Man I fought my ass off lol. I am really getting scum exhaustion. 4 games in a row is just too much. I get everyone takes a turn as scum, but I think you should re roll a game to avoid someone getting scum over and over again. 90% of the fun of this game is hunting scum, not having to lie and make cases to defend yourself. It's just getting old.
GG. Yeah I was scum.
Originally Posted by whiteflame on 10/13/2026 at 10:55 PM (post #225)
Anyway, it's almost 1 AM and I'm feeling pretty exhausted. I'll give Luna the last word. I'll read it, then I'm making a call. I already have most of my thoughts written out, I just have to decide based on all that info who my lynch choice is.
Really hope you make the right one. Regardless, GG either way,
I think you're underestimating just how long this discussion went on, how clearly onboard Helz was, and his own statement (that he restated and reenforced with your vote) that we have to be on the same page with the lynch. Helz was leading that charge, and for a good stretch, both Kohai and I were onboard to follow that lead. Is it possible Kohai was just nervous and unwilling to take the first step to ensure it? I guess, but man, it's hard to believe. It's even harder to believe that he'd initiate the transition to refocus on Thoth rather than try to get Helz to take that first step if you're right.
This entire point just works in my favor though, considering I essentially suggested derailing it. That said I still think that in his spot its better to be the hammerer after you or helz forced the decision. Doesn't make a lot of sense to risk voting when you can't unvote, just for them to change their mind. I am sure he was frustrated that you waffled the decision to vote outside of me and thoth before it was too late.
I'm not arguing that your vote didn't directly lead to the lynch on Thoth, man. I don't know why you keep making that same argument. And I've also several times recognized that, yes, you'd have to have chosen to bus your partner. Again, I believe that's true for both you and Kohai. The difference is that you would have had to actively engineer circumstances to that end, whereas Kohai would just have had to use the direction that Helz was taking things and post a vote when the opportune moment came.
Again I just disagree that this was the optimal decision from his POV. I think kohai is patient and waiting for his oppertunity to hammer, this patience is replicated in the fact that he didn't immediately vote me when the vanillizer flipped the way I vote him. It was obvious to me you were town, and he actually tried arguing that this was a point against me, as if it wasn't obvious you were town at this point. Kohai always kept his options open, and was patiently waiting for his oppertunity the whole time. He even left it open that he could hammer you today if for some reason I was a dumb idiot and voted you instead.
I agree that your vote forced a decision. Again, that's not my point. He had the votes before that to mislynch me. There are several posts where Helz confirms he wanted to lynch among the three of us. He confirmed that I was the most sus of the three of his from his perspective. If Kohai had voted, Helz likely would have gone along with him. Kohai had a long stretch of time when you weren't posting, he could have done it then. He didn't have to start turning back to considering Thoth, which he did in post #95 (https://www.debatecraft.com/mafia/c/active-games/posts/8h/epsteins-island-mafia-dp3?page=4&comment_number=95). That was almost 2 hours before you returned and started posting again.
So, again, why didn't he just VTL me and get it over with if he was scum?
Like I said to kohai, in that situation you want to wait for someone else to lead that, that way he doesn't risk looking scummy if you guys end up changing your mind and voting thoth with me. The deicison wasn't clearly made to lynch outside of me and thoth, even though helz was puushing him. I think he was waiting for one of you or helz to pull the trigger, me pulling the trigger forced his hand and took that off the table.
Even with your result, both Kohai and Helz were considering my lynch well into the DP. I was the intended lynch for a good stretch in the middle of it. Did the result shift attention? Absolutely. Did it stay there and there was never any consideration of my lynch because of it? No, clearly not.
My point is my result and subsequent push on thoth and being the first to vote DID actually change that outcome. You are alive to make this decision because I enabled that with my result.
And again before that vote there was plenty of discussion about voting outside Thoth and I easily could have forced a 1v1 between myself and Whiteflame.
Why would you do that? Thats retarded scum play when you already have town willing to hang themselves, let them vote and you quickhammer, which is what you were hoping to do. My vote forced your hand, you had to cut your loss with thoth and gamble in the endgame because I put you in a situation where you had to lol. When I voted your only option to end the game would have been to lynch me. Before that voting whiteflame prematurely you probably wouldnt have the support and the other three of us could have just voted thoth anyway.
Originally Posted by Kohai on 10/13/2026 at 10:14 PM (post #217)
Originally Posted by Lunatic on 10/14/2026 at 12:12 AM (post #216)
Originally Posted by Kohai on 10/13/2026 at 10:02 PM (post #213)
Originally Posted by Lunatic on 10/14/2026 at 12:00 AM (post #212)
Originally Posted by Kohai on 10/13/2026 at 9:59 PM (post #211)
Originally Posted by Lunatic on 10/13/2026 at 11:56 PM (post #209)
Thoth's flip verifies that he was scum. It doesn't verify your role, dude.
It verifies my results.
No. It. Does. Not
I got a guilty on thoth. He flipped guilty.
Which is quite easy to do when you’re scum.
What would be easy to do as scum would be to follow helz and lynch outside of thoth if I was scum. I took the path of most resistance if I was scum here. Makes no sense.
And that’s the point Whiteflame was making. Before your vote I easily could have set up a 1v1 between myself and wf and get Helz to support me.
Again you still would have needed another vote from either whiteflame or helz for that to happen. That was off the table as soon as I voted thoth preventing you from being able to quickhammer.
I still feel like we're not talking about the same thing here. I'm talking about before your vote, when there was ample discussion of the choice between VTLing me and Kohai. All three of you were pretty much on the same page that, if you were lynching in that pool, I would be the pick. And it only would have taken two of you voting to get there. Kohai could have VTL'd me at any point after Helz made the decision to refocus on the three of us and pretty much been guaranteed to get his support. He basically said as much. So yeah, I believe he had the choice. He didn't take it. Why not?
My vote forced him into a decision yes, and I don't agree that it was imperative for him to vote before that. He needed exactly one of you or helz to vote outside of him and thoth, before they could quick hammer. When I voted that option was off the table. At that point, he could only realistically vote for me. Also I was the one who steered helz away from going outside that when I told him I would rather go for the 50/50 than the 33/33/33. I forced the situation that led to the one good lynch we had in the game.
You're changing the point now. Your argument was that your vote was the thing that triggered Kohai to suddenly turn on Thoth. Now you're saying that your Cop result forced him to turn on Thoth, despite multiple times pointing to how he was all over me and searching for a mislynch a lot of the time in between your Cop result and the vote.
I am not changing the point. Both things are true. My result is what put them into that situation in the first place, otherwise you were probably the intended lynch going into dp3. When I claimed my result that was temporarily off the table until Helz reintroduced the idea of lynching outside of the 50/50.
Originally Posted by Kohai on 10/13/2026 at 10:02 PM (post #213)
Originally Posted by Lunatic on 10/14/2026 at 12:00 AM (post #212)
Originally Posted by Kohai on 10/13/2026 at 9:59 PM (post #211)
Originally Posted by Lunatic on 10/13/2026 at 11:56 PM (post #209)
Thoth's flip verifies that he was scum. It doesn't verify your role, dude.
It verifies my results.
No. It. Does. Not
I got a guilty on thoth. He flipped guilty.
Which is quite easy to do when you’re scum.
What would be easy to do as scum would be to follow helz and lynch outside of thoth if I was scum. I took the path of most resistance if I was scum here. Makes no sense.
Im just being thorough and trying to adress everything. If you feel it;s getting repetitive I am happy to stop, just trying to make sure we have everything covered before the decision.
I think you're misunderstanding my point. The symmetry is that both of you had the opportunity to mislynch me if you're scum, and neither of you took it. In your case, that opportunity came when you claimed and said your target was Thoth. In his case, that opportunity came when Helz and Kohai were on the same page about lynching me out of the three of us. They both expressed it multiple times. He couldn't have engineered that opportunity like you could, but he nonetheless had it, and if they'd both voted for me, Thoth would have hammered. So yes, the symmetry is the bus. You both chose to do so when you had a mislynch opportunity on the table.
I disagree, I had a choice, kohai didn't. I forced the vote yesterday. With unvoting not being allowed, I was forcing the vote in #140. Helz called attention to that in #142 when he said "So to be clear- every single town has to vote together for town not to loose. Given Luna voted and can not unvote we now are obligated to pull this trigger."
The only other lynch option on the table was for you to all go for me, which didn't seem likely for kohai since helz was town reading me. He had no choice but to vote for thoth or look scummy. I think there is a stark difference here. Kohais intended mislynch targets were exactly you and me, and I think thoth was silenced to make me look scummy. Luckily you lot didn't buy into that, but if I or you were lynched that would have been game over. He didn't vote thoth until he was forced to.
The timeline doesn't match up to this. Kohai expressed an interest in pivoting attention back to Thoth before you voted. If your point is that he wouldn't have voted Thoth without you posting a vote first, then I'm surprised he made statements like:
"I think lynching Thoth is the best because in a w!Thoth we force scum to resolve Luna for us." #95
"The longer Thoth does nothing the more I wanna resolve him today" #137
Both posts happened before you posted the vote.
But both of those posts came after my claim at #20. Preferring Thoth once a cop has red-checked him isn’t an independent read, it’s following the result. And in between he was still floating “Thoth is the real cop. The core point doesn’t depend on how Kohai voted anyway. The only person who decided to give up Thoth is whoever created the guilty on him. If Kohai is scum, he was reacting to a result he couldn’t dispute. If I’m scum, I invented it while a guilty on you, which you just agreed had a more than decent chance, was sitting right there.
Again, pointing to the fact that both of you had the opportunity for a mislynch.
The point is I had an oppertunity for a game winning mislynch and didn't take it. Thats the takeaway here.
Thoth's flip verifies that he was scum. It doesn't verify your role, dude.
It verifies my results.
Originally Posted by Kohai on 10/13/2026 at 9:43 PM (post #202)
Originally Posted by Lunatic on
Every result has been checked against reality.
Wnich again is quite easy for scum.
Not really, when it's been established the Thoth check didn't need to happen and a free win was guaranteed from going elsewhere yesterday with a clearly laid out path to do so if I was scum.
Originally Posted by Kohai on 10/13/2026 at 9:40 PM (post #200)
I’m gonna be going to bed within the next 15ish minutes. Last call to ask me any final questions.
I’m kinda tired of repeating the same points ad nauseum
He's doing his due dilligence here, and I think he's exploring both sides pretty thoroughly, which is more than most players would do in his choose, myself included. That said, I don't think he's just repeating the same things, if he was I wouldn't bother replying to it. He's trying to really break into our mentality through each of our decisions and get in our head space. That's a good thing.
So, let's be thorough about this.
You're right about post #2. He also said he didn't want to rush to a decision.
You left out post #3, where he questioned the WIFOM of my being Vanillaized.
He then pointed to the two teams in #5.
He sussed Thoth's flavor claim in #7 and even suggested a theme split that would have placed Thoth in scum.
Then he pushed for your and Thoth's full claims in #13 and posted a variety of possible pairings in #18.
I think it actually helps my point. In #5 and #18 Kohai was already worried about a Luna/Thoth team, and in #7 attention was building on Thoth. If I’m scum, my partner is drawing heat and the town’s main voice is already pairing us. The last thing I do is put a guilty on Thoth and walk straight into that pairing. I redirect onto you, which Kohai already leaned in #2 and #3. I did the opposite.
The above starts off reading as almost certain on me, but then deviates and becomes more about the game generally and the unknowns in play. I think it's possible you're right that a faked guilty on me could have led to a lynch. I know both Helz and Kohai spent a lot of time agonizing over the decision and seemed to be zeroing in on me for a bit. I'm not absolutely certain of it, but yeah, more than decent likelihood.
Every result has been checked against reality. Helz flipped town, Thoth flipped Maxwell, and you know you’re town. I get that a scum faking cop would know those too. So the only question is why I’d pick those results. You just said a fake guilty on you had a “more than decent likelihood” of winning the game. If I’m scum, that’s the result I give. I gave you a green check and handed you my “partner” instead.
That’s all I’ve got. Whatever you decide, thanks for actually digging into it.
forgot to tag you in my response to 159
I've already covered the timeline here, including post #111. I agree, both you and Kohai had a lot of incentive to lynch among me, Helz and Kohai, with Kohai targeting me and you targeting either Kohai or me. I believe that you both had that opportunity, so one of you had a decision to make and you went with a bus instead. For either of you, when you made that decision, Helz necessarily had to be the NK that NP. That's not uncertain. What is uncertain is which of you made that call.
I don’t think it’s symmetrical. The only person who decided to give up Thoth is whoever put the guilty on him. If Kohai is scum, a cop just red-checked his partner and he can’t counterclaim it, so voting Thoth isn’t a choice, it’s forced. If I’m scum, I had to manufacture that guilty while a free lynch was sitting there. One of us reacted to a result. The other would have had to invent it.
Based on the timeline I'm reading (look at my previous post), Kohai was poised to make the same decision you did. Helz had already said that we all had to be aligned to successfully lynch last DP. The fact that he hadn't locked in yet and you had is a point in your favor. His consistency from post #99 onward is a point in his.
Kohai was very resistant to lynching Thoth up until the moment I forced the vote by voting thoth first, even when he was willing to lynch between us, he was spreading bussing paranoia and suspicion about me. I never fully got the feeling from him that he was on board with lynching thoth until it would have appeared scummy as heck not to vote him. The difference in our positions related to thoth is that Kohai was forced into a thoth lynch, I actively wanted one. The only argument that can be made for me lynching thoth there was that I wanted to bus. I only bus out of necessity, not insanity. There is no reason to bus here.
We've been over the consistency of the flips and your results. I've covered that multiple times now, though if you're just looking for where I've landed with it, I'll say it's more likely than not a positive sign.
On consistency, that’s after my claim at #20. Pushing Thoth after a cop guilty is following the cop, not an independent read. And between my claim and #99 he was floating “Thoth is the real cop” in #51 and #86.
The phrasing on some of this, however, is a little off. You said that you "argued against the free scum win" by arguing that we should lynch Thoth. Knowing what you know now, the "free scum win" would only have happened if we'd lynched Helz (wasn't going to happen) or me (a reasonable possibility). The Kohai lynch, from your perspective, would have successfully eliminated scum, so no, lynching among the three of us wasn't a "free scum win" by default.
I mean within the world we’re testing. If I’m scum, then Helz, Kohai and you are all town. Any lynch in that pool wins. That’s what makes it free.
I'm going to set aside my issues with your follow-up to Thoth for now. I think you have a point about how you followed up in different ways, even if the main one - the red check - is one I can't verify you got.
Thoth’s flip verifies it lol
Cool feature but doesn't work for previous day phases. Though I guess with the bot you can just put an entire game in one thread now, so it hypothetically should work as intended.
Do posts get linked now when from the same day if you just reference the post? Testing #194
t's not really a question of whether you were townreading Helz in DP2. Helz himself acknowledged that you were, and I've acknowledged it as well. The question is more specific: do your posts give any kind of indication that you used your Cop role and got a green check on Helz? That "very very dubious" line came after an explanation that focused on Mag1c's sussing him and choosing him as a Blackmail target. If I squint, maybe that's an indicator that you had inside information, but FYI, if you'd been NK'd at the end of DP2, I wouldn't have seen it as obvious that you'd gotten a green check on him. Pushing back on being paired with him even less so. I'm not fixating on this, it's a minor point at best, but it's a point that still stands.
Making it obvious that you have a green check on someone kind of defeats the purpose of not immediately just revealing the result. I didn't feel like helz was an immediate lynch, if I did I would have happily revealed and blown my cover to save him. But magic insta voting him is part of the reason I suspected magic in the first place. I was also open to my result not being accurate, beccause at the time I thought there was likely a lawyer or godfather. There still might be. Regardless, I don't see a world where cop should reveal innocents unless its absolutely neccesary to do so.
This is your strongest point. It's something I've been considering for a while and I think you're right that Kohai had an independent reason if he is scum to have Thoth claim to be Blackmailed and then push attention onto him, which is your red check on Thoth. I agree that that's the case. As for the tinfoil point, it was always pretty weak (calling it tinfoil in the first place didn't give it much weight or staying power and the idea basically was dead when Thoth hadn't autovoted you), though I get your meaning that it necessarily did put attention on you.
Unfortunately most of the case me or kohai can make against each other will essentially boil down to WIFOM, the only evidence I have is my results, which you don't seem to place a ton of stock in, so it is what it is.
I agreed with this at first, but looking over his response, he does actually say what he thinks was going on: that based on the timing of your claim and list of selected targets and results, you might not have believed you had an easy route to victory through a lynch on either me or Kohai. I'm going to read back through a lot of the early DP3 to see if that tracks, but the argument may have merit since I believe the suggestion to focus on Helz, Kohai and me came significantly later. It's not as strong as your argument, but it's not implausible from where I'm sitting.
Look at what happened before my claim at #20:
#2, Kohai: “Almost certain it’s wf.”
#5, Kohai: worried about a Helz/Luna or Luna/Thoth team.
#7, Kohai: Thoth’s flavor “sticks out.”
So at the exact moment I claimed, Kohai was already almost certain on you, and attention was starting to turn to Thoth. If I’m scum, the move is obvious: claim cop with a guilty on WF. It confirms Kohai’s own top read, so he votes with me. Thoth votes. That’s three, and the game’s over in the first hour. It also pulls attention off Thoth right as it’s building.
I didn’t need Helz’s plan to have a route. The easiest scum win in the game was sitting there the moment I claimed, and it matched what Kohai already believed. Instead I put a guilty on the guy Kohai was worried was my partner.
On my way to work will respond more when I get there
Good morning, im up.. Kohai I'll address your points in a single post.
No hints on Helz DP2: I was “very very dubious” of the Helz wagon in #42 and called it a possible frame. I pushed back on being paired with him in #39 and floated a Helz/Magic bus instead. That’s what a cop protecting an inno without outing himself looks like.
Hypos: nobody posted hypos DP2. The N0 system only works if everyone does it. If I’m the only one posting “hypothetical results” on day 2, I’ve outed myself as the cop. I endorsed the system, I didn’t endorse suicide.
“Why would I have Thoth fake blackmail?”: in your scum world, Thoth just got caught by a real cop. His only out is making town doubt that cop. The blackmail claim produced exactly that: the “Thoth is the real cop and scum silenced him” tinfoil. Go look at who pushed it. You did, #51 and #86 of DP3.
“A fake guilty on WF was too risky”: handing town my own partner was way riskier than that. And Helz’s plan didn’t need a guilty at all. One vote inside his pool and the game’s over.
The meta: every result I’ve given in this game flipped exactly as I said. That’s what WF is weighing, not Majora’s Mask.
WF, Kohai still hasn’t answered your #174. He keeps saying I bussed but can’t explain why I’d bus instead of taking the free lynch. That’s the whole case.
Or maybe Ill try to sleep now so I can be up a little earlier than I have been lately.
Originally Posted by whiteflame on 10/13/2026 at 9:11 AM (post #149)
Originally Posted by Lunatic on 10/13/2026 at 11:09 AM (post #147)
Also I will be going to bed in roughly 3-4 hours tops, I will do my best to maintain composure, but the more tired I get the harder it is to think straight.
I'll get back to the wall of text in a bit, but dude, get some sleep. I'll hold off on making a final call until you're back up this evening.
If you need to make a decision earlier than that its fine, I probably am not sleeping for at least another couple hours. I don't even know if anything I am saying to you is helping my case at all, if it isn't don't bother arguing with me just to argue, make whatever decision you are comfortable with. But I'll keep replying as long as you do if there's any chance at all I can get you to vote the real scum here in kohai. If this dialogue isn't helping you achieve that, there is kind of no point.
Also I will be going to bed in roughly 3-4 hours tops, I will do my best to maintain composure, but the more tired I get the harder it is to think straight.
Setting aside the Helz and Thoth calls, both of which I agree are right and we've already discussed at some length, the decision on me was obvious. If you are scum, you'd have known that your partner would flip and the Vanillaizer would be revealed. If you are town, I understand still being wary of me and wanting to get a read.
You were the biggest mislynch target, one of the most talked about since dp1. I could have easily got you lynched yesterday. I didn't. I stuck with my result. It's obvious that if I was scum I would lynch you yesterday, not leave you alive and put my balls in a vice grip that lets you crush them dp4 for no reason.
I think the paranoia's earned. It's not based even largely on previous games, and I recognize that it requires you to have been selected as scum 4 times in a row and that you'd fake claim Cop twice in a row. That is not lost on me. I am, however, not just considering your results. I've brought up a lot of other issues that go beyond those, as well as beyond your history.
Those issues are based on wrong pre-conceived notions of balance. We have already been screwed by that with magic. We aren't letting it screw us over twice are we?
Frankly, I'm not convinced that a fake red check on Helz, me or Kohai would have automatically converted into a lynch, though I can see your point that that could have led to a win. Helz and Kohai certainly were prepared to VTL me at several points, though neither did. And that's part of the reason I don't like this argument that you "had two votes sitting right there" - there was never a third vote on any of the three of us throughout the DP, so yes, if you were scum, you would have just had to sit on your hands and wait for an opportunity. Insofar as I think you had the opportunity, I agree that you did and that you probably could have gotten a lynch off on either me or Kohai if you were scum. You would have had to go all in on that at the start of the DP, but yes, that would have made more sense. Helz thought that, too.
I mean even without a red check on you guys it could have happened, and I disagree that I would have had to have been all in on the start. I made the call to stick with thoth and voted him after helz had pushed heavily for lynching thoths presumed scum partner.
I just plain disagree that you were the only one pushing Thoth. There was a long stretch when Helz was pushing for consideration between the three of us, but everyone basically agreed he was scum pretty early in the DP. The decision to fake the Blackmail was part of it, so was your result.
And I meant following up in the DP. Again, I'll point out that he was active, and that you recognized his response as a dodge. You can justify waiting all you want, I'm just calling it as I see it.
I was the first person to vote him which started everyone else voting him. I had to get that going, otherwise you guys seemed to be leaning outside of me/thoth scenario. People were considering my results before that and even kohai was spreading paranoia about a bus then. You think I would have just stuck to bussing when I had a clear out given to me by helz? Why? Again Thoth probably wasn't getting lynched had I not voted him first. The mechanic of us not being able to unvote forced everyones hand into that vote.
That's just flagrantly false. I've called out several issues I've seen with his behavior over the course of the game.
I just watched you blatantly tell him he has the edge. I can see the writing on the wall here, and you've already saida the mechanical stuff is more what you care about, and you told him he has an edge on me mechanically. I mean I disagree entirely with that notion, but I just see you voting me and saying something like "I can't get the mechanical issue out of my head, so Im going with lunatic". It's going to be disheartening to lose to something like that.
You'll note that I'm not pointing to individual posts from you and arguing that they demonstrate a pattern. I'm pointing to a number of choices you've made and putting them in context. Pointing to a single joke post and saying that that post indicates distancing is not the same.
In the context of "distancing" what pattern have I followed other than being consistently suspicious of the same person? Non committal distancing is by far more scummy imo.
So, again, the issue is whether I think you were pocketing Helz for this final DP or trying to win things last DP. If it's the latter, yeah, it changes nothing. If it's the former, it changes everything.
If you were scum, you may have been banking on leaving Helz alive going into this DP. If he was VT, you could basically count on his vote. He definitely would have lynched me or Kohai, so you would've had no problem with that. The moment he claimed Soldier, that would have become a problem because his survival would have guaranteed a town win.
Your timeline breaks the theory. Helz claimed Soldier at #44 of DP3. Thoth was still alive. So if my “pocket Helz” plan died at that moment, I had the entire rest of the day to pivot. And Helz handed me the pivot himself. From #60 on, he was pushing to lynch inside the Helz/Kohai/WF pool and leave me and Thoth alone. He even put himself in it. Any lynch there is 2v2 and the game ends on the spot. That’s the scum win, delivered by the town Soldier. What did I do? I argued against it. #111: “you are taking the odds from a 50/50 to a 33/33/33.” I kept pushing until Thoth was hammered. So your theory needs me to have a plan, watch it break, get handed a guaranteed win immediately afterward, and turn it down to lynch my own partner. There’s no version of scum that does that. Pocketing Helz was never the plan. Finding scum was.
I haven't dismissed the guilty result, I'm just putting that result in the context of the DP and expressed susses at the time. It's a point in your favor, I've said that multiple times.
Game balance issues exist regardless of which of you is scum. A Popular Blackmailer with a possible Lawyer is a lot to include in this game, even with a full fledged Cop. Similarly, having a Blackmailer and a JOAT with a Vanillaizer is a lot without a Cop. I don't love the setup regardless.
I personally don't see you highlighting a specific issue with balance other than not loving it. It's always going to be hard to say what is balanced or not without knowing the full set up, but at least from seeing thoth's role pm and the claims we have on the board I could probably say it's a bit swingy and power dependent, but it seems consistent with both sides so far, obviously not accounting for the remaining scum role we don't know about. Nothing really has bugged me about pie signing off on this yet.
Why is it fucked up to notice that the timing of your absence coincided with the one period where your pushing for the Thoth lynch would have looked most townie? Again, my point is that attention had already steered back towards Thoth when you came back. It was not a guarantee, and I'll give you some credit for helping refocus, but you're expecting me to give you a lot more credit than I feel is warranted.
Nah. I deserve every ounce of credit for that lynch. With all due respect to helz, he was about to gamble that between you and kohai, and from the looks of it, he was leaning voting you last day phase. Me forcing the vote onto thoth, who I knew was scum based on my result potentially saved the game here. I am not convinced you guys were lynching thoth without my severe push. I will happily take credit for it, whether you want to award it to me or not.
I'll repeat: I didn't see a follow up to your post #254 in the DP, and yeah, that seems odd when he was active at the time. I've already shown in my ISO of your behavior that, yes, you did call out his claim. Yes, you did maintain a sus on him. Yes, you did use your N2 check on him. That's not nothing. I just don't like the justification that your lack of follow-up on those questions in the DP was because Thoth tends to be absent when he was there, yet you keep saying it over and over again. And now you're adding another justification, saying that if you'd continued to put attention on Thoth, you'd have put a target on your back, which I don't think was obvious. I'm judging you based on something I think you're being overly defensive about. I'm not judging you as though you were a VT. I'm not ignoring other behaviors. The fact that we're still doing this back-and-forth means I haven't made my decision yet.
Understood. You’ve got my reasoning on Thoth and I’m not going to keep relitigating one follow-up. Weigh it how you see fit.
I’d just ask that when you make the call, you put it next to the big pieces: every result I gave flipped exactly as I said; a fake cop picks his own results and any fake guilty on a townie won DP3; and after Helz claimed Soldier and offered to lynch inside his own pool, I argued against the free scum win and pushed Thoth instead. One missing follow-up on DP2 doesn’t outweigh that. I don't think there was as much of a follow up gap there as "It can wait to be resolved" because regardless of his answers he wasn't going to be lynched and we could pursue him the next day, unless he was a night kill, which would have been optimal for solving him anyway. If you think I am being defensive, it's because I feel like this is kind of a dumb thing to pursue me for. I just don't see this through the same lens as you, maybe I will have to accept that. But if I get lynched over logic like this I am going to be fairly annoyed.
Yeah town's not winning this one. Unfortunate.
Yeah, I think we all agree that it is unusual to have a Popular scum with an active role. As someone who has used one of those before, it's pretty rare. I don't like that you were taking two posts from Kohai's DP1 that clearly had one meaning and ascribing a different meaning to them.
The text chain is too long for me to even remember what you are talking about anymore, but speaking of things we don't like, I don't like how your buying into kohais bull shit.
I'm not dismissing your pushes as bussing. Whether you're scum or town, I believe you had little choice but to push Thoth in DP3. And I'll give you some credit that you indicated that choice by the end of DP1 and all over DP2, showing that you had reason to sus Thoth. It does make the decision to investigate Helz first feel a little more surprising in retrospect, but you clearly had a target of suspicion, even if you weren't willing to pressure them during DP2.
When I was the only one pushing thoth dp3 and was the first to cast a vote, I'd say thats more than "little choice". All I had to do was nudge in literally any direction for a win there. Make it make sense to me how lynching thoth was the only option lol. Anyways, I did follow up. I spent my N2 check on him. Chasing a dodge in thread gets you nothing from a player who’s barely there. A check gets you an answer. I took the answer.
As for Kohai's motives, yeah, he could have just been pushing to get mislynches. I'm saying I understand his thinking well enough that that isn't the only plausible explanation for why he voted/sussed the way he did. I'm not "giv[ing] him a pass on every wrong push he's made," I'm explaining why the justification for those choices isn't automatically sus to me.
You've consistently sided with kohai the entire day phase, he's got you hook line and sinker. I am actually pretty impressed with him for being able to pull one over on you.
See, Luna, this kind of sus is just beyond me. Thoth was clearly setting himself up to get a response like Kohai's. Kohai gave it and then rescinded it. If anyone saw that as a reason to unpair the two of them, that's beyond me, so if this is "the cheapest distancing there is," then it's also the weakest and it didn't work. I get that you want to build as complete of a case against him as possible and that you have every reason to sus him, but read this from my perspective. Why is this automatically a sus exchange? I don't see it.
It's more of a counter point, since the only way I can be scum is repeated insistance that I am bussing, however when I try to point out distancing on the other side you want to downplay it as a joke. Sure it is a joke, I get that. It's just interesting that the same bullshit rules being applied to me aren't being applied to kohai.
So, again, you're saying he actively called out a role his own partner had and then got called out by that partner for TMI? If so, that's some weird distancing play, man.
Thoth pointing it out like that seems more to me like Thoth probably got on kohais ass in the mafia pm for mentioning the vanillizer and wanted to be the first to call attention to it so he could get ahead of it.
I'm... still not seeing it. So Kohai jumping on the same vote with Mag1c without his own reasoning was the problem? Or was it that Kohai put him at L-1? Because Kohai didn't even start the 1v1 conversation between me and Mag1c. Like, I get it, it was a little off for him to sheep Mag1c's vote without much explanation and then turn around and vote against him, but there was a lot of discussion between those two points. Are you saying he didn't provide adequate reasoning for the shift in perspective?
Here’s the step I’m pointing at. Kohai’s first DP2 vote was to follow Mag1c onto Helz, right after Mag1c said he’d been blackmailed. Following a silenced player’s vote only makes sense if you believe him. When you asked why, it was “I’ll explain when I get home,” and the explanation was POE plus Helz asking Mag for a character claim. Then he unvoted, voted Mag1c with “I don’t believe vanillaizer and blackmailer exist,” unvoted again over paranoia, and finally put Mag1c at L1. So yes, I’m saying he never gave his own reason for the flip. He went from trusting the blackmail enough to follow the vote to calling it fake, and the reasoning in between was the balance argument you and Helz made, not anything he brought himself. He was on both sides of that 1v1 and ended up on the one that lynched a townie. That’s the chain...
I initially thought I missed something after reading this, but looking back, it seems like your framing is what's missing something. Let's look at the timeline:
Helz claimed in post 44 in DP3. You claimed in post 20 in DP3. So, no, regardless of your alignment, you didn't know what Helz was at that point.
So yes, if you were scum and you knew what Helz was before you claimed, you might have gone all in on the push against him. Absent that, you believed he was just VT, which is what he claimed he would be if he wasn't the PGO. I'll fully admit you had the opportunity to push to get him lynched regardless, but the value of that lynch for scum would have changed after he claimed.
You’re right that I didn’t know Helz was Soldier when I claimed, but it doesn’t change anything. Five alive, two scum. Any town lynch DP3, vanilla or not, makes it 2v2 and the game is over. Helz, you, it didn’t matter. I didn’t need to know his role to win, I just needed one guilty.
I have to jump through hoops and what if scenarios for both of you. I've already explained what several of those are for Kohai.
I mean I have given you a guilty result and our only scum lynch, and it's being dismissed. The best thing you have is presumed game balance issues, when we already mislynched magic over that same thing. Some loose issues with my character I guess. Idk it feels pretty obvious to me, and maybe I am biased being the townie on the other end of the wagon, but I really don't see how you aren't seeing kohai here.
Dude, you were absent for a long stretch that last DP. When the conversation came up about lynching among the three of us (me, Kohai and Helz) you were nowhere to be seen for a while, and it wasn't until we started revisiting the possibility of lynching between the two of you that you showed up again and doubled down on the 1v1. Your absence is not a reason to sus you, but it was notable during a time when attention was largely off you and Thoth, so I'm not giving you much credit for that.
It's pretty fucked to say I am inactive when I am literally asleep. Almost every time before I go to bed I publicly announce it and always say I will be back on to post in the evenings. But when I was back I doubled down on Thoth. If I’m scum, coming back to that conversation and steering it toward my partner is the last thing I do.
Adjustment noted and added to the above.
I don't like that, after one attempt to get him to respond to your question and telling me now that he dodged it, you let the issue drop. Telling me over and over that there was no chance of getting anything from Thoth, who was active at the time (notoriously AFK or no, he was there), just doesn't sound like you. And it's responses like this that keep getting under my skin because they read like really threadbare excuses not to engage with someone you viewed as very scummy. Again, it's not that I think you should have stalled out the DP, it's that you didn't even follow up once beyond just saying you still sussed him.
WF, I disagree with the premise. I didn’t let it drop. I followed up in the way that actually mattered. I put Thoth on the spot in #254. After he claimed Giuffre I called it out in DP2 #391, said he remained one of my biggest suspects, and that his outlier claim made it worse. Then I spent my N2 check on him. That’s three separate follow ups, ending in a guilty. “Didn’t follow up once” just isn’t what happened. And you’re judging me like a vanilla townie who has nothing but the thread. I’m the cop. A cop doesn’t need to win a thread argument with the guy he’s about to check, and he definitely shouldn’t hard tunnel him. That paints a target on his back for the NK and tells scum exactly where the check is going. Every experienced player knows that. I kept my head down on purpose, I wasn’t killed N1 or N2, and I came out with a guilty on the actual scum. You’re calling it a “threadbare excuse not to engage.” I’m calling it doing my job correctly. The result is sitting right there in Thoth’s flip.
I never let up pressure on thoth* not helz
I've fully admitted the Cop guilty on Thoth is the major point that's helping your case. The argument that you could have gotten Helz or me lynched is fair, I think that was plausible. However, I don't like the way you're framing this as though it was a given. Helz himself pointed out that you'd been defending him a bit in DP2 after sussing him a bit in DP1. Coming out of left field and saying that you got a red check on him in DP2 would have at least drawn some uncertainty. A red check on me would have made more sense, though you may also have just decided that it was unlikely town would lynch DJT if push came to shove. And with Thoth a very likely lynch going into the last DP - dude still hadn't claimed his role, so scum were clearly scrambling with that fake Blackmailed play - I could see wanting to put as sharp a divide between you two as possible.
The problem is you have to jump through hoops and what if scenarios to reach a conclusion I am scum here, instead of the liklier possibility I am just town lol
To be clear, I'm not arguing that these are the likeliest scenarios. I think you'd take advantage of the opportunity and try to get a mislynch first and foremost. I'm just saying I have reason to doubt that there is absolutely no scenario where you would make this choice. There's a logic to it, even if that logic requires me to buy that you just didn't trust getting the lynch off on either me or Helz.
I was literally the one most resistant to the idea of lynching outside of the 1 v 1 with me and thoth lol. I understood his idea there and everything but was really hoping you would just help me lynch thoth, and I am glad we did. It's unfortunate that past bussing adventures is having you second guess me and my results this much.
And yes, the lack of engagement with you from Thoth was noted. I didn't see much frustration from you with that or attempts to draw attention back to the questions you'd asked him, so while I agree he could be obstinate, I didn't see much effort to break down that wall. Not voting him is one thing, letting him get away with a weak response that you say now is a dodge is another.
I dis-agree entirely, I never let up pressure on helz. There's only so much water you can get from a stone. Thoth is notoriously AFK and its a habit I am used to across multiple games. Sure, if we have the time to spare, I'd happily make you guys hold off on a lynch and help me apply pressure to him. But in the meantime, we were losing valuable game time and I had agreed with the consensus about the vanillizer and blackmail dilemma, so I wasn't prepared to stall out the day phase waiting for thoth to get his shit together.
