[Town victory] Vanilla Mafia!

[unrepentantAuthor]

Salem was already out of her depth. There were no dead bodies to see, but apparent death was here all the same. Mortal danger was new to her (hunting little stupid prey animals didn't prepare you for a thinking, speaking person being there one day and gone the next) and she could be next. She hadn't got any experience with 'games' like this! Maybe she should just stay out of the way...

[[Calm down, Salem. You'll be alright. Just think about what people are trying to get each other to think and why they might be doing that. You're smart enough for that. And although you might not know for sure who to trust just yet, you aren't alone.]]

Something told her she still had a chance of getting out of this. It was almost like... Something about this place not only let her speak as articulately as she wanted, but gave her insights she wouldn't normally have. Even though she was frightened, instead of giving up...

She'd do her best!

"Hi, I’m Astrid!”

Starting with making friends, perhaps!

"Hi to you as well!" she said to the newcomer, following Ebony closely. I'm Salem! We all have to play a game about finding hidden killers in the group, and everyone who loses gets punished in a terrible place! But it'll probably be fine because a lot of us don't seem worried!"

...Salem had the feeling that if she were here, Dusk would be covering her pace with her palm.

[[You need to contribute to the hunting effort. Consider what the Innocents need in order to win. Who seems to be making the most sense right now? Remember what Dusk taught you about complex plans!]]

"Okay... We don't have lots of information yet, and the killers are obviously also liars who will try to get us to turn on each other. But... We have to turn on people we think are lying killers. And some of us might be lying innocents because lying helps us win somehow. Hmm..."

Salem considered some of what was being said. Accusations being flung about, rules for games like this and whether they might be in effect, some participants trying to reason out likely possibilities and others grasping wildly at convoluted plans... It kept on and on, and people started talking across each other, snapping at each other—

"Hey!" she shouted, feeling a headache coming on, "The rules here aren't clear and we shouldn't get mad at people because they understand them differently for some reason! What if that human who says he can tell people's powers is telling the truth and just isn't being very careful? That seems a lot more likely than that he has a really complicated plan he's also badly failing to carry out. The killers will be better liars than that because they can plan their lies together!"

"If we guess wildly at what the killers' complicated plans might be, we're very likely to just be wrong. We need to play it safe right now. I know it looks like that Mike human could be lying, but that angry Kent creature hasn't tried helping anyone at all! If we voted for him and it turned out Mike was lying, we could just get rid of him immediately, anyway..."

Even though the thought of doing so made her feel a little like she'd eaten something bad.

[[Tetra's enthusiasm is commendable, but her wild theories are the opposite of the principle of Occam's Razor and I'm not seeing why she thinks it's so urgent to get rid of Mike. As for Kent, I can only imagine that he's a Lover, in which case he should have tried to keep it secret and pretend to be a townie, or he's Bulletproof, in which case he's already blown his cover by admitting his motivations, or he's lying. I don't trust him.]]

[[Anyway, y'all, just remember most of us are inexperienced or even brand-new and it does well to remain considerate and sporting, and also to remember that the Mafia don't usually do crazy risky galaxy brained strats where they trade one-for-one.]]

 

[windskull]

[[
Mkay I have to head to and won't be able to actively read the thread for a while but a couple quick things before I go.

[[ I have a question:! Wiki says- Vanilla players have role names that vary by faction; a Role Cop scanning these will get "Vanilla" as the response, again anonymising the win condition. Thus, a Mafia Goon or a Serial Killer should give the same result as a Vanilla Townie (unless they have extra abilities). So do we know Homestar's town rolecop can ID a serial killer? Unless its a special RoleCop? Am I missing something? This is mostly seperate from susing, trying to undertsand things ]]]

I totally skimmed over this this morning. That does raise some suspicions but I'm not totally convinced. Roles have deviated from the wiki versions in past games. That said, this is a beginner game so I would think it's more likely it follows the wiki.

All of that said, I'm not entirely convinced by Abra's soft claim, but this does make me more suspicious of Homestar. I'm leaving my vote for now since I'm about to go to work and won't be around for several hours, but I'll reevaulate later tonight.]]

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

[[Still thinking about who to vote for.]]

 

[Flyg0n]

"If we guess wildly at what the killers' complicated plans might be, we're very likely to just be wrong. We need to play it safe right now. I know it looks like that Mike human could be lying, but that angry Kent creature hasn't tried helping anyone at all! If we voted for him and it turned out Mike was lying, we could just get rid of him immediately, anyway..."

Even though the thought of doing so made her feel a little like she'd eaten something bad.

[[Tetra's enthusiasm is commendable, but her wild theories are the opposite of the principle of Occam's Razor and I'm not seeing why she thinks it's so urgent to get rid of Mike. As for Kent, I can only imagine that he's a Lover, in which case he should have tried to keep it secret and pretend to be a townie, or he's Bulletproof, in which case he's already blown his cover by admitting his motivations, or he's lying. I don't trust him.]]

Hana groaned and facepalmed. "Has no one considered that if you claim that Kent is lover you're downing two innocents?"

She sighed. "Let me explain again. Mike is lying about his role and his claim, and his power. He jumped the gun in a rookie mistake and called serial killer to gurantee we'd destroy abra, who for all we know, may be valuable. While its possible this is some kind of..." she waved her hand in the air, "complex strategy, he's softly likely a rookie movie brought on by Phan's explanation post."

"But it doesn't matter I guess, does it? Kill two innocents by risking Kent being a lover maybe and maybe then you'll see the truth, of some of you will be here, bemoaning why you didn't kill Mike earlier."

She shrugged. "One wya or another, the truth tends to come out."

[[This has little to do with enthusiasm and everything to do with facts.

fact: Homestar sat on a CRITICAL claim of SK knowledge for a long time
Fact: Despite claiming this was to 'feel out the situation/RP' his character was antagonized by the serial killer
Fact: As far as anything is aware rolecop CANT actually sus SK
Fact: Abra claims vanilla
Fact: Some sus Abra as town. Whether this is a lie, rookie, or galaxy brain, killing a lover causes TWO deaths.
Fact: Mike ONLY spoke after Phan Made it clear SK was something anyone would have strong reason to get rid of.

But we'll see how it goes, either way Mike dies, its really a matter of whether an innocent (or two) dies first)]]

 

[AbraPunk]

Kent awoke suddenly with a short yelp.

"Agh, the hell happened?"

He sat up and looked around at everyone.

"What's going on?"

[[ A lot's going on. Long story short, you caused a ruckus, and now half of everyone is saying you should be voted out. ]]

"Wha--" He spluttered as he listened to this weird voice. "Why?!"

[[ Because you were being a complete ass to everyone. Maybe if you were nicer, and actually helped with investigation, people wouldn't be so suspicious of you. ]]

He was silent for several seconds afterwards. "Oh," He said quietly. "Okay."

[[ I strongly recommend you start making an effort to help out with this detective stuff. ]]

"...Right." He knew immediately what the first thing to do was. "That guy," He pointed at Mike. "Needs to be gone. Said I was the Serial Killer. That couldn't be farther from the truth. So, I think it's time you get the hell out of here."

Vote: Mike (Homestar)

 

[Shiny Phantump]

[The thing that confuses me about this whole deal is that trading a goon for 2 lovers is a bad trade, given the standard scum/town ratio is 1:3. (If they are trading for some bloody reason, the real scum rolecop would probably be telling a goon to claim and take the fall for them in scumchat bc rolecop is too valuable for them to trade unless they've already detected the high priority targets which they haven't on N0 if they found Lovers instead.

Tempted to reconsider based on this because it would be a big misplay for scum. Hell, I wish I could abstain but that's useless in a setup with so few power roles, this isn't getting any less unclear for a long time.

Frankly I don't see any scenario that seems logical right now, so... kinda gotta default to Mike/Homestar for lying? Hopefully a SK misplay brought on by trusting my dumb joke? Idk. I'd love it if that happened but I'm not nearly that much of an optimist.]

---

Hazel gripped her helmet with one of her foretalons, pushing back on it. She had a migraine. That wasn't too unusual for her. Putting pressure on the helmet tended to help, but she didn't feel any better afterwards. Perhaps this headache wasn't just induced by the helmet...

"Someone start making sense, please..."

 

[Bluwiikoon]

[[ no info. And I'm not the SK. The only thing outright preventing me from saying what I actually am is that it would give the Mafia a free kill. ]]

I have a question!!

Do we think we can trust the scary dragon guy ((👉 on Pory's screen towards Diyem)) to not change things about the game without telling us? To make it a fun and cool and scary surprise?

This could just be a slip-up, and that's ok! But the voice in my head is telling me...

It would be bad if this was an alien thing? Trying to pretend to be a thing?

I think, maybe, the stuff people are saying about that guy (Mike?) makes sense? And if he's actually not a bad guy, then uhhhhh...

We would have to be very careful of aggressive guy (Kent) tomorrow! And maybe see if there is another two deaths with him around. (I-if he's around?)

If not, then maybe aggressive guy (Kent) is ok! Maybe!

Or if that guy (Mike) IS a bad guy, then it's ok and aggressive guy (Kent) is ok and we can be friends! And maybe someone who can protect people should protect him!

 

[Sinderella]

[[Question! After doing some thinking, I need some clarification. Was it made clear that we wouldn't know what roles were being played exactly until the game was in motion? Or did I misread that?]]

 

[AbraPunk]

Was it made clear that we wouldn't know what roles were being played exactly until the game was in motion? Or did I misread that?

(From the Sign-up post)

Note, there may be other roles not listed here that will also be in the game. However, none of them will be particularly complex or extremely powerful in nature, and there will be no game-ending roles such as Jester, Alien, and so on, nor will there be any nonstandard win conditions aside from Serial Killer's, if there is one. There will be no "resurrection" powers, or anything of that scope or nature, either.

 

[Bluwiikoon]

Oh! That's good!! No aliens or scary clowns!

...so, PLEASE protect aggressive guy if that other guy is bad?? Please?

 

[Sinderella]

nor will there be any nonstandard win conditions aside from Serial Killer's, if there is one.

[[Okay so my point now...since we weren't exactly sure if there was even going to be a serial killer, on top of the fact that Homestar! couldn't have possibly known who the serial killer was--the fact that he tried to call out a serial killer before Poryfriend confirmed the fact that there truly is a serial killer leads me to further believe that homie is lying or the serial killer himself. ]]

 

[HelloYellow17]

“Wes,” he answered. “And you?”

He turned his attention back to the crowd. What a headache…Mike had been caught in a lie, which was certainly suspicious, but…what if he was just an idiot? After all, Wes had made some stupid decisions in this situation before…

And then there was Kent. He certainly hadn’t been acting trustworthy, but then again, who could Wes actually trust here? Certainly nobody but himself, at least for now.

[[Ok so basically here’s the deal: Worst case scenario for voting out Mike is that he is townie cop, which, uh, would be really really bad. However, he’s dug himself a pretty deep hole so I’m not so sure about him being a cop anyways. Pretty slim chance, I think, so I’m keeping my vote on him for now.

Worst case scenario for voting Kent is that he’s telling the truth and two innocents die.

Something else that I don’t think anyone has really brought up: Mike could be the SK and could be going for some big brained strat where he accuses someone of SK to get a mislynch, then maybe doesn’t kill the next night to feign innocence before striking again. Either way, I think he’s the biggest threat rn.]]

 

[HelloYellow17]

Hana shot the silver haired trainer an appreciative look. "Thanks for the vote of confidence. What was your name again?"

[[the HECC The first part of my previous post was meant to reply to this LOL I promise Wes isn’t just speaking to the air hahaha]]

 

[Sinderella]

nor will there be any nonstandard win conditions aside from Serial Killer's, if there is one.

[[Okay so my point now...since we weren't exactly sure if there was even going to be a serial killer, on top of the fact that Homestar! couldn't have possibly known who the serial killer was--the fact that he tried to call out a serial killer before Poryfriend confirmed the fact that there truly is a serial killer leads me to further believe that homie is lying or the serial killer himself. ]]

"So basically, Mike," Clovis said. "You couldn't have known there was a serial killer either way." He crossed his arms. "The nail in the coffin there for me is nobody could confirm that a serial killer exists, until Poryfriend did so with...their? Correct me if I'm wrong?" he said, sending Poryfriend an apologetic look. He decided to continue. "Their hint. Which came about after you tried to accuse Kent of being the serial killer. So either you're just blatantly lying, or you're the Ted Bundy among fangirls."

He exhaled deeply. "Mon vote est pour Mike (Homestar!)."

 

[HelloYellow17]

Oh! I was crying a lot (kind of sort of all night) so I forgot, but...

I also received information! The information is that there's a serial killer.

So, there is super DEFINITELY a serial killer, who exists! Sorry it's not very helpful...

[[Also just pulling this back up because it was oddly convenient that Bluwii only claimed to have info and reveal this after Homestar accused Abra of being SK! It’s a very safe bit of info that would allow them to fly under the radar. I’m not accusing them of being scum buuut I do find the timing suspicious! After all, why wait to reveal that an SK exists? That affects everyone. HMMM.]]

 

[Homestar!]

[[Okay here we go, ladies and gents.

First: Unclaiming Town Role Cop, Claiming Town Bulletproof.

I have never played mafia before, and after reading Phan's thing, I made a gambit. I must admit it was based on in-character bad feels, so that's my bad.

This gambit was also based on the confusing wording in the initial post, as well as some outside information wrt how the game is played. The original post doesn't explicitly say SK can't be picked up by Role Cop (though it does say to check the wiki, which I did later). My initial plan was, I s2g, to oust a malicious RPer. Again, I'm really sorry if this creates bad feels. This was why I RP'd the high-drama injury thing; I wanted to see if I couldn't curb their actions. When I couldn't, and after I read Phan's post, I got upsetti spaghetti and gambited.

In light that they have all but outed themselves as lovers (and are therefore dead anyways), and that I'm dead anyways, I might as well come clean and apologize.

But Homestar, why claim Town Bulletproof?
- Ousting myself as bulletproof destroys my power. Nobody is going to waste their time on me, and that's if I survive today. Which I no longer expect to.

So what was the gambit?
- tl;dr: Eliminate Abra (who I sus'd as Mafia due to playstyle), tank a bullet in the night (or the Juggernaut shot), reveal Bulletproof if I woke up in the morning, explain gambit.
- I thought, given the over-the-top malicious RP style, Abra was leaning into their assigned faction/role anyways. They would have no reason to be so actively cruel if they were really town (Mafia would know instantly that they were town), as it would do nothing but generate scorn by the town (and possibly all players). I read up on basic bulletproof strats (claim power, point finger) and did so.

So what went wrong?
- I didn't understand the rules (or perhaps altered rules?) of the game wrt Role Cop.

TL;DR: I'm Town Bulletproof, I made a shit gambit out of spite, I want to clear the air.]]

 

[Flyg0n]

[[If any of this is even true, which I don't believe it is, not huge on a supposed townie ousting someone based purely on spite and RP. Also bulle proof is a pretty convenient claim. My vote stands]]

 

[Homestar!]

[[If any of this is even true, which I don't believe it is, not huge on a supposed townie ousting someone based purely on spite and RP. Also bulle proof is a pretty convenient claim. My vote stands]]

[[I came clean because I don't expect votes to change. I was holding my breath to see which way the vote was gonna go, and it went bad, so I figured explaining myself before I went was at least the courteous thing to do.]]

 

[AbraPunk]

given the over-the-top malicious RP style, Abra was leaning into their assigned faction/role anyways

They would have no reason to be so actively cruel if they were really town (Mafia would know instantly that they were town), as it would do nothing but generate scorn by the town (and possibly all players)

[[ My character is over-the-top and malicious.

That does not mean that I, as a player, am. ]]

 

[Flyg0n]

[[It's really convenient to go from a very important town role to an equally important one that we wouldn't move against but happens to gain nothing by revealing something like bulletproof because of course mafia won't hurt bulletproof, revealing yourself guranteeees no one would try to hurt you.
Eh.

Anyways really vexed that all this was over RP when it's been mullltipleultiple said that a characters in character behavior has nothing to do with alignment.

Either way. We'll see I suppose. ]]