Thoth

Because it there's no scum in the POE, following it will cost us the game.

Thank you!

So... you're arguing that the lack of a lynch flip denied town valuable information that outweighs the gain of an extra DP? I mean, if that's your view, you're welcome to it, but I don't agree.

No. I am saying that I think you VTNLed to avoid suspicion in case you voted out a townie, which you most likely would, while manipulating the numbers where you could still win with three more mislynches, and denying town information from the flip or saving a town-harmful neutral would be potential bonuses.

I think losing another player would have been more damaging, especially since we were far more likely to lynch town given that no one was on the same page about a lynch wagon.

Agreed, but see above.

I also just don't get how you come up with scenarios like this, that we somehow "crunched the numbers" and determined that there was value in denying ourselves information to simultaneously deny town a flip that would have put them one step closer to MYLO. It's another instance of WIFOM, but it would be some baffling math on our parts to conclude that that's the best possible outcome from DP1.

The math is noticing that you could VTNL and still win with as many mislynches as a Caroler claim could give you. I would not call that baffling. Yes, a mislynch would have put town one step closer to MYLO, but you can lose a battle and still win the war.

Between RT and whiteflame, the one who claims Caroler, and therefore the one that is definitely town if at least one is town

Sorry, misspoke. I meant the one who is definitely town if there really is a Caroler.

I am C Round/K Round. Once per game, I can put on my crown at night, i.e., bulletproof.

Any particular reason why you have been evasive about providing your role claim? You had three votes on you when you last posted.

Because five minus three equals two and

1. I would rather not interact with an anti-claim mechanic unless I must.
2. I was hoping that, at some point, I would be the likely NK target for scum, so I could get them to waste a night.

I can't write off Thoth. It's a bold move to push me and RT as a scum team, but it's also entirely believable if he's in the Caroler result and he wants to push the lynch anywhere else. Making town disbelieve the result is a reasonable tactic, especially when he knows he will likely be on the chopping block regardless and wants to push that off a DP or two.

I wouldn't call it a bold move on my part. I just noticed a possibility that everyone else either missed or was afraid to mention, unless my hypothesis has some flaw I did not notice.

If you think I can pull of this level of frustration as part of a faked back-and-forth with RT, you give me far too much credit.

Your exchanges felt scripted.

False. Mikal started the VTNL wagon (see post #175).

I partially stand corrected, but Ctrl+F-ing showed me that you brought up the possibility of VTNL several times before #175, first in #135 and then in #138, #145, and #174. Unless page search missed something, you were the first to suggest we hop on that wagon, and Mikal only got the horse pulling it. The way you indirectly suggested it on day 1, and now are offloading responsibility for it, give me extreme scum vibes. I'm more sus of you now than I was before you pointed this out.

...Excuse me? Since when does searching the role on Mafia Universe take any more than a few minutes? Also, and I'm surprised I have to point this out again, I already knew I was the Caroler at this point. That research was already in hand before the start of the DP, so of course it wouldn't take substantial time.

I accept that I was wrong here.

The first part of this is entirely WIFOM

Only if WIFOM stands for Whiteflame Is Flunking Out Math. Today, there were 10 choose 3 = 120 possible sets of three players to name. If Shining, Mikal, and Thoth were the most sus possible triplet, and there is only a 1/120 chance of picking the most sus possible triplet, the probability of you lying skyrockets. It might be that this was not the most sus possible triplet, and that 1/120 is an underestimate anyway because scum are more likely to be sus, but it's convenient that, if I remember right, none of the three were being townread. I'm not going through the thread and thoroughly checking for everyone's reads yet because I need to finish writing this before I get a fifth vote.

The only scenario where you should be seeking a lynch on RT is if you believe we're both scum, as Thoth clearly does.

I think you are both scum, yes. I could imagine that RT is town and you are scum. The other way around seems less likely since you would have no reason to fake-claim Caroler, but possibly you would not have seen the same list RT did if you really are Caroler, so you would not know RT was lying. I would still like to see RT out first since he is in the POE list anyway in case the carol was accurate, but I could be persuaded to vote for you to go in front of him.

So I tied myself directly to my scum partner in the most brazen way possible with a role that scum would either have to continuously RB or otherwise kill off to stop, making my survival in subsequent NPs automatically pretty sus? Sure, why not?

Because at least one of you hoped nobody would notice.

Look at what happened here. RT claims he got information that could lead to three mislynches, probably enough to win scum the game. whiteflame and RT have some back-and-forth over it, almost as though they want to look like they do not quite trust each other. Eventually, whiteflame claims a rare role that just so happens to give enough mislynch targets to make town lose if we vote them all out. Not any number of targets, but exactly enough to win for scum. All three names are sus enough that they might think people would lynch them. Between RT and whiteflame, the one who claims Caroler, and therefore the one that is definitely town if at least one is town, is the one who was more strongly townread on day 1, and therefore more likely to be trusted. If I did not shave the hairs on the back of my neck, they would be standing up straighter than a man whose girlfriend is the same height, yet somehow nobody else brought up the possibility of the Caroler list being fake.

If y'all vote me out, when I flip town, please do everything you can to clear both Mikal and Shining. I think it's more likely than not that whiteflame is scum, and, if so, RT is probably scum too. If Mikal and Shining are clear, we can safely dispatch whiteflame and RT. If there is a seer or sheriff or whatever y'all call the role that checks alignments, please, for God's sake, check Mikal or Shining.

Give me a few more minutes to finish writing.

Who started the VTNL wagon on day 1? Whiteflame. That led to 9 players left today. Mislynch today, we start tomorrow with 7. Mislynch again, we start DP4 with 5, by which time scum has not reached parity.

Let's say we had voted someone out day 1. Then we would have 8 today. Mislynch, 6 left at start of DP3. Mislynch again, you go down to 5 and someone dies in the night to reach parity.

Considering these numbers, VTNLing could have seemed like the right call because mislynching on day 1 would have cost us a day.

However, if you were scum and expected town to waste days 2, 3, and 4 anyway, then VTNLing would only set you back by a day you did not need, while also denying the town valuable information and possibly saving a scum or town-harmful neutral. I think whiteflame and/or RT came up with the fake caroler claim plot and crunched the numbers, and then whiteflame became the wagoneer because he was the more trusted of the two.

This is EXACTLY the kind of self-targeted speculation I did

Because it generates FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) about what your role is, and FUD is scum's best friend, especially when it surrounds the role you are lying about.

It is also a little strange that RT kept mentioning his role could have been deactivated hits me as odd still but not worth considering yet

Takes one to know one. This is EXACTLY the kind of self-targeted speculation I did while tightrope-walking on a fake claim as brazen as what I think RT is doing, and much more complicated.

Thoth does just feel a bit off but I can't put my finger on it.

Would you be surprised to learn that I occasionally overhear people say this about me outside social deduction games?

unvote

Vote RationalTheist

Something hit me as I was re-reading this thread.

I'd be happy to full claim my character if enough people want me to. However, I was targeted with a night action and heard music about shining, mikal, and thoth (whatever that means).

(Post 2) I might be reading something into nothing, but "(whatever that means)" doesn't sit right with me. It's like you're making it up and you want to remind us that you most definitely don't know what it this ability does since you most definitely are not making it up. I remember one time on Discord, and this is from a finished game so it's okay to talk about, someone claimed to be "survivor (winshare)". He soon died and flipped winsteal survivor. He emphasized share probably because steal was on his mind.

I also think whiteflame saying he's never heard of a role that gives someone else a dreamer effect, and later claiming that role, seems wrong, like he and RT are working together to make this up and there was a miscommunication in mafia chat. (Can mafia talk to each other during the day here?) Yeah, I know it can be okay to lie as town and then go back on it later, but still.

As for what to do with it, we’ll have to be careful how many we pursue for a claim, even just among those three due to the potential anti-claim mechanic.

(Post 18) This sentence feels like it could have been said in mafia chat.

I am hypothesizing that RT and whiteflame are both scum and they made up the caroler to trick us into lynching me, Shining, and Mikal, after which they would have parity. Assuming exactly one death per phase, scum needs us to mislynch on three day phases, including this one, to get parity, and that's what a fake Caroler claim could do. After the first two fail, they can say we just need to get the third one, town follows it, shah mat. It also pressures those three into claiming, which might interact with some anti-claim mechanic we can't see. It's too perfect for scum. I know it's brazen, but what does it matter? If I'm right and their plan works, we'll have no chance to punish their brazenness.

Another piece of evidence: I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's slightly sus to me that whiteflame's 'research' to find the Caroler role (post 20) apparently only took a few minutes based on post timestamps.

Would anyone agree that, out of the 7 people alive today who are not RT and whiteflame, Shining, Mikal, and I were the most sus, or at least one of the most sus groups of three players you could pick? If so, that's strong Bayesian evidence that they picked three players whom they knew would all sound like plausible POE candidates. I know I'm town and that some side-eyes were cast at me during day 1. I also think they have recently pressured me the hardest out of the three supposed caroler names because they realized that I am picking things up too quickly for their liking and were afraid I would catch onto them.

RT should go first because he's on the POE list anyway, so, if he flips town, we will have still made progress and probably cleared whiteflame.

I'd also like to say that nobody but RT and whiteflame have given me klaxon-esque scumreads at any time in this game.

One more thing. How common is Caroler? Have any of you seen that role before in any game you've played? The fact whiteflame either did or pretended to do research to find an article about it tells me it's not a well-known role. Does Casey tend to use obscure roles? If Caroler is rarer than the roles Casey tends to put in his games, that tips the scales further against RT and whiteflame.

Asked Casey. I can’t get results off whiteflame but I target his target, I would learn those results. Makes sense from a balance perspective

Could you explain what you mean by target his target and learn those results?

Others can pick up on more subtle cues that may be more telling.

(Post 60) Please, for Lord's sake, flip scum so I can feel vindicated in catching the potential irony here.

Re: post 191. When I said my death could town-confirm others, that was a poorly phrased way of saying I was willing to be the first lemming off the POE cliff if we wanted to go down the road of lynching them all.

Just opened the thread to catch up and re-read what I went over earlier. Casey said he would prefer if we didn't talk about this, but I think I need to.

I said to my Discord playgroup is that I started playing on a forum a few days ago, that they have a meta of soft-claiming your character's gender on day 1. After that, my only addition to the discussion was suggesting that someone could claim null-gender if their character has not self-identified or gender does not apply to them. I just wanted their thoughts from a gameplay perspective on having everyone claim some aspect of their character on day 1 to make future fake-claiming harder. I never asked for help, I never shared any details of this game or any other game, and I never even specified which forum I was talking about. I did learn about the everyone-claim-gender meta from this thread, but I am under the impression that it has been meta for a while, in which case I could have learned about it from reading finished games. This was a wrong thing to do because it could have influenced whether or not I soft-claimed like that, but that never crossed my mind until hours after I posted in this thread what they had said about it.

That last paragraph was all out-of-game and out-of-character. I pinky-promise that it is 100 percent undiluted truth to the best of my knowledge, under penalty of perjury. If I am lying about any of that, may I get run over by a semi truck.

Why would scum kill within POE NP4?

Why not test it again?

Because we can only test it by putting him to enough votes to die, and, if he flips town, we wasted a day and gave mafia a free kill?

What is POE? Process of elimination? Rex, it took me a bit to figure out how to read the Xs and Os, but I think I got it. The bold letters are people on the shortlist, X is scum, and O are town. Right? I wouldn't call 1/4 of those = scum worst-case scenario, since you never know what weirdness is going on behind the scenes, but I think I agree with your analysis.

I am willing to hard-claim if that's what it takes to get me off the shortlist, but I am unconvinced that there is guaranteed to be a scum among the three people that RT saw. Maybe 3/4 or 4/5 chance this is what it appears to be. For that matter, I'm willing to die if y'all think it necessarily to town-confirm others.

I'm curious what kind of anti-claim mechanics have been common in previous games here. Do they tend to be things that only affect one or maybe a few claimants? If not, then mass-claiming might still be okay. Many can stand where one would fall. I know that's what scum would say if they wanted to trick everyone into claiming, though. If y'all pressure me into hard-claiming, then I 100% want to see Mikal and Shining claimed too, which Mikal has. If Shining claimed, then I forgot, sorry, and I'm going to need to re-read this thread a few times to understand everything, but for now I want to show I am active.

I don't really townread Mikal but I'm not ready to vote there, and I know I am not scum, so, tentatively and assuming RT was truthing:

VTL Shining

I'll talk more in an hour or two when I get back, but for now: did we actually test that popular claim? It said on day 1 that we needed six votes to reach majority. Day 1, post #129, Casey said that McDonalds' vote and immediate unvote brought RT to a high of six votes.

Eh wth actually, if there are characters that are mafia I think it's gonna be either Kris (or the "soul") and Noelle (because of the quasi genocide route), Susie and Kris (both lighteners) or Kris and Ralsei (both are hiding stuff from us). It could be that the "soul" (the player) and Kris are 2 separate characters. Or not.

On the topic of which characters are in the game, I'm going to say that mine seems minor enough to me that I think it probably would not be on anyone's shortlist for potential inclusions.

The first oddity that jumps out at me is that the main antagonist of Deltarune wins with the town. I wonder if Town are in-game enemies and Mafia are the player characters. My character did not seem that good to me either, despite winning with town (I know that's what a mafioso would say). I don't know much about the lore of Deltarune. Is the player character canonically evil? Are there multiple routes like in Undertale, and, if so, are we playing with something like Genocide?

Earlier today, I had mentally constructed a case against Whiteflame that I was going to share with you all as soon as I got on, but then I realized the problem with it. Whiteflame started the day 1 VTNL non-wagon. As Whiteflame and ILikePie, the latter being confirmed town, both pointed out, there are probably 2 scum out of 10 starting players. That means mafia needs 6 town or neutral to die to reach parity if no mafia die. Under the moderately generous assumption that exactly one townie is the only death on each day and night after that, with an even number of deaths needed to reach parity, mislynching puts town a day/night cycle closer to losing, but, with an odd number of deaths needed, town's cycles-to-lose is unchanged. "Aha!", I thought. "Mikal speculated that mafia has a conversion role. This role exists, Whiteflame knows about it, and he tricked us into VTNLing because, once someone converts, we will effectively have been at an odd number of townies needed to reach parity."

Then I realized that conversion also reduces the number of townies by one, so even distances to parity remain even and odd distances remain odd. Ah well. I might as well tell you all that for the sake of sharing my thought process and kickstarting discussion.

Tangentially, I asked my Werewolf playgroup on Discord what they thought of the meta here of claiming your character's gender on day 1. They not only disliked it from a gameplay perspective, but also were offended at the prospect of assigning gender to characters who have not self-identified.

I feel clever for figuring out that you meant post numbers.

Unvote

VTNL

Fishing for claims DP1 is a bizarre meta that this site has developed that I don't like to begin with. Back in the day you only did it if someone made a very egregious possible scum slip and you wanted to pin them down. It's especially wild to pursue it when the mod has explicitly warned against claiming. The point of DP 1 is to generate speculation and conversation that can be analyzed in retrospect.

On the one hand, this sounds like what somebody would say if they were afraid of claiming. On the other hand, I'm not eager to claim either and I figure you are telling the truth about the meta having been different once, possibly for good reason.

I can't imagine Casey severely punishing one or two early claims, especially soft claims

Casey must be nicer than the people who make the Werewolf games I play.

Thoth initially pinged hard as noobtown until he said he’s asked noon questions for cred before

By noobtown, do you mean I made some mistake(s) which outed me as a noob? If so, what are they? I'm asking this to learn, not as a rhetorical question. In any case, do you think I would have brought that up if I weren't town? (That one was rhetorical.)

Op implies full claiming likely gives mafia some sort of edge and I can totally see this being a thing with the theme.

Why? I'm not familiar with Deltarune lore.

Don't love pushing a new player to claim first just because he's new, but it is harder for him to fake a claim and stick with it, so I understand the logic.

Oh man. Oh man oh man oh man. Please add me on Discord, I would love to tell you about the first Werewolf game I played on there.

I would really prefer not to lynch a new player for being new

Not to disagree, but I appealed to this defense on that Werewolf game I was just talking about, and I was a wolf.

Also, maybe I'm just not cautious enough, but I don't think anti-claim mechanics generally afford scum big gains for a couple of claims, particularly if one is a partial claim.

I've never seen anti-claim mechanics before. I've never seen pro-claim mechanics either, for what it's worth. Are those a thing on here?

especially given the even number of players.

I had to think about that for a minute. Makes sense.

Are you from mafia universe?

Never heard of it.

This is actually a new meta where we soft claim something obscure to limit fake claim opportunities for scum. Gender is broad enough where it won’t reveal your character, but it still makes fake claiming much harder for scum.

It is meta with this player group to push for soft claims early to soft lock mafia into a claim that could potentially bite them in the arse later on.

If you two are lying about this, I expect others to call it and vote you out. They probably already would have.

I am claiming that my gender is ... male, I guess? I would tentatively say male, but I'm not sure which is and there is well-known cognitive bias towards assuming that things are male by default. It might be more accurate to say unknown or null.

Town Block:

Pie

RT

REF

Ultra

Thoth

By town block, do you mean people you think are probably town? Which will look bad for me if you flip scum.

I might be unjustifiably hyperfocusing here, but the one thing that sticks out in my mind as weird so far is RationalTheist soft-claiming by bolding text in other text: "I am just a very popular person". That's so unambiguous that he could have just said, "I am popular". Why didn't he? Maybe he was just trying to be funny; maybe he was playing with some weird mechanic that's probably scum. We do know he is popular, at least.

Could you elaborate on why you suspect Whiteflame and Lunatic?

Mostly gutread. Whiteflame's sheer amount of helpfulness makes me sus. Like he's going out of way to make himself look helpful. Might I refer to the start of Tao Te Ching 81:

True words aren’t eloquent;

eloquent words aren’t true.

Wise men don’t need to prove their point;

men who need to prove their point aren’t wise.

Even though verse 81 also suggests that helpfulness is a characteristic of the Master.

With Lunatic, it's the opposite: he's clearly had the opportunity to be active since he has posted more than once, but has contributed very little.

My topreads, if I am correctly guessing what topread means, are that whiteflame and Lunatic are scum and RT is town.

If your gutread is that I'm scum, I'd like to know a little bit more of where that is coming from, but that's not really something I can argue against now.

I would too. That's the thing. I don't know where it's coming from. If I did then it would not be a gutread.

unvote

VTL RexFavilla

Fewer if you include night kills.

Sorry, bit of a mix-up in the last post. When I said I slightly mafialean, I was actually referring to whiteflame, not ILikePie, although I slightly mafialean on both of them. Just a bad gut feeling on whiteflame.

unvote

I presume it's allowed on here to lie about reasons for being inactive, if somewhat bad form.

What is FOS?

What are your reads so far? Who’s town, who’s null, and who’s scum right now?

Aside from myself being town, I gotta say asking me to soft-claim male/female makes me think you are scum and trying to trick me into something related to your role. Maybe that's a common form of soft-claiming on here, though. Again, this read might evaporate if I knew your playstyle better, but I'm slightly mafialean on you. I just made up the word "mafialean", so I hope that's the term y'all use.

How many scum do we probably have in a game this size? Three? Possibly two if there are neutrals?

I'd put McDonaldsReal in as a townlean as well. A lot of questions that fit more for a noob who isn't in a scum chat where they can ask about these things. Maybe that's the point, to make him look townie by asking these kinds of questions, but for now that's where I'm at with it.

In one of my first Discord Werewolf games, I purposely asked a ton of noob questions in day chat to make people think I did not have help. I guess it worked because someone said pretty much the same thing you did.

My next question is what characters are plausibly Popular, but if RT is town then figuring that out might be something you want to keep to yourself.

The one thing that kills a town more than anything is inactivity and people not doing anything.

Hear, hear!

VTL whiteflame

For the sake of activity

VTL Mikal

I was semi-active on DebateArt a few years ago under the same name. I wanted to get back into DART recently and found a link to DebateCraft on the homepage.

"Have you played forum mafia specifically?"

That question could just as well have been directed at me. I have played Mafia under the name Werewolf on Discord and in real life, but not on a forum.

Right then.

Technically, that was a soft-claim from RationalTheist, but it was unambiguous enough to effectively be a hard-claim. He could have just said, "I am popular". I think he knows something about the mechanics that interact with role claims, i.e., at least one is on his role card.

What is popular? I'm guessing it's something I know from Werewolf but under a different name.

I won as a lone wolf for the last five days by the way.