[MAFIA WIN] Second Anniversary Fanfic Mafia - Game Thread

[unrepentantAuthor]

"Goddamnit," spat Jesse. "I'm too tired fer this shit. Right, first up, anyone have any idea how the fuck this happened?"

 

[IFBench]

"What the fuck."

 

[elyvorg]

"See? Told you I wouldn't get caught! Nobody can catch me!" Tefiren crowed to no-one in particular as the group gathered the next morning.

(Not that he'd even been chased at all last night, but still.)

Nobody else seemed to be paying him any attention. Two other people had been caught, it turned out: the Tyrunt who'd been doing a lot of friendly battling in the background but not talking much about this game, and then... the fun Human. That second one was a bit of a letdown. That Human hadn't always quite made sense, but he'd been enjoying this game, just like Tefiren, just like everybody here should. And now he was just... never going to get to play the rest of it.

Something about this felt strangely familiar.

[[

hi mafia plz stop killing chibi n1 kthx

Okay, so I have been Busy overnight (since I didn't have anything better to be doing with myself in the night phase, grumble) typing up some more elaborate thoughts on the gambit I did yesterday and the implications of my claim, which I didn't have enough time to properly form or articulate just before the day ended.

This, uh... ended up being So Many Thoughts that I'm going to separate them into a few distinct posts with a different topic for each one, just to make it a bit easier to follow. It might take a bit of time to wrangle them all into the post editor considering that I couldn't do the quoting part of them until the thread re-opened, so bear with me if it seems like I'm ignoring any new developments in favour of going on about yesterday's stuff for the next little while.]]

 

[elyvorg]

[[This post is purely me rambling about flavour stuff to do with Tefiren and can be completely skipped if you're only interested in the game itself.

My initial plan with this whole thing was to drop subtle RP flavour hints that Tefiren knew he was targeted last night, in the hope that a mafia member might pick up on it and would then... drop accidental tells that they suspect Tefiren is bulletproof, or something? Yeah, uh. I realised after a few posts that this was way too subtle and wasn't ever going to amount to anything.

But the point is, purely on a flavour front, anyone who happens to be interested in Tefiren's character might enjoy reading over my earlier posts yesterday, because I was deliberately writing him as aware that he was the one who'd been chased and got away that night, as well as subconsciously haunted by the knowledge that that's it and he has nothing else left to offer tricks-wise. Any time he slipped back into calling the mafia "Them" was usually themed around topics that'd remind him of the chase he'd just been in. And all of the insisting that he's totally the best at this game, while something he'd probably have done anyway, was so insistent because of this. Especially when he flipped out when Nefari called his tricks useless, because whoops, they really are.

[[I have a bad habit of ambiguous references in my clauses, so that might be at play here. No, to be clear, it was a reference to the Mafia's possible frustrations, not Tef's fears. I don't think Tef understands fear, so that irritates Alexander greatly.]]

Haha. Is that really how he sees Tefiren?

Well, I guess, technically, it's very true that Tefiren doesn't understand fear. But apparently it seems like Alexander's abilities to sense and feed off people's negative emotions do have their limits, at least when it comes to individuals who are extremely good at lying to themselves about their feelings.

(I am mentioning this because I would not at all mind a potential thread of RP flavour in which Alexander eventually manages to figure Tefiren out.)]]

 

[Disco]

"How does anything happen in this world?", Namco replied, their arms crossed. "Maybe they just found a way out and took advantage of it. I would if I did."

They were less than thrilled to be pulled into this further, but if there were really deaths... It was concerning. The Lugia looked over each of the others with narrowed eyes.

 

[elyvorg]

[[Some not-very-helpful speculation on the fact that someone wanted me dead on night 0!

Presumably the mafia targeted me on N0 because I'm a decent town player in a way that's not necessarily about role powers and more about dayposting, so I'm an ideal threat for them to take out before they even have any inkling what anyone's roles are.

Still, the only game on here (or anywhere) that I've played to make anyone see me as a decent town player is last year's. So whoever's idea it was to target me is almost certainly somebody who was either in last year's game themselves, or has read it. That, uh, admittedly doesn't narrow things down very much at all, especially as we don't know exactly who has and hasn't read last year's thread, and also because only one mafia member needs to be such a person for me to have been targeted. But, you know. It's something. It's at least making me less fond of getting caught up in the notion that all of the people who were prominently posting in the thread yesterday - which was by and large last game's participants, plus a few others, some of whom have indicated they've read the last game - are definitely innocent. I feel like there's likely to be at least one mafioso hiding somewhere among that group.

My other thought on this topic is that, while Dragonfree and Chibi Pika would consider me a threat if they were mafia, they're also fans of Tefiren, and I feel like they'd selfishly want to see me do at least some RPing before they had to kill me off. So I think it's slightly less likely to be them out of anyone who's seen the previous game (and all other basis for reads aside). Not that they couldn't have been outvoted by their other mafia teammates who just wanted to do the more optimal thing, fun RP be damned.

(lol I wrote this before learning who'd died, RIP Chibi)


And obviously, the fact that the mafia tried to kill me on N0 means that if anyone with watching or tracking powers happens to have seen someone target me that night, that's very important evidence. I'm not asking such a hypothetical person to necessarily claim unless they feel ready, of couse, but they should be aware of just how significant that information is.]]

 

[HelloYellow17]

Wes trudged through the camp in a daze, trying and failing to gather any clues. Two of them, gone. Two. Perhaps they were trying to make up for lost time.

He hissed a cursed through clenched teeth. Dammit, the Tyrunt had unnerved him a bit, but she hadn’t been bad by any means. He hadn’t known the other trainer, but Wes couldn’t imagine he’d have gone down without a fight.

He snapped his head up to glare at the group. “All right. What do we got?” He narrowed his eyes at Arctozolt. “I see you’re still here.”

 

[elyvorg]

[[And now to talk about Tefiren's Guessing Game Gambit!

(Shush, that's what I've started calling it in my head, okay. I'm sure Tefiren would approve, if he cared about wordplay.)

Some people last night seemed a little confused as to the point of the whole thing, and even I wasn't entirely sure at the time what its real value was. But now that I've sorted out my thoughts and am not on a short deadline, I can better explain what I'm trying to get out of it.

The real value of this gambit was less about it being likely to actively smoke out any mafia members, and more about getting a stronger basis for some townreads.

Normally it can be difficult to interpret the intent behind people's posts, because there's just so many variables we don't know. But for this particular topic - people speculating about Tefiren's role and who was targeted and how he knows - all of the variables are now known. Tefiren knew who was targeted by the mafia because it was him and he was bulletproof. The mafia would have already been certain of one of those pieces of information before Tefiren revealed it; innocents would not.

Therefore, while none of this evidence is concrete, we can look at people's speculations about how Tefiren knew who was targeted, and get a read on how likely we think it is that they were guessing completely blind as opposed to already knowing half the answer for certain. In some ways, it's less about the actual guess itself and more about the way someone went about guessing.

So I'm inviting everyone else to look at people's "guesses" and form their own reads from them, too! This'd be much less valuable if I'm the only person who ever notices or cares about the "information" (aka: the reads) I'd been trying to gather from it. Half the reason I revealed the whole deal last night was so that this information could be shared with and interpreted by others too.

(I'd have Tefiren be the one to invite people to do this, but he's too busy being kind of put-out at the way nobody was falling over themselves to tell him how very clever his gambit was. And he's also not the greatest at comprehending the idea of 'teamwork' at the best of times.)

At any rate, here's my reads of people's guesses, which will feed into my general overall reads of people.

Spoiler: Altair

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.

Guessed correctly, or close enough, but the way he reasoned around it before getting to that point and based it a lot on in-RP flavour about Tefiren seems fairly genuine. All of Altair meandering around before getting to that point could just be the RP dressing it up whereas Inkedust knew from the start, but I doubt it.

My read: minor good feeling.

Spoiler: Kyros

"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."

Didn't actually "guess", but this mention of Tefiren's role still gives us something to go off. The fact that he was worried about putting someone in danger by saying too much (this was before Tefiren had insisted it'd be safe) and the implication that the target was someone other than Tefiren both suggest he didn't have much inkling of the truth.

My read: medium good feeling.

(For the record, in my readpile post yesterday, this was the reason for my vague nebulous good feeling about Altair and Kyros that I didn't want to mention at the time.)

Spoiler: Equitial (Mewtwo)

[[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.]]

Seems like he'd absolutely figured I said what I did just to softclaim bulletproof-who-was-shot and took it as enough of a given that he didn't even feel the need to say so. (This was before I'd encouraged people to guess and made it apparent I had some kind of plan in mind beyond just claiming.) Having figured out the answer and taking it as an obvious fact does not inherently mean he's mafia, but it does mean I don't get a positive read from this.

My read: neutral.

(but I feel good about Equitial for other reasons anyway: both the playstyle thing and another reason I shouldn't talk about)

Spoiler: Alexander/Namohysip

"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.]]

(the above post happened after Tefiren had actively asked everyone to guess. Then, after some more insistence from Tefiren, and Dave guessing correctly, they finally volunteered this: )

"Hmph." Alexander wasn't very amused by this approach of the odd, winged Grovyle. "I don't make guesses. I don't make moves unless I am certain they will be correct. As such, I'm not going to entertain your game of guess-the-power."

[[I personally think it might also be bulletproof? But be careful. Hope you have another trick to keep alive.]]

I initially sussed the reluctance to guess, but now I don't think that's actually significant and I was just being influenced at the time by a misinterpretation. Seemed to think I might put someone in danger by claiming, suggesting he didn't think it was bulletproof earlier on, but then he also seemed to think I was in danger even after he had guessed bulletproof, so, *shrug*. Not really sure what to think.

My read: neutral

(I wouldn't mind some elaboration from Namo on why they thought I'd be in danger if I claimed bulletproof, though.)

(Outside the spoilers so it's easy to see: I officially retract the shade I threw on Alexander yesterday in the wake of my reveal. After a bit more time to consider it without being biased by tunnel vision brought on by a flavour misinterpretation on my part, I don't think there's anything meaningfully suspicious about the way he responded to Tefiren's prompting at all.)

Spoiler: Lexx (shush I know he's dead; I typed this all up overnight and I'm leaving it in)

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...?

Does not seem to have had any idea the answer was bulletproof, which is unrelated to roleblocking, and would not put a target on my head if I claimed it. Seems to have been imagining something much more complicated, perhaps some kind of unusual inforole. Chibi likes inforoles and their meta, so this tracks with how they might think about such a question. Based on all this, the assumption that the mafia didn't target me feels very unlikely to be deliberate misdirection.

My read: strong good feeling.

Skipping over Dave for now because I have thoughts about his response to this gambit that became A Whole Thing by itself, so that'll be in a separate post coming up next.

Spoiler: Jesse

"Fuck it, I'll bite, if only to get a denial outta ya. You can see what was tried on someone in the night, but not who was tryin' it."

Guessed something that wasn't bulletproof, appears to have been thinking in a more inforole sort of sense and implies he doesn't think the target was me. Terse enough that it would be easy to say this as a deliberate misdirection, but I don't feel like that's it. Jesse's inexperienced enough at this game and its roles and yet trying hard to contribute such that I can understand an earnest desire to just try and figure out what fits.

My read: minor good feeling.

(incidentally, I did some thinking myself about what other roles could possibly explain the partial claim I'd given, and voyeur was the only one other than bulletproof I could come up with that would in theory fit it too! I was wondering if anyone else would happen to guess that, heh.)

Of course, this whole thing is predicated on the assumption that the mafia did directly target me and there weren't any swapping etc shenanigans that led to me getting hit. But I think those are unlikely enough edge cases that we can safely assume I was the mafia target. If information comes to light later that proves I wasn't, then we'll have to throw this all out, but until/unless that happens, I believe this is worth at least something.

Another note: because all of this is specifically about information the mafia would have known, this has no bearing on whether or not someone is a third-party arsonist. We need to keep in mind that that's a thing, too.]]

 

[elyvorg]

[[And then there's Dave.]]

Tefiren watched the messy Human sitting in his spot, already holding another one of those glossy rock-like things that he kept drinking out of somehow. He'd said something last night, just before the end, that Tefiren had wanted to ask him more about, except he'd been too caught up in explaining why he obviously wouldn't get caught - (and look! He hadn't!) - and then it'd been night time.

Good thing this world could bring up echoes of words someone had said in the past, if you thought about it hard enough, so that you could talk about what they'd said, even much later on. (This place was great - it had so many things that were so perfect for this game! There was nowhere else Tefiren would rather be.)

Dave blinked. What? He was just... what? Bulletproof hadn't been everyone's first fucking thought here? "Well, I figured it couldn't actually be you being bulletproof because if it was then announcing it to everyone when the mafia probably has ways to nullify it would be fucking suicide." He gritted his teeth. "Your secret reason you're not dying tonight had better be good."

"Remember when you said this last night? And your whole reason for why you didn't want to guess, even before this?" He cocked his head at the messy Human. "Why did you think me telling everyone what I could do meant the Mafia would catch me? The whole point of what I can do - which you were guessing! - is that nobody can catch me! I was never being stupid to tell everyone, and you'd already guessed right, so that should have been obvious."

Except... the messy Human seemed to think they'd have a trick to catch him anyway.

(No. Ridiculous! Whatever sort of trick They - no, the Mafia, why did he keep forgetting this - had for catching people no matter what they did, there was no way it would be enough to catch him. It wouldn't. It wouldn't. Nothing could.)

(...But that wasn't the point right now. There was something else weird about this.)

Tefiren shook himself out of the distant stare he'd been doing and looked back at the messy Human. "Maybe you think the Mafia has a special trick to catch anyone no matter what. Maybe someone who doesn't know how good I am at never being caught might think that would work on me."

He paused and peered closer at the Human. "But... why did you think that? We were talking about the Mafia having that sort of trick a lot last game, but nobody's mentioned it at all this game. But then you mentioned it, not even like you were only just thinking of it, but like it was just obvious to you. The only reason you thought me revealing things was stupid was because you were thinking they might have that trick. Did you really just think of that on your own, and think it was obvious enough that everyone else should have also thought of it on their own without talking about it? Really? Or is it something else?"

[[

(To be clear, disregard all of Tefiren's stuff about never being caught and insisting he's immune to even strongman kills as nothing but RP flavour and Tefiren being Tefiren. I am, as I said before, an entirely killable vanilla innocent now. It sure is a thing when the roleclaim you've made amounts to being something that your character would never admit to.)

So... yeah. I have been having some Thoughts about Dave's response to Tefiren's gambit. Not because he correctly guessed that Tefiren's bulletproof, since that is after all the most obvious answer and it's not unreasonable that an innocent could figure that out. Rather, it's because of the way he seemed really, really convinced that Tefiren confessing to being bulletproof would get him killed, theoretically by a mafia strongman power that nobody else had even brought up the possibility of so far in this game.

Dave, reasoning on the premise that Tefiren was bulletproof, seemed to be taking it as a given that both A: Tefiren was multi-shot rather than one-shot bulletproof and still had some protection left that mattered, and B: the mafia probably has some special power to pierce that protection such that Tefiren would have just told them exactly where to aim it. He kept thinking this even after Tefiren made it clear he'd be in no danger from claiming, rather than figuring that if he's freely claiming, it must mean he was only one-shot and it doesn't matter any more.

That's a really specific set of circumstances he was assuming to be the case here. As far as I see it, a roleclaim from a bulletproof who's still bulletproof is a bad move, but only because it'd usually make the mafia avoid targeting them at night and waste the point of their role. And a roleclaim from an ex-bulletproof who's lost their protection is barely any loss at all. Either way, claiming bulletproof is very unlikely to directly get someone killed. It'd only do so if they still have the protection, and the mafia has a strongman, and the mafia decide they want to use their probably-limited strongman ability to take out someone who doesn't even have a night action they're afraid of, rather than saving it for, say, a claimed cop who's likely to be healed. That's a lot of "if"s.

I admit that the possibility of a strongman never even occurred to me until I saw that post. (Not that that was a meaningful oversight of mine, because I'm vanilla now, and if I did still have protection I wouldn't have claimed because of the other reason why doing that is bad). But the fact that it never even crossed my mind just makes it weirder to me that Dave was so sure about it.

I'm not outright accusing Dave of anything here, because there's a lot of ways this could be a perfectly innocent line of thought, but I'd like to hear more from Dragonfree on what she and Dave were thinking during Tefiren's whole gambit.

(And also, everything else about Dave has read as decently towny to me so far. Especially all that utter bafflement and wild theorising about what the hell Tefiren could possibly be trying to achieve with his guessing game, including paranoid attempts to reassure himself that it wasn't some kind of mafia trap somehow, which seemed pretty genuine and spontaneous to me. (And selfishly I just don't want Dragonfree to be mafia and the person who wanted me dead on night zero dammit))

]]

 

[Namohysip]

at least when it comes to individuals who are extremely good at lying to themselves about their feelings.

[[In this reality, it is only as strong as my reading comprehension~]]

--

Alexander's face was grave and conflicted. On one hand, the fear of everyone else was feeding into his natural desires for darkness. On the other... Perhaps he should not have taunted this Mafia. "Two... two kills. Both innocent." Alexander clutched at his shadowy spear before letting it dissipate. "Useless..."

He held his focus. "...There is no way the mafia has the ability to kill twice in one night," Alexander said defiantly. "Not after their complete failure on the first, or zeroth, night. They couldn't possibly fail two kills in one night. Who else... can kill? The arsonist? There is no way they would so inefficiently go for a kill after only one priming act. A vigilante? Stop killing when we don't have any information." Alexander had no idea who to point to or what could have caused this multi-kill operation. He was supposed to be the one causing terror. He refused to be the one terrorized.

"That's what we need. Information. We need information and I can't provide it," he spat. "Did anybody see or do anything of use?!" Or was it too early to be asking this? Two kills. If there are another two the following night... how much time would that leave them?

Alexander crossed his heads and tried to focus. Rascal had been targeted, and he wasn't sure why off the top of his head. Was there a subtle hint he had missed to Rascal's potential power? A good guess? Or was it a decoy kill? A random kill? The vigilante factor was still looming.

And Lexx. Maybe something that Lexx was doing was enough of a threat that the Mafia targeted him immediately. But all Lexx really did was put through some good reasoning, and perhaps had a strong cosmic record. Or was it a matter of something else Lexx may have hinted at?

Alexander muttered his thoughts in disconnected whispers, sometimes using his other heads to do the talking as well. [[In other words, the narration of his reasoning can sometimes escape his other mouths as mutterings, so ic your characters can hear it.]]

the above post happened after Tefiren had actively asked everyone to guess

[[Riiiight let me explain that. Iirc I was distracted or sick and had half-made a post in response to Tef way back when that was the most recent post, forgot for a while, and then decided to keep it anyway. Hence my disclaimer about the post being old and in response to old things. The reason I/Alexander warned against it is due to the risk of revealing what I thought at the time was an info role so early, when you only really had one use of it done.]]

suggesting he didn't think it was bulletproof earlier on, but then he also seemed to think I was in danger even after he had guessed bulletproof, so, *shrug*. Not really sure what to think.

My read: neutral

(I wouldn't mind some elaboration from Namo on why they thought I'd be in danger if I claimed bulletproof, though.)

[[So, you mentioned in your post that you could be seen as a good player for dayposting. I'll also admit to my bias that big posts can sometimes mean better players for mafia due to information given out... usually. If it's all nonsense then that's a different issue, but that's neither here nor there. Basically by the time bulletproof was confirmed or the main guess, my major concern was whether the Mafia would then try to "double tap" you like a zombie. That didn't seem to be the case, since we've got two kills and neither are you, but that was my worry.

Now this would obviously then lead to "Well who would they target instead?" but I was sick and not thinking that far ahead. Because now that I think about it further, I guess the Mafia now needs to weigh the info roles and other "dangerous claims" against a "confirmed innocent vanilla," assuming there's no other bulletproof role that hasn't claimed. Bulletproof is typically not a duplicated role, right? I don't know what other evidence there is in favor of Tef being innocent other than strong circumstance... but in terms of tier lists Tef is strongly town in my soul reads.]]

 

[IFBench]

So, are you going to-

"Not YET, you idiot!" the chimera screeched at its tail, before glaring at Wes.

 

[elyvorg]

[[Anyway, back to today's business. I'll stop flooding the page with my posts after this, promise.]]

Two people had been caught at once. Two of them. Everyone else was wondering how this happened, and Tefiren was, too. The Mafia could only catch one person per night; that was how this was meant to work.

He paced around the spot that'd shown the signs of a scuffle not long ago. "I think the fun Human was the one the Mafia caught," he said. "That makes the most sense. He was the sort of person who'd be good at this game. He might have had some useful trick. And because they know now that there's no way they'd ever catch me--" [[Tefiren, that is not why]] "--he'd be the next best target for them. Obviously."

He paced around some more. The Tyrunt wasn't an obvious target at all; she'd barely done anything yesterday. "The Tyrunt... maybe she did something that got her mixed up in the Mafia catching the fun Human, so she got caught along with him." It looked like that, from the marks of a fight, like they'd both been caught close to each other, didn't it?

[[I'm not entirely sure how much we should be reading into Rascal's death flavour saying she was trying to protect someone - maybe some sort of bodyguard role that somehow backfired? Not entirely sure how that'd work to get two deaths, though - or if Negrek would refuse to allow Flyg0n to leak details about their role in the death flavour at all.

...Thinking back on it, the first death flavour we saw in the previous game did in fact contain hints that the person dying was the cop - without actually revealing any inspection results, obviously. So I guess we can put stock into this?]]

"Or maybe it was that ar, Arsonist person who got her instead. If the Arsonist is playing for themselves and not the Mafia like they probably are, sometimes two people might get caught in the same night. Or more!"

The thought might be exciting, if it wasn't so... No. No way the Arsonist could catch him either. Not Tefiren.

"But like the dark dragon says, if the Arsonist was clever, they wouldn't catch only one person at once. So it probably isn't them who got the Tyrunt."

[[Riiiight let me explain that. Iirc I was distracted or sick and had half-made a post in response to Tef way back when that was the most recent post, forgot for a while, and then decided to keep it anyway. Hence my disclaimer about the post being old and in response to old things. The reason I/Alexander warned against it is due to the risk of revealing what I thought at the time was an info role so early, when you only really had one use of it done.]]

[[So, you mentioned in your post that you could be seen as a good player for dayposting. I'll also admit to my bias that big posts can sometimes mean better players for mafia due to information given out... usually. If it's all nonsense then that's a different issue, but that's neither here nor there. Basically by the time bulletproof was confirmed or the main guess, my major concern was whether the Mafia would then try to "double tap" you like a zombie. That didn't seem to be the case, since we've got two kills and neither are you, but that was my worry.

Now this would obviously then lead to "Well who would they target instead?" but I was sick and not thinking that far ahead. Because now that I think about it further, I guess the Mafia now needs to weigh the info roles and other "dangerous claims" against a "confirmed innocent vanilla," assuming there's no other bulletproof role that hasn't claimed. Bulletproof is typically not a duplicated role, right? I don't know what other evidence there is in favor of Tef being innocent other than strong circumstance... but in terms of tier lists Tef is strongly town in my soul reads.]]

[[Okay, I think I follow your train of thought on all this and don't feel like any of this gives me any reason to suspect you. In fact, I think my guess-related read on you just shifted to slightly positive, because all of this would be quite a bit to fake from a mafia whose actual reasoning would have been entirely different to what you say it is.

I can see where you're coming from with the notion that, if the mafia targeted me because I'm a good dayposter, they might want to try again and finish the job. But that's going to be the case regardless of what I claim or don't claim and there's not much I can do about that. If I had turned up dead today, it'd be because the mafia decided they wanted my dayposting gone, rather than my own fault for claiming.

I don't think it'd be impossible for there to be two bulletproofs, especially in a game this big. Stuff like doctor and bus driver has seen doubles in Negrek's games before, and one-shot bulletproof isn't that powerful that having two of them would skew things in the town's favour.

If there is a second innocent bulletproof, good on them for keeping quiet about it, and I'm sure they've been made aware if they weren't already of the reasons they should stay quiet.]]

 

[Namohysip]

Arsonist person who got her instead. If the Arsonist is playing for themselves and not the Mafia like they probably are, sometimes two people might get caught in the same night.

[[I'm not 100% sure here. We might require a gameplay confirmation. But according to the wiki, arsonist kills actually have specific flavor to indicate that it was an arsonist kill. I hadn't considered that until just now, but...]]

 

[Seren]

Miyako got little sleep that night.

She had wanted so badly to be useful, but instead... at best, people had just shaken their heads and ignored her as though she were just a naive child. At least Tefiren had... well, not really defended her, but had agreed that something she had said made sense. Even if that something was pretty obvious. She'd need to do better than that. "And I will," she said aloud to herself; not even Nephthys was paying her any attention, no doubt finding some other way to keep herself occupied rather than listen to her host wallow in her self-pity. What did her Persona do when left alone to her thoughts in Miyako's head, anyway?

Instead of sleeping, she manifested a training dummy - she still couldn't get the bed right - and practiced some staff strikes to calm her mind and perhaps wear herself out. Afterwards, she'd continued to skim some of the previous games' transcripts in an effort to gleam anything useful, even if it was simply how to better perform her own function properly.

As the group began to gather the next morning, Miyako was relieved to see Mewtwo among them. Had he gone missing, she suspected she'd have looked even worse than she already might to a few others. She was also glad that Tefiren remained; with all his boasting yesterday, she thought maybe he'd be the one taken out. After all, just because he'd used up his ability already didn't mean he still didn't know how to play.

"First... I'm sorry for being such a distraction yesterday. Tefiren, thank you for confirming that I at least had one piece of information correct. You seem to be enjoying yourself, anyway."

[[Some not-very-helpful speculation on the fact that someone wanted me dead on night 0!

Presumably the mafia targeted me on N0 because I'm a decent town player in a way that's not necessarily about role powers and more about dayposting, so I'm an ideal threat for them to take out before they even have any inkling what anyone's roles are.

Still, the only game on here (or anywhere) that I've played to make anyone see me as a decent town player is last year's. So whoever's idea it was to target me is almost certainly somebody who was either in last year's game themselves, or has read it. That, uh, admittedly doesn't narrow things down very much at all, especially as we don't know exactly who has and hasn't read last year's thread, and also because only one mafia member needs to be such a person for me to have been targeted. But, you know. It's something. It's at least making me less fond of getting caught up in the notion that all of the people who were prominently posting in the thread yesterday - which was by and large last game's participants, plus a few others, some of whom have indicated they've read the last game - are definitely innocent. I feel like there's likely to be at least one mafioso hiding somewhere among that group.

[[ Wanted to state some thoughts here also on the whole "why would Tefiren not be safe after claiming now that everyone knows what his role was" thing. My thought has to do with something we both have already touched on - your dayposting. It's less about "he's just vanilla townie now" and more about "assuming Tefiren is innocent, he/you are still a good, experienced player who can work things out and help others figure them out, too". So even if Tefiren is a vanilla townie, that doesn't mean he's not useful. At the very least, offing him would be just one step further towards a mafia victory in that it's one less innocent they'll have to take an action on later. We can debate the merits of leaving Tefiren alive as a vanilla townie and if the mafia would do that or ignore him now that he's used up his protection in favor of going after someone with another role, too, but that wasn't the point of this speculation.

Namo seems to have ninja'd me and my thoughts here, so... there's that.]]

Miyako continued. "Jesse... I'm sorry about the "not-a-human" comment. I hadn't known." It was kinda off-hand, but she felt bad about it, regardless, especially as he had looked a bit peeved at the time, even though he'd never said anything.

"And Mewtwo. I'm sorry for jumping down your throat yesterday. I guess I'm more afraid of you than I realized and was seeing you as a villain for that. You've got advocates, so for now, that's good enough for me. That's... all I've got to say for now."

Not that she expected her apologies to smooth over any ruffled feathers or win anyone's favor, but she could try. And if nothing else, she felt better.

As far as the new developments were concerned... two were lost. So that probably meant that either the mafia somehow took out two people in one night, or one of those deaths was the arsonist triggering a one-person ignite, which was... possible, assuming there was one, which the general consensus among the gathered appeared to be "definitely yes". 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.

Alexander's already also pointed out the possiblity of a vigilante shooting blind, but... again, that feels unlikely to me. Rascal was mostly RPing as far as I can tell, and I just don't think there was enough info to go on to target Lexx, especially, again, since Chibi's an experienced player. ]]

[[I'm not 100% sure here. We might require a gameplay confirmation. But according to the wiki, arsonist kills actually have specific flavor to indicate that it was an arsonist kill. I hadn't considered that until just now, but...]]

[[ I wonder is that was supposed to be what happened, based on this:

It seems so. After an hour or so of searching, the only sign of either person is a patch of disturbed ground, the blank, plasticky surface torn and tossed in frozen ripples, ripped apart, maybe, in some kind of scuffle? But what kind, it's impossible to tell, and further investigation turns up nothing while the rucked ground slowly sinks back to its flat, neutral state, even this one clue disappearing while the group watches.

Sounds like the result of a psychic mark to me. I don't see anywhere indicating which of the two were targeted by it, though. ]]

 

[Seren]

Sounds like the result of a psychic mark to me. I don't see anywhere indicating which of the two were targeted by it, though. ]]

[[ On second thought, reading over Rascal's death scene again... it probably was Lexx that was targeted by the arsonist, assuming the arsonist did the one-person ignite. Lexx didn't have a dying scene so we don't know how it happened, but Rascal's death scene reads more like they were in direct confrontation with someone, similar to how Tefiren was "chased" but escaped, and how in a previous year, Nip was killed to end that game. Maybe I'm reading too much into the RP flavor, but that's what I got out of it. ]]

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave squinted at Tefiren. It was way too early in the morning for this kind of galaxy-brain bullshit. He chugged down the rest of his beer and threw the empty bottle off into the void.

"Okay, first of all, why the fuck would somebody else need to bring up strongman kills first, when they were a thing in the previous games these abominations organized. Clearly those were part of the possibility-space. What, if somebody else had brought them up first, would that make them suspicious for remembering it's a thing? Jesus Christ.

"But also, you know what we had been discussing, in relation to me specifically? Fucking roleblockers. I was thinking of the strongman thing and also of the fact that they might have one of those, and all they'd have to do is point them at you first." He picked up one of the mafia manuals lying around, flipped through it and jabbed a finger at a page, before narrowing his eyes at it. "Okay, actually this thing is insisting roleblockers don't work on being bulletproof. What the fuck. That's not what I fucking read. Pieces of shit can't even make this fucking consistent." He irritably tossed the manual away, folding his arms.

"Anyway," he growled. "You started going on implying you were bulletproof, and I figured it was baiting. Like you were trying to make the mafia think you were bulletproof, when you were really some other shit. First thought was you wanted the mafia to waste their strongman shot on you. By the time you started in on the theatrical insistence that everyone make a guess I was just really fucking confused, and because I was already thinking you were baiting them to use the strongman kill, that's where I was at. Just, you can't actually just be bulletproof because then telling them exactly where to fire the strongman shot is fucking dumb. I wasn't sitting there enumerating the possibilities for what kind of bulletproof you could be or whatever the fuck, because I was a little fucking distracted trying to work out what the fuck you were actually playing at with your little guessing game. Go figure."

[[Dave is very annoyed that I did not think hard enough on his behalf about this

Anyway I need to bed, but this is about the shape of it, minus the Dave being Dave. The roles that were in the previous games have been on my mind all game, because this is the same GM and she's likely to have some of the same ideas about how to balance the mafia. Roleblockers on Mafiascum apparently generally don't block passive abilities and are called Disablers when they can, but when I GM mafia games with roleblockers I've always had them nullify your role entirely, as far as I can recall. (I thought elyvorg might have forgotten about the possibility of a roleblocker in baiting a strongman kill specifically; it did not occur to me until I started writing this post that I wasn't actually sure how Negrek GMs roleblockers.) And yeah, I was fixated on the baiting the strongman kill idea and then went down some really galaxy brain rabbit hole in response to the guessing game where I started imagining some kind of custom role that gained one-shot abilities whenever different roles were mentioned by different players or something along those lines. I did not at any stage go and think about whether Tefiren being one-shot bulletproof would simply make him stop being valuable to kill; brain too full of galaxies.]]

 

[Inkedust]

Altair looked down at the gathering crowd from his topmast, taking another swig of his drink. If he'd been alive, he'd be dealing with the hangover to end all hangovers. He had been acting unusually high-strung the previous day and quickly realised why the moment he took a quick headcount. The numbers had been cut down by two, Lexx and the tyrunt were missing; yet there was not a single drop of blood spilt... as if they'd just vanished into thin air... like they never existed at all...

Illusions. They were illusions, created for the sole purpose of giving Altair foes and allies for Yveltal's entertainment.

Yet despite his reassurances, Altair couldn't help but feel a pit growing in his non-existent stomach. That'd be him if he wasn't careful and he was real, meaning that he wouldn't disappear, he'd... he'd...

A flash of sharp metal glistening beneath the moonlight imprinted itself on his mind's eye. With it came the memory of intense pain as he struggled to breathe, the silhouettes of several other men with knives of their own waiting their turn... He stifled a scream, burying the recent memory to the darkest corners of his mind, distracting himself with the crowd below.

"Let's get to the bottom of this." Altair demanded, his voice weak. "At least one of these kills had to be from this 'mafia'. There was no way they'd fail for a second night in a row unless they were truly that fucking incompetent."

But what about the second one? The Arsonist was the first explanation that crossed Altair's mind, but why waste time picking off victims one by one? Surely it'd be a lot more efficient to build it up and then get rid of the targets in one fell swoop. A careless Vigilante? Fucking idiot. Neither Lexx or the tyrunt aroused any suspicion. Lexx seemed far more interested in helping out the town by discerning previous mafia strategies and the tyrunt was interested in biting someone more than anything else.

"What I'm trying to wrap my head around is the choice of victim. Lexx I could see, he was very observant and may have posed a threat to either the mafia or this Arsonist." [[Also Chibi just being a very good player in general and being at the top of every mafia hitlist no matter the game.]]

Altair was now pacing atop the mast, appraising everyone below. "What I don't understand is the tyrunt. The only reasoning I could see there is that she was easy pickings for the mafia, as I'm pretty sure that if either one was taken down by the Arsonist, I'd bet good money that it'd be Lexx." Altair looked at the strange grovyle and recalled his little gambit. "But the grovyle's claiming that they went after him tells me that they'd rather focus their attention on more competent players to stunt the town's sleuthing abilities rather than arbitrarily racking up numbers. I don't think they're that desperate to make up for lost kills." He then considered Lexx's comment the day before and narrowed his eyes.

"But that's pretty obvious. If you want my honest opinion? Anyone with a swap is underrated as heck in these games. There could be up to two of them, and they've been the cause of pretty much all the unexpected results in every game. They've even used their power to kill."

"Do you think that the tyrunt might've been swapped out for the actual victim?"

 

[Seren]

Rascal sprang in front of the one she'd chosen to defend, taking delight in the thrill.

"Do you think that the tyrunt might've been swapped out for the actual victim?"

"Swapped, maybe, or had another role that allowed her to protect someone physically? Not like a doctor, but where she could take the fall herself?"

[[ I don't know if a defending role like that exists, because... either way, it kills an innocent most likely, unless Tetra was expecting to be protected, which seems unlikely with how little information everyone has, too, so I feel like a role that does that would just be counter-productive. Maybe that's just my inexperience showing again, though. I suppose I could sit down and start scanning the Wiki...

Something else crossed my mind, too... it says "chosen to defend" which is what prompted the above speculation on self-sacrificial defensive roles, but also makes me wonder... can a swapping-role character swap themselves? I know Tetra was vaguely inactive and worried about being able to keep up, so maybe she thought she could swap with someone she thought might be targeted as a protection while removing herself? Idk. She didn't give any indication that she wanted to stop playing, only that she had a mountain of other things going on, and given the previous game with.... I think it was Espy? asking to be modkilled... I dunno, I don't believe this is the case personally, but I did want to throw it out there for consideration. ]]

 

[Seren]

[[ Also, again, maybe I'm reading too much into the RP flavor and the "leaping in front of the one she'd chosen to defend" really means nothing. I just... don't know anymore. ]]

 

[Inkedust]

"Swapped, maybe, or had another role that allowed her to protect someone physically? Not like a doctor, but where she could take the fall herself?"

[[A role like that does exist, so it is a possibility however I read the flavour as "Rascal was a doctor/other protective role" and admittedly didn't consider the possibility of Bodyguard as it's not a very common role.]]