Also, Butlers aren't allowed to self-confirm by failing to vote, if they illegally vote the GM has to count it and if you do that on purpose it's cheating, which would be a nightmare to administrate in an environment where the target can change their vote and unvote at any time in the day and the Butler can potentially not check the forum/sleep through day end. $20 says this one isn't actually in the 'real' pool of roles that were assigned.
I think a Spy would just shatter the game balance over its knee.
In a game of this size and where we're only playing once I'd also almost guarentee that a
Scarlet Woman (Backup Imp, in Mafia terms) is in the setup. Otherwise any D1 kill could randomly hit the Imp and end the game even faster than our last Mafia. I'd also encourage everyone here who has only played Mafia to read the
Poisoner page becase it could surprise you, it will scream "weird bastard role" to Mafia players but as someone whose BotC experience is a couple rookie games, I have seen it appear every single time. It's standard. Hell, I'd give it >50% odds that our scumteam is
specifically Imp, Scarlet Woman, Poisoner. Imp, Scarlet Woman, Baron is second place. All other setups fall into "Doesn't have Scarlet Woman" or "Does have Spy" which would both really fuck with me.
Straight out of the gate with dense commentary about how the game works.
- Said Butler might not be in the game
- Notes what the Grimoire is and that making a fake one is passable
- Said Spy might not be in the game
- Thinks scumteam is Imp/Scarlet Woman/Poisoner or Imp/Scarlet Woman/Baron
- Free confirms shortly after that roles were picked randomly
"Oh, our Better Odds" [[Investigator]] "info would be nice to have right now, if we have that."
First to call for Investigator to claim
"If it's that bad, they say something about their emera to get out of the bind. Who cares? You seem to expect that anyone who claims will be left dead where they stand for it, and that the fact we don't get to see who people are when they die makes it bad to execute them. But consider this: What if people didn't get killed for claiming~ That would be cool, wouldn't it?"
"Think of it this way: People we kill don't flip. People that the Awakened fucker [demon/imp] kills, may as well be flipping for most functional intents and purposes. Sure, they could kill one of their own, or even themself, to throw us off, but... uhh, not usually a great idea for obvious reasons. Taking a player under heavy heat with a powerful emera and showing that evil wants them offed is often the best gift you can give 'em! Suuuuure, they wake up a bit deader than usual, but that's never killed anyone~ They'll just claim, share all their info, and become a trusted ally for the rest of the game! If a player with a power role is catching flak, all the incentives tell them to do the opposite: Make sure they get executed in the day while avoiding confirming them and let them be suspicious forever!" [Although we should be able to target the dead with powers like inforoles here if it comes to that, it's just usually a waste] "Combined with Ally Reviver [monk/doctor], the possibility of someone wanting to avoid day targeting because they've got Toughness [soldier/bulletproof], fear of activating Payback [ravenkeeper/death-activated rolecop], there are a lot of reasons why targeting some kind of active-power softclaim is often a bad idea. It's not a universal law that claimed players don't get killed, they do, but shaking one softclaim out of someone is fine. They're more likely to get Poisoned, but that's usually possible to play around."
In conclusion: Claims are more powerful and dying less scary here. This is the counterbalance that allows thing like Poisoner or Spy which would be weapons grade fuckshit in Mafia to be standard vanilla fare. If we don't press that advantage at all we will probably just get fuckshitted to death.
- Insists it's safer to vote D1 because the executee's info isn't lost.
- Kinda gives some dense speculation on how the game works, hypothetically assuming what's in play.
- Insists that claims are more powerful here.
- Considering they singlehandedly goaded out a few claims, that tracks
[[There should only be one of each. In the physical game, even the Drunk's fake role assignment has to be unique since there's only one of each role token in the box and you have to give the Drunk the token of the role that they think they are.]]
Speculation about duplicates
[[Honestly if you don't understand all the strategy talk coming out of my mouth, that's fine. My target audience for most of that is veteran mafiaheads who I need to talk out of playing the Traditional Mafia Metagame, which is why it's a bit technical. Just do your best and your teammates will help you along the way!]]
Trying to speak specifically to veterans.
[[Seriously, if your info is lies it could indicate that scum didn't roll a Scarlet Woman at all. (It's legal for the Storyteller to tell you two good players are a Minion that is in the game, too. Storytellers can tell Drunk/Poisoned players anything, even 100% true info if they want.) If this happened, I'm so sorry to the evils because in a game of this size with no SW we could just kill people at random and expect to probably win. It isn't "scary" like Spy or Poisoner but is instead a load bearing pillar of large game balance. BotC Storytellers usually do not totally randomize roles and SW is one of the reasons why.]]
Speculation about role randomization, after Free says they learned the roles were randomized.
"Beautiful! That's exactly the kind of thing we need to hear! And you know what? I think that's good info. I think we should all believe you! Yeah, you could be wrong, but it's improbably and even if you were we'd recover."
When Yellow claimed, this was the first thing Morgan said.
"This is also a great time to put our pal with Prolong under high heat. Whoever got Awakened and maybe All-Knowing gets info on what's safe to claim. This is the one night where those two have their result but couldn't have shared it with the Prolong player yet." [[Unless the Imp got their three safe claims in their role DM, but traditionally they wake up in the night to learn this like an inforole. I'll DM Inke to request clarification once she wakes.]] "At this point, if one of them has Prolong they won't be happy to have a claim forced out them tonight. We should not give them the privilage of claiming tomorrow once they know what's safe. I want to know their exact roles. The whole 'the Awakened won't kill our allies if we fear they might be one of their power roles and deconfirm it even if it's was a good night role' principle applies in full force here."
Prolong is Scarlet Woman is the backup Demon. (Since killing the Demon otherwise ends the game that's hugely important) Awakening is Imp is the only Demon role in this game so those are gonna get used interchangeably.
I marked this because I didn't know what the FUCK Awakened was, but she clarified that it's the Imp (was using Awakened and Imp interchangeably so it threw me off). They have a knack for using terms that weren't initially mentioned in the original rule post. Just something to note.
"It's fine, don't worry. I don't see why Better Odds [Investigator] couldn't be hit with Dizzying Stare [Poisoner] but it'd be a random blind shot. [This is true. Both powers activate on N0, and Poisoner moves first.] They can also be Drunk."
[[shit. that's
terminology from a BotC-inspired game bleeding into my vocab bc they're phonetically similar and mean the same thing. I will stop doing this.]]
Apologizing for vocab while also offering more speculation about Investigator being Drunk or Poisoned.
Morgan shot daggers at her neighbour. "Speaking of putting your money where your mouth is, you say you're happy to claim? Then do it. You've got three people vehement it's you, deflecting's not gonna cut it. Hell, you could claim Dizzying Payback [Saint] just for shits and giggles~"
Went in on Watt.
[[Inke has answered my question: Evils will have out of play fakeclaims ready tonight, unfort. Should be possible to play around this.]]
Outside conversing with Inke about evils having out-of-play fakeclaims (was this included in the rules? Is this something I would have needed to pick up on from the wiki? Throws me off but maybe just because they're experienced and know what to ask).
Need to note that Morgan has done
A LOT of outside-thread comms with Inke.
Anyway, the odds of it being true aren't great, but if Rui's drunk then that means it almost certainly is true, and I'd be down to execute you anyway."
Prepped to execute Watt based on Yellow/Rui's claims even with Drunk probability
"One thing that jumped out at me is Rocky here says he's the Butler, and the Mismagius earlier put twenty bucks on there not being a Butler in the game. Rocky, did you get any insight into how your role's been adapted to make sense?"
Dave calls out something I noticed--Morgan was CERTAIN there were no Butlers in the game. Pano claimed Butler.
"This is true. Our turtle pal over there can't be two things at once... Can't be Spy and Scarlet, and the whole poke-poking the Virgin would be a weirdly specific plan to commit to so early as the Spy. Especially for a total greenhorn. I don't see any way you could've come about that information without Autumn over there being wrong anyway, at which point why suspect you?"
"Despite how we might feel, I think we made good progress today. Not quite my desired outcome, but net-positive. I'm less frond of Autumn over there than I was before this. Oddly, I trust the turtle. They've arguably given us more info than anyone else here with little plausible theory as to how they could've manufactured it. I'm not even confident I can rightfully call it a blunder, even if it was reckless. I might even, begrudgingly, have to call him my... augh... strongest townread."
She shot the leafy cat thing a sidelong glance.
"I don't know if I'd rather take you out, or just call it a night here. I think it's the latter, honestly. We made all the progress we're going to. But that's not a choice I seem to have right now, If it's you or the turtle, well, I guess I know where I stand."
[[I do not believe it to be possible for Yellow to have received accurate info based on these developments. No idea where to take that, though.]]
Remember, she was the first to say "She might be Drunk/Poisoned, but trust her!" and promptly flipped even still knowing that she was Drunk/Poisoned
"Hm. Probably should've kept quiet about that, but oh well. Process of elimination means that it's gotta be the bunny, which means she's good as dead unless we can find an appropriate sacrifice to confirm today..."
She shot Watt a cheshire grin.
"So, Nine-Volt, seems like you've got a window of opportunity. Nothing left can save you, but you can still go out on your own terms. If you really are town, a quick vote for her should clear everything up real quick. And it'll probably only hurt a bit~"
Morgan goaded Watt into voting for the perceived Virgin, resulting in the mechanical confirmations.
My freak communed with the whatever and was told the Awakened [Imp/Demon] player erroneously got their three out-of-play emeras before the first night, but everything else went as intended, which means the All-Knowing [Spy] player would only get their info as a result at the end of the night like any info power, which'd be after it was too late for them to tell the others. Knowing that Big Ears isn't in play isn't enough to fake an accurate Virgin call zero point zero five seconds into the day. No, only the All-Knowing player themself could do that right now, and even then it'd be pretty unhinged. We got more or less perfect value out of the free kill, it certainly didn't 'trick us into wasting' that power. If you were All-Knowing you'd let 'em coast and quietly tell your boss to kill 'em the second Night 1 fell. You'd never want to let them confirm themself and an ally."
Dense matter-of-fact reasoning
[[Reminder to everyone that Third Parties do not exist here. There are none. Outsiders are just Town with shitty roles. (Also anything that specifies "townfolk" and not "good" won't count them, e.x. Virgin wouldn't kill one.) They still share our wincon. Everyone has the good wincon or the evil wincon and knows which one it is. Even if they're our drunk they'll have the good wincon but think they're a townfolk, who also have the good wincon.]]
Reminding players about game mechanics
Similar to Rocky, has put a lot of logical/helpful information out. Brought up the idea of having me vote for Odette, which seems to me like a bad play if she was scum. And though I'm a bit rusty, it doesn't feel like scum Phant play to me.
Needed to point this out because nobody seems to be thinking about this--it is NOT A BAD PLAY FOR SCUM TO GOAD REVEAL OF THE VIRGIN. It keeps scumteam members from accidentally voting the Virgin and being themselves and being clocked not town by said Virgin. This does not clear her at all.
"You'd have been told that it's out of play at the start, guaranteed and have expected them not to flip until some vintage Virgin bullshit ruined the plan."
[[I'll concede, It's not historic Yellow play. Plus you'd know the above if you were evil and I don't feel like evils usually blunder/pretend to misread mechanics on purpose like that, it's just weird and gets shot down quickly, so this actually does soften me somewhat.]]
Voted for Yellow despite knowing the play of her galbrain lying isn't typical. Also, remember, first one out of the gate to insist trusting Yellow but turned when the vote train started (note: that train was started by Tetra/Flygon/Drake).
“Nobody called me out in yesterday, but if you’ve been paying attention I’ve been soft-claiming some bullshit too. Shuppet over there’s definitely been paying attention: The moment Rui’s allegations dropped, I signaled how happy I’d be to kill one of my neighbours, even though I shouldn’t have had any clue if it Hareta or Nine-Volt. After Elegym more or less claimed Empath, I cranked up the gambit a bit, softclaimed Empath a bit harder, but also said I thought I might be Drunk.”
[[The reasoning wasn’t consistent, it shifted a bunch over the day as things happened, and it was totally faulty at times. I’ve got a trick or two up my sleeve but I’m no mastermind]]
“Must’ve be rough for Shuppet, once the actual flesh and blood catgirl next to her died… She’d be stuck between two Empath softclaims, one of which seems to have already pinged you. They can’t both be true, but it’s not a fun situation.”
A few things:
- Sorry, you weren't softclaiming boo. I've combed every single one of your posts up until now and caught nothing that would have pinged me as a softclaim, which means there's a high chance that scum would have missed it too (however, later on, Mal/Jackie/uA completely goes along with realizing the play and doesn't indicate that they missed any softclaims. Considering they're sus right now, worthy to note).
- WHO THE FUCK IS SHUPPET LOL
“So you go all-in. Elegym must die before they get a result.” [[Demon wakes before any town roles so although their target continues playing the game it’s an effective roleblock.]] “Four townsfolk have claimed info roles, there’s three or four left. You just have to hope none are a Monk protecting the most obvious info claim, because if that happens you’re already dead. You also have to get me to disregard my incriminating result, but I left them an out there when I softclaimed possible drunkenness. If I don’t trust my night zero results, and I’m poisoned on night one, surely I’ll conclude that I’m drunk~”
“I’ve got the Clairvoyant [Fortune-Teller] emera. I get to pick two players next to me each night and am told if I picked the Demon, but one townsfolk gets chosen to look like a fake Demon to me. Night zero, I picked my neighbours and found a demon. Night one, I did a replication experiment: Rocky, who’s not townsfolk and therefore can’t be chosen as my false positive, and Madeline again.”
[[Technically, it’s within Inke’s rights to turbo-frame Watt, making them my fake demon and also choosing them to register as a fake minion to Rui. It’d be unconventional though and I think there’s a more likely explanation.]]
“No dice. My night zero and night one results are borderline contradictory. Seems the most plausible explanation by far is that I was poisoned night one, inadvertently confirming that I’m not the drunk, and my night zero results were accurate!”
The thing that gets me about Phan/Morgan is that she speaks in total and complete absolutes. There are several explanations why this discrepancy occurred, all centered around her being Drunk/Poisoned, yet she speaks like "yes my N0 roll was for sure accurate!"
[[Correction: I was NOT poisoned on night 0, the first night, which means Rui could still be either poisoned or drunk. I was poisoned night 1, tonight.]]
Plus a quick correction
Dave furrowed his brow, squinting at Morgan. "That... sounds pretty fucking convoluted to me? It relies on the mafia drawing one specific conclusion about you based on a softclaim that there was no indication anyone'd even noticed, concluding you're specifically the Empath, and that because you distrust your results you'll conclude you're drunk if poisoned this specific night, instead of just trying to kill you, and therefore your night zero results were accurate but your night one results are wrong? And this is all to conclude that your innocent result today on the person being accused actually proves they are scum, because your night zero result couldn't have been confused because... it would've meant Watt was 'turbo-framed' by appearing as a fake minion to Rui, who was either drunk or lying or poisoned? The Investigator doesn't say there's a specific player who appears as a false positive for them at all." He shook his head. "Sorry, but this sounds way fucking galaxy-brained to me."
Dave/Free calls out this weird-ass play and assumption. Seems to be the only other person aside from me squinting at it (Mal/Jackie/uA and Rocky/Pano in particular found it a good approach, worth noting).
Considerations for this readlist:
-We cannot have a Baron or there'd be more Outsider claims
-If there's a Spy the game is over, since it'd mean an Imp/Poisoner/Spy comp with no one to inherit from Madeline.
-Frankly, if there was no Scarlet Woman then Madeline should've killed herself to allow the spy to inherit given she's in a physically dangerous place. The willingness to risk her in a bad place indicates someone will just take over once we execute her.
-tl;dr this is an Imp/Poisoner/Scarlet Woman comp after all. I love accidentally being right despite my logic being totally wrong.
Again, do you see this speaking in asbolutes shit?
There
CANNOT be a Baron
Nobody could inherit Imp from Madeline because
"she's for sure the Demon"
Madeline
should have done X
I love accidentally being right
"You are now being taken as drunk or poisoned because someone's reasonably well-substantiated hardclaim included you as town. Also, I disagree that deciding your innocence after you die is useless. It confirms you as town, which means we don't have look at this and decide whether you've rated an entire evil team's worth of people as more suspicious than Madeline because you're upset your charge lost her emera, or are pushing a scum agenda in defence of Madeline. Which is what I would otherwise be doing right now."
I personally still don't buy this, especially considering down the line it's proved that scum just needs to be at 50/50 with town and apparently rh ghost votes don't sway this? Might have misinterpreted that so don't quote me there. But I found this shoddy from the getgo regardless.
"Oh, you heard correctly~ I knew that if I didn't get Elegym's eyes on you, I'd never know for sure if you were the demon, or my false positive. You'd have claimed to be my false positive, and frankly, it could easily have been true. If I'd heard they got a 0 again despite reading you as a demon, at least I'd be pretty sure of where my false positive was. Elegym was the only way I could determine which one you were. And the unlucky cat just so happened to be in my way. Should I have argued her innocence? It was clear that she was going to have a majority vote against her either way, and it was in violation of what I believed to be our best interests to stop it. I don't make a practice of fighting losing battles for no reason, and the only way to argue her innocence and justify executing her anyway would be to try to hardclaim my and Elegym's roles to make it make sense."
Some play explanation
"I do not believe the ghost is our enemy. If she is, she has played us all for fools, and we would have deserved the loss. No, I will not entertain it at this time. If her visions were contradictory, then she cannot be our 'drunk.' And if she were poisoned last night, I therefore cannot have been. I have confidence in my vision!"
Spectrier/Chibi doesn't think Morgan/Phan bad
It’s an in-character way of noting that you have a long list of suspects based on people not posting while asleep and more generally not saving you, and noting that I have done both of these things as well and I could’ve just as well ended up on it. (I’m actually not sure why I haven’t.)I would already not be surprised if your list contains more town players than evil ones given how it’s longer than the scumteam is large. I’m genuinely sorry that you rolled drunk and were immediately executed for it, especially when not prepared to defend yourself, but the town had good reasons to do this. (Chibi has just demonstrated another one.)]]
[[Tbc Undertaker who saw Drunk is a pretty safe claim rn, especially when claiming to see an Imp death tomorrow is also going to be expected, so I can’t quite townlock Chibi right now (although I lean positively on them) but no matter what the reading is at least extremely likely to be true. (Hypothetical scum-Chibi would know they didn’t poison Rui and would be unlikely to risk being caught out by a second drunk appearing.)]]
Play explanation and speculation, especially around Spectrier/Chibi claiming Undertaker.
[[Re “Death is trivial here. Roll with it.” in specific bc I think it sounds harsh: Your power was not going to activate any further. The evil team will be no closer to controlling the vote unless you spend your ghost vote. You can still talk and share your opinions. Your death had several beneficial effects and is more likely to avoid us ever reaching a ‘one townie alive, eliminate or lose’ scenario than it is to cause one sooner. I mean this earnestly: You death does not change much about your ability to play the game, only hurting your voting power. It has progressed town interests. I think you should accept it and move on, even if it sucks and stings to get voted out d1 for trying your best to help. It’s not personal.]]
Talking about how deaths aren't a detriment.
It was a bit late to go pick someone else to kill based on vibes, and notably, we learned who you are and who the Demon is as a direct result of it.
Still need to point out that Phan/Morgan flipped on Yellow when the vote train, started by Tetra, began, after being the first to say to trust her.
Catching the demon (which I firmly believe we have done) in exchange for even a larger number of lives is a positive. Townies are already more expendable than Mafia in Mafia but BotC takes this to an even further extreme. In Mafia, Mafia only needs plurality while town need to eliminate EVERY scum player. In BotC it’s the evils who have to eliminate EVERY townie (unless people waste their ghostvotes) while town only has to get the head honcho (and potentially scarlet woman if they exist and the demon dies so early that they inherit) further incentivizing even more callous disregard for the lives of town if you just get the demon. By all measures, unless Madeline is (very implausibly) innocent, then this is truly going well. I firmly believe that we’re winning and maybe some real fuckshit is happening, scum is laughing at me, and I’ll eat crow. But I’m not spinning.
Again, speaking in absolutes
[[Nope! They win only when there are ZERO townies (in the physical game only living players can ‘nominate’ a player to vote on) or their voting power outweighs the town’s counting ghost votes, which should never happen unless people blunder their ghost votes en masse. Meanwhile if there’s no Demon the game just ends instantly, even if they are survived by their minions. 1 townie 3 evils is an eminently winnable (albeit very hard bc you have to figure out which of the evils is specifically the demon) game state.
[[If there’s one townie left to ‘nominate’ the demon and enough ghost votes to convict, it’s game on!]]
Iirc this was proven wrong
[[I’m not sure exactly what some of the stuff after my quote stops means means, but I can answer this: While there shouldn’t be duplicate roles (iirc Inke has confirmed this?) in a game of this size the Storyteller usually exercises their discretion to ensure a Scarlet Woman is in play alongside the Demon so that you can’t just get lucky with the demon earlygame. Inke has indicated that she has not done this, but...]]
I don't think Inke confirmed anything unless she asked in one of her many off-thread chats with her and got that confirmation
[[I have checked with Inke and been told that we lose if the living evils can outvote living town, ghostvotes (on both sides?) being able to change the outcome doesn’t matter and the game will be ended anyway. A little odd to me, but unlikely to matter too much? We still just have to get the demon to win. Even if some of the D1 play is a bit aggressive in that context, we got lucky to find an evil in time to offset that.]]
Ah yes, I was right from the start. Baller. Again also want to point out MORE off-thread discussion with Inke.
[[Primarily, I don’t know how that affects ghostvote strategy since they matter a lot less now that they don’t prevent evil vote majority.]]
Now Ghostvotes matter a lot less, huh? After insisting it was powerful that townies die because they can still sway with votes?
[[If anyone wants to follow up or wants to make sure I’m not misinterpreting, here’s the exact exchange for transparency:
“[I quote myself from here earlier] I should check that this is true bc the intro post just says evils win if they control more than 50% of the vote with no elaboration. Is that statement true of Ink on the Clocktower?”
“The evil team wins when they control 50% or more of the vote. This is how I've always played this game as after a certain point, it'd be mechanically impossible for town to win.”
“We could control the vote with zero townies alive. Is that allowed?”
“No. Ghost votes do not count.”]]
Finally some transparency, but it easily could have been edited.
I'm not wild about how Morgan's been going around saying Madeline's mechanically confirmed as the Demon after the neither Rocky nor Madeline being the Demon result that she got last night. The other possibilities include:
- Morgan was poisoned on night zero and Elgyem was poisoned on night one. This is obviously also possible and explains the results equally well, and Elgyem had a much stronger info softclaim yesterday than Morgan. Personally I would've bet on scum poisoning Elgyem last night over Morgan. Telling a story about how they definitely noticed Morgan's easily-missed softclaim and definitely went for her instead of the really prominent softclaim is all well and good, but it's hardly incontrovertible proof they must have done that.
- Watt was Morgan's designated false positive, and Elgyem was poisoned on night one. Morgan thinks this is unlikely because then Watt would've been 'double-framed', both the false positive for her and one of Rui's false Drunk Investigator results. But these are completely different mechanics so I don't know that it's obvious the same person wouldn't get picked for both, the way the same person probably wouldn't be picked as a designated false positive for two different roles with a designated false positive. Wouldn't it be pretty likely to be picked at random which people Rui was told about, for one?
- Elgyem was poisoned night one and Morgan is evil and trying to take charge of the game. Obviously it's fair for Morgan not to consider this one, but we should. It'd probably be unnecessarily bold play at this stage to act so certain about mechanical confirmation, and would raise more suspicion if Madeline turns out not to be the demon, so I don't see it as super likely.
Dave/Free also points out how weird it is that Phan/Morgan talks in absolutes, and shows the different ways she could be wrong.
[[mmm fair yeah I shouldn’t do that]]
A concession
“Quite the other way around: I think I was poisoned because Elegym was meant to die. In other words, I expect we were both targets, and that this is the explanation for there being no kill tonight. I was far less likely to have been protected, so they would’ve otherwise had to get unlucky and just hit a soldier.”
What does this MEAN Elygem was meant to die??? Don't follow the logic of how that pertains to the possibility of you being poisoned
[[It is possible that I was poisoned N0, aer/Elegym N1, and I was protected/evil stumbled into an unrelated killblock but given the obscurity of my claim I don’t think I’d be the top protection candidate and targeting a clear power role would be the least random explanation for the no kill. It’s also possible Watt registered as contradictory false evils twice: BotC logic I think dictates a storyteller would be unlikely to choose this (storyteller would usually choose whatever fake results they want, even so far as giving true info of town’s getting rolled but usually just to not contradict the narrative) but mmm I suppose it would hardly shock me if Inke’s randomizing all her storyteller choices.]]
Speculation
[[Traditional BotC rules are that the Demon actually can't abstain unless they lose their power to poison. (This is standard for all every-night roles.) But at this point in this game I honestly think Inke would allow it. There's precedent on this forum for equivalent roles being able to abstain from killing. (Hi it's me I'm the precedent. It sucked. I don't think anyone would do it outside a disaster scenario. Ironically, Perse was my scumbuddy for that gambit.)]]
Gamestate stuff
"Literally, no. For most practical intents and purposes, yes. We haven't confirmed he's the butler, per se, and we never will. Not directly. The cue that a butler might be fake isn't anything to do with the role, but what's around it. The amount of real outsiders in the game is set from the start, and any fake ones will push the amount of claimed outsiders up beyond that number. Saint and Recluse are both basically forced day one claims, they are out of play. To argue that Rocky is faking being an outsider, you have to argue that the town setup has eight townsfolk, one outcast, two minions, and the demon. It's not impossible, but it's... weird. Very pro-town, and probably the worst day one Outsider fakeclaim you could make in that scenario: Recluse would be much more powerful, and Saint is incredibly hard to vote out."
Wdym we never will; weren't you the one who used Rocky's apparent butler claim as fuel for your little gambit that you insisted worked until Free called you out? Also, if the roles were confirmed randomized, why is a pro-town game weird?
"Sorry, puppydog, but I disagree. Maddie and I are the only two players on this side of the field I could consider to be at all... contentious. The turtle and cat's roles are pretty much on lock, I've just said why I don't think Rocky is a viable suspect, if Nine-Volt was a minion then making them register as just a slightly different kind of minion to the drunk is bizarre, improbably, and cruel and the series of events leading to the Virgin thing coinciding with that is comically unreasonable."
Elegym would probably be the hardest sell here, since it was more of a social read than a mechanical one, but it was also one she was firm on.
"You have to argue a pretty bizarre mens rea for Elegym to be faking what's ultimately very normal behaviour for a new townie with an info role. You know, cautiously trickling us information that seemed obviously important really early in the game, info which has now been more or less confirmed to be true. And doing so while trying to only softclaim some form of info while being just a liiiiittle bit too forthcoming in a way that made it actually quite clear what the actual underlying role was. If that's an insane evil team social engineering gambit then you know what, good job, you've got me eating out of the palm of your hand.
gamestate speculation
[[In a town with no Recluse to serve as a fourth possible trigger, the odds of our three evils, spread across twelve seats, being adjacent are nontrivial but not great. (I'm not crunching the exact numbers.) Even if Watt being poisoned was a 50/50, I'd favour the accuracy of their information slightly. But it's also not a 50-50. The evil team has 9 people of unconfirmed role and can poison only one. For Watt to be wrong, we need to have an unlikely seating arrangement with an unlikely poison hit.]]
"Now, we're not crazy, we're not actually arguing that people should start suspecting me of being a Minion..." [[and it would have to be a Minion in specific, since Slayer failed.]] "I am saying that theories positing that neither Maddie nor I are scum can probably be— at least temporarily— discarded! That would be a move to simplify things. It also makes me more confident in my personal reading."
No it wouldn't have to be a Minion in specific, what if Perse was poisoned or drunk? There's those absolutes again.
"But I'm just going to soulread Noivern for a moment: I've decided to trust him for now. I have my reasons. I'm curious to see if he acts how I expect him to, though. That's all."
Trusts Mal/Jackie/uA on pure soulread
“I believe you’ve left something unconsidered in attributing evil to two out of three unclaimed character. You are, however unintentionally, attributing the failed kill to the dog. If he’s the soldier, and believes himself to have been targeted by evil for his experience, he should have contradicted my theory by claiming it long ago: The evils would already know it, and it’d put a massive puncture wound in my argument. One large enough that, frankly, a hypothetical evil version of me would have known better than to posit it in the first place out of fear of that exact counterclaim. You could also argue he’s the monk and just didn’t target anyone who’d make my hypothesis plausible, but it still looks odd both that he didn’t protect our clear info role and that this knowledge didn’t result in him visibly believing in anything. Instead there’s been a bunch of helpful reminders about ever possible confusing gamestate, very little effort put into narrowing the possibilities to anything not logically required for him to be town, including claiming things that would continue to confuse the gamestate even if I’m proven innocent later, particularly that Maddie and I can somehow both be innocent. Every reminder and suggestion in a vacuum has been seemingly helpful and incontrovertibly plausible, but the net force of that behaviour is uncertainty and confusion. It leaves a foul taste in my mouth.”
She shrugged, trying to look nonchalant even though openly positing what she currently beloved felt dangerous.
“Frankly, I believe you’ve accused our monk of being evil. It could be either of the rat or the Noivern, I’m not sure, but I favour the Noivern of the two.”
This is the post that ended up goading Free to claim Monk. 2 for 2.
"It resulted in me visibly believing that the mafia was pretty likely to have poisoned and not tried to nightkill Elgyem, and thus probably not have poisoned you and left Elgyem alone. Like I've been going the fuck on about all day, but shut up about when I realized you were assuming they'd tried to nightkill Elgyem and the reason I hadn't considered that was I knew they hadn't. Fuck!
"And yeah, I was considering claiming earlier because it's practically got to be Drake and Malachai and they probably knew it's me, but maybe there was a tiny fucking chance it was somebody else. But here you are insisting the window to claim it is closing and that it didn't result in me visibly believing in anything FUCK OFF. So fine. It's me."
The result, Free/Dave's response
[[I’m just thinking and typing. And slightly reeling. I was expecting you to claim but I also expected the uA counterclaim if either of you were scum. Now I feel like you’re both town— I am certain of this for Dave, but it’s just a lean for uA. I was… not prepared for that.]]
Thrown off by Dave's claim. Unsure about uA vs. Chibi but still leaning uA.
“Oh, whoops~ Damn, here I was hoping Noivern thought my reasoning bore their scrutiny because they knew their action corroborated it.”
"I'm sure a player as intelligent as yourself can deduce what I was hoping might happen."
I guess there was some sort of collusion here?
“Dog’s gotta be town. Rabbit’s gotta be town. Squirrel’s gotta be town. Turtle’s gotta be town. Rock not being an outsider is numerically weird. Squirrel’s poisoning is improbable when their outcome is expected and the targeting random.” (Neither of the last two were impossible. That was frightening. But you had to believe something at some point or you just floundered to death.)
That wasn’t much. Did she believe she was poisoned this night? It was much harder to say that now. The results of her night actions still felt contradictory. Was the rodent just her false positive?
“Surely, either the Elegym or I was poisoned tonight. It wouldn’t have been sensible for it to have been the monk, the virgin, the butler, or the washerwoman. And if we really think it’s the Elegym who was poisoned…”
Then that was bad.
“I don’t think it’s plausible that our enemies would leave Elegym to register a minion they had sightlines on, not when they had two tools to try to prevent it. If they didn’t use the kill to stop it, they’d use poison to force a zero. Which they didn’t.”
That was something. And it really suggested that the fucking nine volt rodent was just her false positive.
Game speculation.
“If we’re mixed on the horse, I should consider the possibility that the cat isn’t Drunk. Earlier, I said it made sense to correctly claim the drunk because they knew who they poisoned and a second drunk later would contradict them. I’m revisiting that assumption now that I’m realizing how hard it would be to actually evidence a new drunk and how powerful it’d be to convince people the Drunk is out when they’re not.”
Speculation on who's actually drunk
"It would give Elegym line of sight on me. Does that produce any interesting results? With all the options to produce false results in play, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who'd have confidence in the results. I'm not sure how much good that will do us at this point. If we want a read on me, we'd probably be better off trying to get an undertaker read on me directly then trying to reach for Elegym's line of sight."
But she didn't trust the damn horse to read her accurately either.
Iffy on a possible Undertaker Chibi/Spectrier read?
[[Yeah, completely understandable. I feel like my trust in their results is gonna be pretty low no matter what, especially because we don't really have any disputed claims and even if they're town they'd just be a poisoner magnet the one or two nights when we hit scum. And if they say we hit scum then that's also gonna inspire some mixed feelings in me. But if someone feels differently they're gonna disagree with me and I won't blame or fight them.]]
[[I'm considering the latter two, they're the 'either reason'. Poisoned more highly than scum since she seems more like lying town unless Free's wiki playstyle theory is true. If we have a living drunk then that frightens me. It's not open and shut, though.
But I don't want to kill Madeline. And I will never really trust Spectrier. I'd be more apprehensive if I was the tipping vote but as it stands rn if everyone thinks I'm wrong it's not gonna happen, which is reassuring when I'm doubting my judgment.]]
NOW doesn't want to kill Madeline, doesn't trust Spectrier
[[Okay but multiple layers of base assumptions have been proven wrong. I think I'd be frankly insane if did stay the course, under the circumstances.]]
I mean sure, but I also kind of feel like you've been flip flopping toward whatever has been convenient for you (i.e. the one being trained).
"Well, I tried not to, and then I was pressed on why I trusted one and was being accused of being scum alongside the other two. There were three unclaimed players left. At least one of them is going to be scum, and I believed the dog could only be innocent if both were. As far as I understood it, I pointed out what the evils already knew. And that turned out not to be the case, the fact that my argument fell apart with no counterclaims should indicate I don't have teammates backing me up."
Why she goaded out the Monk.
"Well, I fully understand the risk I'm taking of digging my own grave even deeper by asking for more claims, but I genuinely think we're best off with an open setup by now. The minor Monk ambiguity certain scumteams might've experience was the last bit of redeeming value there and, well..."
You would assume correctly, you are
[[Tbh I think the 'alternate wincon' feature of a Mayor here is dramatically worsened by the use of an alternate evil wincon in this game. Usually games are guarenteed to go to final 3 unless they're literally all evils, with them being a great way to resolve "oh fuck we probably have a minion and a Demon so we can't just kill evil but also have to pick the right one" endgame gambits. And it's already really frightening to attempt a Mayor win.]]
"There are four townroles unclaimed. Do we think Soldier Drake or Librarian is viable as a legitimate unclaimed town role? I doubt it. The sheer risk of a Ravenkeeper or Mayor or even a Soldier will deter them from being targeted, ever. At least with this many exposed power roles. On the other hand, if neither Ravenkeeper or Mayor is in the fakeclaim pool because the last one is Soldier or Librarian, then suddenly an evil Drake would have to risk a fifty-fifty risk of a collision with the drake."
I read this five times and if I understand it right, speculating that if Ravenkeeper and Mayor aren't in the fakeclaim pool, Drake's claim would be a 50/50 of being sus? I don't understand.
More side-eye because Drake does end up claiming Mayor.
[[Eh fuck it I really don't want a Maddie bus to win as my #1 priority. And I should give more consideration to evil Drake if I trust Dave now anyway, which I had not adequately considered. This will read as wishy-washy. Sucks to be me, I'm just gonna have to live with that reality. I still don't trust Spectrier.]]
[[Also yes if Maddie isn't evil, why WOULDN'T they poison or kill you? I used to think you were unpoisoned they failed to kill you. And I've been proven wrong in, uhh, quite an airtight fashion. Can you explain why you are not dead or poisoned, if you were clearly about to get an accurate ping of 1? I think you're town tbc, not evil and lying, but I don't like you being just allowed to read her when they had multiple preventative measures and supposedly took fucking none of them.]]
[[This is not as bad as I think it looks: Unless you think Drake and uA are both innocent, at which point who are all the suspects, then they were gonna deduce Free was Monk anyway bc she firmly didn't believe me, while uA did and Flyg0n is doing whatever Flyg0n is doing. Free was most likely turning up dead one way or another, I continue to believe this. Maybe at best we'd have seen Free poisoned on the way down to disable the possible utility role. Secrets are less powerful than Mafia and info is more important. If I hadn't done that we'd still be tunnelling Maddie which would be bad.]]
[[Do you think this is how scumlyn would have played 90% of the day if she needed Perse alive???]]
[[Moving off Perse means scumlyn would be forfeiting the opportunity to manipulate Aer's results as she pleases with Poison, and if she didn't want to do that it'd be easy to argue that they were manipulated while actually poisoning someone else.]]
A lot of their own analysis on their play and scumreads
"Your role would be no big loss. The mayor requires absolute trust to activate, which you were never likely to have, and is only helpful when which of the other two players is the Demon is unclear, usually because they both look evil and one's probably a minion pretending to be their demon... Which, in this particular ruleset, is just a premature game over instead. A poisoner could easily have neutralized your kill resistance if they were scared of it, but I for one would not likely have even bothered, were I scum."
So............after all of that talk about a Mayor, Drake claims Mayor, immediately it's a vote and "no big loss."
“Phew. We got one. Maybe. At least, I hope so. The horse’s information aligns with mine reasonably well. I inspected them alongside the rat, since I expected to be told that either a minion or demon died no matter what and wanted to see if my results lined up. They do! We’re all clear~”
Of course, the fact that everyone’s info lined up and seemed true kind of posed it’s own little problem, didn’t it?
“However, given that Elegym serves as rock solid proof a Poisoner is in play, and most likely has backed off targeting them, the new question becomes: Who was more important to target than her?”
Morgan fought off the urge to visibly grimace. After yesterday, she’d prefer to get to talk about literally anything else today. But there wasn’t much choice.
“It doesn’t make sense to poison a passive role. Either it’s the horse, and we just killed our mayor, me and the horse is a probable demon and the Scarlet Woman thing is called into question anyway, or it’s actually the Elegym this night and not last night, in which case what the fuck. I don’t like any of these options, frankly, they all suck ass. I don’t want any of these to be true.”
Now suddenly Spectrier reads align with hers. And again, those absolutes, HOW IS ELGYEM ROCK-SOLID PROOF THAT THE POISONER IS IN PLAY??? Did I miss something while I was just reading your posts?
[[Tbh when I say “is in play” I mean “is in the setup” and not “is currently alive” so I could toy with the odds of Drunk Honse and dead Poisoner leaving us in a state with no poison (but a drunk honse) although I don’t think that’s our most realistic line.]]
Game speculation
“Yep! I thought about doing the same Rocky test as yesterday but it felt like a waste of my second target. I thought about you but once I thought about how I and everyone else would interpret the results I realized it wasn’t going to be very useful. I considered a pure test of poisoning with Rocky and Rui since I figured a town horse would be a higher priority to poison than me. But I settled on this, because being able to check which kind of evil Drake might be and compare it against what type of evil Horse might be would make it harder to fabricate information.”
She targeted a dead player for some reason which I really think wasn't the move
[[This could also be erratic play, though. We often get an erratic player who we all assume is scum until they flip and we realize it was just that. Except they don’t flip here. If Drake’s not evil, though, I’m not happy: It’d mean we could reach Eliminate or Lose tomorrow which sucks ass bc Scarlet Woman is intended to be guaranteed disabled at EoL so that the demon can’t fail an EoL and just… win anyway, but it would not be disabled here, creating a hellish game state. Should I just ignore this if I think Drake’s scum? Maybe? I feel remiss not mentioning it if it’s influencing my thinking though.]]
Musing about Drake
"We got them on different nights, and I have a built-in false positive. My false incriminating result would be caused by either my being poisoned night 0 (y'know, the night you got clean reads on Rui and Hareta) or just Watt being my false positive. Yours was almost certainly caused by your being poisoned night 1. Admittedly, I initially thought these two false incriminations were a lot less likely than me having one false exoneration yesterday— to such an extent I was willing to push Dave over it— but now that we can be pretty sure you were poisoned and not I when I got the clean read on Madeline, it's looking like I have to face up to the fact that reality is the less-likely seeming case."
Okay but how are you so sure of this is my question?
Morgan shrugged "I'm not the only one saying it, as you've cited there. It's not impossible we have 1 but it'd be a little low— eight town power roles is quite strong. Right now we just have better lines of inquiry, especially because I used him as the other half of my second Madeline test, when I got a clean read, so even if he was lying he's a minion at worst."
Speculation on Rocky.
[[You are, the key context being that I'm replaying to someone talking about whether Mayor, on account of being pretty bad in this format, is in the pool. The exact roles chosen are random. (i.e. Mayor is in the pool, we cannot discount its existence purely on account of it being adaptationally weaker in this variant where it logically cannot go off unless you killed all minions and fail to kill the demon specifically.) The distribution Townfolk/Outsiders/Minions/Demon is confirmed nonrandom.]]
DIDN'T FREE SAY AT THE BEGINNING THAT IT WAS RANDOM?????? DID I MISREAD???
"I've been turning this over in my head, honestly. 'Cause I pretty clearly fired a warning shot for who I was about to inspect last night, too, which makes the threat a bit more timely. Seeing the horse try to construct a reality in which they are innocent, and serving up reheated leftovers from my currently critically-damaged theory from last night hasn't exactly put my mind at ease either."
Okay so I guess she wanted to inspect Spectrier/Chibi last night
So after all that:
- Morgan was the first to say we should trust Rui
- Morgan was the first to say there was likely no Butler in the game
- When Tetra started the Rui vote train, there was a flip
- Morgan goaded Watt into voting Odette to possibly confirm the existence of the Virgin/his townie Chef claim
- Morgan has had quite a bit of outside-thread conversation with Inke
- Morgan has a habit in speaking in absolutes, like they know their answer or approach is completely and totally right, and continues to do so even after this gets called out by Dave
- Morgan used Rocky's apparent Butler claim to fuel her little Fortune-Teller gambit but went on to say that there's no way to prove that Rocky is what he says he is......while being completely sure her read at that point was right
- Morgan goaded Dave into claiming Monk
- Morgan soulreads Mal as town
- Morgan was entirely sus of Spectrier until allegedly their reads aligned with hers (on the assumption that she is not Drunk or Poisoned, she seems to be very certain that she's not and right)
- Morgan was the first to make speculation about the existence of a Mayor, but when Drake claimed Mayor, went on to say that it wasn't important and still allocated Drake as a sus party
- Are the roles fucking randomized or not
All of this is assuming things didn't get lost in the sauce between me JUST focusing on Phan/Morgan's reads. I will also admit, a lot of Morgan's responses didn't make sense to me, so a lot of my weird vibes might be because it's all pinging as absolute smoke blowing. My biggest issues are that they really like to insist over and over again that they are absolutely right (and only pulled back a little when the Monk called it out, but it still kinda doing it), they've been having a lot of admitted side conversations with Inke, they goaded out 2-3 claims (Monk and Virgin ESPECIALLY were important for scum to get out of the way, mind you) and they've been apart of every vote train that has happened so far.
I do need to zero in on Jackie and Chibi (ignoring Tetra for now, I forgot she's dead), but this took me all morning. I need a fucking break.
]]
