what they're thinking," Altair sneered. "I'm just trying to get a hold of all the possibilities here." He turned his gaze over to the luxio, who'd curled up into a tight ball—the only signs of movement being the steady ups and downs of her diaphragm—she'd just given up, now waiting for the end. He couldn't help but pity her. Was this an admission of guilt, or was she so overwhelmed by the circumstances that she just... stopped. Either way, the fight in her had vanished, much like the victims of the night.
 

windskull

Bidoof Fan
Staff
Partners
  1. sneasel-nip
  2. bidoof
  3. absol
  4. kirlia
  5. windskull-bidoof
  6. little-guy-windskull
  7. purugly
  8. mawile
[[Soo.... Just as a heads up. I thought I was going to be off work early tomorrow and would be active at EOD but something changed, so there's a good chance that I won't be. I'm hoping to have reads and at least an initial vote before I go to bed tonight, in case I don't have time to reply further. I'm still at work for now though, and my lunch break is almost over, so I'll catch y'all later.
 

Equitial

Ace Trainer
Pronouns
he/him
Partners
  1. espurr
  2. inkay
  3. woobat
  4. ralts
For now I'll unvote. Even if Abra read the first anniversary game Yellow has a point about holding events against players. And I need to cosider Abra's recent-ish explanation for her N1 action as well.
Still pretty null on her.
Unvote: Chappie

[[
Actually DawningWinds unvoted them.
]]
 

Fusion

Oh knee on
Location
Here, silly
Pronouns
Him/His
Partners
  1. zoroark
[[Huh, wow, I didn't expect the night to be over so soon. I still didn't grab Jackie's whiteboard and I personally have no suses yet. I'm gonna read over today's posts and see what I can pull from there.

And, also...]]

"Fuck... That's something I don't want to get used to again..." Fusion gritted his teeth, rubbing the side of his head. Being used as a goddamn speaker was headache inducing. "Whatever... I gotta do some searching, right?"

"I honest to gods can't remember if we went over this, but what were everyone's night actions again? Two people tried to heal the chimera, that much we know for sure. What about the rest of us?"

[[If we already went over everyone's night actions, I'm sorry for asking them again. But it would be nice to have everyone's actions tossed in without them being an addendum to a five page, college major, final essay which is like, the snarkiest complient I can give, I actually don't mind the big posts]]
 

elyvorg

somewhat backwards
Pronouns
she/they
@Fusion (and everyone, really): here's a compilation of every claimed role and night action so far, unless I overlooked something. Also including (in italics) facts we can hard-assume about some of the dead people's roles or actions based on things they said.

NameClaimed roleN0N1N2
Nefari (DawningWinds)Chooses either firefighter or rolestopper after 4th innocent deathN/AN/A[end of night] Has to choose role during D3, or else stuck as vanilla.
Tefiren (elyvorg)One-shot bulletproofWas shot, now vanillaN/AN/A
Lexx (Chibi Pika) [Innocent]Cop [confirmed]Dave; innocentkilled
Arctozolt (IFBench) [Innocent]Universal backup [confirmed]N/A[end of night] Inherited Cop from Lexxkilled
Chappie (AbraPunk)Bus driverAltair and LusamineLexx and SparkMewtwo and Namco
Mewtwo (Equitial)DoctorLexxTefirenArctozolt
Wes (HelloYellow17)Doctor??????Arctozolt
Jesse (unrepentantAuthor) [Innocent]???Dave; he knew the action failed, therefore it must have been an info power???killed
 

Seren

Lurking
Staff
Pronouns
He/Him
Partners
  1. sableye
[[I think it’s highly unlikely Lusamine was killed by the arsonist. Again, this would require the arsonist to have chosen not to douse the person who can become firefighter, and to choose to inefficiently ignite early after it’s been widely discussed in the thread that this would be suboptimal play for them, and to happen to have either not doused anyone or doused one of the people who died for other reasons as their other douse. I don’t think scorch marks as flavor are nearly enough reason to postulate this over the very simple “We have a vigilante, who successfully targeted one of the people who were very suspicious yesterday” - especially since the flavor implied by DW’s role PM is something psychic and not actually even fire.

I would also like to say that all annoyance etc. expressed by Dave is in character. I think all the newbies have been playing well for their first game and that nobody has made horrible unclearable mistakes; it seems to me all the newbies feel like they’re being subjected to scrutiny that the others aren’t, but people picking out random little things you’ve done and finding them suspicious is just what happens in mafia and doesn’t mean you’re terrible or being picked on in some impossible-to-shake way. I would also like to reassure you that you aren’t expected to post massive textwalls. Some people are textwallers, most people aren’t, and that’s fine.

]]
[[ (Okay, now that I'm home I can properly Text Wall!)

This is partly why I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around all of this. When I suspected Lexx might have been an arsonist target early on, it was written off as "sub-optimal play", as well as the flavoring not being fire, that the flavoring didn't matter. But it looked more like the residue of some sort of psychic explosion to me, which is why I mentioned it anyway (otherwise, why bother mentioning the scuffle marks and twisted ground at all in Rascal's/Lexx's death scene? No other death really shows the results on the ground other than lynching someone, far as I've seen. Or at least that I can remember off the top of my head). But now, for a reason I'm not entirely following, we do believe the psychic mark flavoring is actually true, despite it looking to me now like Lusamine went up in flames (the bright light?).

To quote the message:

No more than that before a flash of light took her.
she was gone, nothing but a scorch mark on the off-white ground marking where she'd stood.

That... doesn't say "arsonist using fire" to anyone else? Because I feel like I'm reading the exact opposite of what other people are seeing. I mean, it looks like, at least in Dragonfree's take, that neither mention of the marks on the ground after a death (Rascal/Lexx, and Lusamine) is an indicator of how the death happened. I'm just... very confused on why we seem to suddenly think the favoring now matters and that this isn't it.

(Granted, this is entirely ignoring the logicstics of "it makes more sense for it to be a Vig kill" but... would a vig kill look like someone erupting into bright light? Idk. Everyone talks about how the arsonist kills are supposed to be flavored in a way that makes it obvious, but somehow they aren't being treated like the flavor is right for any particular kill so far. Would that just mean that the arsonist has yet to kill anyone (and probably won't since we suspect it was Lance anyway)?

Does any of this make sense or am I just overthinking this?


Anyway, in regards to the second part, I definitely do feel better about how I've been playing based purely on the fact that I'm still here on d-3 (although having a couple people explain themselves did help too, hah). I didn't expect to get this far when I'd signed up, so I count it as a win regardless of the game's outcome at this point.


This is a long post on just one confusing (to me, anyway) topic so I'll just end it here and try to get to everything else quicker in my next post... ]]
 

Seren

Lurking
Staff
Pronouns
He/Him
Partners
  1. sableye
[[ Aaaand now I wish I just kept going because I have an addition to my last post:


Arsonist/Lusamine's Killer

Based on the scorch marks, I just have to assume that the Arsonist is still around. To me this is a case of Negrek would not make things unclear if she didn't have to. She could have written literally anything else for the flavor; she was the one who put the Arsonist in the game. I hear what other people are saying but I'm going with Navar was some other kind of third-party, and our fire-setter's still out there.

But, other people are pointing out that the hypothetical Arsonist's moves don't make much sense strategically. However... what if that's because they weren't paying much attention to the game until now? I feel kind of bad for sussing the players who literally just got here, but I'm marking Braixen (Zoroark)/Espeon and Cold Fusion/Fusion as very sus.

Again, it does mention scorch marks specifically, doesn't it? I hope this isn't a case of "the first kill wasn't flavored enough to be obvious so the second kill tried to make it flavored as such but by this point everyone changed their minds on it being psychic rather than fire and no longer see scorch marks and an arsonist kill" because... that would be bad.

That said... I'm absolutely willing to believe Dragonfree and elyvorg if they think there is no other arsonist and Lusamine's death wasn't what it looks like, but... I dunno, it just looks like that's what happened to me, and I'm glad I'm not alone in that, at least. I absolutely wouldn't put it behind Negrek for including multiple third-party roles tbh, considering how many experienced players are/were in this game. Gotta keep spicing it up, yeah? ]]
 

windskull

Bidoof Fan
Staff
Partners
  1. sneasel-nip
  2. bidoof
  3. absol
  4. kirlia
  5. windskull-bidoof
  6. little-guy-windskull
  7. purugly
  8. mawile
[[Disclaimer that ic doesn't equal ooc feelings. Kyros is just a rude boi.]]

The luxio was just going to... give up? Just like that?

Kyros began to pace, his head and tail low, and with a rumble in his throat. If she was evil, would she give up so quickly? Would she cave under the pressure? Was it all just a ploy? Or was she just an innocent cracking under the stress?

He didn't pay attention when Tefiren retreated. He just kept pacing, occasionally casting furtive glances back at Chappie. Finally, he couldn't hold it in anymore. He had to say something.

"So that's it, huh? The first sign of trouble and you're gonna give up? If that's how you're going to be, then maybe it would be better if we removed you from this game, Chappie." He paused, a bit of gilt clawing at his chest. "If you're as innocent as you say you are, then at least you won't have to worry about whatever horrible thing happened to that delphox. Or whoever might have been killed by the mafia. And it might point us in the direction of the real culprits. And if you are part of the mafia?" He paused again.

"Well. Cosmos have mercy on the soul of those with blood on their hands. They're going to need it."

[[Updated D2 reads and explanation of my vote:

Hard Town:
DawningWinds (Nefari) - Same reasons as yesterday, no real changes to their playstyle.
Elyvorg (Tefiren) - Same as DW

Medium Town:
Dragonfree (Dave) - More certain of this because of the Bench and Chibi business, and because Free generally seems like she’s trying to be helpful town, but I’m not quite as certain of her as I am the two hard townies, which is the only reason she’s in this category instead.

Soft Town:
Equitial (Mewtwo) - For the same reasons as yesterday, though I am generally slightly more cautious. I’m inclined to believe Equital is the town doctor over HelloYellow, but if Yellow ends up dead and innocent that’s going to be setting off a loooot of alarm bells on Equital.
Namohysip (Alexander) - My read hasn’t really changed from Day 2, though he feels slightly more town on account of other players feeling slightly more Null
Inkedust (Altair) - See yesterday's post. Now the shakiest of my soft town reads, but not ready to lynch. May revisit tomorrow if still alive.

Null:
Seren (Miyako) - See yesterday's post.. Slightly less suspicious of them
SparklingEspeon (Braixen) - has posted, which is nice, but hasn’t really done anything to make me bump her out of my null pile. Not comfortable lynching her yet but I am cautious.
Fusion (Cold Fusion) - Same as Espy, basically

Slight Suspicion:
HelloYellow17 (Wes) - See yesterday's post Primary reason I’m hesitant to Lynch is that they could be the town doc and I’m a little nervous about lynching that. Least suspicious for me right now, but the fact that healer clash is a thing in this game does generally make me think there’s a mafia doctor. Of course, there could still be a mafia doctor that hasn’t claimed, or else is lying about their role. IDK.
Chappie (Abrapunk) - See yesterday's post
Mellow (Namco) - Honestly probably has the highest scum vibes for me rn due to lurking and not contributing (as opposed to being totally inactive), but I don’t think Mellow is the most useful lynch. They’ve generally been disjoint from other players thus far, other than jumping on the Bench wagon and not getting off before EoD. There are other players whose flip will tell us more, I think.

I’d be comfortable lynching anyone in the slight suspicion pile, and could be convinced to lynch someone in the null pile if given good reason, though there are some I’m a bit more hesitant to lynch for one reason or the other.

Now on to the subject of my vote.

Though I still don’t 100% understand all of the logic behind Elyvorg’s post, I do find myself generally agreeing with the idea. Of the three people in my slight suspicion pile, I think Abra Or Yellow are the ones that would give us the most information, though I’m not sure which one gives us more, if either. That said, one player has expressed interest in dropping out of the game while the other hasn’t, and partially as a result, I’m inclined to pick the one that wants to drop out. If something changes and I have time, I may revisit this before EoD. But as I stated before, I may not be available at EoD, so please keep that in mind. ]]

Vote: Chappie (AbraPunk)
 

Seren

Lurking
Staff
Pronouns
He/Him
Partners
  1. sableye
  • The way you presented two completely different interpretations of me--that I was Mafia or that I was a powerful info-role--which would have helped scum if I were sussed or made to softclaim. The first time I attempt my aggressive Day 1 strat, I didn't end up ultimately hitting scum, but I did unearth several of them who told on themselves by being self-contradicting or seemed like they were info-hunting. BEcause of this, in this game I was specifically on lookout for that kind of behavior.
  • The way you followed me throughout that first day. It reminded me of my first scumplay, where I chose one innocent to sus and stuck to him 'til I couldn't anymore. So, just a familiar vibe.
  • In contrast with Wes's accusation, yours feels more suspicious to me because it had a better chance of succeeding. There were other newcomers side-eying me, so you had a chance to maybe get a mislynch without looking too out-of-place.

[[ Gonna point out that I don't belong under the "Mafia Frustration" heading here. ;)

But for reals, though. The explanation for your previous game night 1 activity makes sense of what happened in this game, honestly. Newbie mistake for me in that I shouldn't have outright openly questioned your role, regardless of whether or not it was right, since that could have made you a target anyway. That's fair. And it seems like my behavior towards you is just what you were on the lookout for, so yeah, that also makes sense. Guess I kinda just got frustrated that everyone else seemed to be taking that same view of me, since... well, it makes sense now that you'd be actively seeking the behavior I so openly displayed N1, but you personally also had a reason for that, and it felt like everyone else was just kinda taking advantage of that. Which, in retrospect, I guess is... how the game is played, LOL. So, again, rookie move on my part. ]]


I'm sorry that you're not enjoying the game, but I'm not sure what I can do to help other than reassure you every player will make mistakes when playing Mafia and that I have nothing personal against you. Either I'm making a mistake or not, but I'm trying my best, as presumably are you.

[[ I can't speak for anyone else, but honestly, with some explanation and things clicking now, I'm definitely a lot calmer. Still not happy with how I have been playing, but that's more on me. I wouldn't say I haven't been enjoying the game, either, just... that one particular point really bothered me. But yeah, I definitely feel better knowing it wasn't just me making a rookie mistake but also the fact that you in particular were on the lookout for that sort of behavior already for a very valid reason. No harm, no foul. ]]


What if the scorch marks were Jesse's vigkill? Or whoever else might be the vig. As Dragonfree said, the flavour for the arsonist in this game is apparently something psychic. I just don't think we can be certain about what this flavour is meant to imply either way.

[[ Ah, we're back to this again. (Where's my anxiety emote when I need it?) Maybe some of the more experienced players can tell me, but do vig-kills normally leave death-marks like this? Because it's not just that there were scorch marks on the ground, it's also that Lusamine apparently lit up like a Christmas tree as she died, which just... says "arsonist fire" to me. So if suddenly we're all aboard the "psychic flavoring is not just flavoring now, it matters" ... I mean, I guess it could be a vig-kill, certainly nothing to disprove that. I just don't want the possibility of another third-party to go unrecognized. (Admittedly, it does feel wrong disagreeing with both you and Dragonfree on this, since you're both nearly-confirmed-innocent-veterans and especially since I've mostly agreed with the rest of both of your takes so far... Perfectly willing to admit I'm wrong and just reading too much into this.) ]]

"But okay, one thing Tefiren didn't cover in the possible alternative explanations is that Lexx dying wasn't the mafia after all. Maybe the mafia went after Rascal for some fucking reason; maybe their kill fizzled entirely. It'd still mean somebody targeted Spark for a kill, which seems random as all hell, unless it was the arsonist. Arsonist douses Lexx night zero and ignites him night one, which'd mean it doesn't get swapped. Still technically possible, and the arsonist could've thought he was the biggest threat to them after Lexx talked about wanting to catch the arsonist on day one, and wanted him gone before he'd have more time to try to figure them out, figuring they had time to get rid of Nefari later before she picked up the firefighter power. So I guess that's one possibility where Chappie's innocent and nobody's making completely insane decisions."

[[ Going to quote this for a second time because this is where I picked up the change that the psychic mark flavoring thing does matter. (I think I figured out my own confusion here, bear with me.) Because if this is true... (which is in fact what I proposed when Lexx died):

But how likely would that be? Miyako had no idea; assuming the arsonist did in fact target someone n-0 and then off them in n1, she assumed Lexx would have probably been their target, but again, she wasn't sure how to be able to tell, or if that's even what had happened.

[[ This assumption again comes from the fact that Chibi is what I consider an experienced player, and according to the Wiki, an arsonist can't be blocked by traditional means like Doctors, etc. So it would help to "guarantee" that an experienced player is taken down, especially since Nefari's firefighter role can't take effect until n-4, so short of any character-swapping, it was an easy guaranteed early kill.

[[ Anyway, by that logic... if Lexx died to the arsonist, and we did see the flavoring here by the torn-up ground, then Lusamine's scorch marks were not the work of an arsonist, and this is what leads to the possible vig-kill option. (The only other explanation I can come up with for myself here is that Negrek changed the flavoring since no one seemed to get it on the first night except me in the hopes that it would make sense to everyone else but by this point everyone'd already gone back to believing the psychic marks were actually relevant instead of fire which inadvertantly makes this kill not look arsonist even if it was. And while I wouldn't want to completely rule that out, I think Negrek's probably more consistent than that, so it's unlikely.) Okay, I think I got understand where Dragonfree and elyvorg's point was coming from now. ]]


"I mean, if it was the arsonist, there's no possibility about it, he must have been primed on night zero, when the arsonist didn't know about Nefari yet. So obviously that would've been just as likely to be someone non-Nefari. And igniting N1 is suboptimal but if they saw Lexx as a serious threat, they wouldn't have figured they had to get Nefari immediately, because she said she wouldn't get the firefighter power until night four or whatever it was. I'm not saying it's likely but the only bit that stretches disbelief in there is the arsonist thinking Lexx was that big of a threat, which is a lot less of a stretch than some of the other stuff. Like, why the fuck would the mafia block Chappie at random when there were actual people who'd claimed or implied they had inforoles?"

Miyako pouted as she listened to Dave's theory. "Yes, this is exactly what I'd said that day! Consider that Lexx knew what he was doing [[ read: Chibi's on my "experienced player" list ]]. No, it wouldn't be the optimal play to get rid of him alone in terms of how many kills the arsonist could average per night. But it would ensure that one of our best assets, regardless of his role or alignment, would remain silent for the rest of the game. There didn't need to be optimal play involved when there was someone talking about hunting you down specifically, so what if they specifically chose to do the non-optimal play to specifically just silence Lexx? The fact that it was a sub-optimal move works in their favor, too, because, as was proven afterwards, no one would expect they'd be dumb enough to trigger a one-prime ignite on someone. I didn't think it was a stretch then, and I only backed off it because people put it down. But now that it's come up again, I still feel it's worth considering.

"The only flaw I see here is the failure to target Nefari afterwards. Whether or not Lusamine was also an arsonist kill, it looks like they didn't go after the one person here that they know could still have stopped them.

"Now, I'm just throwing a random thought out there. What if... what if someone swapped Nefari and Lusamine? The arsonist thought they'd be priming Nefari, when they actually were priming Lusamine, and then when they ignited last night, expecting to get rid of their one weakness, they ended up burning up someone else, instead?

"Of course, this is still assuming Lance was not the only third-party amo- in the group, though."


[[ Ughhhh.... wind ninja'd me here, but I'm going to post it anyway. ]]

She turned her attention to the luxio, unsure of what to make of the poor thing now. "I'm going to second Kyros's thoughts here. I'm willing to trust Tefiren, and I feel like knowing what Chappie's part in all of this would give us the most useful information out of what we have so far. So... I'm sorry, Chappie, but I think... well... I hope you're zoned out enough that you don't feel anything..."

[[ For the record, while typing up tonight's Text Wall, I was very much going to vote for Chappie before windskull ninja'd me. My reasoning, admittedly, is more because I'm not comfortable with keeping someone in the game who doesn't really want to keep going and, unlike last year, this lynching does actually give us some info rather than just removing a player. I'm willing to give Wes another day because I know this has been hard on Yellow, and right now everyone seems to be easing off their suspicion slightly anyway. Miyako's in-character reasoning can't state any of that, of course, which is why it's flavored more towards the information-gathering side of the choice even though OoC that is my secondary reason. ]]



hello yes please more RP in which Miyako completely unintentionally reminds Tefiren of a certain someone, even if it's only based on the fact that she vaguely admires him and is treating him like a person
[[ Comin' right up! Or so I shall try, haha. ]]

Miyako glanced back towards the tree where she watched Tefiren slink away to. How odd for the archopy to suddenly clam up like that - he had been a downright giddy ball of energy while giving his thoughts earlier.

This time, Miyako didn't need Nephthys' mental prodding. (Briefly, she noted that her Persona had been oddly quiet since they had arrived here, short of that one outburst... she'd question that later, though. Right now, someone else needed her more.). After casting her first actual vote for another player and telling them she'd be right back, she crept her way nearer to the archopy's tree. She stopped a fair distance away - enough to still hear, should anyone back in the crowd decide to respond to her musings, but close enough for her target to realize she'd come where with a purpose.

"Hey, um..." How to begin? She stared up into the tree, looking for any sign that Tefiren was listening. He... was up there, wasn't he? She tapped the end of her staff on the ground - why was she nervous? She could ask if he was okay but... that would be dumb. It was obvious he wasn't, and he would say he was fine, anyway. Possibly laugh at her for even asking. Well, nothing wrong with taking a guess. "Um... You just kinda... took off back there. For what it's worth, I believe you. I mean, I think you're on the right track. You've been working the hardest at this and I think you've gotten a lot of them to consider what you've said, even if they, uh... might not look like it." She chanced a look back at the group, only for a moment. Motley crew, indeed. "But either way, we'll figure it out in the end, right? So, um... why don't we go back over there and you can help them out? Gods know we need all the help we can get." She continued smiling up at the tree, waiting for some kind of reaction.




[[ To top this off, per Negrek's request, my official position:
Vote: Chappie ]]
 

Dragonfree

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[[Just quickly acknowledging that yeah, Seren totally did have the arsonist theory originally! It was dismissed then because it was before Chappie's swap claim, so at that time, thinking it was the arsonist being that worried about being caught out by Lexx while the mafia targeted Rascal (or failed entirely while something else killed Rascal), rather than the mafia simply targeting Lexx and something like hider getting Rascal killed with him, was kind of a reach. Now that if Chappie's telling the truth it would've meant the mafia can't have been targeting Lexx, it's become a lot more plausible to consider the arsonist explanation, since all the other explanations now other than Chappie being mafia are even bigger reaches.

Incidentally, while looking back to confirm the timing of this, I bumped into this post again, which I'd been meaning to re-find:

"Alright, if you say so. I swapped Lexx and Spark, since I thought nobody would be targeting either of them... you can see how well that went. But now, my question is: Why Spark? Who would possibly be targeting her, and why?"
Here AbraPunk does indeed explicitly claims to have swapped them because she assumed nobody would be targeting either of them. Yet today she has said: 1) that actually she did the swap because she thought Lexx would be targeted, 2) that she thought Lexx would be very useful if kept alive, and also 3) that she was getting scummy vibes off him. All of these things contradict each other. Now, innocent people absolutely can and do contradict themselves! People don't always correctly remember what they were thinking in the past, and justify their actions in retrospect with reasoning that's not necessarily what was actually going through their head at the time. But this is a whole lot of self-contradiction which is definitely making me more confident in eliminating her today.

Vote: Chappie]]
 

Dragonfree

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[[Another wild hilarious what-if scenario that just occurred to me: what if Chappie is a town bus driver, and Rascal was also a town bus driver, who also swapped somebody with Lexx - either also Spark, or someone else that the mafia would want to target - and then Rascal died that night too for some other reason. This explains why Rascal's death flavor talked about trying to protect someone, how the mafia kill could have ended up on Lexx, and why no other bus driver has claimed. Likely? Not remotely, but at least it involves a series of coincidences rather than people making exceedingly strange decisions. I will laugh if this is somehow it.]]
 

Dragonfree

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[[ANYWAY I am off to try to skim through the whole thread since D1 start to squint at Wes and Inkedust's posts in particular, as well as potentially a couple more people]]
 

elyvorg

somewhat backwards
Pronouns
she/they
[[To the people who've voted Chappie so far without expanding on it much, I wouldn't mind hearing more of your thoughts, if any, on how likely you think it is for her to be mafia, and how willing you'd be to lynch her if she still wanted to play. I worry that the fact that AbraPunk wants to stop playing is going to make it too easy for people to go "oh well, let's lynch her because she wants to stop playing" and leave it at that, reducing potential useful reads that could be generated from what people think about the chance that she's mafia.

---

So I was thinking about who Chappie told us she swapped last night: Mewtwo and Namco. Seems a sensible enough choice - swap a prominent trusted person with a nearly-inactive and vaguely-suspected one. Any kill attempt on Mewtwo winds up on someone who's either no real loss for town, or maybe a mafioso.

But... why didn't she try to swap Arctozolt with someone to protect them, when they were by far the most juicy mafia target? That'd be a near-guaranteed way to keep them alive - a lot less risky than the way the doctors had, given they knew healer clash was a possibility. Even though Chappie trying to protect Lexx (if she's innocent) wound up going horribly wrong, that was due to bad luck; her swap was strategically the correct move for a town bus driver to make to try and protect someone important. She should have tried to do the same thing with Arctozolt and just hoped to not get massively unlucky this time.

Of course, AbraPunk probably won't be here to answer that question, and that's fine. It's just something for the rest of us to think on - and, I think, some more support for the idea that she's mafia.

But then, also, if Chappie is mafia - I suppose we can talk about this more tomorrow if she flips that way, but here's my basic thinking on it for now - why didn't she swap Arctozolt with someone to help the mafia kill Arctozolt?

I think most of us are agreed that for the two innocent deaths, Arctozolt was definitely healer clash, meaning Jesse was the one the mafia went for with their regular kill. So apparently, the mafia thought about killing Arctozolt, figured they were too likely to get healed and result in a wasted kill, and therefore went for someone else. Jesse was a safer bet and still a valuable target, as he'd implied an inforole, but not prominently enough that he was likely to have protection. Not quite as good for the mafia as killing the cop, but a less risky second-best option to guarantee they'd kill at least someone and not have their kill healerblocked.

Except, if the mafia had a bus driver... they could have guaranteed themselves a kill on Arctozolt. Swapping them with someone low-profile who's very unlikely to be healed and then firing at that person would bypass any doctor protection on Arctozolt themselves. If they had that option, why would they not do that? If you can be absolutely sure of killing the cop, you kill the cop.

So, if Chappie flips mafia, I'm thinking this makes it extremely likely that the mafia does in fact have their own doctor. It was almost certain that a town doctor would heal Arctozolt; knowing that, if the mafia had their own doctor, they could near-guarantee a kill on Arctozolt anyway, without having to use up their killing action or bother with any swapping tactics. Boom, free easy kill on Arctozolt, and they still get to use their regular kill on another potential threat in Jesse to boot.

---
[[ Ah, we're back to this again. (Where's my anxiety emote when I need it?) Maybe some of the more experienced players can tell me, but do vig-kills normally leave death-marks like this? Because it's not just that there were scorch marks on the ground, it's also that Lusamine apparently lit up like a Christmas tree as she died, which just... says "arsonist fire" to me. So if suddenly we're all aboard the "psychic flavoring is not just flavoring now, it matters" ... I mean, I guess it could be a vig-kill, certainly nothing to disprove that. I just don't want the possibility of another third-party to go unrecognized. (Admittedly, it does feel wrong disagreeing with both you and Dragonfree on this, since you're both nearly-confirmed-innocent-veterans and especially since I've mostly agreed with the rest of both of your takes so far... Perfectly willing to admit I'm wrong and just reading too much into this.) ]]
My response to Equitial was less me saying "this flavour definitely proves it's a vig", and more just trying to offer him an alternative interpretation and point out it doesn't necessarily mean arsonist, since he seemed really stuck on that specifically. I may not have made it clear enough there, but right now my overall feelings on this (and I'm not necessarily right just because I'm being considered one of the veterans here!) are that I'm not really sure what the flavour is trying to tell us, so I personally don't want to get stuck on trying to interpret the flavour one specific way.

...Okay, I know I'm saying that when Tefiren and I were also really zeroing in on the implication that Rascal and Lexx died together yesterday. Maybe that's just because the implication that the deaths were connected means more to me than the multiple different ways we could interpret the method of death. Or maybe I'm totally off-base and shouldn't have actually read anything into that! We are all human and flawed and have differing opinions and can even disagree with ourselves from a little while ago. You seem to be thinking of this like everyone (or at least, the veterans) have all "agreed" that the best interpretation is such and such, but I think the real take-home is that there isn't quite one specific consensus on what's going on with these deaths and we're all just making our individual best guesses, so of course there'd bound to be contradictory ideas flying around.

However! Regardless of what we think about the flavour, it's simply not mechanically possible for Lexx and Lusamine to both have died to the arsonist. If Lexx died to the arsonist, they doused him on N0 and ignited N1, so they wouldn't have had time to then douse and ignite Lusamine by the end of N2.

Personally, my thinking for why I'm willing to bet Lusamine was a vigkill isn't about flavour but is instead just about mechanical logic. After how suspicious she made herself in the last hours of yesterday, killing her is just the logical move for a vig (if there is one, which is pretty likely in a game this big). Meanwhile, the theory that her death was the arsonist just involves a whole lot of unlikely "maybe"s coming together all at once: maybe Lance wasn't the arsonist and they're still out there, and maybe they just happenned to douse Lusamine on N0, and maybe they either somehow failed to douse Nefari N1 or made the suboptimal choice to ignore her and douse someone else (someone who's since died), and maybe they made the suboptimal choice to risk announcing their presence to us after it looked exactly like we'd just lynched the arsonist. Possible, sure, but I think it's very, very unlikely compared to the much simpler vigilante explanation.

And yeah, as far as I understand it, Dragonfree is offering the Lexx-arson theory not from genuinely thinking it's what happened, but as a potential not-completely-farfetched explanation to N1's deaths if it turns out that Chappie isn't actually mafia.

(also, <3 Miyako, I definitely need to get in Tefiren's head and figure out how he'd respond to that, but lemme just spend this post covering some of the game-related stuff first.)

---

While we're at a relative lull in the middle of the day, @Equitial , I wanted to ask you something kind of unrelated to any of this. Not suspicious, just curious, and I can finally openly talk about it now that you've roleclaimed.
[[(Oh right, I've been hinting around a role I may or may not have. Lol, I kind of had a plan for that but things kinda turned whoops. I'll still roleclaim if needed, but for now... eh, lemme just say that I don't think Townies should regard me too highly for now. Mafia, I know you're reading this. You could try to snipe me tonight but should you? Hmmm... might wanna think about that.)]]
What was your thinking when you said this on Day 1? You seemed to be trying to hint at something about your role, but... this doesn't really feel like a doctor play to me?

What I thought at the time was that you were also an innocent bulletproof (I've said that I don't think it'd be unreasonable for there to be two), and this was a fumbling, not-necessarily-well-executed attempt to bait a mafiakill onto you. That whole "town ignore me, mafia maybe you want to kill me idk???" feels like you were telling town doctors to not bother to heal you while also trying to make the mafia think you might have a power worth killing. Last game I was a JOAT with one-shot commuter and had had vague plans to bait a mafia kill and then dodge it, which this reminded me of, and of course I'd also been thinking about bulletproof strategies at the beginning of this game before I stopped being bulletproof through pure luck.

...Then I properly interpreted stuff you said elsewhere in that same post, about my softclaim, and realised you already thought I was bulletproof and that any other innocent bulletproofs would counterclaim it, so I realised you couldn't be that. But there's other innocent roles with some kind of self-protection, like hider or commuter, so I figured you might be one of them instead.

(And obviously I didn't want to say anything about what I thought of it back then, because if I was right, then openly talking about it would render the whole thing useless.)

But, well, it can't have been that after all, because you're a doctor, and you can't heal yourself (at least, I assume not? either way, you healed me that night). So I'm curious - what was the idea behind this?

---

And also, I want to refute one of my own arguments from earlier, because I've realised a reason why it's a lot flimsier of an argument than I originally thought, and I don't want to suspect people for reasons that don't logically hold up.
Lusamine, Wes and Altair - the three people that I was, after yesterday's voting, suspecting the most - just happened to be the three who encouraged Chappie to softclaim. I just feel like that's a bit of a weird coincidence! Of any three people who happened to decide to coax Chappie into telling us what she knew, it was the exact three that I (at the time I thought about this) was most suspecting of being mafia?
It's not actually so much of a huge weird coincidence that these same three people took part in two separate and potentially-suspicious events (the Chappie softclaim, and the end-of-day Lance voting discussion), when you consider timezones are a thing. The same pool of people are likely to be active at around the same time in any given IRL day. Chappie's softclaim happened at (in my timezone) around 5-6AM-ish, while the Lance voting discussion at EoD yesterday was around 1-3AM-ish. That's only a few hours apart in terms of time of day, such that similar pools of people are likely to be online at those times, while other players simply won't even be there. So it's actually not nearly so much of a huge coincidence that these exact three people happened to be involved in both these events, when they would have been some of only a certain amount of players who even happened to be online at around that time of day.

---
[[Another wild hilarious what-if scenario that just occurred to me: what if Chappie is a town bus driver, and Rascal was also a town bus driver, who also swapped somebody with Lexx - either also Spark, or someone else that the mafia would want to target - and then Rascal died that night too for some other reason. This explains why Rascal's death flavor talked about trying to protect someone, how the mafia kill could have ended up on Lexx, and why no other bus driver has claimed. Likely? Not remotely, but at least it involves a series of coincidences rather than people making exceedingly strange decisions. I will laugh if this is somehow it.]]
...I went into a whole meanderingly confused ramble about how I thought that didn't make sense unless Rascal swapped Lexx with specifically Spark, but then I ended up realising that I just really have no idea how a GM would resolve a situation where the same person gets swapped with two different people by different swappers. I kind of want your insight on this, not even because this is even remotely relevant to the Chappie argument, but just because I am interested in wacky Mafia night-action mechanics. Not that explaining this should at all be your priority over figuring out how you feel about people's posting, but, you know.]]
 

Equitial

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But, well, it can't have been that after all, because you're a doctor, and you can't heal yourself (at least, I assume not? either way, you healed me that night). So I'm curious - what was the idea behind this?

The idea was that it would encourage the Mafia not to kill me. Since I was killed night 1 last time, it seemed like I would still be an early candidate for a nightkill. Before the game even started I was actually thinking of hinting that I was bulletproof--whatever I was--to prevent. Then when you claimed Bulletproof, obviously I couldn't do that anymore, but I decided maybe some version of that plan might work?

About encouraging healers not to target me... that was just me being dumb. You see, I don't really consider Healers *that* valuable compared to others, especially since overdoses were now in effect. Except... if the other healer targets me, then they can't overdose someone else, which... yeah. I realized that was a mistake soon after, but couldn't figure out a way to fix it.
 
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