Werewolf/Mafia: Percy Jackson

[gac3]

What is LYLO? For those of us who don't know all the abbreviations yet.

[Elenna]

Lynch or You Lose - it's the situation where town has to lynch correctly or lose the game. Eg if there's two wolves snd three town.

[AvatarVecna]

What is LYLO? For those of us who don't know all the abbreviations yet.

Lynch-Lose, essentially a situation where "if we don't lynch a wolf today, the game is over by tomorrow because wolves control the lynch". 5 wolves/5 neutrals is only D1 LYLO if:

1) In the night, no wolf/neutral dies to a vig shot or wolf-NK that got redirected

2) On D2, wolves and neutrals coordinate their votes perfectly despite no neutral starting in private contact with wolves

3) No powers screw with vote totals in town's favor

[Rogan]

Okay, I guess we're discussing this now.

5 wolves and 5 neutrals isn't really LYLO, that would only be the case if all the neutrals were guaranteed to side with the wolves, which I would assume is not true. Also, there could be four wolves. Actually, totadile, what makes you think there are exactly 5 wolves?
That being said, I'll agree that 5 neutrals seems like too many for a 21-player game.

(Do we have 5 neutral claims? I also thought there were five but can't remember why now. Batcathat, Emmy, Jeen, supposedly Snowblaze... who else?)

I'll also agree that "I don't have any power" is super weird in an all PR game and reads to me like "I didn't want to fake a power that I couldn't actually do".

Jeen has hinted at another neutral. Champion of Hera.

[gac3]

End of Night 1

Some small amounts of conversation happen in the night before people retire to their tents. Then the exciting things happen.

There are noises and flashes and laughter and finally everyone hears the crack of thunder. When they arrive they find a body, still letting off some electrical energy.

AV has died. They were the child of Apollo. They were Town.

Spoiler: Role QT

Show

Apollo: Children of Apollo are some of the most diverse in powers because of his diverse list of domains.

You have the following Power:
Prophecy: With the approval of your father, you have limit access to his gift of prophecy to help find the culprits. Each night target one person and see their faction (town, neutral, wolf).
You are town aligned.

Day 2 Begins. You have 48 ish hours. Since it will be Sunday evening, I may not be quite as exact as I was the past two times but if I don't end on time, I'll make sure I'm at least late so people have their full chance.

[totadileplayz]

Okay, I guess we're discussing this now.

5 wolves and 5 neutrals isn't really LYLO, that would only be the case if all the neutrals were guaranteed to side with the wolves, which I would assume is not true. Also, there could be four wolves. Actually, totadile, what makes you think there are exactly 5 wolves?
That being said, I'll agree that 5 neutrals seems like too many for a 21-player game.

(Do we have 5 neutral claims? I also thought there were five but can't remember why now. Batcathat, Emmy, Jeen, supposedly Snowblaze... who else?)

I'll also agree that "I don't have any power" is super weird in an all PR game and reads to me like "I didn't want to fake a power that I couldn't actually do".

Jeenleen believes there is another neutral a Champion of Hera, since it can't be batcathat, emmy, jeen, or snowblaze there must be a fifth.

Now Yes, the Lylo scenario is relatively low, though not completely unlikely. Emmy could easily be convinced by the wolves simply due to the greater number of players willing to work with her to achieve her objectives. Batcathat the same deal. Snowblaze needs a dionysus child alive if one is in the wolf pack that people seem to be believing is the case that's another willing to join the wolves.

That only really leaves, Jeen, and The Mysterious Champion of hera, which we don't really know much about.

The Votestealer, and The Doublevoter are vote manipulators. With unknown alignments, and shouldn't be factored into the case, since I hope Gac is smart enough to realize that if he's leaving those roles independant of alignment, that he needs to prepare for the worst case scenario. This is why I'm confident there can not be 5 wolves, and 5 neutrals, and the proportion one way or another has to be lower then that.

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Snowblaze for the reasons I have stated and tried to explain.

[gac3]

If anyone was expecting feedback and didn't get it, let me know.

[Rogan]

Okay, this is bad...
We just lost one of our most important roles.

The description of the kill points to the Child of Zeus, not a Wolf night kill. But there is only one kill... So... Poseidon did a better job than Zeus?

@Gac can you tell us how the wolf kill would work? Is it an ability they have to use? Can a wolf both deliver the night kill and use his normal power? Could Dionysos drunken power prevent a wolf kill?

[gac3]

Okay, this is bad...
We just lost one of our most important roles.

The description of the kill points to the Child of Zeus, not a Wolf night kill. But there is only one kill... So... Poseidon did a better job than Zeus?

@Gac can you tell us how the wolf kill would work? Is it an ability they have to use? Can a wolf both deliver the night kill and use his normal power? Could Dionysos drunken power prevent a wolf kill?

I believe I said this in the pregame chatter so I feel safe revealing that the wolf kill is considered a to be used by a specific person in nearly every case. The child of ares is the one exception. Whichever wolf uses the kill, it functions as a second power and abilities that interact with power usage would apply to the kill. So either Dionysus power would be able to affect it. Yes.

[JeenLeen]

@Apogee: was AV killed by the Town Network, or is this a wolf kill?
Or did the vigilante!Zeusling try to kill someone else and get redirected (presumably by the other Zeusling)?

I don't know if gac's statements thus far 100% confirm it was a Zeusling that killed AV, but it seems likely.

I'm inclined to believe Snowblaze, and also have reason (being a neutral) to try to keep neutrals around. I know Elenna isn't one of the Zeusling via my Night power, so I'll go with Valmark. They looked iffy D1 according to AV, but suspicions kinda died out with the focus on Batcathat and EmmyNecromancer. Perhaps he killed her in hopes that suspicion didn't rearise?

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OH. A thought: I figured two kills probably were attempted last night, but one was stopped by a baner or voider. But if the "vigilante"-powered Zeusling is a wolf, it's probably not that the wolves get two kills a night, but some augmentation to the power. (Or the wolves effectively got someone without a power.)
Not sure what to make of that, but gac3 did state (I think) that every named Role had a chance of being Town or Wolf. I would think that one had a small chance of RNGing wolf, but it's still possible.

I reckon any baners/voiders/watchers/trackers should give intel to Apogee, and maybe they can puzzle out who the killer is.

[Xihirli]

I gotta confess I do not remember what happened last night. hic. I woke up... head... guh. My... hic. I'm not drunk! You're drunk!

[JeenLeen]

Also, it's possible AV still got her Night Feedback, and could tell it to the necromancer (if in play) via deadchat.
Though, well, I guess we don't know if that would happen or not.

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I gotta confess I do not remember what happened last night. hic. I woke up... head... guh. My... hic. I'm not drunk! You're drunk!

Xi is claiming she's not the killer.
How very odd this game has been. Active D1. Neutrals winning D1. Xi saying we shouldn't kill and then not killing anyone.

But, sincerely, thanks for sharing that the void happened.

[CaoimhinTheCape]

So, if a Town Vig targeted or was redirected to AV, that would mean that the Wolf kill didn't go through for one reason or another.

We should also get info from the Child of Hades: Highway to Hades. AV would have gotten a result, can pass it along to the Child of Hades who would pass it along to Apogee. If AV got someone guilty then Apogee can pass along the info, if innocent then Apogee has someone new to trust.



So, in short, we're waiting on info to travel through the grapevine. I'm comfortable placing a vote on Snowblaze while we wait.

[Xihirli]

I gotta be honest I didn't know that the alcohol thing was a voiding. I haven't actually read most of the opening post.

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So why is it that we see the Seer lying dead and aren't like "oh, it's the wolves at it"? Why do we think this was the vig?

[Elenna]

Jeen has hinted at another neutral. Champion of Hera.

Right, yeah, that's what I was forgetting.

Jeenleen believes there is another neutral a Champion of Hera, since it can't be batcathat, emmy, jeen, or snowblaze there must be a fifth.

Now Yes, the Lylo scenario is relatively low, though not completely unlikely. Emmy could easily be convinced by the wolves simply due to the greater number of players willing to work with her to achieve her objectives. Batcathat the same deal. Snowblaze needs a dionysus child alive if one is in the wolf pack that people seem to be believing is the case that's another willing to join the wolves.

That only really leaves, Jeen, and The Mysterious Champion of hera, which we don't really know much about.

The Votestealer, and The Doublevoter are vote manipulators. With unknown alignments, and shouldn't be factored into the case, since I hope Gac is smart enough to realize that if he's leaving those roles independant of alignment, that he needs to prepare for the worst case scenario. This is why I'm confident there can not be 5 wolves, and 5 neutrals, and the proportion one way or another has to be lower then that.

By the way, I'm waiting for an answer about why you're sure there's 5 wolves.

Yes, technically if 5 wolves and 5 neutrals were alive as of D2 they could win the game. Technically. But that would a wolf to randomly out themselves, hoping that there are 5 neutrals, and hoping that they are all willing to cooperate with the wolves. I can't imagine a wolf team ever making that gamble, so I wouldn't consider it LYLO. (Also, it sounds like Jeen and the Champion of Hera are opposed somehow, if Jeen is telling the truth, so I doubt they would both work with wolves.)

Anyways, that's mostly a theoretical comment on the definition of LYLO. I agree that in this particular game, it seems unlikely that there are five neutrals.

If there aren't actually five neutrals, that means either Jeen or Snowblaze is lying, and I know which one seems more suspicious to me. Besides, Snow's lack of a power seems really weird, as I said earlier.

Okay, this is bad...
We just lost one of our most important roles.

The description of the kill points to the Child of Zeus, not a Wolf night kill. But there is only one kill... So... Poseidon did a better job than Zeus?

@Gac can you tell us how the wolf kill would work? Is it an ability they have to use? Can a wolf both deliver the night kill and use his normal power? Could Dionysos drunken power prevent a wolf kill?

Oh, I missed that bit in the narration. Yes, I think the vigilante probably killed AV. Apogee, if you have any comments you can share on how the vigilante ended up hitting the seer, I'm very interested to hear them.
I guess one possible answer is "the vigilante is a wolf". I really hope that's not the case, but IIRC gac said no role was absolutely 100% town or 100% wolf, so it's possible?

There's a few possible ways that the wolf kill could have been prevented
- The baner (child of Poseidon) protected the wolf target.
- The wolves targeted the child of Ares who has Hard to Kill.
- The voider (the person with Drunken Fun) targeted the wolf who did the kill.

This is probably obvious, but the baner and voider should let Apogee know who they targeted tonight if they haven't already.

@gac: Does the person with Hard to Kill get notified if they lose their extra life?

[JeenLeen]

So why is it that we see the Seer lying dead and aren't like "oh, it's the wolves at it"? Why do we think this was the vig?

Flavor text makes it sound like a Child of Zeus did it. And most seem to assume that the Zeusling with a NK power is gonna be Town.
Though we should be clear that, probably if either Zeusling did the kill just as the factional kill, it'd likely have similar flavortext

We can presume the Town!vigilante wasn't voided, since Xi was voided. (She could be lying, but seems a foolish thing to lie about, as a Dionsyian could claim.)

I feel like writing something like "how could this happen if any of these are true: both Zeus Town, both Zeus wolf, vortexer Town and vig Wolf, vortexer Wolf and vig Town"--but I'm a bit tired, and I think I'd like to hear from Apogee if the Town Network had planned to kill AV anyway before I put the effort in.

I don't rule out that another person could have done the kill, but it seems unlikely.

[totadileplayz]

End of Night 1

Some small amounts of conversation happen in the night before people retire to their tents. Then the exciting things happen.

There are noises and flashes and laughter and finally everyone hears the crack of thunder. When they arrive they find a body, still letting off some electrical energy.

AV has died. They were the child of Apollo. They were Town.

Spoiler: Role QT

Show

Apollo: Children of Apollo are some of the most diverse in powers because of his diverse list of domains.

You have the following Power:
Prophecy: With the approval of your father, you have limit access to his gift of prophecy to help find the culprits. Each night target one person and see their faction (town, neutral, wolf).
You are town aligned.

Day 1 Begins. You have 48 ish hours. Since it will be Sunday evening, I may not be quite as exact as I was the past two times but if I don't end on time, I'll make sure I'm at least late so people have their full chance.

I gotta be honest I didn't know that the alcohol thing was a voiding. I haven't actually read most of the opening post.

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So why is it that we see the Seer lying dead and aren't like "oh, it's the wolves at it"? Why do we think this was the vig?

Spoiler: Roles

Show

I'm listing the names of the gods and goddess but all roles will actually be given the full title "Child of Zeus" or "Child of Athena".

Zeus: As a child of Zeus you hold more power than the average demigod.

• Mystical Might: You have a knack for manipulating the mist that helps hide the mythical monsters from mundane eyes. Each night, choose two people to target. Any action that targets one of your choices, will instead be used on the other.
  
• Lightning Control: You can manipulate the pure electric power of your father. Each night you may choose one person to kill with your lightning.

It was a flash of lightning. Lightning Control is a power that allows you to kill someone with lightning.
The Fact the person was killed with lightning probably means that the child of Zeus was the one behind it. That doesn't mean that they are a vigilante, they can be a wolf. It just means they were the one to Kill AV.

[JeenLeen]

I gotta be honest I didn't know that the alcohol thing was a voiding. I haven't actually read most of the opening post.

- The voider (the person with Drunken Fun) targeted the wolf who did the kill.

It is possible that the vig kiled AV and wolf!Xi planned to kill someone else, and she posted her post
1) knowing it meant she was voided, and doing a fun move (and perhaps to get some WIFOM shielding since 'of course a wolf wouldn't admit that if they were the NKer')
2) honestly not realizing it meant anything about a void, and just posting it

Not saying I suspect Xi a ton, but, well, Elenna implicitly was noting a scenario that pegs Xi as the wolf, so drawing explicit attention to that.

[Elenna]

Ninja'd. I guess the voider doesn't have to say who they voided. Unless they voided someone who's not Xi, in which case I'm going to have a lot of questions.

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Aaaand more ninjas

[JeenLeen]

It is possible that the vig kiled AV and wolf!Xi planned to kill someone else, and she posted her post
1) knowing it meant she was voided, and doing a fun move (and perhaps to get some WIFOM shielding since 'of course a wolf wouldn't admit that if they were the NKer')
2) honestly not realizing it meant anything about a void, and just posting it

Not saying I suspect Xi a ton, but, well, Elenna implicitly was noting a scenario that pegs Xi as the wolf, so drawing explicit attention to that.

Ninja'd. I guess the voider doesn't have to say who they voided. Unless they voided someone who's not Xi, in which case I'm going to have a lot of questions.

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Aaaand more ninjas

I did forget a third option
3) Xi lied and said she was voided, for... reasons?

[totadileplayz]

After thinking through options, I'm inclined to trust Apogee's Demeter claim. Although I'd advise those with info-gathering roles to trust but verify - the fact that it'd largely be a stupid play for wolves because of how easy it is to check could explain why Apogee is working hard to be transparent, so as to convince people to not double-check without just saying that they shouldn't. Now, for game numbers!

21 players. Probably 1 neutral? That leaves 20 for town/scum, so probably a 15/5 split? 16/4 feels too little, and while I could maybe see 14/6 if their powers are generally weak, I wouldn't bet on wolves having strong numbers and weak powers - that seems like setting up for disappointment. With 11 cabins with 2 powers each, we've probably got two representatives from most cabins. Some of those are gonna be wolves, but probably not two wolves from the same cabin for the most part. Let's see...

Spoiler: Roles

Show

First power makes sense for scum, second power doesn't.



First power is unlikely as a wolf. It's not a daybane, so it's not immunity to losing if they've got one, but even then, bane is much weaker in the hands of wolves than town, just because town is less likely to be throwing around NKs.

Second power is not a wolf power in any universe.



Never a wolf. If there were no demeter in-game and wolves knew that, I could see them claiming demeter as a safeclaim, but given the game size, it's almost a guarantee that there's demeters in game, and that means it's not a safeclaim cuz a counterclaim could easily come in.



Either of these could work as a wolf power.



I'm unclear if the first power is track+devil, or just devil. Either way, it's useful to wolves. Second power (motion detector) is also useful to wolves.



First one is alignment scry, so useless to wolves...except for neutral-hunting, I suppose? I'd only expect this to be a wolf if scumteam is 6-man band.

Second one is useful for town and wolves alike.



Either of these works well as a wolf power.



Both of these feel like wolf powers.



This makes me inclined to think that the Athena power is just a devil power, since this is a track. I could see either of these as a wolf power.



Both of these powers are pretty useful to wolves.



The first can work well as a wolf power. The second is problematic as a wolf power, but that's at least partially cuz it's just plain problematic. If there was a power I would expect to not be in the game, it's that second Hades one.

Order of cabin suspicion, most to least:

Ares
Aphrodite
Hermes
Dionysus
Athena
Hephaestus
Zeus
Hades
Apollo
Poseidon
Demeter

My thoughts:
1) There's no wolves in the blue section.
2) There's not more than one wolf in the teal section.
3) There's not more than two wolf in the orange section.
4) There's at least two wolves in the dark red section.

(incidentally, this sorta lines up with the lore - the top three have antagonist children in the original series, Dionysus and Athena themselves are kinda unfriendly, and the protagonist is a child of Poseidon.)

This was the Thing that got me into the headspace of there being 5 wolves in the game.

[Elenna]

I did forget a third option
3) Xi lied and said she was voided, for... reasons?

Well, if the voider says they didn't target Xi, there could also be a vortex (or two) involved. Anyways at this point I'm just waiting for Apogee to pass on anything he wants to pass on. Although if he doesn't want to say anything, I'm also 100% fine with lynching Snowblaze.

...if Snowblaze is somehow another neutral telling the truth about having made an incredibly bad and unlikely play, I will... be very confused, I guess.

[Rogan]

I gotta confess I do not remember what happened last night. hic. I woke up... head... guh. My... hic. I'm not drunk! You're drunk!

Also, it's possible AV still got her Night Feedback, and could tell it to the necromancer (if in play) via deadchat.
Though, well, I guess we don't know if that would happen or not.

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Xi is claiming she's not the killer.
How very odd this game has been. Active D1. Neutrals winning D1. Xi saying we shouldn't kill and then not killing anyone.

But, sincerely, thanks for sharing that the void happened.

I gotta be honest I didn't know that the alcohol thing was a voiding. I haven't actually read most of the opening post.

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So why is it that we see the Seer lying dead and aren't like "oh, it's the wolves at it"? Why do we think this was the vig?

I would say, there are three reasons.
1) The power description of lightning
2) AVs role analysis gave the Lightning power a good odd of being town
3) The fact that Team wolf couldn't know AV was the seer after one day. (Only chance would be someone told them. Apogee? Did you know AV s role and told anybody in order to verify the claim? I think this is very unlikely, since AV was quite vocal in the defense of Apogee)


Plus, there was only one kill tonight. So either there is no child of Zeus with the killing power or one kill was blocked. Or...

@Gac Can you tell us if there would be a hint in the death description if one target was hit by two killing powers?

------

Now, what do we think about a drunken Xi?
If we take it as a result of Dionysus power, this would either mean Xi was the wolf carrying the kill OR poseidon was successful.

[Zelphas]

Losing a Seer is... not the best for Town, for sure. I'm still shaking out what exactly we've learned over the night, but for now I'm willing to add my vote to Snowblaze due to the weirdness of her claims the day before and the likelihood that with all the neutral claims we've already gotten, someone is probably lying on that front.

[Elenna]

This was the Thing that got me into the headspace of there being 5 wolves in the game.

That makes some sense, although that post also assumes there's one neutral when we now know there's significantly more, so the numbers aren't really applicable. But I can understand getting the number in your head and forgetting it was just speculation, I guess.

[bladescape]

Snowblaze

As advocated. Further analysis is going directly to Apogee rn.

[Rogan]

This was the Thing that got me into the headspace of there being 5 wolves in the game.

Now that AV is dead and confirmed town, I see some things in a different light.
I did not like her analysis before, but I also admitted that some of this might be clouded by her bad review of me.

I still stand by one thing: AV had totally underestimated the number of Neutrals.
We can be sure there were at least two and I tend to believe Jeens neutral claim.

So, we should take this part of her analysis with a grain of salt.
The rest of it... well, I hate to say it, since it will mean I'm high on the list of suspects... she had good intentions and tried to help town.

So, for now I will put a vote on AVs suspect number 1. Valmark

[Xihirli]

Now, what do we think about a drunken Xi?
If we take it as a result of Dionysus power, this would either mean Xi was the wolf carrying the kill OR poseidon was successful.

OR hear me out... fun night last night man.

LAST FIRGADY NIGHT

YEAH WE DANCED OUT OF THE BARS
WE GOT KICKED ON TABLETOPS
THINK WE SAID WE WOULD STOP
WE SAID WE'D KISS BYT E FIFORGOT

[Rogan]

idk about "popularized", but I've had a habit of self-voting at least once a game since before I started playing WW/Mafia on this site. I don't manage it every single game, and sometimes it works out better than other times.

I'm working on getting a proper feel for players, but there's a lot of them, and more than a few share avatars, so I'm doing some ISOs to keep things straight, so it'll take awhile.

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Spoiler: Batcathat ISO

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Randvote. Null.



Last bit feels weird, but not really able to put my finger on why.







Yeah okay I can't say I'm a fan of "I'm just following the crowd" protests. "I'm not leading this mob, I'm just lending it some more legitimacy" isn't exactly a stellar defense, it looks like somebody trying to take part in a mislynch without wanting to get blamed for taking part in a mislynch. On its own that's not really enough to lynch somebody normally, but it's as good a reason as any D1.



"I'd OMGUS vote somebody, except I know that looks bad, so I won't [winkyface]". Are you trying to look suspicious? Xihirli, somebody's copying your schtick!



From a more experienced player, I'd expect them to think through the Demeter claim privately before jumping right into questioning. A D1 mason claim is weird enough that you'd wanna give it some thought to think about what could be happening here and how you should react. I'm inclined to think this series of posts is gut reaction. I can see how some people might see this as immediately casting shade on the weird D1 mason claim, and from a more experienced wolf that's maybe what I'd expect (albeit more subtle than this), but given how new BCH is I'm inclined to think this is an excited townie digging into a claim they're not sure whether they should trust or not.



"Lol that makes me sound suspicious doesn't it, good thing I'm calling attention to it."

I'm honestly trying to think of something more textbook "Too Wolfy To Be A Wolf" than literally saying "wait did I just do what scum would do? oh well lol", and I'm not coming up with much.



I like that they don't seem to be backing down from their suspicion of Apogee just because town is pushing back against it. Townie points.



"I can't imagine I'd be staring at four votes if I just stayed silent."

Thank you, I almost forgot that I haven't checked to see if we've got any inactives to poke.



Null. Feels like speaking freely, but doesn't really lean either way.



At least at this point, roleclaiming wouldn't do much to help, no.



Null.

Feeling kinda sketchy about all this. Slight wolflean, would be stronger if they were a more veteran player.

Spoiler: bladescape ISO

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Some decent points but nothing too concrete - makes sense for how early in the day it was made. Feels a bit more towny than scummy at least.



It's a good and fair callout, even if my initial response was to joke by giving yet another thing to weird out over. Townie points.



Null. Legit annoyance but could come from either side.

Slight town lean, but also I'm worried. Reading through the thread, I had the impression that bladescape was much more in the thick of things for some reason. There's a lot of mentions and replies, but very few actual posts from them. I don't necessarily think bladescape is a wolf trying to look busy without actually contributing much, but if they are they're doing a fantastic job of it.

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Spoiler: Book Wombat ISO

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Null.



"Sorry I'm being unhelpful" TWTBW fodder right here. Slight scum lean.

Slight scum lean. BW is typically pretty low-activity, although what little we have does at least have something worth thinking about. It's very little, but it's more than I'm used to getting from the less-active players so I'll take it.

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This isn't a point against Cao, I'm just addressing it now cuz I didn't think of it in the BCH ISO: looking skeptical for the sake of not looking like you know for a fact Apogee is telling the truth just makes you look suspicious. If you think there's a scheme going on, dig into it and unearth it, don't just hem and haw like "idk if I can trust them aaaaaaaaaa". Yeah, it's weird that a mason claimed D1 when not even leading a wagon, but doing nothing about it but make noises of suspicion does more to harm the case against Apogee than help.

Spoiler: CaoimhinTheCape ISO

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Vote counts used to be the classic "information without analysis" wolf move, and then Cao came along and did them constantly.

It's good that the seeming-inconsistency was getting called out, but it's not like it was subtle that something was wrong, so no points for calling out the obvious mistake.



I've already asked a question about this post and I'm still waiting on an answer.



I've addressed this outside the ISO so I'll leave it be. The post itself is null: at the point in the thread this post was made, I could see a townie putting effort into puzzling through any possible scheme, but I could see a wolf putting this much effort in as well.



I can't speak for the others but my valmark vote at the time was just early randvoting, not based on anything in particular. I'm also not really inclined to view the people that were voting me as less wolfy for it - I'm not saying they're necessarily wolfy for doing so, I'm just saying that "wolves wouldn't wagon somebody that early" isn't necessarily true, and it's especially not true if they're all voting somebody's who's a frequent target D1. If the votes on me had been a bit more spread out, it would barely be any more suspicious than usual, which makes it good cover for getting wolves all voting on one person D1. In a game this big, 4-6 people on one wagon D1 is death.

Null, although that might change depending on how they react to some other things that have occurred.

Spoiler: Elenna ISO

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I think I've put my finger on why this feels weird. A townie who said they'd vote Valmark would just vote Valmark - it's her first post, who cares, it'll get changed later. But when there's a big wagon on AV, and AV is voting Valmark already and nobody else is, putting your vote on Valmark is creating a counterwagon. That's why there's this hemming and hawwing to justify a vote she already said she'd probably cast. A townie wouldn't feel so inclined to care that hard about their first vote, but I could definitely see a wolf second-guessing themself in such a situation. Scum lean.



While I don't think the thing being called out is too unreasonable (I think it's more just a veteran seeing newbs as wolfy than a wolf seeing newbs as easy mislynches), I appreciate the callout occurring. Slight town lean.



This is some of the initial "can we trust the claim" discussion, so it gets a pass. There's stuff that happens later on that I kinda take issue with.

...

...oh boy, big reaction post. Let's split this up:



I definitely agree that it looks like Valmark is being skeptical for the sake of looking skeptical. I'll discuss that more in Valmark's ISO, but for now I'll say that I like this callout. Towniepoints.



Null, easy to just agree and move on.



On the one hand I do think it's kinda out of character for Xi. On the other hand, she did get some nice satisfying bloodshed last night...hrm...

...oh, null. Elenna is familiar enough with Xihirli to find this worth calling out regardless of her own alignment.



Null. I guess it's sorta a callout, asking Murska to elaborate on his votes, but Elenna should know better than to think it'll work. He'll explain himself when he's solved the game from the grave D2 good and ready.



It's a reasonable explanation, but my reading in this ISO feels more correct.



Null, although I appreciate you vouching for me.




Yeah, it's pleasantly surprising to see a game full of people who said they'd participate and then actually did.



Seems like a stretch based on basically nothing? I mean also there were a few people voting Xihirli anyway. Not sure what to make of this.

Generally, slight townie lean, but the first post still feels really sketchy to me. It might just be first impression coloring my overall opinion, but I think it's plausible that Elenna is a veteran wolf who stumbled a bit in her first post and then got into a proper rhythm as a good little pretend-townie.

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Spoiler: EmmyNecromancer ISO

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Skipping is bad, but she's new so hrmm...



Randvotes are all the rage ITP. Null.



I've already responded to this, although I think I need to walk back part of it: I'm forgiving of this attitude in a new player, but somebody who's played a good bit of forum WW/Mafia should really know better. Statistically speaking, "no vote D1" is a bad move, even if for multiple reasons it has the lowest chance of all lynches to catch a wolf. Better to take the risk than to sit and do nothing. We have first move advantage, don't give it up for no reason.



...okay so I mentioned that Cao always does votecounts, but it's always because Cao was posting something else and gathers a votecount to accompany his normal post as well. A votecount with nothing else isn't very helpful.



...see I thought it couldn't look worse than a bare votecount, and then you add a "I'd change my vote but it would make me look suspicious".

Slight wolf lean.

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Spoiler: flat_footed ISO

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Null, D1 randvote.

Null. If it were somebody else, a single bare post would make me suspect the person is trying to fly under the radar, but FF is a mod so they're probably just busy. As always, I'd still like to see more content from them.

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Spoiler: JeenLeen ISO

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I kinda get the logic here, but I don't like it. JeenLeen smells something wrong with the AV wagon and wants to vote one of the people on it. His options are two recently-returned veterans, one utterly new player, and one with just a few games under their belt. BCH wasn't picked for being the most suspicious of the people on the AV wagon, but for...let's call it "ww/mafia forum etiquette". It could be a townie playing by etiquette, or it could be a wolf who wants to lynch the person on that wagon least likely to result in backlash on the wolf.



I can appreciate the effort being put in to think through possible schemes here. And as fun as it is initially, I don't think gac would pull a town/wolf mason combo, that kinda thing tends to upset people in my experience. >.>



No lynch D1 is a win for wolves too - it means one less kill to analyze, it means arguments to lynch this person vs that person take longer for us to get to analyze. D1, especially a D1 that's going like today has gone, is a goldmine of information to be untapped, and skipping the vote delays that information being available. Every third post or something like that has speculation on what this or that could mean, but a lynch gives us concrete information to build theories around, rather than pure theoretical conjecture.



Solid reaction to tot's post, and I like just asking Xi outright even if it's not really a lean either way. Slight townlean for the tot stuff.



Townie's and wolves alike are capable of moves that make them look wolfish. The difference is, "don't look wolfy" isn't a townie's top priority, a townie's top priority is catching wolves, and this sometimes means that they do something wolfy because they weren't thinking about controlling their image. For a wolf, "dont look wolfy" is top priority, so when they include something in a post that looks wolfy, they can either remove it (which makes the post flow differently than it did when they originally typed it up), or they can leave in the wolfy-looking thing. A simple second draft of the post would do wonders for many a wolf, so that their post flows properly while excluding or dodging around the wolfy thing their first draft did, but people are lazy by default so it's either delete it and make the post read weirder, or lampshade the wolfiness.



Null.

Null read overall. There's a few things I like, and there's a few that rub me the wrong way.

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Spoiler: Libro ISO

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This got called out by Cao for inconsistency.



After replying to the callout with a very basic "oops" response, Libro disappears.

Urgh. Low activity, but that's Libro for you. Null in the way I don't particularly like, slight wolf lean I guess but it's probably just my bias against low-activity playstyles.

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Spoiler: MornShine ISO

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I've started "early" because there's a lot of posts to dig through despite how we're like halfway through D1. I honestly wish people were posting even more, but them's the shakes.

I appreciate that he's come into the thread with thoughts on things going on rather than just dropping a randvote before leaving to analyze. I can't say I've really seen a grammar analysis before - of course, I'm also not really sure this is all that different from Xihirli's usual typing style (even if the tone is a bit less bloodsoaked than usual). I can't say I necessarily agree with the conclusion, but I like the direction the post is going in, I have good feelings about MornShine.

Slight townlean, marred only by a lack of activity that I'm hoping will be soon rectified.

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Spoiler: Murska ISO

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Randvote or pressure vote, who can say.



Not Murska, not until he's solved the game from the grave, that's for sure.

Null. I got exactly what I expected from this ISO: nothing to go on whatsoever either way.

Spoiler: Rogan ISO

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As before, I'm not fond of any argument to skip the D1 lynch, and this one providing additional reasons to do so is striking me badly.



Null, nothing to indicate alignment here.



I like calling out mistakes in the votecount. It gives good reason to look at the people tabulating the votes, to see if it looks like they're trying to skew public perception of the lynch.

...

...next one is big, so let's cut down to the parts I wanna address.



Before I go off on my enormous tangent about Apogee, I'll just say that I'm not fond of the shade being cast at this point. It's already been discussed to death. The situations where this is a fakeclaim are either exceedingly unlikely or extremely easy to check/counterclaim - in particular, a counterclaim is a good idea for the reasons I'm about to go into. At this point, if you're questioning the claim, you need to present a plausible reason for doing so - a scheme or scenario that hasn't been considered. This hand-wringing "I wanna trust it but idk if wolves had the right power combo this could hand them the game" and not specifying what that "nightmare combo nobody else has considered" is, just looks scummy.

Spoiler: My Thoughts On Apogee

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"his death would be more helpful than his life" IME you are correct. Masons + QT Spam = Boring Town Win. Here's the order of events:

1) Mason!Apogee publicly reveals D1, makes QTs with absolutely everybody. Apogee shares these links in the mason chat.

2) Apogee is murdered in the night. Nobody scried him, nobody watched him, nobody baned him. Only a wolf targeted him, and nobody was tracking that wolf. It's a complete mystery who performed the kill. Apogee is revealed as a townie and a mason, and their mason buddy is still both alive and anonymous.

3) The other Mason logs into QT with a pseudonym (ie "Child Of Demeter") and proceeds to make contact through all the QT links they have from the mason chat.

4) Every true townie gives an honest claim and conspires with the mason to catch the wolves. The mason knows the most and is demonstrably trustworthy, so it's best if they pick the lynch and the night targets as part of their larger scheme to catch wolves not obeying.

At this point, the game balance has shifted dramatically in town's favor. The mason doesn't know which claims they can trust, but all townies know they can trust the mason even if they don't know who the mason is.

The wolves have to decide between claiming their real roles or fakeclaiming something else. If they fakeclaim, it's easier to catch them not obeying mason instructions because they're incapable of obeying mason instructions - and even with three neutrals, there's probably five wolves, which means there aren't enough fakeclaims to go around, somebody is going to claim something that somebody else has claimed, and that will get announced by the mason via some other player (ie "mason says that these two people have both claimed to be the Ares with the survival power. Let's test that, shall we?"). Final fakeclaim option is some nebulous neutral, but there can only be so many of those: even if I'm correct and there's only one neutral in the game, if all the wolves claim neutral, the mason will smell rats. You could maybe get away with two neutral claims, if I'm correct and there's only one real neutral in play - but I might be wrong, and even a single neutral fakeclaim by a wolf will result in four neutral claims made to the mason, which still means a rattish smell. Fakeclaiming is a great way to get caught either immediately or shortly.

If they give a true claim, this at least gives them the ability to obey (even if they don't want to), and it means their claims shouldn't contradict anybody elses, but it also puts their night actions in control of the network or they risk getting caught disobeying. It also means that they get analyzed a bit based on how useful their power would be as a wolf vs as a townie; there's several powers wolves probably don't have, and a few that they probably do have, and having one of those "looks like a wolf power" powers is gonna put extra attention on them. This, incidentally, is why analyzing the roles to see which make more sense as town powers or wolf powers is useful information - it gives the mason something to think about when they're getting claims post-apogee-murder.

Wolf priorities at this point have shifted to include a few things:

1) Don't let Apogee die, and cast shade on the mason claim so that people aren't as likely to claim to him until he dies.
2) In case Apogee dies, figure out how we're gonna claim to the anonymous mason.
2a) If fakeclaiming, have one or two claim neutral, and the others claim roles that are hopefully not present and not easily provable.
2b) If realclaiming, make sure to cast shade on anybody trying to analyze which powers are more or less likely to be wolves, like calling out the people who did it as wasting time with useless information with the intent to look more helpful than they really are.



Per the wolf priorities, villager priorities also shift slightly. The weirdest shift is definitely that it's probably in our best interest to kill Apogee unless we're pretty sure we've caught a wolf today: the sooner we can confirm Apogee as mason, the sooner we can get the ball rolling on that super network.

Of course, all of that is the upside of this strategy. Now we get to the downside, which is that it's anti-fun. It's not fun for Apogee, who did the right thing and gets killed for it by town. It's not for for Apogee's mason buddy, who now has to control all the powers in the game, while figuring out how to test players for disobedience/scumminess, while not accidentally revealing themselves to wolves in any of a number of ways. It's not fun for wolves, who now have to focus all their effort on fooling the mason long enough to kill the mason before the mason finds somebody they can absolutely trust to hand the network to in the event of their death. It's not fun for the rest of town, whose optimal strategy is to allow themselves to be led around by the nose by an anonymous poster, while doing as much as possible to obfuscate who that mason could be so that they don't accidentally give the game away to any wolves they're talking to.

You have analysis? Share that privately with the mason, but otherwise keep it to yourself. You have a scheme to pull? It better focus around taking out the mason. You've got a neutral goal and don't wanna get ganked? Better kowtow to the mason. The entire game shifts to focus around one player. It's optimal play for town, but it's not really fun. And the game can shift to this so quickly when it's like this: if the masons didn't pull this trick, then the game would take place 90% in QTs as players start privately talking with all other players, webs of links connecting everyone to everyone while they compare notes on who seems to be changing their suspicions depending on who they're talking to. It's all this exciting analysis...and then one of the masons dies anyway, an anonymous person shows up in that mason's chats, and now it's back to the boring version.

There's enough powers that aren't scries or kills that I could still see a scanner as a wolf. If you targeted AvatarVecna with the kill, and Murska died, and you know that you were targeted by Xihirli, you now know Xihirli has some kinda power that swaps targets. That's useful information that doesn't really put you at risk. Additionally, if you're fine going out in a blaze of glory, you could do something like claim wolf at the last second of the day, really play up your wolfiness, and then watch the power targeting come in. It's unlikely the vig is going to shoot you over that (it could be a gambit, for all they know), but you'll at least get a few people targeting you that night with info powers, and that gives you a shortlist to hand to your wolf buddies of "these people might be seers, kill them".

Lots of options.

Slight scum lean. There's some stuff I like here, but some of it really rubs me the wrong way.

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Spoiler: rogue_alchemist ISO

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Good callout without being too harsh. Kinda null read for this game, but I like seeing this for community-growth reasons.



More of the same.



This is a bit before Apogee claimed, so it's not calling out Cao specifically for voting a mason. It looks better in hindsight than it was at the time because of that.



Null, the analysis part could be made by anybody, as could the given clarification on roles.



RA is making a habit of explaining concepts to the new players. It's a good attitude in general, but at this point I must also consider that it's a good way to look more helpful than you're actually being to the game.



Mmm.



Null. Anybody can want to kill Xihirli.



Forum functionality. Null outside the aforementioned "looking busy" thing.



More of the same.



Clarification post. Null.



Forum functionality. Null.

This started out good with talking about stuff that isn't the game, but then it just kept going and there wasn't really much actual discussion of the game ever. There's a lot of words here, but barely any of them focused on the strategy and tactics and lynch. I can't tell if this is just RA being a kinda casual townie unconcerned with the gamestate, or scum doing a phenomenal job of disguising nongame discussion as activity. Slight scum lean.

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Spoiler: Shal06 ISO

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Randvote, null.



Null.



Null.

Null for now. Might just be a new player who isn't particularly active, might be a new wolf who's avoiding posting because they're not sure how to post without looking wolfy - a common enough anxiety. I wanna see more activity so I can get a better feel for them either way.

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Spoiler: Snowblaze ISO

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Randvote, null.



Nice response, but could've come from a wolf or townie, so NAI.



It's pretty early for reads. There's nothing too controversial or weird here, but because there's not much to go on, it's mostly obvious stuff.



A decent response, although not really alignment indicative.



This feels good to me, better than some of the other meandering theories were coming out of the gate. This feels slightly more town than most I've read so far.



Null, it's pushing for more discussion but it's an easy push to make given the context.



Null, although looking forward to seeing her thoughts once she's caught up.

Slight town lean. Got a good feeling about Snowblaze.

Spoiler: totadileplayz ISO

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OMGUS at its finest. Null I guess, idk. Getting tired.



lmao guess I'm not the only tired one.



Forum functionality. Null.



Alrighty a solid post to work with. I think this is the first suggestion that apogee could be neutral. I like tot not just taking the easy path and jumping on a wagon - I could see a wolf doing that. Slight townie points, although I'll keep in mind the possibility of a BCH/tot wolfteam.

Slight town lean but it's pretty shaky. Hopefully much more activity incoming.

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Spoiler: Valmark ISO

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Looks worse in hindsight than it was at the time. Null.



*nods*



Scumlean. Either you doubt it for a reason, and keep your vote there, or you think it through and realize the claim is almost certainly legit, like basically everybody. This honestly reads like "I still suspect you, but I don't wanna attract attention for voting the claimed mason so I'll move my vote elsewhere".



This continues feeling kinda wishywashy.



Poking an inactive instead of addressing posts calling him out hmmmmm.



Given what all has happened and been discussed, I'd really like to hear the scenario that to your mind justifies continued suspicion.

Wolf lean, easily my strongest yet.

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Spoiler: Xihirli ISO

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Counterwagon for counterwagon's sake, and valmark hadn't been weird yet. Possible AV/Xihirli scumteam?



Yeah, really not liking the "no voting D1" ball this post started rolling with others picking it up later. Hrm...



Normally RP happens before serious game posts but ok. Null, Xihirli being Xihirli.



Forum functionality, null.



RP.



Forum functionality.



RP.



An odd sentiment, but could just be a Xihirli-ism. Hard to say.



RP.

Slight scum lean, but could just be typical Xihirli stuff.

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Spoiler: Zelphas ISO

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Feels a bit wishy-washy, but it was pretty early in the day. The bigger mark against them is the lack of activity following this. You acknowledge that fostering discussion is the best move for town, and then don't contribute. Be the change you want to see in the world!

Null for now.

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In order of suspicion from least to most:

Apogee1
Snowblaze
(Elenna)
MornShine
(bladescape)
totadileplayz
Shal06
Zelphas
Libro
flat_footed
JeenLeen
CaoimhinTheCape
Murska
Xihirli
Batcathat
Book Wombat
EmmyNecromancer
rogue_alchemist
(bladescape)
Rogan
(Elenna)
Valmark
AvatarVecna

(And yes, that's a vote on Valmark)



I'm sorry I don't share your conviction based on three mostly-neutral posts? *shrugs* I've seen Cao play wolf quite a bit, both as town and scum myself, and I'm not exactly seeing any red flags. There's one kinda good thing (calling out another player on being inconsistent), and one kinda bad thing (explaining that callout after it became a bad idea to explain it), and then the same kind of middling commentary that half the players in the game have made.

Which, if we wanna talk about middling commentary and null analysis...



Oh wooooooow really? You think one of the three top wagons that have been trading positions all day might have a wolf in it, because Cao gave mild two-sentence defenses for all of them? Do tell me more about this theory of yours.



The strength of the "boring town win" plan is in the guarantee that the hidden mason is trustworthy despite being alive and anonymous. Normally, the only time you can 100% trust someone is what you think they are is after the narrator has confirmed it following that person's death. There are three scenarios where we can have 100% trust in a player this game: first, in a private chat with a now-dead mason, the other mason talks to us (anonymously or otherwise); second, that one Poseidon power is used to have the narrator publicly claim your role (which could be used to absolutely private-claim to two people instead, which doesn't get you a giant pile of claims from everybody but is probably safer tbh); third, you have been brought back from the dead via that one Hades power. In two of these three scenarios, the 100% trustworthy person is also at risk of being intentionally targeted by scumteam.

That's it. Any other "proof" is largely going to depend on info-gathering roles, except there's multiple target-switching powers available, and almost certainly at least one of them is in play. Given that switch-powers (usually) don't inform the person that their target has been switched without their knowledge, info-gathering abilities aren't as reliable as narrator reveals or mason QT shenanigans. Obviously they could be quite dependable, but it's not going to be quite as rocksolid.

...but it would still probably work out just fine. An alignment-scry or role-scry could confirm Apogee in the seer's mind.

AVs ISO posts from the beginning of the game.


I intend to reread AVs other posts as well. But not today. The song of birds singing in front of my window is a clear sign I should be asleep a long time ago...

[JeenLeen]

OR hear me out... fun night last night man.

LAST FIRGADY NIGHT

YEAH WE DANCED OUT OF THE BARS
WE GOT KICKED ON TABLETOPS
THINK WE SAID WE WOULD STOP
WE SAID WE'D KISS BYT E FIFORGOT

Anybody have the time, sanity, and desire to try to examine every misspelling in this to see if a hidden clue is in here?
Though I completely suspect this is just Xi having fun.

Pending intel from Apogee, my top wolf suspects are Valmark and Xi.