Thoth

I’m curious on how you know Thoth’s character?

Is it really possible for two folks to have the same character?

Upon re reading I think I may have misunderstood Thoth. The only issue I have is him claiming a Xenomorph but my character is the Xenomorph. I admit that I know nothing about the Alien franchise so I had thought the Xenomorph was an individual character and not necessarily an entire species.

I was under the impression that all aliens are called Xenomorphs and "the alien" refers to one specific Xenomorph that hunts the humans in the movie. My character is a type of alien, in the same way that Rex had Wargals last game. The role PM sounds like I am a Xenomorph but the justification for my ability is that it goes against the interests of Xenomorphs. I know it's weird.

VTL Mikal

Pressuring a new player for a claim explicitly because she is new is so scummy it almost loops back around to not being scummy, but I'm willing to put it here for now.

I did know one more fact about Alien that I did not mention earlier because it only came to mind a few minutes ago, as I was brushing my teeth. I usually have my best ideas when doing household chores.

Some of you may have heard of the Bechdel Test, which a movie or other work passes if: (1) it has at least two women characters; (2) there is a conversation between at least two of these women; (3) they talk about something other than a man. Many movies fail it even today, let alone in the 1970s. As pointed out in the comic strip that introduced the Bechdel Test, Alien passes because Ripley and Lambert have a few exchanges. That could be the theme split.

If I got that right, everyone here is going to side-eye me until the end of time, Lunatic and both scum will start wondering if I hacked into their computers, and I will get voted out the instant one of them flips scum.

Does anyone have an idea for how I could randomly pick a number from 1 through 9, or whatever number of players, for my first vote and prove to everyone that the number is really random?

If I have no good reason to vote someone specific by 6 September 2025 at 12:30 P.M. Central Standard Time or whenever I get to this thread, and if the winning numbers for the Florida Lottery's Pick 5 are available by then, I will choose my vote by adding the numbers, taking the remainder modulo 8, and adding 1 if the result is greater than 2. I believe that this is unimpeachable, and that the chances of choosing anyone are close enough to equal that they might as well be equal.

Mind you, I don't recommend that you do this because then we will all be voting for the same person. A better method is needed for randomly selecting votes with independently verifiable integrity. I'll keep thinking about it.

The drawing is technically today, but it feels like tomorrow since I stayed up past midnight.

I'll start. My character is a Xenomorph. I might as well claim that lest someone think the split is as easy as human = town / xenomorph = scum, and I doubt it is vice versa either.

Or lest a townie be afraid to claim a Xenomorph because they think it will look scummy.

Probably a good idea to soft claim something if anyone has any ideas

This should not be too risky, since the theme split is supposedly not obvious and scum know it anyway.

I'll start. My character is a Xenomorph. I might as well claim that lest someone think the split is as easy as human = town / xenomorph = scum, and I doubt it is vice versa either.

I almost suggested we all do a different soft-claim, then realized how much it sounded like I was baiting you into some weird custom-role ability.

Miller, PGO, Gravedigger are the top ones I can think of

So SOP-claim roles are ones liable to hurt town, especially if they give misleading results?

I could imagine PGO claiming some high-power role to bait the night-kill, although that would be very risky and very likely to draw profanity your way should it misfire.

romulus is included, sorry it is also canon

You're sorry that you forgot to mention that it's included, or you're sorry that it is canon?

Since I would not vote for myself, I would pick a number 1-8 and then add 1 if it is greater than 2.

Does anyone have an idea for how I could randomly pick a number from 1 through 9, or whatever number of players, for my first vote and prove to everyone that the number is really random?

About all that I knew about Alien before this game started was that the original is a horror film infamous for the scene where the alien comes out of a guy's chest. I only learned today that Alien is the original, since I had heard of some of the sequels to Alien without realizing that they were sequels. I've read up a bit, but am not at all familiar with the lore.

Which roles are considered SOP-claims (standard operating procedure) on here? Mikal brought up SOP-claiming early in day 1 of last game, and I'm just curious for future reference, as I don't believe my role is likely to qualify. Before someone asks, "Didn't you bring up gender soft-claiming last game with an ulterior motive and the intention of playing the curious-noob card if someone pointed out how few women are major characters in Ranger's Apprentice?", I don't see how knowing which roles are SOP-claims could hurt town, or, for that matter, hurt scum unless it caused someone to SOP-claim. I know that y'all will be scumreading everything I say with a microfiche reader for the foreseeable future, but I tried to save you the effort of wondering what kind of ploy I'm hiding behind this question, since there is none.

VTL Thoth Better safe than sorry

I diagnose this patient with Post Thoth Stress Disorder.

One thing that really threw me off is why Mharman had such a hardon for lynching Mikal DP1. As scum I would want to keep him alive, especially if Thoth had a redirect.

We asked Pie whether or not we could Redirect a Hider, and he said lol no. I left the scum chat server, so I can't check, but I think he said that Deflector and Bus Driver would have worked.

In my first Discord game, I had a mentor who could see everything I could see, answer my questions, and give me advice on how to play, although I made all decisions. One tip he gave me is that, when confronted with seemingly irrefutable evidence, I should assert that something must have gone wrong because the chance of success, however small, is better than nothing. I deployed this tactic in DP4 against the inexplicability of Magic's self-visit, and I guess it worked.

I thought for sure you would've conserved your 1x Strongman until later.

That was Magic's idea. I disagreed.

Also, the Strongman role card had a typo in it: "Each even night..." Pie confirmed that we could use it any night, not just on even-numbered nights, and edited the role in scum chat accordingly, but the original version is in the OP of this thread.

So the goal was to gin up suspicion that there was a scum role that interfered with role results?

Partially, but the main reason was to explain why I had not claimed earlier.

How will you break a tie in votes?

All I'm saying is that I would not turn down a date with a supermodel due to having a low body count.

It was a fortunate, for me, coincidence that we had a Doctor in this game despite Pie using them rarely enough that Lunatic reasonably concluded that it was evidence against Wryly.

All the more reason to sign up.

Iso as in isolation. You can go through a player's profile page and read all their mafia posts in isolation to get a feel for how they evolved over the course of the game.

De gustibus non disputandum est, but several people have told me that they would rather be town than mafia/wolf/scum/whatever you call the evil team, and I could not feel more differently. I love the challenge and risk of lying, manipulating, misdirecting, subtly misrepresenting, nudging people in my desired direction, fabricating bullshit stories complete with details, and not being caught doing any of those things. It's like an adrenaline high, but chronic rather than acute. Maybe I'm an anxiety-masochist or a high-functioning sociopath who found a healthy outlet, but playing scum is at least several times more fun to me than playing town.

Forget watching how I evolve over the course of one game. If I play a bunch of games on here, higher-than-average post count will probably become a decent heuristic for me being scum.

Okay I see. Nah it was the right play because there was no way I was gonna self-doctor at that point. You would be stupid to NK me with only the two of us left in the POE. And I had no idea what a bus driver was so I wouldn't have anticipated that play.

I very much doubted that you would self-doctor, but I might as well have taken into account the possibility, however small, given that I believe the night action would have worked the same otherwise.

Why is it bad for a doctor to waive NP1? I know people scumread it but why. What i looked up seemed to indicate doctors should play conservatively.

More fundamentally than the answers other people gave, because waiving actions denies you information. There is an old saying in firefighting: "Never pass up fire with the nozzle". Since the hose has a fixed maximum flow rate, you should, as much as possible, have the hose running at maximum capacity and pointed at the fire, even if you are not aiming it optimally.

Not to sound like I am the leading authority on how to play this game, but information in Mafia is paramount and in limited supply, and abilities give you information. Therefore, you should always use your ability unless there is an overwhelming reason not to, even if there is a risk of harming town, especially considering that the information you gain may outweigh the harm you might do. It took me a few games to overcome my hesitancy to take the risk of hurting town. In a game of imperfect information, you have to take risks.

The 2x restriction on your Doctor might have been a good enough reason to override the default of always using it, since you had little information to guess who was worth protecting, and, even if you never got any scumreads, your probability of stopping the night-kill would become higher as players died.

Scum asked a million questions about mechanics and roles, especially for flipped ones that I thought town missed.

In case anyone is curious, our questions were Alyss Mainwaring (making the gender softclaim ploy redundant), Will Treaty, Watcher, and Gifter.

basicslly speculation on why I was the night kill instead of Rex, I had figured that Rex would have been killed last night and even mentioned it to pie but I was hoping it would have been me because Rex was technically more confirmed than me. It ended up not even being an issue no one tried to spin me as scum in the end really.

I thought you both seemed town-confirmed enough that I never factored this in.

Thoth, as everyone has already said, you played a really good game. Staying off of the wagons is always something you want to do as scum. I thought you tried just enough to avoid seeming like a try hard.

Good game everyone. Thoth you were definitely the MVP of the game.

I'm not going to be too hard on Luna because I originally was also scumreading Wryly, mainly because Thoth's scum play was just that good.

Y'all are too kind. My strategy was to say what I thought I would as town, then cut out anything likely to hurt us and add what I thought could move town in the direction we wanted. Easier said than done, I suppose. Much, maybe most, of the analysis I gave was sincere, even if inconsequential, because, as town, I would have said everything that I thought had any chance of being useful in hopes that it might lead someone to catching something I missed. That also meant that most of what I said did not advance our interests and maybe harmed them, but I figured that, if I kept my contribution volume high enough, I could hide scumminess in the margins.

Ya they were false and misleading/redirecting, which town sadly fell for

Sadly... for them.

I was pissed that I was killed because I thought they would kill Luna and did a lot of iso reading in the NP.

Iso reading?

Also why did you guys decide you should straightclaim Gilan but fake claim Erak?

Magic thought that Erak was the best fit for his Universal Backup fake-claim because of the justification that Erak took over as Oberjarl after the previous one died.

Why was he so insistent?

He wanted me to claim that I saw something that indicated that my results had been tampered with, hence why I did not claim immediately, and by claiming I Tracked him, nobody would have information to the contrary, unless perhaps RT Asceticized Magic. I told Magic that, if I were Tracker and I knew that I had been interfered with, I should have claimed this ASAP to let town know there is a role that can tamper with information. He replied that a Tracker would have good reason to hide their role so they could get more usefulness out of it. I said in the day thread that I had been debating with myself whether or not to claim, then claimed, and I believe nobody pressured me about it.

Thoth saw Mharman visit himself during NP1. How would this be possible. Let’s say Mharman did use the Strongman, then the Tracker would see him kill Whiteflame. Let’s say he waived; then he can’t be tracked. Let’s look at what the townies did. RT waived and REF blocked WF. There is not a role that exists that can create a result that Thoth saw. Redirector doesn’t work. Neither does Bus Driver, or Deflector.

I couldn't imagine any way it could have happened either, but I had heard that you like to use custom roles and I had my fingers crossed that Lunatic would buy my, "I'm clueless, but it definitely happened", explanation. The self-visit claim was Magic's idea. I did not like it, but he was insistent and my objections to that one never got vocal, although some of my other disagreements with him did.

I'm confused, how can Mharman's power self visit. Someone had to reflect his power back at him for Thoth's tracking results to be correct, right? Who did you think did that?

He never self-visited, and, if he had, the night action list shows that I would not have seen it. That claim was unadultered, military-grade, industrial-strength bullshit. I kinda thought that would go without saying.

Thoth isn’t really a noob; he’s played countless games of mafia before.

Countless, not exactly. Few enough to count on two hands between here and my Discord playgroup, and, adding games I've played in real life, e.g., Blood on the Clocktower, I could probably account for all of them if I could count with my toes. That is, unless you count Town of Salem and the Mafia map from the Starcraft 2 arcade, which are so full of kids that they probably serve as negative experience.

Also, the fact that you responded to a lot of people in one post was hard to follow for me, and I’m sure for other people. I’m surprised people were following along. I won’t let it slide though, so be warned.

I wanted to avoid unneeded posts, but, upon reflection, I suppose there's no risk of running out of posts. I also did not want people to think that I was ignoring something in case I responded to something else in an earlier post.