[TOWN WINS] Third Anniversary Fanfic Mafia - Game Thread

[NeoLurosa]

"Ah. It seems I am to pilot this body for the time being. Very well."

The espeon, presently with Lurosa's golden eyes and turquoise gem, paced back and forth, twin tail-tips flicking in the air.

"Despite my considerable misgivings about the strategies and conduct the nickit's Voice is employing, I am becoming more confident that they are a member of the Town. I am fairly sure a swap did indeed happen, and if so, the explanation given by Nefari's Voice seems more likely and based on fewer blind assumptions than any theory in which they are Mafia. Do not miscontrue me, though. I merely believe it is somewhat more likely that Nefari's Voice is Town, not that they are truly not hostile. I will try not to hold it against them that they tried to have me killed."

She smiled politely and sat, crossing her tails over her paws. An intuition struck her.

She definitely would have come up with an even smarter plan if she'd got mail, though.

"Floatzel Jet! Do you and your Voice have any recommendations for this gift-giver who visited me in the night? They did, after all, solicit instruction, and I confess I have little idea what I would do in their position to improve matters." She frowned as she contemplated the situation. "I do wonder why this other ostensible mailperson would have declined to use their power on the first night. Is there some downside? Or perhaps they did not wish to be caught without an alibi should their target turn up dead? I can only speculate."

 

[windskull]

[[Okay, I will return to discuss in more detail after work because I need to think on the implications and look back at the user's iso, but I know with certainty the identity of the person that messaged me/tried to message Jack/yellow, and I have reason to believe they're telling the truth about not sending a message N1]]

 

[NeoLurosa]

 

[Virgil134]

"I already told you yesterday I'm not a mailman. I'm not an absorber either. I didn't send any messages to anybody." May took a breath. "Also, didn't the person saying there might be a parrot say they deliberately didn't use it on the first night? So if they're an absorber they were lying about it."

[[ True, if the message that Wind got was sent by an Absorber then the message is indeed false. The Absorber wouldn't have been able to send any messages on N0, meaning not sending a message wasn't an intentional choice. If this is true, perhaps the Absorber made that claim to justify a third message without giving away his role.

That said, I'm not entirely convinced that the message Wind got has to be from the Absorber. The message that JackieYellow and Pano got also could have been sent by the Absorber. Like I mentioned in my previous post, at first glance it seems we simply have 3 people sending messages, but that doesn't have to be that way. After all, Pano simply described her message as " It wasn't nonsense like the messages claimed on D1, but it also wasn't terribly important. Almost conversational, and quite short.". The description is a bit vague, but it doesn't sound like it's another Mr. Rodger's quote, meaning it's a bit presumptuous to say for sure that it's from the same person who messaged Starlight on N0, even if it might look that way at first glance.

That said, I think it's interesting that you claim to neither be an Absorber or a Mailman. This means one of two things:

1. We have three Mailman after all
2. You're lying about your role

I guess I'll just wait and see what Starlight has to say. For all I know I'm completely off the mark with this whole theory.

"Also wasn't there that whole problem where the mailman's letter only goes out at sunrise, so if a parrot visits them, there ain't enough time for them to write up a whole letter of their own? That'd probably happen even if a parrot visited the mailman who was too fraidy to send a letter on the zero night."

Ah, you see, I don't think this assumption is right. Looking at the wiki, it says the Parrot just uses the role of the target against him. It doesn't say anything about it being used on subsequent nights, which is a very specific condition and one that is present in the description of other roles that do have an effect on a subsequent night. Of course Negrek could have modified the role, but that seems like a very odd change that I don't think is necessary. After all, if there's enough time to let Namo and Sike know that they've been eliminated and for them to write death flavors, I don't see why there wouldn't be enough time for a Parrot to write a message. Especially when there are 48 hours and for most roles the Parrot's effect is applied automatically. ]]

 

[DawningWinds]

"Alerting people when they're wasting time and getting them to stop is a form of rerailment, especially if there's nothing more substantial to talk about."

She didn't get people to stop the unproductive conversation, though- yeah, the motivator convo stopped, but she seemed to see the amount of mailman speculation and the amount of time spent on it as a waste of time as well, at least then, and did not get people to stop that in anyone. The person who rerailed that was Chibi I believe.

2) DW's claim to be a JOAT is an interesting one. If this is true then it would mean she's innocent. Swapping JackieYellow and Wind doesn't really seem that beneficial to the Mafia unless one of the two is Mafia, but I didn't really get that impression of either of them.

There is of course the chance the DW is lying. I'm not necessarily saying that this is true, but I at least wanna keep the option open. She claimed the role right after people concluded that there was a swap, which seemed a bit opportunistic to me. It's also a good way to obtain a "legitimate" status among the group after being suspected of being mafia the prior day.

That said, nobody else is claiming to have done the swap, so this could be wrong. On the other hand if there's a legit town Bus Driver (so not a JOAT) I can also imagine that this person doesn't wanna reveal himself. A town Bus Driver can almost be as annoying to the mafia as a doctor, so speaking up would make you a likely target. Hell, if DW is mafia this can be even all be bait for the town Bus Driver to reveal himself.

...Why wouldn't I just claim a regular bus driver instead of coming up with three other fake redirections roles. Or claim a more varied JoaT; I think scum would expect eyebrows to be raised if all the abilities on a JoaT claim were kinda doing the same sort of think, wouldn't you?

Anyway, scum lose in one-for-one exchanges; with scum at smaller numbers, it benefits town. Town is bigger and can take more losses, which means a scum going down needs to insure more town deaths and/or another scum's survival to be worth it. It's not beneficial to bait out a bus driver. I'm always getting lynched here, so realistically, especially as the most voted player yesterday, I would probably assume town would vote me off before whoever counterclaimed me, and then the doc if they exist which they probably do might protect the bus driver claim because their the only somewhat-confirmed town.
So its not even one for one. It's one for nothing. Which is super skewed in town's favour so if that's what I'm doing y'all should start planning town's victory party cause scum clearly has no clue what they're doing.

 

[Dragonfree]

Ah, you see, I don't think this assumption is right. Looking at the wiki, it says the Parrot just uses the role of the target against him. It doesn't say anything about it being used on subsequent nights, which is a very specific condition and one that is present in the description of other roles that do have an effect on a subsequent night. Of course Negrek could have modified the role, but that seems like a very odd change that I don't think is necessary. After all, if there's enough time to let Namo and Sike know that they've been eliminated and for them to write death flavors, I don't see why there wouldn't be enough time for a Parrot to write a message. Especially when there are 48 hours and for most roles the Parrot's effect is applied automatically. ]]

[[I think you're confused on what Chibi is getting at; they're not talking about subsequent nights there at all.

I think the difference between death flavor and this hypothetical mailman parrot is that if as a GM you tell the parrot to write a message before the outcome of the night has been 100% determined, you're either leaking an unacceptable amount of info to them, or will actively mislead them. Suppose you get the parrot to write a message for the mailman they targeted; this tells them that the target is a mailman (already kind of giving the parrot an amount of power they shouldn't have). Now suppose that at the last minute a bus driver changes their mind about their action and makes it so that the parrot actually targets a non-mailman. Now either

- you tell the parrot actually they aren't going to be sending a message whoops, telling them not just that their target was a mailman but also that their target was messed with; a player shouldn't get to know this for reasons outside the natural scope of their role
- you don't tell the parrot this, and thus they assume they sent a message that they in fact never did at all

This just strikes me as a can of worms? I wouldn't want to GM this way. Mayyybe theoretically if someone got their message a little while after the start of the day; I know I got mine before.]]

 

[IFBench]

[I have no clue what's going on anymore, and am completely stumped. Only thing I can think of is that someone's lying about their message.]

 

[DawningWinds]

[I have no clue what's going on anymore, and am completely stumped. Only thing I can think of is that someone's lying about their message.]

[[windskull said their message came from an absorber I believe? And only one of yesterdays message claimers has explicitly said they are not an absorber- so we could have two mailmen and then Starlight could maybe be an absorber?]]

 

[Dragonfree]

[[I honestly don't think it's unlikely that there really are three mailmen, but it's also possible someone's lying about their message today, I suppose. I don't think it's likely Starlight was lying about getting a message N0; it was surprising to everyone for there to be a second message, so it'd be kind of a weird thing to lie about, I think.]]

 

[windskull]

[[Alright. I'm home. I was debating over how much to disclose at this point in time, but after looking at the users posts in isolation I've come to the conclusion that it would be better to put everything out in the open to generate discussion.

My role is a customized version of watcher. My action cannot be misdirected, but it comes with a major drawback to keep that from being overpowered. For the time being, I'll be keeping that drawback hidden, thank you very much, as I think my ability is more useful without that knowledge.

This is the message I received.

Yarr!! I be thinkin' that ol' Parrot theory goin' on may have some truthin' to it. I can send messages in bottles, like this 'un, but I held m'self back N0 because I could'nay tell who ter trust. Now, I do.

Last night, I watched myself, and was visited by two people: DawningWinds, and Starlight Aurate. DW has already confessed to being the swapper, which leaves starlight as the only possible person that could be the messager. The style fits tbh lol.

So the conclusion I am drawing here is that either
A. Starlight is being 100% honest in that message.
B. Starlight is an absorber and is lying about why she didn't send a message N1

It's also possible that starlight isn't a "Mailman" but instead some custom role with messaging capabilities. But I'm pretty certain it has to be one of these three options.

My next post will be going over a few notable things I noticed when reading over Starlight's posts.]]

 

[Inkedust]

[[Won't be able to properly comment for a bit, because of skool, but that changes things quite a lot. Going to reconsider several things in the meantime.]]

 

[DawningWinds]

[[Alright. I'm home. I was debating over how much to disclose at this point in time, but after looking at the users posts in isolation I've come to the conclusion that it would be better to put everything out in the open to generate discussion.

My role is a customized version of watcher. My action cannot be misdirected, but it comes with a major drawback to keep that from being overpowered. For the time being, I'll be keeping that drawback hidden, thank you very much, as I think my ability is more useful without that knowledge.

This is the message I received.

Yarr!! I be thinkin' that ol' Parrot theory goin' on may have some truthin' to it. I can send messages in bottles, like this 'un, but I held m'self back N0 because I could'nay tell who ter trust. Now, I do.

Last night, I watched myself, and was visited by two people: DawningWinds, and Starlight Aurate. DW has already confessed to being the swapper, which leaves starlight as the only possible person that could be the messager. The style fits tbh lol.

So the conclusion I am drawing here is that either
A. Starlight is being 100% honest in that message.
B. Starlight is an absorber and is lying about why she didn't send a message N1

It's also possible that starlight isn't a "Mailman" but instead some custom role with messaging capabilities. But I'm pretty certain it has to be one of these three options.

My next post will be going over a few notable things I noticed when reading over Starlight's posts.]]

[[The way its worded its very pirate-y as well, which should've suggested it was Starlight over me even before I claimed, since Archie is a piratey character; it looks like an intentional soft. I'm inclined to believe you're most likely telling the truth about the message-- I don't see a point to lying with how many there are as it would just bring scrutiny.

I recall Starlight completely discounting the Parrot theory before, so I'm kinda curious what lead her to change her mind here. I can see why a mailman would skip out on night 1 like Star's claim to have here; I probably wouldn't have done so with that role, but it could risk giving more extra information to just Mafia.]]

 

[NeoLurosa]

It was oddly quiet in this realm. Not a disagreeable sensory experience for Lurosa, so plagued by sounds and sensations, but not conducive to a successful outcome for her faction. And with that cocky boy whose body she was borrowing asleep, she had only herself to rely on with real certainty... She would have to speak up.

"I can't help but notice that there hasn't been that much discussion today. Perhaps that's understandable – I know many of our Voices were busy today. Certainly, mine and Neo's Voices have been! Still, there are no votes cast. That's not an agreeable result of nearly half our time's passing. Town cannot win without eliminating members of the Mafia! I understand our odds seem favourable with a Third Party eliminated, but we cannot afford to be complacent."


She eyed the absol whose Voice claimed to be a variant Watcher. Fascinating. Mutual verification by so many different participants... If this was a Mafia ploy, it was a terribly involved and bold one. Far more likely that those involved were Town, surely? And yet, one could never know until the votes fell that way, or else until a night's conclusion.

"I confess I am not at all confident of any one person's factional aberrance," Lurosa said, softly, "but we must determine someone for whom to vote, regardless. I had at first thought I might vote for Archie, for being a possible Absorber..." The espeon closed her eyes, and shuddered. "And yet... While there are several explanations for Archie's actions, is it not pristine 'flavour' that his messages should be messages in bottles, cast to sea? What's more, that style of writing is absolutely Archie's idiolect, as I determine it. It seems so very plausible, that it makes me suspect he truly is a 'Mailman'. Still, that is no proof that he is aligned with Town, yes? I am starting to believe there are most certainly two or more mailmen, and it is easy to suspect that one might be Mafia!"

Lurosa put a thoughtful paw to her mouth as she looked back on the instances where Archie had spoken. After the game truly began, he had contributed [[to gameplay]] on nine discrete instances... And to spout off an awful lot of smack-talk.

1. To claim he had received a message.
2. To suggest that there might be two mailmen, Town and Scum. Implicitly, he is claiming not to be one.
3. To affirm that the message he received was nonsense.
4. To speculate a little more on messages. Nothing critical.
5. To advocate abstaining, admit to no reads.
6. To make a few more comments on mailmen.
7. To flounder somewhat.
8. To defend his non-aggressive play, and cast some doubt on the 'recipient swap' while talking more about mailmen.
9. To make a few insubstantial comments and speculation on messages etc.

"I wish to look at other players individually before casting a firm vote, and I certainly hope to get the assent of Neo and his Voice before committing to a vote, but... At this time, I believe this sailor is possibly our Mafia Mailman or Absorber, and has thus far attempted to avoid controversy and attention, or getting caught on a wagon...

"I vote for Archie."

 

[NeoLurosa]

Huh? What was that? Ah, yes, Neo had some thoughts to relay from his Voice...

Lurosa cleared her throat.

"Ah, I have conferred with my partner for a moment, and we are sticking with the Archie vote for the time being, but we'd like to ask @IFBench and @AbraPunk to contribute more. We would ask the same of Rascal, but we know her Voice has fallen ill... Such a misfortune. But still, it is critical to Town's odds of success that nobody drifts along voiceless, yes? Perhaps after further conference and some rest we'll make a consensus 'readlist' to share."

[[Quick and lazy readlist is that we particularly like Wind and Dawning for Town right now as a result of this swapping business and have ambivalent thoughts about several others.]]

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jet let out a barking laugh. "Caught one of the mail guys in the act! Ha!" Then she remembered that the objective was to catch bad guys, not mail guys. But maybe Archie was a bad guy? It was hard to say, but the Espeon was making sense. ...Not that Jet was going to let herself get upstaged.


"I mighta figured out who the other mail guy is now! But I'm not telling!" This was definitely not a way to cover up the fact that she wasn't sure if it was a good idea to reveal or not.

 

[windskull]

[[Okay, the quotes below are things I found notable from Starlight's posts, mostly regarding mailmen and parrots.

"I should probably add... I got a message, too. It... didn't really make any sense. But it looks like we've got some mailmen at work here."

"Interesting..." Archie poised. ""So there might an innocent mailman, and a scum mailman? Well," he sighed as he shook his head. He looked at May. "I don't know about you, but whoever sent me my message... if there's some kind of code in it, they ciphered it too well. My message didn't look like instructions or real information of any kind. I think, whoever sent it was just letting everyone know that mailmen exist in this game, though they obviously don't want to reveal their identities."

[[My thoughts are pretty much summed up by Sike/Windskull. Looks like we've got two potential mailmen (or just one who can send multiple messages?) and so far, that's all we've got to go off of. Both Free and I claim our messages were not useful and had no context.]

[[Yo-ho! I only have 5 minutes and just caught up. Just popping in quick to say that no, my message was not the same as Free's. What I got was a quote from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. If there's a code or something in there, feel free to let me know, because I sure can't make sense of it lol. I'll be back later with a fuller flavourpost because RP-ing as Archie is too much fun.]]

Regarding Day One Mailman shenanigans.

[[Okay, correct me if I'm wrong, but the confusing thing about the Parrot would be that it would mess with the timing of phases? Because if a Parrot targeted a Mailman, both would need those actions in before end of the night, and then the Parrot would ALSO need to get their message in, correct?]]

Discussion of how a parrot would work after interacting with a mailman. This has since been discussed quite a bit, and I agree with Free's most recent take: if a parrot exists in the game and is able to mimic a mailman, they would have to be sending the same message. The alternative would have to be that they can't mimic mailmen for whatever reason.

[[Yeeeaaaah I know you and Abra had a spat but I think it was all just honest mistakes and I'm personally in favour of abstaining a vote for today unless we get anything more than running amok with these mailmen theories.]]

Lean towards abstain. Reasonable, as other people chose to abstain for similar reasons.

[[I guess the message senders probably wouldn't have a goal right now, would they? Other than to let everyone know that they exist? I can see how message sending would definitely be useful, but on N0 nobody knows anything about anyone yet.]]

This does line up with the reasoning that Star gave in her message.

But Wind and Neo both claim to have gotten messages meant for each other? One of them or Pano could be lying about receiving a message, of course, but it's still odd. Or maybe someone was Parrot'd last night, and that's why there's an extra message?]]

I don't want to say anything definitive until Star has had a chance to defend herself but the most recent posts just... idk, I find it weird that star was bringing up the possibility of one of the recipients lying when she would know there would be a third recipient. Maybe it was to coverherself and try to not come across as having a messaging ability? IDK, it's kind of tingling some alarm bells.

More player reads and a vote to come later tonight.]]

 

[DawningWinds]

[[I agree with others that Star being a mailman and casting so much doubt on the swap situation seems really weird. Obviously NeoLurosa is telling the truth about their message since they would otherwise not know about the swap, and she knows NeoLurosa was supposed to receive a message as well so from her perspective there should not really be a reason to doubt it at all. I understand her not wanting to say "this is 100% true" but I'd expect a her as town mailman to act like she believes it at least? Same thing with the third mailman- obviously she knows its gonna be true, so she has no reason to spend time casting doubt on it except to make others look bad.

I also still find Star pretty scummy after my previous ISO of her so I'm gonna join in on voting her.
Vote: Starlight Aurate
]]

 

[NeoLurosa]

[[Why would it be so important to not let the Mafia know that you're a Mailman that you'd mislead Town? Obfuscating roles in the early game is pro-Town, but not this sort of thing... The more I think about it, the more I feel this is scummy stuff. Firm vote.]]

 

[Virgil134]

[[ @DawningWinds @Dragonfree I'll reply to you guys' posts tomorrow. Ditto for my thoughts on all the recent developments.Completing the anniversary reviewing challenge took a bit more time than expected and writing up a big mafia post when it's almost 1:30 am is probably not a good idea 😅

Good night y'all. ]]

 

[Inkedust]

[[Okay, just got done with my lectures for today, so I can finally post my thoughts proper.

So my previous comments on finding Wind sus? Disregard that because her subsequent claims are not something that I find easily faked (see what I mean when I said that I'm bad at reading Wind?). The resultant information regarding Starlight is also more than enough for me to consider it a proper lead. I do want to hear Starlight out but she's also going to get my vote for the time being (which I may as well do now seeing that I can change it at any time).

Starlight's theory of a Mafia Mailman reminds me a lot of second anni's Mafia Doctor, where the scumteam gently pushed the theory so they could appear helpful. It also explains why I thought that the theory was weird to begin with (and likely a scum distraction), because much like a Doctor, someone's first thought when seeing a duplicate largely Town role is probably not "there has to be a Mafia version as well!" - at least I don't.

Third Mailman is still a massive big thonk on my end. Depending on how many messages we see N2 might clear a couple things up. For now my pet/joke theory is that it might be TP for le luls just like Namo's TP Bus Driver but don't stake anything on that.

As for other things I've noticed about other players...

Bench and Abra have been remarkably quiet, should probably pressure them to speak up more. Not necessarily sus, but definitely not very helpful. A player that has risen a brow from me is Virgil (holy shit, he just posted as I was typing up this post. Speak of the devil). He has been making decently large posts but something I noticed about them is that they're straight up unhelpful. He's not really making any new observations, just basic parroting of the information we already know with very simple "this is weird", or "I agree with this". It's something I definitely intend to look over more later.

Anyway, if only for the sake of pressure...
Vote: Archie]]