Alicornutopia

My alignment hasn't changed this game, but I can talk more about what it was like last game if you want.

When I started last game, I was a vanilla townie named Alex. My goal was to figure out who the scum were and I had no idea how to do that but I tried to get to know people in the thread and bumbled around like the rest of the town. As a townie, I could win even if I died, and being night killed would have been a worthy "taking one for the town" -- better me hit than a power role. Then in night 1 Daniel targeted me.

And then I had a new win condition: I won if everyone in the town was friends with Daniel or if nothing could prevent this from occuring. The best way to achieve my new win condition was to not tell anybody that my win condition had changed. If I said there was a Chelsea or if I started asking if there was a Keziah who could degook me or anything like that, I would have been playing to my old win condition. My new win condition was that there should be no suspicion whatsoever on Daniel so that he could get as many friends as he could and then we could all stop fighting and be friends.

It is possible that when Daniel was targetted by Alpha he still could have achieved his win condition (everyone alive is one of alpha's friends) by targetting Alpha back because Alpha didn't have any attention of making everyone Alpha's friends or being Chelsea 2.0, but Daniel didn't realise that until hindsight so things happened that you saw in public.

And then Alpha said that Chelsea was spotted, and kuuskytkolme said that I could prove Alpha was lying by voting Daniel: and then my win condition required me to vote Daniel because voting him gave me the biggest chance to clear him. Of course, it failed, and my vote wasn't really counted but because the mod only does final votecounts, not intermittend vote counts, you couldn't see that our votes weren't being counted until the end.


tl;dr: If someone has been possessed by a demon and their new win condition is something like "you win when all the town is dead but a demon possessed person is alive" (this requiring the demon to successfully hop from person to person undetected until the very end, which I think is a good guess loosely based on how serial killer win conditions are often worded and how chelsea worked last game), then it is against their win condition to say that their win condition has changed because then we would just kill them. They probably can't tell us with their words. But they can show us with their actions. If we require a lot of activity from the town in general it will be harder for the demon to hide.

preview-edit: yeah I was talking about last game but i already typed all this out and maybe it will help.

This post, like Gaul, will be divided into three parts.

I. Responses to people (and by people I guess I mean modrony...) (Since we've started voting I'm not going to spoiler my responses.)

modrony wrote:They have voted with pistachi0n every night since the first one. I am not sure in which direction I should read that, but it is weird.

It looks like you're wrong about this. On Day 1 I voted to lynch Aestrix but pistachi0n voted for No Lynch. This isn't a particularly good example because almost everyone voted for either Aestrix or No Lynch (I see that you were an exception to that), and which of those they voted for depended mainly on whether people were online right before the vote ended when Aestrix "roleclaimed". You and kappa *also* voted with pistachi0n on Day 2 and Day 3. So really all you're saying here is that both pistachi0n and I voted for Paradox yesterday. I think I made my reasons for doing so clear, and I still think they were valid.

modrony wrote:@ jalapeno_dude
It was not pistachi0n.

Thank you. I will count "lying low" as slightly less suspicious (though I think Shoal is right that we should be suspicous of people who say almost nothing).

Your quotes from Alphabeta are confusing to me. You cite him saying "Kappa is fallible and makes mistakes - we should remember that of all our community leaders." as clearing you. I agree that this would be plausible on its own. But then he voted for you later that day! I doubt very much he would have voted for you if he'd actually confirmed you as innocent. I continue to think you are Leekath and Town but making bad arguments like this does not make me happy.

modrony wrote:Time to vote then.
vote jalapeno_dude
For being better with crypts than I am and still advocating lists.
I simply do not see how those two things go together.

I think you are both making an incorrect deduction and misunderstanding my reasons for advocating lists. I know the technical side of crypto because I am a math nerd and also TA a class that talks about it. I don't see how this has anything to do with being paranoid about information disclosure. If you're going to hide things, then sure, do it right. But that doesn't necessarily mean you *should* hide things.

I am sure I made this argument better in previous posts, but I don't want to go back through them to grab quotes. Instead I will try to reproduce my reasons for advocating listposts from memory. First off, I was not the person to suggest the listposts in the first place. That seems to have been MTC, who everyone agrees was Town up until the point she was possessed. So you are objecting to my advocating listposts starting here, on Day 3.

But let's talk about the example you posted about Alphabeta/BSS. I used slightly different evidence than you to come to the same conclusion. (And then DIDN'T POST IT, because I'm not a *complete* idiot about infosec.) I am going to spell this out in great detail in order to make my point more clearly. (And now I am going back through old posts in the thread despite my just saying I wouldn't do that.)
1. BSS's listpost. (Posted Day 1)
2. BSS's defense of alphabeta (also on Day 1).
(Based on that, Shoal, taking BSS's listpost at face value, already concluded and publically announced that Alphabeta/BSS were Mallyn/Rithka or Keo/Kanaat on Day 1! I had forgotten about that, and noticing it again makes me a little more suspicious of Shoal..)
3. MTC roleclaimed as Rithka on Day 2.

It was therefore obvious to me from this point on, and I assumed it was obvious to *everyone* from this point on, that Alphabeta/BSS were either Keo/Kanaat or Talyn/Leekath. (You raise an interesting point about the misspelling of Talyn in BSS's rolepost, which I hadn't considered). Then once you roleclaimed it was clear they were Keo/Kanaat.

So you are getting angry at me for supposedly enabling a set of deductions which were made long before I called on people to post listposts. I am confused.

______________________________________

II. My suspicions about everyone.

The people left are:

anthusiasm: Listened to me when I asked them to make a listpost. Seems to have been the first person to vote for michaelblume. Other than that I can't think of a single thing about them in this game. So I guess I'm reading them as turtling.
futurevision: Also one of the late listpost-posters. I have not updated my suspicions of them since here, where I found them suspicious but probably not mafia. Survived a lynch, so either dragon or light-protected.
jalapeno_dude: I'm Town, and wish my role had more powers than it actually does.
kappa: I agree with modrony that Alphabeta cleared them. Potential target for demonic possession for this reason.
michaelblume: We assumed he was a dragon. Now it looks like he could have been light-protected. We seem to have agreed to have stopped worrying about him, which makes him a good target for demonic possession.
modrony: It's complicated. Like futurevision, "suspicious but probably Mafia" is a good summation of my opinion here. I wish their powers had actually been helpful, but at least so far they don't seem to have been.
Paradox: Has been very quiet, and seemed extremely panicked about dying yesterday, which is why I voted for them. My exchange with modrony has made me slightly less suspicious of quiet people, though.
Shoal: Seems to be acting exactly the same as last game. Reading them as Definitely Town, but I thought the same last game so I could just be really bad at reading them. I do think the outing Alphabeta/BSS (mentioned above) and the breaking of their precommitment were both slightly suspicious.
Tamien: Made a terrible pun. I remember them as very quiet but it looks like this has only been true in the last week or so (and they said they were camping).
Tulip: I am reading her as Town because she has been very transparent about explaining her thought processes.

___________________________________

III. My vote

Either I should be trying to kill the demon or kill mafia members. If I was trying to kill the demon, I would be suspicious of people who everyone believes to be town, and/or people who have built-in excuses to be quiet. This comprises kappa and michaelblume, primarily, and actually the more I think about it the more worried I am that michaelblume is possessed. This requires some assumptions about how demonic possession works which seem plausible but which I can't back up. I don't think I'm going to vote for michaelblume now, because the mafia seem like a bigger threat right now and because I'd feel dumb if he was not, in fact, possessed. But I could probably be convinced to join a bandwagon against him.

So, that leaves mafia. If I take Aestrix at face value, there are 2-4 mafia members left alive, almost certainly 4. (Believing there are fewer than four while still believing Aestrix would require either Rithka or Revenn to have been Mafia before being possessed, which seems unlikely, but I'm mentioning it for completeness's sake.) Kappa is out. I still don't feel comfortable voting for futurevision or modrony, and if I believe futurevision I should also believe that michaelblume isn't (currently) mafia. I'm out.

After all that, despite consciously trying to make myself less suspicious of people who are being quiet, I still find myself most suspicious of Paradox. I currently suspect them to be either mafia or some Town powerrole. Just based on remaining numbers, the former seems much more likely, but I am prepared to accept input from modrony or a defensive roleclaim as proof that I'm wrong. As per Alicorn's request to put my vote on a new line:

I vote for Paradox.

Whew. Sorry about the length, but I think this has helped me get my thoughts in order for the endgame we seem to be approaching.

EDIT: Fixed a few grammar things that were really bothering me. The only contentful thing was changing "fewer than two" to "fewer than four", which was just a typo. I think Alicorn said we were free to make minor tweaks like this, right?

I have not had the brain lately to do threadbinges to update my suspicions properly, nor to look into who may have had noteworthy connections with pistachi0n. I keep opening the thread and finding where to start up from and then my attention slides off of it like water off of some sort of superhydrophobic surface. Bluh. Because of this, I don't feel like I can post a proper suspect list, sorry. Some nonordered suspicions since I can't seem to make my brain do the pairwise ordering algorithm right now: modrony's actions now all make sense to me and i no longer find them suspect. i'm really not sure why we're listening to futurevision about themself or michaelblume, they seem to be in cahoots and questionably town-aligned and mysteriously not dead? (iirc pistachi0n was frustrated with michaelblume's inactivity and was one of the most vocal about wanting him replaced? i'd go back and try to evaluate whether it seems like a scum connection but brain). anthusiasm i cannot seem to work up an opinion on, nor tulip. maybe they are suspicious? my main opinion on kappa is i liked it when he talked a lot and i'm sad she stopped talking so much. his thoughts helped me put mine in order several times. shoal feels sort of perky and friendly and helpful and i feel townish about them. jalapeno_dude i am also having a hard time developing an opinion about, i have a lot of feelings like he is helpful but also kindof needlessly antagonistic towards modrony? but modrony was being kindof confusing and sowing confusion is scummy so i'm not sure that being frustrated with modrony is scummy really. oh and i guess paradox exists. i have no idea what to say about paradox. i think my general categories of people are as follows - townish: modrony, shoal. sketchy townish: kappa, jalapeno_dude. no clear opinion: paradox, tulip, anthusiasm. sketchy: futurevision, michaelblume.

i donno who i wanna vote for yet. sorry if i ought to have put any of that in a spoiler box, but honestly i'm kindof finding the "every post is in a spoiler box" thing pretty annoying and it makes it hard for me to read the thread, so screw spoiler boxes right now.

(oh god jalapeno_dude ninja'd me with a huge post, i'll post this and then read that and maybe it'll help me jumpstart my brain at all about this game)

Tamien wrote:(oh god jalapeno_dude ninja'd me with a huge post

I'm sorry! :(

Also, full disclosure, I just fixed a couple of typos in my above post. Alicorn said we were okay to do this, right?

jalapeno_dude wrote:I'm sorry! :(

hahah it's okay, it was a good post. i'm not sure i'm convinced to vote paradox on its basis but i like how you laid out your reasoning and it made me feel more townish about you.

jalapeno_dude wrote:(Based on that, Shoal, taking BSS's listpost at face value, already concluded and publically announced that Alphabeta/BSS were Mallyn/Rithka or Keo/Kanaat on Day 1! I had forgotten about that, and noticing it again makes me a little more suspicious of Shoal..)

I think if I were mafia I'd probably have some private thread to have put that thought in but then I thought that last game about the mafia and they didn't so I dunno. but MTC and wolffreak said they had one so maybe alpha/bss had one and the mafia too maybe though I doubt anyone will come forward.

I guess at the time I figured it was so obvious that it wasn't worth refraining to mention.

sorry for only responding to the tiny part that was about me but it's late and this was easy to reply to. but vague reply to the rest of it is mainly agree i think and I'm glad you got your thoughts out there to share them with us.

Further suspicion thoughts:

My suspicion of futurevision has increased since whenever I last talked about my suspicions, but all I wrote down in my spreadsheet was "I just have a FEELIGN" (typo and all). It was something about a phrasing or something? Anyway. My FEELIGNs are not always right but they are nonzero evidence at least if you're me. (The worst is when they're right but incomplete, like how I had a strong feeling PDV was on the level about being Revenn. Well, yes, technically that was true, it's just that being Revenn did not turn out to mean we shouldn't have killed him...)

My head is really fuzzy and I don't know what to do.

feelings good. bss yesterday feelings mtc. kappa feelings futurevision. shoal feelings paradox but probably futurevision too.

i mean not feelings 100% accurate but sometimes feelings mean something pattern matching little details something...yeah it's bedtime.