Jack Attack Mafia (Day 5)

[Epignosis]

The TSP commentary on Pawn / sprityo made no sense to me. I don't understand why TSP thinks I'm mafia or more specifically why I'm mafia with JJJ.

I still think Alison is full of shit. A "hard miller" trying to get the cops to check the same person is asinine.

I don't get why Colin isn't using his ability. You can stop a kill with a role block.

nutella looks civilian.

sabie isn't annoying.

Hally asked a question that I'll answer later if I have to.

[Epignosis]

[VOTE: Alison] aubergine

[JaggedJimmyJay]

Colin could theoretically block the redirecting role, allow both alignment checkers through, and potentially expose that player when the results are successful. Or stop a kill.

[mention]ColinIsCool[/mention] please use your role my dude. You know now who to definitely avoid targeting.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

Colin holstering still strikes me as a positive indicator of caution. One needn't toy with WIFOM there, particularly on Night 2 -- it makes some sense that a guy is afraid of having his block swerved into a cop's ass.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

Epignosis, what is my alignment?

[Epignosis]

Epignosis, what is my alignment?

Civilian.

[ColinIsCool]

Colin could theoretically block the redirecting role, allow both alignment checkers through, and potentially expose that player when the results are successful. Or stop a kill.

@ColinIsCool please use your role my dude. You know now who to definitely avoid targeting.

My concern since claiming has been that the redirector will push me into blocking one of the alignment checkers or useful town roles but, yeah, it does force the scum to make a hard choice on who to do that to, so I probably will start.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

Epignosis, what is my alignment?

Civilian.

What sold you?

[Long Con]

I find Alison's hard dedication to a POE with her in it to be a possible ploy for cred. I found some of her recent posts too rigid at best, revealingly adverby at times, and suspicious at worst.

[VOTE: alison] aubergine

[JaggedJimmyJay]

revealingly adverby

[Epignosis]

Epignosis, what is my alignment?

Civilian.

What sold you?

I don't think your take no prisoners attitude here is a sham.

[Epignosis]

JaggedJimmyJay, what's my alignment?

[Epignosis]

I find Alison's hard dedication to a POE with her in it to be a possible ploy for cred. I found some of her recent posts too rigid at best, revealingly adverby at times, and suspicious at worst.

[VOTE: alison] aubergine

Someone nominate this post. I always forget how.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

I do not think Alison was making sound arguments on a few points:

1) Calling for both alignment checkers to target one player frees up a mafia redirector to interfere with someone else. She justified this by referring to having the co-alignment check be on a "town target", as in one everyone agrees upon, instead of a "individual choice target". This reasoning is not good on two fronts. We're getting a's and b's:

~~~~ a) There's no actual guiding principle that makes a generally-agreed target a better target than an individual choice target.
~~~~ b) Even if there was, the gains would not be sufficient to justify freeing up the mafia redirector.

2) Scolding the game at large for voicing some concerns about KitsuShel, particularly via team dynamics with her, while Kitsu had zero votes and Alison had four votes. This means her scolding did not reflect the circumstances of the game at hand, were largely unnecessary, and eventually ended in her calling for a POE-centric chop when the present wagons were already POE-centric.

~~~~ a) If Kitsu is town, this doesn't justify anything. Given that Alison's dialogue wasn't necessary in the first place, the only other apparent motivation for its existence that I view as sensible would be a mafia Alison trying to pocket a town Kitsu.
~~~~ b) If Kitsu is mafia, then it isn't hard to break through the generic WIFOM and see Alison trying to "play optimally" by securing her teammate's posture in a town core.

So either way that bugs me.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

JaggedJimmyJay, what's my alignment?

Mafia. To borrow your own language from earlier in the game, for much of this phase I've thought you "looked caught".

But keep going. I'm listening.

[Epignosis]

at this stage in the game I am not going to believe any late miller claims. anyone who hasn't claimed miller yet will be assumed to not be a miller and any red checks on them by SD will be treated as legitimate

PoE, ordered from most to least preferred exes

Colin > epi > TSP > nutella

Just realized that we should probably focus investigates on the nonmiller slots so SD and Wisp can both be on them. I can't remember if Epi claimed miller - he would be a good investigation target if not.

I am not a miller. I can be checked, as you've noted. Why are you voting for me?

[JaggedJimmyJay]

[VOTE: Alison] aubergine

[JaggedJimmyJay]

Whatever one judges Alison's alignment to be relative to this point about investigating non-miller claims and currently voting one -- the point is appropriate. Epignosis can be checked and we have two checkers.

[Alison]

All of Alison’s insistence that we just run through the same couple people and worry about the same couple people for basically the rest of the game feels strongly anti-town to me. You don’t win games by deciding who the scum is D2 and resting on those laurels. And as someone in the POE who is town, and who has some doubts on other people in the POE being scum, I’m telling you it’s a good idea to keep other suspects in mind.

You do that after you eliminate the POE and sort them. If you bring up some tinfoil theory about a deepwolf, exe them, they flip town, then the POE is still uncleared and you've progressed nowhere. If you confirm the POE to be town (which we have room to do), then you can approach hunting for the deepwolf in a more structured manner.

[Alison]

I see there's a lot of other poorly reasoned posts regarding me but I don't really have the time to deal with them because something pressing has come up so I'll come back in a few hours and respond to them

[sabie12]

I find Alison's hard dedication to a POE with her in it to be a possible ploy for cred. I found some of her recent posts too rigid at best, revealingly adverby at times, and suspicious at worst.

[VOTE: alison] aubergine

Yes I remember also mentioning earlier that I felt like alison is being pushy about people doing things a certain way or voting a specific set of people and she has been resistive to people deviating from that. Like she has a plan for how it all should all play out or how she wants it all to play out. I think pushing checkers to check the same person and reveal who they're checking may not be in best interest of town.

[ColinIsCool]

All of Alison’s insistence that we just run through the same couple people and worry about the same couple people for basically the rest of the game feels strongly anti-town to me. You don’t win games by deciding who the scum is D2 and resting on those laurels. And as someone in the POE who is town, and who has some doubts on other people in the POE being scum, I’m telling you it’s a good idea to keep other suspects in mind.

You do that after you eliminate the POE and sort them. If you bring up some tinfoil theory about a deepwolf, exe them, they flip town, then the POE is still uncleared and you've progressed nowhere. If you confirm the POE to be town (which we have room to do), then you can approach hunting for the deepwolf in a more structured manner.

But the POE is a fluid group — obviously for me because I’m in it, and for others because new information is revealed or indicated over time. You’re acting like you’ve settled on who all the possible suspects could or should be by the end of D2, when I (and I suspect every other player in the game) hasn’t, because why would they? This isn’t nearly as stitched up as it would need to be in order for your view to make sense.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

POE is not and has never been something that cannot change. Even dear departed Nanook knew that.

Anyone that isn't continuously trying to find civilian indicators among players in the POE is either a mafioso or a civilian that wishes to lose the game. The entire argument you're making, Alison, hinges on the actual execution of a player outside the POE pool. If that happens and there is a town flip, then that is obviously a problem.

Voicing concerns? Sharing tinfoil? Saying "I'm not sure about this?" -- those are not only fine, they're necessary. Waiting until the present POE pool is cleared and the game is not over to start working out the alternative scenarios is precisely the recipe to lose to any deeply embedded mafioso. It's silly.

Alison is a mafioso. None of this makes sense. She is a logician, and this is clearly not logical.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

I mean, if we truly adopted that mindset then Epignosis would never have become a suspect, let alone a player with 4 votes right now. He spent much of the game outside the suspect pool. He didn't find himself there now merely because Long Con and nutella checked out as civilians. The game changed.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

[mention]Long Con[/mention] your hunting has taken a nosedive since Wisp vouched for you. That is the opposite of ideal. Please don't give me cause to worry about you.

[Long Con]

Now I don't have to push myself to Force Reed's that I don't know if I believe in. Do what you want.

Remind me again what the difference is between having a list of people you think our town and a list of people you think could be bad, and POE?

[Long Con]

*are

[KitsuShel]

I’m having a hard time narrowing down my personal POE. My gut is saying that if Epi is mafia, then Alison is town (and vice versa). Same with TSP and Colin. I think one of them is and the other is not, but I can’t finger which one is which.

Also, anyone saying fine, check me (I know I’m guilty of that as well) is not taking into account any misdirectors or the possibility that the don might have an alignment mask.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

Remind me again what the difference is between having a list of people you think our town and a list of people you think could be bad, and POE?

They "could" be the same under some circumstances. POE is a process by which player(s) deliberately seek civilian reads without necessarily worrying as much about finding people suspicious -- and it's usually meant to be some target size. A certain number of mischops available + number of mafia alive = correct size of POE pool. In a closed setup that's more ambiguous. It's why I was looking for a POE pool of four -- that leaves room for three mafia and one mischop. It's probably a conservative estimate.

[Long Con]

Thanks.

[Alison]

Hi all. I'm free now and will be responding to the accusations laid out against me. I think they are poorly reasoned, and I will show you why.

[Alison]

Like, what good is the “consensus POE” (if there is one) if I’m in it? Because I know that’s a dead end. I don’t need you to tell me who to look at it if I’m supposed to be one of those people.

Reminder: I am in the consensus POE. I will try to get other people within that POE executed first because I know I am town, but it doesn't stop me from believing in it. I am happy to be sorted within the context of that POE, either by investigation or by execution, because I believe that this gives information to the town that will help it win. Town's biggest advantage this game is the hefty list of confirmed townies that it has. This list will only shorten as the days go by and scum make their kills. Therefore it is important to rapidly sort out the alignments of those not within the confirmed town pool, balancing speed with surety, in order to root out the mafia.

[Alison]

which is why I'm saying it, so it's my legacy when I flip town

Very well. I promise to take that legacy seriously if you should end up chopped/killed and flip town.

Why do you suggest Epignosis would not help chop you?

because he has an established meta of not bussing? you know, the meta that you told me about?

You keep raising this point in defense of yourself. Who are my teammates?

Colin and TSP. Outside chance of JJJ and Sabie.

[Alison]

@ColinIsCool could you please describe the progression of your thoughts about KitsuShel since you first arrived?

Very blendy in general. I don’t have a meta read to rely on so I have to judge hunting/contributions/tone and nothing there inspires me to confidence. I gave KitsuShel a clear earlier in the game because of the notion that claiming miller without knowing what it’s called would be the kind of mistake a townie would make, but I think now that that is a bad reason to clear somebody. I struggle to find a reason to townread her.

have you not ever looked at kitsu's posts and go "this is obvious town"?

This is the only time Alison has directly addressed Colin in the last 36 hours or so. I'm not seeing much effort from her to sort this slot beyond "chop it".

I agree.

[Alison]

The TSP commentary on Pawn / sprityo made no sense to me. I don't understand why TSP thinks I'm mafia or more specifically why I'm mafia with JJJ.

I still think Alison is full of shit. A "hard miller" trying to get the cops to check the same person is asinine.

I don't get why Colin isn't using his ability. You can stop a kill with a role block.

nutella looks civilian.

sabie isn't annoying.

Hally asked a question that I'll answer later if I have to.

When there exists the presence of a mafia role that can confound investigative results, doubling up on the investigatives in order to be extra sure about the certainty of the results is optimal. I'd rather have 1 check that we can bet the game on (like nutella) than 2 checks, neither of whom we can ascertain the validity of. This is better both in general and in the specific context of trying to narrow down the POE.

[Alison]

Colin holstering still strikes me as a positive indicator of caution. One needn't toy with WIFOM there, particularly on Night 2 -- it makes some sense that a guy is afraid of having his block swerved into a cop's ass.

This logic is faulty. If Colin is mafia here, he obviously is lying about holstering because he doesn't have a roleblock at all. (If he was a mafia roleblocker, he'd have blocked Wisp or Spacedaisy, and they would have gotten no result.)

If Colin is town -> he holsters because he doesn't want to accidentally block the cop -> he claims to holster.

If Colin is mafia -> he doesn't have a real roleblock -> he claims to holster.

So we've established that Colin would claim to holster either way, and so his claim to holster is not an indication of his alignment. An actual good way to test his claim is as follows: ask Hally to use the "vote steal" ability she has to steal his vote from him, and then ask Colin to block her. Hally has claimed that she doesn't care about using that ability. We've also established that if Colin was a mafia roleblocker, he'd probably have blocked Wisp or SD. So, if Colin blocks Hally, then he clears himself as town. If he is mafia, he can't block Hally and will get his vote stolen, outing himself as wolf. If mafia Colin kills Hally in order to avoid outing himself as wolf, then Wisp and SD get to survive another night and give another investigation result, while Colin has still done nothing to clear himself and is still under suspicion.

What do you think of that plan?

[Alison]

Colin holstering still strikes me as a positive indicator of caution. One needn't toy with WIFOM there, particularly on Night 2 -- it makes some sense that a guy is afraid of having his block swerved into a cop's ass.

This logic is faulty. If Colin is mafia here, he obviously is lying about holstering because he doesn't have a roleblock at all. (If he was a mafia roleblocker, he'd have blocked Wisp or Spacedaisy, and they would have gotten no result.)

If Colin is town -> he holsters because he doesn't want to accidentally block the cop -> he claims to holster.

If Colin is mafia -> he doesn't have a real roleblock -> he claims to holster.

So we've established that Colin would claim to holster either way, and so his claim to holster is not an indication of his alignment. An actual good way to test his claim is as follows: ask Hally to use the "vote steal" ability she has to steal his vote from him, and then ask Colin to block her. Hally has claimed that she doesn't care about using that ability. We've also established that if Colin was a mafia roleblocker, he'd probably have blocked Wisp or SD. So, if Colin blocks Hally, then he clears himself as town. If he is mafia, he can't block Hally and will get his vote stolen, outing himself as wolf. If mafia Colin kills Hally in order to avoid outing himself as wolf, then Wisp and SD get to survive another night and give another investigation result, while Colin has still done nothing to clear himself and is still under suspicion.

What do you think of that plan?

Hm, no, the redirector can target Colin and make him block other people. So that plan doesn't work. Cancel that. My previous point about Colin's holstering being NAI still stands.

[Alison]

I find Alison's hard dedication to a POE with her in it to be a possible ploy for cred. I found some of her recent posts too rigid at best, revealingly adverby at times, and suspicious at worst.

[VOTE: alison] aubergine

Please never try to "adverb read" me again. That is a horrible way of playing.

Playing rigidly is correct if you suspect the mafia is POE clamped. Do you have a reason to believe they aren't?

[Long Con]

Hey, you know me, I just like to go with the flow. You're in the POE, so I guess my vote is pretty legit. Sorry if I sprinkle in my own gut reads while I vote you.

[Alison]

I do not think Alison was making sound arguments on a few points:

1) Calling for both alignment checkers to target one player frees up a mafia redirector to interfere with someone else. She justified this by referring to having the co-alignment check be on a "town target", as in one everyone agrees upon, instead of a "individual choice target". This reasoning is not good on two fronts. We're getting a's and b's:

~~~~ a) There's no actual guiding principle that makes a generally-agreed target a better target than an individual choice target.
~~~~ b) Even if there was, the gains would not be sufficient to justify freeing up the mafia redirector.

2) Scolding the game at large for voicing some concerns about KitsuShel, particularly via team dynamics with her, while Kitsu had zero votes and Alison had four votes. This means her scolding did not reflect the circumstances of the game at hand, were largely unnecessary, and eventually ended in her calling for a POE-centric chop when the present wagons were already POE-centric.

~~~~ a) If Kitsu is town, this doesn't justify anything. Given that Alison's dialogue wasn't necessary in the first place, the only other apparent motivation for its existence that I view as sensible would be a mafia Alison trying to pocket a town Kitsu.
~~~~ b) If Kitsu is mafia, then it isn't hard to break through the generic WIFOM and see Alison trying to "play optimally" by securing her teammate's posture in a town core.

So either way that bugs me.

1a) Yes there is. Deciding something by consensus prevents people from "going rogue" and targeting someone completely irrelevant out of paranoia (I have seen it happen and I have seen games thrown because of it, and if you've played a bunch of mafia games, you probably have to) or simply because of a misunderstanding of the game state. Furthermore, the interactions created by the discussion on who to consolidate the investigation on can often reveal people's alignment.

1b) Freeing up the mafia redirector to do what? Hally isn't using her role. You don't have a redirectable role. Colin, if he is town, is holstering. Is the mafia redirector going to take a random shot in the dark at some player who might well have an inapplicable role or be holstering that night? Be my guest. Unless the mafia redirector blindly lands a shot on a player who A) has a targetable role, B) is using that role tonight, and C) can cause great disaster by misaiming their role, we have lost nothing. I am perfectly fine with accepting that risk - it is not as great as you make it out to be.

2) I oppose and will continue to oppose actions that attempt to undermine the integrity of the towncore. I have no reason to suspect the towncore is invalid at this stage in the game, and every reason to suspect that the mafia are clamped in the POE and have strong incentives to cast shade on those in the towncore to try to widen the POE. Voicing suspicion of Kitsu means we give less credence to her voice and waste time chasing shadows (like the Epi/Alison/Kitsu team). I am not scolding the thread for suspecting Kitsu because I am afraid Kitsu is going to get executed. I am doing so because I believe that actions which attempt to undermine or cast shade on the towncore are scummy. I will not see a game that we had in the bag disintegrate because of town infighting and paranoia.

2a) See above for the harms of this song-and-dance about town Kitsu.

2b) Feel free to suspect Kitsu once we've cleared out the POE. Nobody is stopping you and I'm openly admitting to you that my protection of the towncore ends when the POE has been cleared. So the only thing wolf Alison gains from protecting wolf Kitsu here is to... ensure that Kitsu doesn't come under suspicion until [Epi/Alison/TSP/Colin] has been killed? I don't think it's ever correct to execute Kitsu before those 4 players, from the point of view of the town in that scenario. So what exactly am I gaining here as scum?

[Alison]

I mean, if we truly adopted that mindset then Epignosis would never have become a suspect, let alone a player with 4 votes right now. He spent much of the game outside the suspect pool. He didn't find himself there now merely because Long Con and nutella checked out as civilians. The game changed.

Epi was never the towncore of anyone except nanook. I would have shielded him if he had been soft cleared in the way Kitsu was, and people tried to attack him because he hadn't done anything. The difference is that suspecting Epi doesn't undermine the integrity of the POE, which is what I oppose.

[Alison]

at this stage in the game I am not going to believe any late miller claims. anyone who hasn't claimed miller yet will be assumed to not be a miller and any red checks on them by SD will be treated as legitimate

PoE, ordered from most to least preferred exes

Colin > epi > TSP > nutella

Just realized that we should probably focus investigates on the nonmiller slots so SD and Wisp can both be on them. I can't remember if Epi claimed miller - he would be a good investigation target if not.

I am not a miller. I can be checked, as you've noted. Why are you voting for me?

Because if you are executed today, I will not be executed today.

[ColinIsCool]

Like, what good is the “consensus POE” (if there is one) if I’m in it? Because I know that’s a dead end. I don’t need you to tell me who to look at it if I’m supposed to be one of those people.

Reminder: I am in the consensus POE. I will try to get other people within that POE executed first because I know I am town, but it doesn't stop me from believing in it. I am happy to be sorted within the context of that POE, either by investigation or by execution, because I believe that this gives information to the town that will help it win. Town's biggest advantage this game is the hefty list of confirmed townies that it has. This list will only shorten as the days go by and scum make their kills. Therefore it is important to rapidly sort out the alignments of those not within the confirmed town pool, balancing speed with surety, in order to root out the mafia.

I just don’t buy that you as a civilian have a total unwillingness to reshape your POE to include or exclude non-cleared players when we haven’t even caught a single scum yet. This post does nothing to explain or address anything.

[Alison]

(Then the investigative team checks TSP and we flip Colin, which clears out the entire POE from my point of view without missing any investigations. We don't need to keep nonmillers alive in order to clear out the POE in good time.)

[Alison]

Like, what good is the “consensus POE” (if there is one) if I’m in it? Because I know that’s a dead end. I don’t need you to tell me who to look at it if I’m supposed to be one of those people.

Reminder: I am in the consensus POE. I will try to get other people within that POE executed first because I know I am town, but it doesn't stop me from believing in it. I am happy to be sorted within the context of that POE, either by investigation or by execution, because I believe that this gives information to the town that will help it win. Town's biggest advantage this game is the hefty list of confirmed townies that it has. This list will only shorten as the days go by and scum make their kills. Therefore it is important to rapidly sort out the alignments of those not within the confirmed town pool, balancing speed with surety, in order to root out the mafia.

I just don’t buy that you as a civilian have a total unwillingness to reshape your POE to include or exclude non-cleared players when we haven’t even caught a single scum yet. This post does nothing to explain or address anything.

Everyone who isn't in my POE is cleared. That is why I am rigid about it.

[Alison]

I find Alison's hard dedication to a POE with her in it to be a possible ploy for cred. I found some of her recent posts too rigid at best, revealingly adverby at times, and suspicious at worst.

[VOTE: alison] aubergine

Yes I remember also mentioning earlier that I felt like alison is being pushy about people doing things a certain way or voting a specific set of people and she has been resistive to people deviating from that. Like she has a plan for how it all should all play out or how she wants it all to play out. I think pushing checkers to check the same person and reveal who they're checking may not be in best interest of town.

As town, I have strong views about how the game should be played in order to maximize chances of victory, and will attempt to persuade people to adhere to those views. I often have plans for how the game should be won, especially in contexts like this where there is a clear set of scummy and non-scummy people and the path to victory consists of eliminating the scummy people while protecting the cleared town.

Do you believe that?

[Millium]

You claimed miller correct [mention]Alison[/mention] ?

[Alison]

Hey, you know me, I just like to go with the flow. You're in the POE, so I guess my vote is pretty legit. Sorry if I sprinkle in my own gut reads while I vote you.

I'm not disappointed in your for voting me (although I will try to get you to move your vote off me for obvious reasons). I will, however, be very disappointed if you and the rest of town don't follow my legacy.

Speaking of which: both me and Epi are in the POE. Why do you find me more suspicious than Epi?

[Alison]

You claimed miller correct @Alison ?

Yes.

[ColinIsCool]

Like, what good is the “consensus POE” (if there is one) if I’m in it? Because I know that’s a dead end. I don’t need you to tell me who to look at it if I’m supposed to be one of those people.

Reminder: I am in the consensus POE. I will try to get other people within that POE executed first because I know I am town, but it doesn't stop me from believing in it. I am happy to be sorted within the context of that POE, either by investigation or by execution, because I believe that this gives information to the town that will help it win. Town's biggest advantage this game is the hefty list of confirmed townies that it has. This list will only shorten as the days go by and scum make their kills. Therefore it is important to rapidly sort out the alignments of those not within the confirmed town pool, balancing speed with surety, in order to root out the mafia.

I just don’t buy that you as a civilian have a total unwillingness to reshape your POE to include or exclude non-cleared players when we haven’t even caught a single scum yet. This post does nothing to explain or address anything.

Everyone who isn't in my POE is cleared. That is why I am rigid about it.

If you have a reason to clear Kitsu then you need to go ahead and claim it. But I don’t think you do because you keep saying we can get to her after the POE is exhausted, and if she was definitively cleared, you would never entertain the idea.