[MAFIA WIN] Second Anniversary Fanfic Mafia - Game Thread

[Dragonfree]

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.

[[I don’t thiiiiink that’s what Lexx was getting at there? The way I was reading it, he was arguing that the early no-lynch voters are not likely to be mafia (since even in the previous game most of them were town), and it’s more suspicious when people vote to get on the no-lynch wagon later? I could be wrong, haven’t reread and maybe I was just assuming Lexx was arguing the stance I had, but that’s definitely how I was interpreting Lexx’s argument.]]

 

[Chibi Pika]

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.

Lexx leaned back in his seat. "See, the problem there is that's the exact opposite of what I was getting at--that the mafia started out hesitant but only felt confident enough to all vote abstain after the innocents did. I trust the early no-lynch voters slightly more than the late ones. And I figured I'd try to head off the ten-millionth iteration of 'if you guys all vote no-lynch we gain zero info from it!' because that's boring and repetitive, but we ended up getting it anyway." He shrugged emphatically and turned back to his reading.

 

[elyvorg]

Lexx leaned back in his seat. "See, the problem there is that's the exact opposite of what I was getting at--that the mafia started out hesitant but only felt confident enough to all vote abstain after the innocents did. I trust the early no-lynch voters slightly more than the late ones. And I figured I'd try to head off the ten-millionth iteration of 'if you guys all vote no-lynch we gain zero info from it!' because that's boring and repetitive, but we ended up getting it anyway." He shrugged emphatically and turned back to his reading.

[[Right, okay, if that's what you were getting at with it then I have much less reason to be suspicious - and it's also very unlikely that you're suddenly claiming you meant the opposite of what you initially meant to avoid suspicion, given that Dragonfree says she read it that way too. I think the reason I read it as being about the significance of the early no-lynchers is that Tefiren and I were latching onto windskull's explanation of the plan as being about trying to influence the vote to no-lynch by pushing it early, and I thought that was what you were thinking about, too.

Though I should mention, not as an attempt to cast shade any more but just as a practical observation about this analysis: 33% is also not a significantly low proportion of mafia. I don't know if we'd get much value out of assuming mafia are less likely to vote no-lynch early, either.]]

"But maybe they are! Because if the only reason the last game's Mafia voted early to not to get rid of anyone was because they thought they were trying to trick us with that stupid plan that made no sense, maybe a normal Mafia wouldn't usually do that!"

[[Hi, Tefiren, excellent mental gymnastics you're doing there, replying to me while still pretending I don't exist. But yeah, you... might actually have a point there, huh.]]

 

[Equitial]

[[
OoC post because I'll be busy today and likely won't be able to put in another. This'll probably be pretty rambly because I'm doing it quick and I have a lot of things to cover.

Okay, so when I read Elyvorg's post I thought she was casting a fair amount of sus on Chibi, but now witnessing everything it seems like there's just general misinterpretation going around? Idk, honestly, the whole discussion about this feels kind of irrelevant to me. I'm not sure discussing all the nuance of such a plan helps Town at all. It feels pretty good faith from Chibi, because again if we're not voting anyone our options for info-gathering is very limited grumble grumble okay I'll shut up about that now.

Now I feel like going over this game's roleclaims/softclaims, namely Jesse's, Dragonfree's, Elyvorg's, and DawningWinds. I believe DW, so yeah. I do think that neither Jesse nor Dragonfree have a specific claim to innocence after their roleclaims. Like someone pointed out, some roles could be scum or Town, and after everything my thinking is individually either of them could still be guilty, but not them both? idk. Elyvorg, I guess there's no reason she couldn't be lying, but I feel like her particular claim has too much of a counterclaim if there's an innocent Bulletproof? She's not DawningWind level, but I trust her more after the roleclaim.

(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.)

don't be salty regarding the lack of lynches don't be salty regarding the lack of lynches -- OKAY now how should we go about finding scum? I'm thinking there are two particular behaviors I'm going to be eying. First of all, I said I trusted DW, so which players still were sussing her hmmmmmmm. From my notes, there's Seren, Flyg0n, Dragonfree, and maybe Namo but maybe he was just saying the Arsonist could be read as town. (Sorry, don't have much time to look over everything, so maybe someone can clarify.)

Also, we possibly maybe have a Roleblocker around, so look around for people who seemed to be role-hunting. Which, like, that leads again to Seren. Le sigh, I'm guessing I'm keeping my vote on him, though honestly it's more whatever for me now because I doubt anything's going to come of whatever I do. Have other people seemed to role-hunting, uh kinda Jesse maybe? Please tell me if there are others, sorry--I'm doing this real quick and I'll look over the whole thread again at night.


Quick impressions of the players. I'll restate the inactive, who are necessarily neutral:

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, then another quickie.

Then I have players who I kind of group together. These ones are less experienced (as far as I know), are no-lynch, and most of them sus or sussed me lol

AbraPunk (AbraPunk)
Seren (Miyako)
HelloYellow17 (Wes)
Flyg0n (Rascal)

I said that Seren's the most sus of all of these, but they all feel kind of new, kind of playing lowkey which would be in-character for newcomers, but y'know.


Then we have the rest, whom I'll also list:

Windskull (Kyros)
Namohysip (Alexander)
Inkedust (Altair)
unrepentantAuthor (Jesse)
Chibi Pika (Lexx)
Dragonfree (Dave)
elyvorg (Tefiren)


Of these, the two other people who seemed willing to lynch are Inkedust and Windskull. Windskull, I've played with before. And I feel like they've been pretty helpful, don't really strike me as different from in their innocent game. They’re targeting an inactive, which eh. On day 1, this day in particular, there appears just to be a lot of people unavailable, including Navar. I’d rather target someone who’s been doing stuff. Then there’s Inke, whom I’ve never played with before and who seems willing to lynch, but hasn’t done so yet. I’d like to see them cast a vote, or just list who they think seems scummy.

Others. My general vibes are that Jesse feels like they're trusting certain players too easily but is wayyyy observant; I’ve never played with them, so. And I feel like Chibi and Dragonfree and Elyvorg are going after each other for kinda frivolous reasons? Idk, maybe it’s I’m misreading more suspicion into other people’s statements. I kind of like DF and Elyvorg’s general reasoning and contributions are pretty okay. I don’t agree with everything, but each make good points--just kind of their priorities I don't like. Chibi seems maybe less active than usual? Namo also doesn’t feel like he’s contributing too much, more so than Chibi. I think if I had to choose one person from this pile it would be Namo now, but I feel like the alignments of the roleclaimers are going to get clearer as time goes on, in one way or the other.

]]

 

[IFBench]

[[Sorry for not doing much detective work. Just not really sure what to do at the moment.]]

 

[Dragonfree]

And I feel like Chibi and Dragonfree and Elyvorg are going after each other for kinda frivolous reasons? Idk, maybe it’s I’m misreading more suspicion into other people’s statements.

[[I think you are, yeah - unless something’s really flown over my head the only suspicion that’s been going around between the three of us was elyvorg suspecting Chibi based on a misunderstanding of what Chibi was arguing, which has now been cleared up.]]

 

[Equitial]

[[I think you are, yeah - unless something’s really flown over my head the only suspicion that’s been going around between the three of us was elyvorg suspecting Chibi based on a misunderstanding of what Chibi was arguing, which has now been cleared up.]]

[[Oh, something I probably should have mentioned--I haven't read the posts after my last post really well. Despite being out-of-date, I figured I should give some thoughts anyway.]]

 

[Chibi Pika]

The voice above Mewtwo had done a full rundown of pretty much everyone. Lexx didn't really have any complaints. Especially regarding the fact that someone almost definitely had a block power, so people really needed to keep their mouths shut about their own powers, at least for now.

"Good buddy of mine always says allies are worth their weight in gold, so that's how I'll be doing things," Lexx said casually. "Jesse was wrong but he's trying. Tefiren misread me but it feels legit. Nefari is innocent. Dave seems fine. Mewtwo seems fine." (Now that was a sentence.)

"Who elseee, let's see..."

Spoiler: "If you really want my thoughts then fine--"

Hard town:
DawningWinds (Nefari)
Dragonfree (Dave)
elyvorg (Tefiren)
Equitial (Mewtwo)

Soft town:
unrepentantAuthor (Jesse)
HelloYellow17 (Wes)
Flyg0n (Rascal)
Windskull (Kyros)

No read:
IFBench (Arctozolt)
DeliriousAbsol (Spark)
Fusion (Cold Fusion)
Navarchu (Lance)
Mellow (Namco)
AbraPunk (Chappie)

Cautious:
Namohysip (Alexander)
Inkedust (Altair)
Shiny Phantump (Lusamine)
Seren (Miyako)

[[Cautious does not mean suspect. It means that I haven't read them yet, and also get the sense that misreading them could be dangerous. Take Lusamine for example. She's said/done nothing suspicious, Lyn just scares me in general. :V]]

 

[elyvorg]

Tefiren listened as the think-talky one and the fun Human laid out lists of the people playing the game and how they felt about them. A lot of the players in the last game had kept doing that, too. It was something of a strange concept to Tefiren - talking about how he felt about other people; usually there'd be no point in that at all! - but he supposed in a game like this, maybe it could be useful. A little bit. It still felt weird to do.

Whatever. He could at least say a few things about some of the more interesting people here.

"The small fox and the think-talky one are annoying and saying silly things, but they're definitely not Mafia.

"The fun Human, the messy Human and the tall fiery fox all say interesting things and seem like they could have useful tricks. They better all be on our side. They've been talking and arguing with each other enough that I don't think more than one of them is Mafia, at least.

"And the Human with the stick says she's new to this, but she sounds like she's trying to play the game well. If she was new to this game and a Mafia, she'd be more nervous, probably.

"The others... some of them have been talking a lot, but most of it has been boring."

Spoiler: a non-Tefirenese version, including more categories for the people he doesn't care about

definite town based on consistent playstyle, even if I disagree with it:
Nefari (DawningWinds)
Mewtwo (Equitial)

cool people I want to trust, not quite ruling out yet that one of them is maybe mafia, but if so I doubt it's more than one:
Dave (Dragonfree)
Lexx (Chibi Pika)
Jesse (unrepentantAuthor)

posts are reading fairly towny to me so far, more because of tone than content, don't think a newbie would post this confidently if mafia:
Miyako (Seren)

i have a nebulous, circumstantial reason to feel vaguely good about them based on something I don't want to reveal yet:
Altair (Inkedust)
Kyros (windskull)

has posted a fair bit about the game but I still feel neutral:
Alexander (Namohysip)

have evidently been around but haven't contributed much to game discussion, therefore neutral:
Wes (HelloYellow17)
Chappie (AbraPunk)
Rascal (Flyg0n)
Lusamine (Shiny Phantump)
Arctozolt (IFBench)

haven't posted, probably too busy to follow the game right now, therefore neutral:
Lance (Navarchu)
Namco (Mellow)
Cold Fusion (Fusion)
Spark (DeliriousAbsol)

"But anyway," Tefiren added, staring pointedly around the group, "doesn't anyone else want to guess what kind of tricks I could have that'd let me figure out exactly who the Mafia tried to catch last night? You're all no fun. I'm not asking this just so I can get to look clever, you know. I'm cleverer than that."

 

[Seren]

[[

(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.)

Also, we possibly maybe have a Roleblocker around, so look around for people who seemed to be role-hunting. Which, like, that leads again to Seren. Le sigh, I'm guessing I'm keeping my vote on him, though honestly it's more whatever for me now because I doubt anything's going to come of whatever I do. Have other people seemed to role-hunting, uh kinda Jesse maybe? Please tell me if there are others, sorry--I'm doing this real quick and I'll look over the whole thread again at night.



]]

Miyako again turned to Mewtwo. She really didn't want to start this again, but again, he said something that struck her as odd. "Why would you suggest that both townies AND mafia shouldn't regard you well? Are you the arsonist? That tracks with the third-party theory as well as the "psychic"-because-psychic-marks theories. Granted, both are speculative, but you fit the bill for both, and I can't think of any other reason why the mafia would want to keep someone that dangerous around."

"For the record, I am keeping my no-vote vote for tonight, because speculation with no one else backing it up is not good enough for me to target someone. As for me, I am innocent and if I reeeeeally need to, I think I could defend myself with my own role claim, but that could also be risky, not just for me, so I'd rather not if I can avoid that."

[[

I know the original post was OoC shhhhhhh.....

And with that, I am off to work. I maaay be able to post on my lunch break, which should fall somewhere between 1-2 hours before end of day, but unless I really do need to defend myself, I probably won't since, y'know, I gotta eat, too.

Also, finally, sorry if the new pic causes confusion for anyone; wanted to get a pic of my girl before the night was done, so thanks to Cresselia92 from Discord! (I'm sorry, I don't know who they are on the forums...

]]

 

[Namohysip]

[[Hi, this is a massively delayed post from back when Tief had first said she has a claim that something happened.]]

And suddenly, things got even more interesting. In response to the claim of knowledge of what the Mafia did, Alexander's guesses now felt just a little more validated. Yes, the Mafia took a shot, and yes, they'd failed, assuming the strange, green creature's claim wasn't a lie.

Alexander's tail flicked as he waited, his heads individually breaking into grins as he felt and fed off of what he was sure was the anxiety of the Mafia. For them to be caught on the zeroth night. How... delicious.

"Feel free to not disclose your power," the Hydreigon said. "Whichever option will make them squirm more. I want to feel their pain for a little longer..."

[[Which, as it turned out, she did not. Good. I don't think that information is necessary to get out just yet and from past history I think you have a good head for information control. I'll trust you on that one for now, but without any actual kills or solid info roles or reads I'm not confident in anybody's roles.]]

[[Sorry all, I'm less active because compared to last year, work and Blacklight has been busy. And as I've said many many times, all this squabbling is just making Alexander enjoy himself because there's no actual information to go off of. I'm taking notes, but I don't have much to contribute.]]

If I agree with them, they're guilty. There haven't yet been any exceptions to this.

[[...Oh wow, you're right, assuming the trend continues.]]

Namo also doesn’t feel like he’s contributing too much, more so than Chibi. I think if I had to choose one person from this pile it would be Namo now, but I feel like the alignments of the roleclaimers are going to get clearer as time goes on, in one way or the other.

[[Like the vast majority of people here, I get the feeling my role is one that's better off not revealed at the start. And see above for why I'm less active. The last time I was active on day 1 after no-kill, my insistence in no-voting and other strategies without any evidence kinda nearly got me lynched, so... You know. I'm just picking my words carefully in case I do spot an inconsistency. Plus, my character is less... Darkwhite this time around.

And finally, I got my Covid jab, the second one, so I'm far from 100%. I'll try to contribute more thoroughly if that's the concern with me. Anyway, back to in-character.]]

Alexander waved around at the voice above him and rolled his eyes. "Like the Guardian Spirit said, there is little I can contribute beyond baseless speculation, and it's far too easy to fake alignments when nobody's even been killed."

 

[Inkedust]

[[OOC post. Just woke up, still organising my marbles, bare with me for a bit.

OKAY SO after consulting da notes, I've compiled a bit of a list on who I feel good on and who I feel less so good on (cutting out everyone who has been inactive/not contributing to discussion as they're neutral by default):

Spoiler: Reads

Hard Town
Nefari

Town
Lexx
Tefiren
Jesse
Kyros

Soft Town
Mewtwo (consistent playstyle isn't an end-all-be-all for alignments, guys. Nefari gets a pass because of the Arsonist claim which I believe to be true for reasons I have already stated.)
Dave (this engimatic role of his makes me raise a brow, otherwise, he seems fine.)

Neutral
Miyako (may just be newbie carelessness but her agressiveness doesn't read well to me.)
Alexander

As for why I haven't voted yet?

First up, I'm new to the game and am trying to consider all options. I'm not an agressive player as I've noted from previous games, playing agressively will end up painting a massive target on your back that will be shot if you're not careful. Second, I live in a timezone where EoD happens at noon. This means, that if I choose to leave voting for the last (irl) day, where most information is out, I'm always going to end up voting in the last 3-4 hours of the day (even at the very end depending on how busy I am) because I'm asleep during the most ideal times. So while I may seem that I'm bandwagoning or going with the flow, I'm not. It just timezones being fucky and considering all new info.

With that being said, I think I've gathered enough info and with my current reads being neutral at worst, will vote to abstain today.]]

 

[elyvorg]

Tefiren shivered from a sudden breeze rustling his wing leaves as the dark dragon just... stared at him. He didn't like it. Maybe the dragon still only had two eyes, but why did he get to have so many heads.

"Feel free to not disclose your power," the Hydreigon said. "Whichever option will make them squirm more. I want to feel their pain for a little longer..."

[[Which, as it turned out, she did not. Good. I don't think that information is necessary to get out just yet and from past history I think you have a good head for information control. I'll trust you on that one for now, but without any actual kills or solid info roles or reads I'm not confident in anybody's roles.]]

"But I never actually said I wouldn't tell everyone how I know! I just want people to guess first, because that's more fun. I'm asking everyone to guess, so anyone sensible would be able to tell that I don't think anything bad will happen if they do. I'm not stupid."

Alexander's tail flicked as he waited, his heads individually breaking into grins as he felt and fed off of what he was sure was the anxiety of the Mafia. For them to be caught on the zeroth night. How... delicious.

[[Tefiren can't see Alexander's thoughts (and would be pretending he couldn't even if he could, based on their content here), so I'll take this one. This might just be me reading too much into RP flavour, but - what do you mean by this? "For them to be caught on the zeroth night" sounds from sentence context like you're talking about the mafia getting caught, but a mafia getting killed on night 0 is both extremely unlikely and something Tefiren would be the opposite of afraid of.]]

 

[elyvorg]

[[whoops ignore me temporarily forgetting that Hydreigon's two smaller heads do in fact have their own eyes, Tefiren is definitely also uncomfortable about all of Alexander's eyes]]

 

[windskull]

[[hi I'll try to do a reads post before eod but am at work so it might not happen.]]

 

[Chibi Pika]

"But anyway," Tefiren added, staring pointedly around the group, "doesn't anyone else want to guess what kind of tricks I could have that'd let me figure out exactly who the Mafia tried to catch last night? You're all no fun. I'm not asking this just so I can get to look clever, you know. I'm cleverer than that."

Lexx smirked. "Let's be real, I'm assuming it's not that they targeted you. That'd be way too obvious and practically wave a flag saying, 'Come and get me now.'"

The fact that he was so confident that even if someone guessed right, nothing bad would come of it. Now that was interesting. Something unblockable...?

 

[Equitial]

Miyako again turned to Mewtwo. She really didn't want to start this again, but again, he said something that struck her as odd. "Why would you suggest that both townies AND mafia shouldn't regard you well? Are you the arsonist? That tracks with the third-party theory as well as the "psychic"-because-psychic-marks theories. Granted, both are speculative, but you fit the bill for both, and I can't think of any other reason why the mafia would want to keep someone that dangerous around."

Mewtwo tilted his head.

Did this human really think Mewtwo would so easily admit it if he was the Arsonist?

 

[Dragonfree]

Look, I gave nothing away. You did that yourself by immediately going after Lusamine. You can give your reasoning about pressure or whatever, but it doesn't make sense to me why anyone would do that without knowing something. You could be forcing another innocent to reveal their ability in self-defense, and then suddenly the mafia would have a confirmed target.

Dave sighed. "Look, some people like to vote for someone randomly right off the bat just to get people talking. It doesn't mean they know anything or have a reason. They just rolled a fucking die. And they're not expecting whoever it is to reveal their role immediately, which'd be really fucking stupid. They're just trying to stimulate conversation so that there'll be more actual evidence to analyze to make the real votes off. It's a thing. It's not suspicious. Can we move on from that?"

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.

[[I actually didn't think you thought Dave was actually jailed; I somehow misread your post as saying that Jesse asking if Dave's action had worked didn't make sense because even a jailer wouldn't stop Dave's action happening. Naturally I was ???. It was just pure read the words wrong somehow.]]

First of all, I said I trusted DW, so which players still were sussing her hmmmmmmm. From my notes, there's Seren, Flyg0n, Dragonfree, and maybe Namo but maybe he was just saying the Arsonist could be read as town.

[[For the record, I don't suspect DawningWinds. I argued that it was conceivable that we could have a town arsonist, because some people had been saying that was impossible, and in that hypothetical DawningWinds could be a mafia firefighter. That is not what I think is actually going on. DawningWinds seems quite towny to me.]]

"But anyway," Tefiren added, staring pointedly around the group, "doesn't anyone else want to guess what kind of tricks I could have that'd let me figure out exactly who the Mafia tried to catch last night? You're all no fun. I'm not asking this just so I can get to look clever, you know. I'm cleverer than that."

Dave folded his arms. "Well, I mean, I was figuring talking about my first obvious guess would be a really fucking bad idea liable to get you killed for zero benefit, but sure, it's no 'fun', unlike jerking people around with grandiose guessing games. Just fucking spit it out if you're going to."

"Why would you suggest that both townies AND mafia shouldn't regard you well? Are you the arsonist? That tracks with the third-party theory as well as the "psychic"-because-psychic-marks theories. Granted, both are speculative, but you fit the bill for both, and I can't think of any other reason why the mafia would want to keep someone that dangerous around."

"Why the fuck would the arsonist just go and tell everyone that's what they are? What they presumably mean is their role isn't that important. Hence why they added that the mafia could kill them for it but wouldn't necessarily want to. It's generally helpful to not assume everyone else in the game is just a goddamn moron."

Dave took a swig of his beer. God, this shit was tiring.

"If anyone cares, I think all the main actives right now are probably innocent. Teen girl over there may be hyperfocused on Mewtwo but I'd be really fucking surprised if she was faking it. I expect the mafia's staying under the radar for now and there's not much to go on, but I guess if Tefiren's about to drop some bombshell I'll hold off on voting." He looked critically towards the Archopy.

 

[Disco]

[ i don't think we should lynch anyone, not until we have more information.]

 

[Namohysip]

"For them to be caught on the zeroth night" sounds from sentence context like you're talking about the mafia getting caught, but a mafia getting killed on night 0 is both extremely unlikely and something Tefiren would be the opposite of afraid of.

[[Alexander basically thought you had some key info on who it was or otherwise because you knew why/how they failed, as opposed to them just being able to get a kill in. Flavor wise, Alexander feeds off of misery per his origins, so he is only imagining the frustrations of the mafia failing to get a kill.]]