Thoth

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.

Oh I almost forgot, the theme split was Rangers vs Non-Rangers or Ranger and his apprentice was everyone else.

I caught Gilan being Halt's apprentice, but I missed that they were the only Rangers in the setup. I guess I implicitly thought that Horace was a Ranger because he was good with a sword and never questioned that assumption or even recognized it as an assumption.

Rex lying about his role being harmful to visitors so we would not redirect him got us to waste our NP1 action.

If Wryly's role wasn't in the game, then the existence of a Strongman at all was pointless.

Eh. More like pointreduced than pointless. There was still Hider. I asked Pie whether or not Strongman killed a Hider if targeted at them, and he said yes, which surprised me. No matter how strong you are, you can't kill someone who isn't there.

Did you ever claim 2x?

This is all from Day 4, Post 31.

Most of thoth's behavior has been relatively similar to his other town games.

The ones we have played together? All one of them?

But the major point I want to touch on here is how increbily pro-town his lynching behavior is. If mafia is going to stay away from mislynches, the only reason to do so would be to use it for town cred.

The reason I was on neither of those mislynches is because both times, I was busy in real life and got back right before the end-of-day deadline, but Pie had closed the thread early. Lucky me. I was afraid someone would point out that I was not posting during the last few votes on either wagon.

Thoth has been on exactly 0 mislynches, and has never once tried taking credit for that. In fact when I gave him town cred in dp2 for it, he tried denying the town cred by explaining he wasn't around to vote!

I figured that the town credit for not being on mislynches was self-arguing enough that explicitly playing the "town credit" card would look tryhardy. Same with the justification for Gilan being a Tracker. It fits so well that going on about it could make someone say, "Why is Thoth putting in effort to convince me of this very obvious thing?"

Hell, thoth was so conservative he didn't even want to vote and missed the fact that I was town confirmed because I hadn't quick hammered him yet, where wryly was very quick to point that out. This is such an innocent little town slip its very hard for me to ignore, but ultimately shows how passive and careful he is being because he doesn't want to mess town up.

I actually did miss that. It's what I get for playing forum Mafia as scum while taking four accounting courses.

I knew that rex would die though, because mharman was smart enough to have directed that, knowing that if I die, it confirms my results and proves rex is town. Rex has the ability to prevent a kill which can confirm him especially with a town doctor alive (if she was actually a town doctor). To shut that narrative down scum would have HAD to have killed rex, and I think mharman is one of the few people alive that is smart enough to have pieced that together.

I'm not sure I understand this.

Wait so which power did Thoth use on me to block my protection of Rex?

You Doctored Rex and I killed you, then Bus Driver sent the kill to Rex and your Doctor to yourself. I was surprised that Bus Driver redirected night kills too. That play was Magic's idea. I think it might have been better to Redirect you to Lunatic because that Bus Driver play would have failed if you had self-doctored.

Some were more reasonable than others, but that’s usually by design. As always, I hope everyone had fun, and any constructive criticism is appreciated.

Yeah. Constructive. Like calling my arguments garbage. Unless you just meant they were false.

Scum chat this game was not idyllic. We rarely agreed about what to do and strong words were exchanged, but, as Pie told me, better argumentative than inactive. I could not have done it without Magic. In particular, during day 2 after Casey's role flipped, I wanted to claim Will Treaty as a modified Cop that checks whether or not a player is from Araluen, and he caught that this would have exposed me as lying or scum straight-claiming because Will is from Redmont Fief and Casey saw there was one, presumably meaning only one, town-aligned player from Redmont. Oopsie.

I brought up gender soft-claiming day 1 because I figured that, with Evanlyn claimed, it could save us a question and identify characters since one female would probably be Alyss Mainwaring and two would almost certainly be Alyss and Madelyn Altman. I was surprised that nobody called me on this given the low female:male ratio of important characters in this series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj2eix1bYrc

I suggested that Wryly redirected Magic to himself for some bizarre reason, but I suppose there is a non-negligible chance that Magic never visited himself and Wryly has an ability that can feed townies false information. I doubt it, but I guess it's possible.

It also just occurred me to that Wryly's justification is probably the cleanest of any role that has flipped or been claimed so far, even considering that I just said that I am Gilan, Tracker and nobody questioned it or asked for a paraphrase from my mod PM. As Wryly said herself (Day 2, Post 73), claiming her character practically claims her role. That strikes me as symptomatic of a fake-claim, although, in fairness, either you or Magic probably could have concocted a less straightforward but still believable fake-claim and justification. Also, it seems to me that Malcolm is, while not exactly a minor character, less important than many or most characters that have flipped, which makes me think that you exhausted at least one of your questions about who was in the game before you settled on Malcolm.

Tagging you in hopes that it will increase the probability that you see my latest post before voting.

If you're town, why did you read Magic visiting himself?

I don't know. I'm guessing that you redirected him for some godforsaken reason I can't begin to guess at.

If I'm Magic's scummate, I certainly wouldn't have tried to redirect him.

"Certainty" is a strong word given that your role hasn't flipped and there is no indisputable evidence of a Doctor since every night has had a night-kill, notwithstanding the Strongman. You could say that Strongman being in the role setup is proof of some protective role, but we had a Hider, and Pie confirmed to me that a Strongman would kill a Hider (no, that's not a scumslip, I asked him after Magic's role flipped) if targeted at them, plus I don't know whether or not Doctor would have saved Rex if he role-blocked scum. Again, I don't know why Magic visited himself, but I think you do.

Also it means you're a 3x tracker and idk why Pie would do that when everyone else's powers were 1x or 2x

False. Mikal and RT both had unlimited uses, and Casey's ability was passive.

If Magic had carried out the NK on Mikal, you would have tracked him visiting Mikal that night. But you didn't, you tracked him visiting himself. That means he would've had to use his 1x Strongman power NP1, when it made the least sense to.

NP1? You mean the NP1 when you supposedly waived your Doctor ability, so there was an excuse for a townie dying despite the presence of a Doctor? Not to suggest that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that whiteflame was town.

Also it would mean Magic advised me to claim doctor and then say I protected him, my scummate, which would be stupid

"Stupid" is another strong word, but it would befit a noob, so, yes, it's plausible that he told you to do this to farm noob cred.

Also wouldn't Magic have advised me not to jump on the Mikal wagon and stay low profile instead, like you did

That's a creative way of spinning the fact that you were on that wagon and I was not. Again, not to say that I knew for a fact that Mikal was scum.

Also why VTL me last DP instead of trying to turn the suspicion up on you

Only if by "instead of" you mean in addition to.

Would you care to explain why Halt has flipped scum and Will Treaty is in a "mentor/student relationship which develops into more of a father/son relationship" with Halt? Source. You're not really telling me you missed that, are you?

If Halt is scum what the hell is the theme split.

For that matter, you could have pushed me as scum straight-claiming, since Gilan was Halt's apprentice, and the fact that you did not shows me that you were afraid to bring up connections between Halt and any other characters.

You are right that Luna must be innocent because he didn’t instahammer. I’m tired and not thinking that clearly. I’ll vote you now and leave it to Luna to decide when and where to drop the hammer. If I’m stalling, well, yeah, I’d like if Luna could at least give me a couple hours to take a nap and come back when I’m refreshed.

VTL Wryly

I’m beginning to suspect that the split is Halt / Will Treaty and Wryly is Will. That does seem to go against Casey’s role mentioning Will as the source of her information, but, then again, her card says there is one town-aligned player from Redmont Fief, not only one player period, and it does specify information “from the inside”. Apparently, Will Treaty is like a son to Halt. This doesn’t reflect that well on me either since Halt mentored Gilan, but there are a lot of characters linked to Halt in some way, and Will seems the most tightly linked.

Watch Wryly claim she visited me or Luna and she just caught me lying about being Tracker.

Lunatic is probably town because, as Wryly pointed out yesterday (Post #123), Rex would have died from visiting Luna if he were scum, although I can’t rule out redirection, though. With that in mind, the game probably comes down to which one of us Luna thinks is scum, although I’ll withhold my vote for now on the off chance it’s Luna.

I tracked Wryly last night and saw her visit Rex.

Wryly might have claimed to have waived NP1 to explain why a Strongman kill was not blocked. Re:Luna, yes, mafia had a Strongman, see Magic’s role flip.

It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings.

Ah, well, the day phase is technically over so I guess I should have refreshed the thread before posting anything.

I think its mharm and wryly. A hider shouldn't been seen visiting themselves if you actually tracked him. I've literally never seen this mirror maker role used EVER in any game.

Is Pie known for using rare or custom roles? If he is, then Magic's claim goes from extremely unbelievable to merely very unbelievable.

If it was me and Rex I wouldn't have VTL'd him DP1. Also why would Rex confirm Luna as town, that turns up the heat on me.

I bet you could find an example where every pair of living players, not just the ones on PoE, have done something uncoordinated or antagonistic. After you voted for Rex DP1, he still had two votes to go, and let's not forget that you eagerly swapped to Casey. I can imagine scum doing that for, "definitely not the same team", credit later, although it's not a risk I would be willing to take and Rex supposedly is not known for playing that incautiously. But, yeah, Lunatic might be right that it's you and Magic.

I will be willing to vote Magic once I believe I fully understand his claim. I will need to re-read it a few more times, and maybe a few more times after that. If I fuck up, then I fucked up.