whiteflame

Reads R3 (I mean to get through these tonight):

Banana - Null. Much as I also like how Luna was covering Magoroth behaviorally, just agreeing with him doesn't tell me much. Some minor thoughts on Kohai's choice to out the IC and on Thoth's claim just don't do much to move the needle. So far, Banana's mainly just been agreeing with others or questioning reads, so there's too little to go off of.

Mikal - Null. Early thoughts mainly focused on Thoth's role and being happy about Kohai being IC, later got into an argument with Helz on the usual playstyle shit. Reads make some sense from his perspective, albeit I disagree with him on Thoth and don't really get his perspective on Bullish or Rex (both of whom he seems to read based on some big presumptions about how they usually engage early as scum, which is fair, but pretty weak). I kind of want to put him into town as a gutread because I'd say he's usually more easily distractable as town, but that's an even weaker reason to read him, so null it is.

Luna - Slight town. The pushback on the Magoroth townreads that were relatively common early in the DP make sense to me. As one of those early townreads, I can see why he was confused by how common the sentiment was. Luna shifted to focusing on Rex as plausible scum, and that came with a set of reads that look pretty decent to me. Maybe it's just because I'm in a similar place on Rex, but I'm seeing a good deal of analysis into how Rex's flip would inform reads on other players, and he seems pretty well aware that it would affect perceptions of him. It's not unusual for Luna and I to see behavioral reads in a similar light regardless of our affiliations, but for now, I'm seeing more reason to townread him than not.

also. I claimed metal in the astronomical sense. for an astronomer all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium are metals. I dunno how that’s damaging. I just said I am not two things, I could still be like 100 others lol

I mean, fair. Wasn't really scumreading you over it, but noted.

Alright, reads R2:

Casey: Null. Some light thoughts aside that largely just make them look reasonable, I can't say there's anything that pings me in either direction. Being opposed to softclaims, responding to my mixed read on Thoth with reasons to townread him that largely comport with what I posted about him later, and doing some WIFOM on my unwillingness to say "I am town" straight up is all fine, but it's also NAI from Casey.

Mag1c: Slight town/null. Pinged by the same late reveal of Thoth's role, largely thinking well about how this kind of role could have been inserted from a modpsych perspective. Honestly, the early decision to amorphously sus me for unknown reasons is pushing me towards a town gutread, I think a lot of people have been pretty quick to put me in their town pile. His read on Magoroth is pretty basic, but supported by past behavior in terms of activity. They're all pretty weak reasons to townread him, so he's teetering into null.

Shining: Null. Just not enough to go off of. His uncertainty pings me as slight town, but that's mainly because I've seen how he usually plays games as scum and he's usually more assertive than this. That lack of consistency with his scum play is a weak enough read that I can't put weight on it. Mostly, he's talked about Thoth's role and modpsych of Pie associated with it and the PGO, specifically. It's all NAI.

I dislike that thoth is posting in discord and not engaging on here to questions being asked to him

I get the annoyance and with anyone else, it would ping me too. With Thoth, it's just kind of what he does. NAI to me.

Helz wrote:

Actually rereading what I just posted I think I would really like to hear more thoughts that are not about flavor. I feel like the majority of your stuff is flavor focused and I would like to hear analysis..

Good thing I was already planning on doing this with a more extensive read list. I don't have a lot of time before I eat dinner, so I'm going to break this into pieces and do a few players at a time.

Kohai - Given town atp. Helz already mentioned that it can at least be useful to have someone who is known town throughout this DP, and a few others have mentioned that it takes someone who is usually the focus of attention this early off the table, which is a nice change of pace. Been a while since he's chimed in (yes, I know, Shavuot) and the last post was just to unvote, so I'd like to get more insight from him.

Bullish - Slight scum. Much as I liked his early post about me only liking 3 elements, there just hasn't been a lot since. The sus on Magoroth is unclear. It initially looked like an RVS, but then he talks about Magoroth "over compensating," townreads Rex for no reason I can see, and states a lack of opposition with a mass character claim. I don't think Pie stated that there's any anti-claim mechanic in play here, but I pushing for a mass claim here of any kind rubs me the wrong way.

Magoroth - I've landed on null for Magoroth after catching up. His post about "read[ing] emotion in" my posts felt pretty genuine to past interactions with him as town (he always seems to specifically call me out for not posting more organically) and the pushback on exploring Thoth's role more in depth looked a little townie, though in retrospect, he wasn't the first to push back on more info there. Largely spent the early DP just pushing a little to see how people responded to scum accusations and questioning Thoth about some of the aspects of his role without getting into the details (though surmising that Thoth's role could somehow function as anti-claim raised a small flag, don't really get where that thinking comes from).

The metal softclaim was a little off when there was generally pushback against softclaims like that, but what's been pinging me back to neutral is how he's dancing around his scumreads, saying he doesn't have any only to say he "could say" he scumreads Rex and has some uncertainty towards Mag1c. I get wanting to play things different and I'm not so much sussing a difference in behavior, but rather the decision to be so insecure about his early stage reads only to shift back to null on him later. Not going straight to a VTL is fine, but this all seems very cagey. The uncertainty seems kind of genuine, but that's the best I can say about it.

Thoth - Slight town. That early claim definitely helps my perspective on him. I don't think scum Thoth opts to ask about this obscure element and then designs this role on the fly. There's an outside chance that, given scum can only ask about two characters, he just goes for a low likelihood claim and someone on his team comes in with a pre-packaged role that gives him some cover for numerous DPs. The main thing that's holding me back from a solid townread is the DP4 aspect. Having to wait 3 more DPs to figure out what his role is gives him a lot of cover, and it reminds me a lot of games where someone (looking at Pie here) gave a late DP Innocent Child claim and just coasted on that to victory. That being said, his responses to efforts to clarify his role are consistent with what he's said, and if there's anything I've experienced from Thoth that usually makes weird role claims from him stand out as scummy, it's inconsistencies. Maybe he's gotten better at supporting fake claims or he's getting help, but I doubt it.

Back with more later.

I'm catching up on some work this morning, but I'll be active on here in the afternoon.

9-4 would be fucking insane, I am hoping its 10-3

I'd bet on 10-3 or 9-3-1.

Lunatic wrote:

whiteflame wrote:

I sure hope you do, considering what life is made of

Eh, the elements themselves are important, but it's more about how they make up more complex molecules than about the elements themselves, particularly when you're talking about molecular biology and microbiology. It's an emphasis in many of the classes I took, just not usually the main one unless I'm in chemistry or physics

I hope you are town, because I am too dumb to know anything about this theme and am not sure I will be caring enough to research stuff to figure it out. Probably won't be able to spot fake claims and shit, so I am gonna take a lot of yours and others words for it when it comes to what claims are scummy or not.

Funny thing is, you know even if I'm scum that I'll likely be telling the truth enough of the time that you can trust what I'm saying, but we'll have to see what the claims look like.

I'm signing off, so I'll keep my reads light for tonight, come back tomorrow and do some deeper dives.

Town: Kohai

Slight town: Magoroth, Thoth

Null: Helz, Bullish, Casey, Luna, Mikal, Shining, Mag1c

N/A: Banana

Slight scum: Rex

Thoth wrote:

whiteflame wrote:

I get wanting to take attention off of you for the purposes of focusing the DP, but it was a waste to out this so soon. I think there would’ve been little risk from developing a wagon and using that to get some reads on the people who joined and their reasons for doing so. Not often we get a role that can be instantly town confirmed.

I take it that Pie would rollback the day phase if Kohai got hammered after declaring his Innocent Child use but before Pie got on to confirm him.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he would do that, though it would’ve been worth taking some risk regardless. Missed opportunity.

Thoth wrote:

Casey_Risk wrote:

Kohai wrote:

Perhaos we could claim if we are a metal or a gas

I used to do this sort of thing all the time in games, pushing for soft claims from everyone. I don't really like it anymore. It helps scum figure out what other players are and the constraints it puts on scum claiming aren't generally as useful for the town as one might expect.

whiteflame wrote:

I was considering metal vs. non-metal/metalloids, which at least keeps it broader. I’m hesitant to push for soft claims so far, but if we were to do them, that’s the direction I’d take.

With more than a hundred plausible claims, any soft-claim that leaves plenty of pigeons in every pigeonhole won't do much to help scum figure out what people are, but it won't do much to constrain scum either.

Yeah, that’s always the balancing act.

Casey_Risk wrote:

whiteflame wrote:

Thoth wrote:

I am Oganesson. I don’t know what my role is and won’t learn it until DP4. Justification is that very little

is known about Oganesson and it will probably be a while before it’s seriously studied. I am SOP-claiming in case it’s something SOP-claimable.

So... hmmm...

On the one hand, I want to just townread this because it's such a weird pull. I'm not familiar with Oganesson (it was only discovered in 2002 and in general any of the ones listed under the "unknown properties" section of the table is beyond my limited knowledge), but it's an odd part of the Table to grab from, especially if you're looking for a fake claim. There are probably 3 scum in this game so it's possible that one of them would just go for it rather than waiting to ask questions, but this doesn't seem obvious, nor does the whole "I discover my role 4 DPs in" aspect. It's weird that that's so delayed, but in a game with this many players, reaching DP4 is pretty likely.

On the other hand, I don't get this as an SOP claim. It's an unknown role, not an SOP one. Maybe this is just Thoth being extra cautious, or maybe this is him trying to give himself some towncred out the gate in hopes he'll avoid investigations. I don't like the decision, even if I kind of townread the claim itself.

I agree with the first half of this. I think Thoth's claim reads as towny. It sticks out as risky to me, the sort of thing scum would generally be very reluctant to YOLO on DP1. I disagree with the second half; it's very possible that the role is actually negative utility for the town, and if he waited until he actually found out what his role was to reveal it, it would end up looking WAY worse for him. Again, see Atypical Mafia

Yeah, I acknowledged the issue in my initial thinking later. I thought the role activated at DP4.

Kohai wrote:

Casey_Risk wrote:

Thoth wrote:

I don’t think speculating about theme splits will be productive until we see at least one flip, maybe more than one. There are too many plausible ones.

I agree fwiw, theme split analysis without at least one flip rarely, if ever, benefits the town

Perhaos we could claim if we are a metal or a gas

I was considering metal vs. non-metal/metalloids, which at least keeps it broader. I’m hesitant to push for soft claims so far, but if we were to do them, that’s the direction I’d take.

ILikePie5 wrote:

Attention:

Kohai is the Innocent Child. He is Town.

I get wanting to take attention off of you for the purposes of focusing the DP, but it was a waste to out this so soon. I think there would’ve been little risk from developing a wagon and using that to get some reads on the people who joined and their reasons for doing so. Not often we get a role that can be instantly town confirmed.

Mikal wrote:

Initial impression is I wonder if this is a creative way to do innocent child since it's triggered by a specific day

Initially thought that. The way Thoth phrased it changed my mind. Seems like a hidden role with maybe something that gets activated at DP4. Could change into an Innocent Child, but I doubt it’s that.

Magoroth wrote:

I bet if I told some people here details of my personal life they would cry.

Sounds rough man. Hope things are at least stabilizing.

Bullish wrote:

whiteflame wrote:

Bullish wrote:

whiteflame only cares about 3 elements

Actually curious about this. Do you mean carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen given how important they are to life (I’d at least include oxygen, sulfur and phosphorous), are you doing a play on my username, or am I missing a joke here?

I was talking about just carbon hydrogen and oxygen

It’s a fair set for life, even if I’d say at least nitrogen is about as important. But good on you for the biology knowledge.

any hidden role can be a sign of negative utility. Whilteflame and I have put hidden negative utility in his games on multiple occasions; not sure if Pie would do that, but I don't see why he wouldn't.

Yeah, it makes more sense that it could be negative utility given that it’s in effect continuously. I thought initially he was talking about something that would activate in DP4, but this is basically just a hidden ability that Thoth is made aware of but not specifically informed about until DP4.

Mag1cman wrote:

Mag1cman wrote:

Whiteflame feels for a reason I can't quite put my finger on...

feels off*

Story of my life right there.

Magoroth wrote:

Thoth wrote:

whiteflame wrote:

Either makes sense. Depends on the roles in play.

Have you ever seen 9-4?

I have. My first MS game. People did not know 9/4 was possible. Town was at MyLo D3. Granted, the setup was very interesting.

Mafia Loyal Vigilante

Mafia Simple Doctor

Traitor

and some other role I can’t remember rn.

Cant and wouldn’t dismiss a 9-4 setup, even if I think it’s unlikely.

Bullish wrote:

whiteflame only cares about 3 elements

Actually curious about this. Do you mean carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen given how important they are to life (I’d at least include oxygen, sulfur and phosphorous), are you doing a play on my username, or am I missing a joke here?

Helz wrote:

whiteflame wrote:

Setting your self-imposed challenge aside, I disagree that claims are just NAI because scum can ask Pie questions. That matters, I’m just not convinced scum would ask about an obscure, largely unknown element like this one.

I did not mean to say that they are NAI. I meant to say specifically that mechanic of the question is something to consider with Thoth's claim.

I agree with that much.

Thoth wrote:

I was about to ask you what your profile picture is, but then I realized that I have a Waterfox extension which lets me reverse image search from the context menu. Y'all should get one for your browser. It's a great quality-of-life upgrade.

Well, for anyone else who didn’t do that, I’m Dazai from Bungou Stray Dogs.

Thoth wrote:

whiteflame wrote:

Either makes sense. Depends on the roles in play.

Have you ever seen 9-4?

That would be new to me. It would allow for two mislynches, assuming there isn’t an extra night kill mechanic in play.

Helz wrote:

whiteflame wrote:

Thoth wrote:

I am Oganesson. I don’t know what my role is and won’t learn it until DP4. Justification is that very little

is known about Oganesson and it will probably be a while before it’s seriously studied. I am SOP-claiming in case it’s something SOP-claimable.

So... hmmm...

On the one hand, I want to just townread this because it's such a weird pull. I'm not familiar with Oganesson (it was only discovered in 2002 and in general any of the ones listed under the "unknown properties" section of the table is beyond my limited knowledge), but it's an odd part of the Table to grab from, especially if you're looking for a fake claim. There are probably 3 scum in this game so it's possible that one of them would just go for it rather than waiting to ask questions, but this doesn't seem obvious, nor does the whole "I discover my role 4 DPs in" aspect. It's weird that that's so delayed, but in a game with this many players, reaching DP4 is pretty likely.

On the other hand, I don't get this as an SOP claim. It's an unknown role, not an SOP one. Maybe this is just Thoth being extra cautious, or maybe this is him trying to give himself some towncred out the gate in hopes he'll avoid investigations. I don't like the decision, even if I kind of townread the claim itself.

So my challenge this game is that I can't use flavor at all which now seeing more setup details I am unhappy about. On the mechanics side though I think a claim is NAI given the scum team is given questions to verify. Also given that Mafia could ask about specific elements there could be some sort of anti-claim function in the mafia roles. Players may want to be careful about declaring what they are until we know more about what kinda PR madness we are dealing with.

Setting your self-imposed challenge aside, I disagree that claims are just NAI because scum can ask Pie questions. That matters, I’m just not convinced scum would ask about an obscure, largely unknown element like this one.

Thoth wrote:

whiteflame wrote:

If there are 3 scum players (as balance would suggest there are) and we lynch them all back-to-back, we never reach DP4. I'd call that extremely unlikely, but no, it's not guaranteed we reach DP4.

10-3 strikes me as townsided. Are you thinking 9-3-1?

Either makes sense. Depends on the roles in play.

Thoth wrote:

whiteflame wrote:

Also also, are you saying that your role is currently active and that you'll learn what it is by DP4 or that it will activate by DP4?

I have a role that was determined before the game started. I will learn what that role is at the start of DP4. This role has at least one ability. These abilit(y/ies) may be active or passive. It might be active now or it might not be. Pie won't tell me anything else about my abilit(y/ies) until DP4 starts. That's what I got between reading my PM and interrogating Pie.

Alright, that’s a unique design for a role, basically telling you that you have a hidden role and that it will be revealed later. I can better understand why you’d SOP claim that.

Thoth wrote:

It's weird that that's so delayed, but in a game with this many players, reaching DP4 is pretty likely.

It's guaranteed unless there are serious multi-kills.

If there are 3 scum players (as balance would suggest there are) and we lynch them all back-to-back, we never reach DP4. I'd call that extremely unlikely, but no, it's not guaranteed we reach DP4.

Thoth wrote:

Unknown could be SOP. Imagine how pissed people would be if I turned out to be Paranoid Gun Owner. And while y’all are at it, don’t put me at L-1 unless you intend to lynch me, on the off chance I am Hated.

I don't want to get too in the weeds about what your role could be if it activates by DP4 (I have a few ideas), but the idea that it's just a negative utility role waiting to activate a time in the game where it could dramatically shift the balance of the game doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Also, I'm not sure why you'd default to thinking it is negative utility, let alone something like PGO.

Also also, are you saying that your role is currently active and that you'll learn what it is by DP4 or that it will activate by DP4?

Magoroth wrote:

whiteflame wrote:

So are you Town this game?

I do tend to enjoy being Town more, but you know my answering this question doesn't make any difference.

I’m not sure exactlt what I expecting. Nothing in particular really. But I think that statement looks townie. Hence why I asked you that question.

I’m unsure how scum you would react to that question

If I'm being honest, probably the same.

So are you Town this game?

I do tend to enjoy being Town more, but you know my answering this question doesn't make any difference.