[MAFIA WIN] Second Anniversary Fanfic Mafia - Game Thread

[DawningWinds]

"The small fox is a huge fool. I'm sure of that." Tefiren glared at the Pokémon in question, pouting, not knowing why he was so sure that this was the same deal as that stupid white-coat Human from the last game. But he was, and he was good at this game, so he was going to listen to these thoughts that came out of nowhere, because they were obviously all his. Where else could they have come from? Ridiculous.

[[ Nefari hissed at Tefiren and backed away from him. After backing a comfortable distance she sat down and licked her paw as though everything was fine. "Uh hum, sure I do, whoever that is," she paused for a moment, running her paw over her ear. "And I'm no fool. Sure, anyone could have any powers, though I'm sure yours are completely useless, but soneone's powers doing something entirely different according to would be completely ridiculous. You're the fool. I'd like to make it out of here alive. I imagine you would to. The best chance of doing that would be to take out everyone trying kill us as soon as possible." ]]

I do get that maybe the Arsonist flavour in their role PM would be tailored to their character, which is why I feel like they're psychic because I'd think Negrek would want to be consistent so I'd be removing something other than psychic marks if they weren't. Equitial's post contains some less obvious options for the psychic mark placer so I think those combined with the obvious psychic types makes it fairly believable that I'd be told this.

This is gonna get really disorganized sorry:

Oh and because migraine's are non-conducive to reading and understanding thinfmgs, I'm gonna clear this up: I don't get the ability of the fourth night or the fourth day, but the night following the fourth innocent death.

Also voting no lynch is different from not voting so uA in your future list maybe separate those for a more accurate count.

And people please stop voting no lynch people it gives the Mafia a free chance to kill people their kill failing gives us a head start we should take it it's not like read forming is impossible on D1 or anything and especially people who are against the mere existence of any accusations ew please stop accusations happening are absolutely and completely necessary to read forming.

Also I don't think firefighter as a Mafia aligned role is basically ever a thing because even in a rare case of town-aligned arsonist firefighter dousing certain players can be very beneficial to town.

And Arsonist is absolutely a ticking time bomb I can't remember who said that but their right.

My role name is Dark's Cunning abilities are Howl for Rolestopper and Knock Off for Firefighter.

And now back to bed because I'm still feeling terrible and this did not help. Will try to come back either in a few hours or tomorrow morning and read the thread properly.

 

[Seren]

And people please stop voting no lynch people it gives the Mafia a free chance to kill people their kill failing gives us a head start we should take it it's not like read forming is impossible on D1 or anything and especially people who are against the mere existence of any accusations ew please stop accusations happening are absolutely and completely necessary to read forming.

Also I don't think firefighter as a Mafia aligned role is basically ever a thing because even in a rare case of town-aligned arsonist firefighter dousing certain players can be very beneficial to town.

[[ For the record, I personally am not against accusations (I didn't see where anyone was?). My problem is with baseless accusations. If we're going to target someone, let it be for a reason.

The second sentence here doesn't make sense to me and I don't know if it's worded poorly or I just am not understanding, so I'm not going to comment my thoughts on it yet; would rather get some other thoughts first to verify my own. ]]

 

[Equitial]

[[
I have was going to do something longer, but mehhhh. Honestly, I'm at the point where before I do more I'd like information and opinions from certain people (DawningWinds, in particular. Feel better soon, my friend, and take care of yourself--migraines are tough.) Especially because, alas, I don't think I'm going to convince people to try voting peeps to see what happens cryyyyyyyyyyyy

For quick opinions, I really doubt DW is doing some ploy, and I think it's best to assume there is an Arsonist and that they're third-party. I highly doubt they're Town-aligned, and tbh DW is the player I'm town-reading the most right now.

I don't really see where the controversy is coming from Lexx trying to analyze past games? We don't have much info, so our resources are short. That's a bit of an odd nitpick imo.

I'm going to sort people into some groups. No scum-reading for now, but other bits that might be helpful. To start with, inactive players, who haven't posted or haven't posted much in way of strat:

Bench -- only RPing
Del -- inactive, stated they were busy
Fusion -- inactive, stated they were busy
Navar -- Hasn't posted
Mellow -- only posted once to tell people to calm down
Phantump -- only posted once to RP


Now I'm going to try to sort people by experience. Now, this is all going to be relative--a lot of us don't have many games, but a lot of us are newbies. Here's where I think everyone is at, though obviously I can't know non-TR experience. You can correct me if I'm wrong about anyone.

"Experienced" players
Windskull (Kyros)
DawningWinds (Nefari)
Namohysip (Alexander)
unrepentantAuthor (Jesse) (you're boosted because you're incredibly observant and well-organized, just accept it my friend)
Chibi Pika (Lexx)
Dragonfree (Dave)
elyvorg (Tefiren)

Familiar players
IFBench (Arctozolt)
DeliriousAbsol (Spark) (been in a few games, but tended to got picked off early)
Fusion (Cold Fusion)
Shiny Phantump (Lusamine)

Newcomers
AbraPunk (AbraPunk)
Seren (Miyako)
Navarchu (Lance)
Mellow (Namco)
Inkedust (Altair)
HelloYellow17 (Wes)
Flyg0n (Rascal)

Somewhat related, I don't think that the Mafia not getting anyone last night was really that noteworthy. More known players are more likely to be targeted by Mafia and protectors, so yeah.

This is probably going to be my last post tonight, and as a warning, I'll be busy a few hours before EoD tomorrow, and it's entirely possible I won't be around then.
]]

 

[elyvorg]

"And I'm no fool. Sure, anyone could have any powers, though I'm sure yours are completely useless--" ]]

Tefiren hissed and flared his wing leaves. "Useless!? This silly tiny fox thinks my tricks are useless? Maybe you don't know, because you weren't here in the last game, but I can think up the best tricks out of anyone! I won the last game using just one of them! The only reason I'd ever not be able to do anything useful with my tricks is if someone stupid went and got in the way of it all!

[[don't mind him, this is pure RP flavour. And, uh, assume this happened earlier.]]


Tefiren peered at the fiery fox's board full of squiggles, fascinated by the way that the squiggles had meaning that just seeped into his head if he looked at them long enough. He was so good at figuring out new things, picking up new tricks that'd help him out in this game!

But some of the squiggles, even though they made sense in his mind, didn't actually make sense.

44. Chibi drew a very good art. <3

[[ yes, yes they did <3 ]]

47. Of note, Tefiren points out that Scum can make a pretence of taking a pro-town stance so long as town keep mislynching at end-of-day.

"That would be a sensible thing for a Mafia to do, maybe. But what I was talking about was how the old Mafia apparently did the exact opposite of that! Or half the opposite, at least, because they thought they were tricking us into not getting rid of someone innocent, just so that they could look not-suspicious when they agreed with us about it. And then I was saying that that plan was stupid, and didn't trick us at all, and it doesn't matter to this game anyway so we shouldn't bother thinking about it like it's how a Mafia would always think. It doesn't help."

"I mean, I'd say the timing of when they voted matters too. If they're trying to not draw attention to themselves, they'll probably just get behind whatever train the general consensus is on, but to do that the general consensus needs to happen first."

"They could have just decided to let everyone else maybe agree on something which would be better for them - like getting rid of a not-Mafia - and then vote against that to not make themselves look suspicious. They didn't need to put in all that effort to push something that they'd have wanted less. Nobody's going to think they're Mafia if what they're disagreeing with everyone else on is getting rid of someone who turns out to not be a Mafia.

"And anyway, my real point is that it doesn't matter in this game, because the Mafia this time is totally different. We shouldn't act like this Mafia is definitely using the same strategy that old Mafia did, especially when it wasn't even a good one."

48. Dave [...] is sus of Tefiren for discouraging an examination of old Mafia metas.

"Is the messy Human suspicious of me for that? I didn't think he was." Tefiren cocked his head. Was there anything that could seem suspicious about him thinking the fun Human's musings were pointless and made no sense? No, because they were pointless and did make no sense, and it was weird how someone who was making a lot of sense just a little while ago would suddenly care so much about something so nonsensical.

"Maybe he was suspicious of me, but he didn't say so. You shouldn't be so quick to put things on this magic board of yours if they're just a guess you're making," he told the fiery fox. "You don't know more than anyone else, and other more stupid people might look at your board and think something's true when it isn't.

"Anyway, I said that to the fun Human because he was being suspicious, caring so much about old stuff that made no sense and doesn't matter any more in this game anyway. Maybe he was only pretending to care to find an excuse to get rid of someone. And maybe that's what the messy Human was thinking when he looked at me like that. Maybe he thought the other Human was suspicious too."

Lexx shrugged. "Just figured that if we go the no-lynch route like usual, we oughta try to get some info out of it. If everyone votes the same, we've got to work that much harder to find a pattern behind it."

"That'd be a good idea! But you're trying to get info out of it in a way that doesn't make very much sense, thinking this Mafia would follow a bad plan that they probably didn't even know the last Mafia used."

Maybe the fun Human was just one of those people who didn't make much sense, despite him at least being in the right mood about this game, unlike most of the rest of the group. But Tefiren couldn't shake this feeling that this Human was supposed to make more sense than this. He wasn't as fun as Chibi.

(...Why was he comparing this Human to Chibi? They weren't the same person.)

54. Seren (Miyako) argues that more experienced players, if Mafia, would be better at concealing it, and names some examples.

[[That's not at all what he was saying, unless I'm massively misinterpreting it myself. He wasn't talking about the Mafia being experienced players, but speculating that they probably targeted one of the experienced players. And then also that doctors etc were likely to have targeted within the same pool of experienced players, making our no-kill night somewhat less of a coincidence.]]

"And the Human with the stick is right about that!" Tefiren suddenly burst out with, bored of keeping it in.

"Nah, didn't obstruct you. Targeted ya with somethin' that fizzled. Meanin', I reckon you were protected against interference. Meanin', I reckon y'might've been also targeted by Mafia an' lived. It ain't conclusive in the least, but it makes me think yer more likely than not t'be Town, Ambrose."

"Oh? You think the Mafia tried to catch the messy Human?" Tefiren giggled again. So many of them had all been talking in circles trying to guess what'd happened last night. It was all like some big mystery to everyone - everyone except him.

"Nope! That's not what happened! Because I know exactly who the Mafia tried to catch last night, and it wasn't him!"

 

[Inkedust]

Nope! That's not what happened! Because I know exactly who the Mafia tried to catch last night, and it wasn't him!

"Then who was it? And how do you know?" Altair asked. "Did you see who did it?"

 

[Chibi Pika]

And people please stop voting no lynch people it gives the Mafia a free chance to kill people their kill failing gives us a head start we should take it it's not like read forming is impossible on D1 or anything and especially people who are against the mere existence of any accusations ew please stop accusations happening are absolutely and completely necessary to read forming.

Lexx quirked an eyebrow. "Really. That's some strong wording. 'Absolutely and completely necessary to read forming,' wow." He licked a finger and turned a page in the logs. "Funny thing, that. There's been exactly one game in this place that the mafia has won and... which one was that? Oh yeah, the one where people got pushed into voting the cop who had a scumread on the guy who spun the web of nonsense that dragged everyone down. That mislynch pretty much cinched the game for the mafia. So yeah, I think I'll do this my way."

Lexx kicked his feet up on the table that had appeared in front of him. "Anyway, the Nickit is 100% innocent. I'm confident enough in that that I'll go on the record asking anyone with an inspection power to not even bother with inspecting them--waste of time."

[[Sorry for Lexx being a dick, but I really do have a metric--if I disagree with Dawning, they're innocent. If I agree with them, they're guilty. There haven't yet been any exceptions to this.]]

 

[Chibi Pika]

"Nah, didn't obstruct you. Targeted ya with somethin' that fizzled. Meanin', I reckon you were protected against interference. Meanin', I reckon y'might've been also targeted by Mafia an' lived. It ain't conclusive in the least, but it makes me think yer more likely than not t'be Town, Ambrose."

Lexx smirked. "You think Dave was rolestopped? Nah--I've got pretty decent evidence against that. I think you were just blocked."

 

[Seren]

[[That's not at all what he was saying, unless I'm massively misinterpreting it myself. He wasn't talking about the Mafia being experienced players, but speculating that they probably targeted one of the experienced players. And then also that doctors etc were likely to have targeted within the same pool of experienced players, making our no-kill night somewhat less of a coincidence.]]

"And the Human with the stick is right about that!" Tefiren suddenly burst out with, bored of keeping it in.

[[ Yes, this is correct. While it might possibly be true that the experienced players would be able to conceal their alignment easier, that's not what I was attempting to convey, as it is sort of an insult to everyone who is still playing well and doesn't have any experience with this sort of thing, and I just wouldn't feel good about potentially insulting/offending anyone like that.

But yes, since people seem to be of the mind that a n-0 no-kill isn't worth worrying about, I was giving my thoughts on how it might have happened; and, as stated, it makes sense that the mafia would try to eliminate one of the more experienced players, and it also makes sense that, due to that not happening, that the experienced players (or at least the one targeted) was protected.

Thank you, Tefiren. ]]

 

[elyvorg]

"Then who was it? And how do you know?" Altair asked. "Did you see who did it?"

"I don't know who did it, obviously, or I'd have told you that from the start. But I do know who they tried to catch! The Human with the stick was right with her guess - they went after one of the ones who's good at this game! Except it wasn't the messy Human like the fiery fox thinks."

He giggled again at the thought that the Mafia had at least been smart enough to start off the game with a strategy like that, and yet they'd still failed.

"How do I know? It'd be no fun if I just told you that straight away! It's much better to keep the Mafia guessing, isn't it? What kind of clever tricks could I possibly have that'd let me figure out something like this, hm?"

He said that last part up at the sky to no-one in particular, grinning, his chest puffed out from the thought of how clever he was. Then after a moment, his mind suddenly looped back to the thing the fiery fox had said. Something else had been strange about it other than the fact that his guess was wrong.

"Nah, didn't obstruct you. Targeted ya with somethin' that fizzled. Meanin', I reckon you were protected against interference. Meanin', I reckon y'might've been also targeted by Mafia an' lived. It ain't conclusive in the least, but it makes me think yer more likely than not t'be Town, Ambrose."

"You're saying you tried to do something to the messy Human, and it failed? But why would that make you think that whatever he did that night would have also failed? That's what you started out asking him about. The only thing that would make those both be true isn't even a stopper, because that wouldn't stop him, just everyone who targets him. It's a... like, if someone could just, take the messy Human away and trap him somewhere for the night so nobody could get to him, and he couldn't get to anyone else." [[A jailer, is what he's getting at.]]

"Why would you ask the Human if his trick had failed as if you were so sure it did, when that's just one possibility out of lots? Why did you seem so sure he even had a trick, if your trick on him didn't end up telling you anything?"

 

[Chibi Pika]

The only thing that would make those both be true isn't even a stopper, because that wouldn't stop him, just everyone who targets him. It's a... like, if someone could just, take the messy Human away and trap him somewhere for the night so nobody could get to him, and he couldn't get to anyone else."

"Yeah, just gonna vouch that Dave wasn't jailed," Lexx said without looking up. "Jailers aren't unheard of--apparently the Scrafty in game 1 was one and literally nobody knew. But yeah, that's not it this time."

 

[Dragonfree]

The only thing that would make those both be true isn't even a stopper, because that wouldn't stop him, just everyone who targets him. It's a... like, if someone could just, take the messy Human away and trap him somewhere for the night so nobody could get to him, and he couldn't get to anyone else.

Dave rubbed his face. All the sudden vague claims were giving him a headache. “Hold on, what? First you say it wouldn’t stop me, then you yourself describe it as making sure I couldn’t get to anyone else. Near as I can tell, yeah, being jailed would stop me doing regular actions, only it didn’t because it’s not an action that can be interfered with. What are you getting at?”

 

[Dragonfree]

[[will respond to more stuff tomorrow but I am very groggy and sleep]]

 

[Inkedust]

"I don't know who did it, obviously, or I'd have told you that from the start. But I do know who they tried to catch! The Human with the stick was right with her guess - they went after one of the ones who's good at this game! Except it wasn't the messy Human like the fiery fox thinks."

Altair tilted his head at the strange grovyle. Someone good at this game. There had been discussions of returning players, was that what he meant by a "good player"? One that he was familiar and impressed with? Well, that narrowed things down to the "messy haired human"—Dave, was it? but he'd already said that he hadn't been targeted. Lexx then? Considering how impressed the grovyle had been with his comments and observations? Hmm. Altair thought back to the grovyle's comments on games past and chuckled. Such a braggart would make for a desirable first target. Not only would the mafia be motivated by fear, but it'd also send the message that the mafia would not be playing around this time.

"It was you, then?" It made sense the more Altair thought about it. How else would he have known the target without seeing the culprit? He must've hidden or protected himself in some way, Altair reasoned.

"How do I know? It'd be no fun if I just told you that straight away! It's much better to keep the Mafia guessing, isn't it? What kind of clever tricks could I possibly have that'd let me figure out something like this, hm?"

"Don't get careless. Let your guard down once and it may be your last in a place like this. I don't want to see any of you here gutted," Altair shivered.

[[Just gonna say that this is entirely speculative most of the reasoning here was done in-character, so I could very well be off the mark here. So please don't take any of this as definitive. Altair is just one to read into others and come to conclusions like this.]]

 

[windskull]

Huh? What? Kyros had been so deep in thought for a moment that his attention had started to drift. He paused for a moment, focusing, and tried to take in all the information flying around. "Okay. So let me try and organize what we know so far."

He paused, conjuring up a laptop as if to attempt typing notes. But it quickly became obvious that all his kitty paws were good for was typing useless messages like "dasdsaasasdsa asasfdjl;jlkjnln,mmn." He let out a low growl then looked back up.

"The first, and most concrete thing we know is that no one died." No duh, captain obvious. "The odds are significantly higher that it was a failed kill over witholding a kill."

He let out a grunt. Next fact. "Jesse questioned... Uh, Dave, right? He asked Dave if he had used an ability. Dave said that he did, and Jesse said he tried to do something, and speculated that Dave might have been blocked. Or stopped, rather. Something happened that made whatever Jesse was doing fail." This part he was less certain of. Was the insinuation that Dave had been blocked? Or that Dave had been protected, somehow?

"Lexx seems to think that Jesse was blocked, and is implying that he had an eye on Dave. All of that checks out. For now. And between the behavior of both Jesse and Lexx thus far, I'm inclined to believe they're being truthful."

He turned his attention next to the Nikit. "Nefari, based on their claimed abilities, thinks there's an arsonist in our midst. If it was a lie, it's a risky one. And if it's not, it puts a target on them by the arsonist, so I'm inclined to believe them for now. However. With how bizzare this world is, I hesitate to believe that the arsonist has to be someone with psychic abilities."

What else... oh, right. "Tefiren seems quite certain he knows who the mafia targeted. Though not who that mafia member is. There are a couple of possibilities I have in mind for how he could know. But they are little more than guesses, and I fear pressing that issue may force the original target to spill too much and put them into more danger tonight.

"Is there anything else I've forgotten?" He could mention some of the statements Miyako had made, but there wasn't anything in particular he wanted to focus on there, at the moment. Instead, he eyed some of the others that were remaining around the edge and not saying much. The lugia, the dedene, the ailen, and the lucario. Most of them had at least said something, though.

Maybe he could... do a little convincing in hopes of getting some thoughts out of one of them. With all the false bravado he could muster, he sauntered up to the lucario and looked him over through narrowed eyes. "Hey you, Lance, mind telling us what you think about this whole situation?"

[[I picked Lance specifically because I know ooc that Mellow/Namco is busy getting dental work done in the morning, and the other two have already stated that they would be busy. I doubt anyone is going to hop on this with me, but we're down to about 18 hours left in the day and Navar has yet to speak up at all, even to say he's busy. I'd like to put some pressure on him to do that much, at least. I'll also give @Navarchu a ping as well, in hopes of catching his attention.]]

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave gathered himself again, took a sip of his beer.

"Nah, didn't obstruct you. Targeted ya with somethin' that fizzled. Meanin', I reckon you were protected against interference. Meanin', I reckon y'might've been also targeted by Mafia an' lived. It ain't conclusive in the least, but it makes me think yer more likely than not t'be Town, Ambrose."

"All right, so, yeah, this is a real fucking stretch. There are a lot of reasons your thing or mine could fail, and me being jailed is only one of them. Maybe your line of thinking was that'd be likely if your action failed and so did mine, but then I told you mine didn't fail because it couldn't have, so that leaves zero evidence for a jailing on me specifically. And then, even if I was jailed specifically, that doesn't mean I was targeted by the mafia. Even if the jailer was the only way the mafia kill could be stopped, which it's clearly fucking not with this many people, it could just as well mean I'm mafia and that's why the kill didn't happen. Obviously we've got both Tefiren and Lexx knocking down that conclusion anyway too, but even without that, it's a reach. It really just feels like..." He squinted at Jesse. "...Like you either want to get me on your side, or just really fucking want to believe I'm innocent, for some reason." What the actual fuck was he playing at?

"As for whether I was suspicious of Tefiren, not exactly. I do think it's fucking weird that he's harping on about how why would there be observable patterns in how the mafia tend to play, but that kind of seems to just flow from..." He gestured vaguely at the Archopy. "...the rest of his entire shtick. The point he's trying to get at underneath all the irritating bluster seems to be, I guess, that if he's mafia Lexx could be trying to make us think the mafia's going to act a specific way to divert attention from his teammates while they try to act differently. Which, you know, I guess, but I'm not convinced this is something Lexx couldn't just as well be doing as a good guy."

 

[Dragonfree]

[[To be clear, Dave’s bafflement at Jesse here is entirely an IC thing. I can fully believe uA is motivated to look for evidence to trust me <3]]

 

[Dragonfree]

[[I read Tefirenposts while half-asleep last night and didn’t have time to reread before posting that, but now I have and I think I misconstrued what he was getting at, so applogies for a kind of faulty summary there. That said I still don’t really agree that Lexx looking at how the mafia’s acted in previous games is suspect or irrelevant. May analyze that line of argument in more detail later.]]

 

[IFBench]

Kyros tilted his head at this. "Was that really a claim? I can definitely see where you're coming from, but I just thought it a passing comment."

[[Small post for now. More discussion after work]]

"I still don't know what you're going off about with 'claims' and such, but I didn't use any abilities last night. Unless conjuring up a blanket THAT WAS WAY TOO SMALL FOR US counts as an ability," the chimera said.

 

[elyvorg]

[[

Dave rubbed his face. All the sudden vague claims were giving him a headache. “Hold on, what? First you say it wouldn’t stop me, then you yourself describe it as making sure I couldn’t get to anyone else. Near as I can tell, yeah, being jailed would stop me doing regular actions, only it didn’t because it’s not an action that can be interfered with. What are you getting at?”

You seem to have figured out what Tefiren was actually getting at there by now, but just to clarify: I wasn't suggesting that Dave was actually jailed. I was saying that Jesse seemed to think that Dave was jailed (rather than rolestopped, like Lexx thought he was assuming), since that's the only thing that could produce the outcome he was apparently fishing for Dave to admit to in the first place: that Dave's action failed, along with Jesse's action on Dave. And then my point was that it was strange that Jesse would zero in so strongly on that, to the point of pressing Dave to give information about it, when it's only one possibility out of many.

Not necessarily suspicious of Jesse for this, just wondering if there's anything more to this that he's willing to explain, or if it was just tunnel-visioning on a possible answer to the no-kill.

---

Also, while Tefiren's busy strutting around feeling clever about the really-not-that-important nugget of information he has and hoping more people will guess at how he could possibly be so clever, let me clarify my stance on the Lexx-analysing-past-mafias thing myself. Tefiren can be hard to parse, after all, and he also tends to get too focused on Being More Right Than Everyone to the point of skimming over the point I'm actually trying to make.

See, I'm not trying to say there's anything bad about trying to analyse general mafia behaviour patterns in general, and Lexx taking an interest in hearing more about what the previous mafia were thinking is reasonable. But then windskull explained the previous mafia's D1 strategy as... something that really doesn't make any sense to me as a good strategy, for reasons Tefiren has lengthily explained and that aren't really my point (please chill, Tefiren, there is more to mafia than just pointing out why other people's ideas are stupid).

So, given that this particular past mafia strategy doesn't seem to me like a great strategy, I found it a little weird that Lexx, rather than going "huh, that doesn't seem like a great strategy, I doubt this game's mafia would be trying to do the same thing", immediately went, "welp, that's significant, this game's mafia is probably doing that too, we should definitely try and look for who might be doing the same thing this time".

The only part that really struck me as off was this post, rather than anything else. In particular, this part:

"Before the end, six people were against voting. Out of that six, two were mafia, or 33%." He leaned back in his chair--because apparently he had a chair now. "So what I'm getting from this is that the timing on when someone votes no-lynch is probably more important than the fact that they did it at all."

He glanced over at Jesse's boards. They sure had a lot of early votes for nobody, huh.

Because also - and Tefiren never got around to mentioning this part at all - 33% really isn't that significant? It's barely different at all from the actual mafia-to-town ratio, especially with a sample size of only six. Even assuming the mafia this time are, for some reason, using the exact same not-great strategy as the last mafia, we're not going to get any significantly better chance from looking at our early no-lynchers than we would from looking at a completely random pool of people.

If the six early no-lynch voters last game had happened to contain all four mafia, sure, I can see someone making an argument for that being a pattern we should look for this game. But, just two out of six? The mafia being split 50-50 between pushing it early and jumping on the bandwagon at the end? That's just random noise to me.

And this is coming from Chibi, who very openly believes that Day 1 no-lynch is the optimal town strategy, mind you. So it's weird that Lexx was apparently trying to throw subtle shade on early no-lynchers because they're voting no-lynch and that's apparently definitely a mafia strategy now.

So in short, I'm not suspicious of Lexx for being interested in figuring out potential mafia strategies at all, but rather for latching too hard onto the apparent importance and recurrence of a mafia strategy that:

1. wasn't that sensible of a strategy
2. was only in relation to the usual Day 1 lynch-or-no-lynch debate, which is very fuzzy and ambiguous and has plenty of arguments either way for both innocent and mafia optimal play
3. doesn't actually give us any more significant odds of finding a mafia by analysing it, even if we assume this mafia would definitely use the same strategy, which points 1 and 2 make very unlikely.

I'm not entirely sure what Lexx would be trying to go for with this if he's mafia. My initial thought was that he was planning to use this as an excuse to actually lynch someone today, since lynching D1 is extremely not Chibi's innocent playstyle. But Lexx claimed that he still expects the day to end in no-lynch and just wanted to use this to glean something from it (though that could still potentially be a ploy to push a mislynch, just later on).

And, to be completely clear and fair, I don't disagree that this could simply be an innocent Chibi scrambling to provide something of use. It just stuck out to me because, to put it how Tefiren would, their logic doesn't make sense to me, and my thoughts usually align with Chibi on most things in these games. Maybe it's nothing, and it's just a rare instance where our thoughts don't align for once. But I'm feeling slightly more cautious about Lexx because of it, at least until I can see more from him that'd convince me he's genuine.

The other thing Tefiren wouldn't ever admit is that, despite my longpost carefully clarifying what I mean here, and despite all of Tefiren's insistent bluster, I don't think this is that big of a deal. It's just a reason I have to be currently slightly less trusting of someone I'd usually want to trust, which I then explained my reasoning for in lengthy detail because that's how I roll.

]]

 

[Shiny Phantump]

Lusamine listened to what was going on around her. In the end, she just shrugged. "I see no compelling reason to kill anyone today. Nobody's even been killed yet, we'd be hard pressed to find a killer."

[[I've been trying to keep up while also being busy, there's a few interesting developments here and there, but I don't feel we have good odds on any potential targets. I don't want a repeat of the Fall Mafia where town mislynched the cop and lost as a result. Not killing isn't what gives them another night to attempt a kill, but they're going to get that either way. No reason to kill another probably-innocent for them as well.

Voting Abstain unless something more substantial comes up. Which I don't expect to happen.]]