Alicornutopia

If Alicorn's statement was regarding how she picked roles in the previous game, I suggest that we not take it as hard evidence regarding this one. We have been enjoined to respect our gods' creativity.

Shoal, I think that is probably not the statement Aestrix was talking about, but I could be wrong.

I do see what you're saying about giving the power roles time to work, Aestrix. It's possible I could be convinced to agree on a day 1 no lynch. I'd have to think about it. Feel free to speak further on the subject.

Oh, that quote just made me think of a problem with the list thing. Some people might have really complicated or hard-to-explain powers that don't fall into broad categories like "investigative," so it'd be hard for people to summarize their roles without revealing levels of detail that they would have no way of knowing if they were not that role.

The stuff Aestrix is saying about giving the power roles time to work appeals to me, but I'm also trying to be less passive and flip-floppy this game, so I'm not going to change my vote just yet.

Huh, I didn't think Allicorn meant that she'd take requests in general by that sentence. I just thought she meant that you could ask for a nonspecific role that didn't take up as much time or was less complicated if you were busy/new to playing mafia not that you could be like "can I be a killer?" or "can I be Ehail?".

People who have hard-to-summarize roles can feel free to give an un-detailed version that does not explain everything perfectly. I guess it's possible that some people might have really ridiculous roles, and I guess those people would have to either invent a bunch of really ridiculously complicated roles to suggest everyone might have, or cut down their summary of their own roles, or both.

I agree with Paradox's interpretation of the Alicorn statement that Shoal quoted.

Alternatively, if their role is weird enough that they're unable to come up with sufficiently weird character roles to hide it with they could make a list but leave off their character name. So if everyone agrees to this we'll know that any town aligned player who die with a list without their roles name on it is a power role with some really unusual powers. Which is less information than we'd ideally want but might be better than nothing.

I agree to Paradox's variation.

anthusiasum wrote:@Aestrix yeah it was totally that first post you made. Yeah, sleep deprivation is a reasonable explanation. I feel that. The thing that bugged me was that I feel like if you had a helpful power role, you would have mentioned it so you could defend yourself. (You already have a reputation for being smart and Favored By The Gods, so roleclaiming would probably not make you more of a target than you already are).

I think it's too early for me to role claim, and I don't think this is a legitimate enough threat that I'm willing to pull out each and every stop. If I don't have a power, I'm removing safety murder room for the powered templates, and if I'm a powered template, I won't be revealing myself until I have a legitimate reason to, IE, something for the town to gain. So it hasn't factored into my arguments. If I think my alternative is death I might fess up about who I am, but I'm not that close to the murder knife yet. Besides, I like keeping it a mystery of if I can do anything useful at all; if I am a powered role, no one will be able to tell because I make it confusing, and if I am not a powered role, I maybe attract the attention of the mafia and die before someone more important. Of course there is the unspoken guarantee that this stance does help me if I'm mafia, too, of not changing my playstyle through games whichever role I get. It's up in the air if I'd get the acting right as a mafia member, though, so feel free to stare at me and see if I'm doing anything majorly different. The entirety of the first game is open for viewing.

Shoal wrote:btw aestrix, on mafaiscum they dont do random voting like this with picking a number. they do semi-random and usually it ends up that most people have 1-2 votes on them at the end of it and then they start discussing with each other and chatting with each other. it's just an icebreaker thing, not a "we will commit to the RNG because that's literally the worst we can do". we don't have to copy them, we can and should come up with our own way of breaking the ice, but we do need to break the ice somehow. I think kappa's make a long list of who might be in the game thing might be filling in for that.

I'm not terrified for my digital life here. The most prevalent emotion I'm feeling is annoyance, because the Random Number God is the one foe I can't argue against. If people were coming after me because I'm sketchy or because they do not think it would be a good idea to have me in the game, or they think I'm too hard to read and not worth the trouble, that would be fine. But it's not. It's a RNG, and I can't reason with a Random Number God. It's an exercise in frustration, that the entire reason I'm coming under fire is not because of anything I've done, but because the Random Number God said so.

I understand that you consider it an icebreaker, but I am not convinced everyone does. Thus, I will fight like a cornered badger to stay alive if it comes to that.

I do not personally consider the day 1 random kill an icebreaking technique. My reasons for it are as stated - making maximal use of our opportunities to kill people who are less likely to be murderers than the murderers' victims. Other people with other reasons may behave differently from me.

Kappa wrote:Also, her post contains a claim with no citation that "Alicorn admitted that our roles are not up to the random number god, but picked based on what would be interesting and unexpected". I have skimmed the first posts of this and the OOC thread and found no such statement, and I don't remember hearing one. I acknowledge that I could be forgetting and failing to find it. Can someone find the citation, please?

Kappa, I asked Alicorn in the mafia IRC channel to what degree role assignment was random vs not last game, and she said that it was entirely nonrandom (it should be in the IRC chatlog doc, but I'm having trouble finding it, sorry; maybe it didn't get updated?). And then this game, she even asked people to make requests. So I think that going by peoples' real-life skills and personalities is a pretty reasonable strategy here, actually.

Re: "mother's grave": Whoops. It stood out as a one of those things that might be hinting at role stuff, like when 63 said they were "rusty" last game, so when DanielH pointed it out I didn't want to let it drop, in case it made more sense to people who know more about Elcenia than I do. >_<

Anyway, the list thing seems like a good idea. Last night I stayed up waayy past my normal bedtime in order to finish reading Blood, so now I've got that and Summons under my belt, at least. I made a short list before, but I'll make a longer, official one here. Some of these will be based on my impressions of the characters from the stories, others I will randomly click on names in the dramatis personae list and make up something plausible-sounding based on their entry.
Ugh, I'm having a hard time thinking of possible powers. I ended up with a ton of duplicates. But, based on the sheer amount of mind magic in Elcenia, though, it seems really likely that there are some protown factions with private comms?

I think Alphabeta is being suspicious and Aestrix has plenty of votes currently, so I'm going to vote Alphabeta because maybe that will pressure him to make a list or at least elaborate why he thinks that the lists help scum more than town.

Lastly, having now read Blood, it occurs to me that maybe the scum are Barashin demons? I'm not sure how it would work - it would be kindof a weird half serial killer, half cult mechanic more than a mafia - but something like... the demon is a killer, but they can also select someone to possess. Whoever they possess then becomes a demon and their wincon changes and the original person playing the demon dies. Now the new demon pretends they are still town and keeps their original abilities, plus getting killing/possession powers. Demons would only die for real if they are lynched. And maybe to keep some continuity of "consciousness", the dead demon players and the live demon player share private comms?

Postscript - It took me two hours to write this all up, jeez. It looks like there have been a bunch of posts in the interim but I'll catch up with them after rather than spending more time no this one. And by after, I mean later tonight; I have a bunch of errands I have to go run >_<

My current inclination is something along the lines of "people who are trying to make me be sociable must die," but I'll probably change my mind about that tomorrow. For now, no lynch, because I never made any precommitments so I can back out of killing Aestrix if I want to, and she seems convincing.