whiteflame

I still believe that giving out some form of reads is bad for the game. I’d rather keep the town guessing but reading the DP and other posts have given some clarity and imo I think I have one person that I am confident in giving favor too at this point. I told REF (just so he knows I’m not bullshitting) but a lot of good analysis so far. Taking note of a few players as well

I get that you're doing that to avoid divulging who you're planning to give favor to, so I can respect that choice. Since you are the only town-confirmed player, I can at least see some value in you clarifying a read on players who are set to be lynched, but I don't think you should be providing a full set of reads.

Whiteflame can back me up on this. I am spacing the name of the game off the top of my head, but there was a game in DART where I used the same defense Thoth is using for mago on Whiteflame. Whiteflame did something scummy and everyone was lynching him except me. I hardcore defended him with the logic “Whiteflame would never blatantly act this way as scum”. Turns out he was just scum and I looked like a fool for defending him.

I don't remember the specific game, but yes, I recall this being your logic for why I was not likely to be scum in a game where I was scum.

Obviously this logic will change from player to player and I don’t know mago super well but there’s certain players that you just don’t give passes too for scummy behaviors and from what a few of you may have said so far, I don’t see why mago would be an exception here.

I wouldn't say that being excessively scummy in his behaviors gives him a pass. It's mainly a matter of whether I end up seeing him as more anti-town or more scummy, and seems I'll have my work cut out for me making that assessment just skimming through his recent posts.

Damn, a lot happened since last night. I'm going to catch up and give some thoughts. Looks like we've got about 3.5 hours left in the DP, so I'll try to make this quick.

Now I'm really going to head off, let Banana get caught up on the posts.

so can u explain what you are? like is your goal to help town or is it neutral? are u ambivolent

From the OP:

In this game, the Emperor (Vader) is town-confirmed and aloof. He cannot die, and unless your role specifically mentions the Emperor as its target he cannot be targeted by it. He does not count as a player for the purpose of determining votes to lynch and does not have a vote himself. Each NP, he will distribute favor to the harem, the amount varying with the number of players still alive as follows:

12, 11, 10 – four favor 1,1,1,1 or 2,1,1

9, 8, 7 – three favor 1,1,1 or 2,1

6, 5, 4 – two favor 1,1

3 favor 1

He can give two favor to one target if he has three or more favor to distribute, if not he can only give each consort one favor.

So he's town, but he stands apart.

Anyway, that's enough for one night. We still have a handful of players who have been almost entirely inactive (Mikal, Luna and Banana, and to a lesser extent Awesome) that I'd really like to get reads from. As the one town-confirmed player, I'd like to hear from His Highness Vader as well. We should be getting at least some reads from everyone before we have to make a decision tomorrow. I will try to be on early enough to participate in further discussion tomorrow.

Well... I had a whole set of reads typed up and then the page reloaded...

So I'm keeping these shorter than my usual. I can dig into the details if asked, but it's late and I'm not re-typing these in full.

First off, just revisiting Pie, great to see all of his recent contributions and he has some points worth addressing, though I'm going to save that for tomorrow morning.

Wryly - Slight town. Her contributions to the DP read largely as someone who just feels out her element without softclaims on the board, which I get. She's not doing as much as she could to get at behavioral claims, but the solid pushback on Magoroth's ideas so far come off as slightly more likely from town, not trying to leave that door open at all.

Shining - Null. Contributions so far have been pretty minimal, largely small reads and thoughts about various strategies to advance the DP. Nothing all that strong.

Wylted - Slight town. This one's shifted more toward null in the posts since he claimed, mainly because he's made less sense since he started VTLing between Magoroth and Awesome and because he's calling for favor when he said he'd become a Miller with enough of it. The hedging on the SOP claim and even coming back later to say he may have been wise not to do so just don't seem like a strategy to me, so that's swaying me toward town.

Thoth - Spent most of this DP really digging into choices and perspectives taken so far, including giving out some pretty well-supported reads and allowing for back-and-forths to convince him. I want to townread that because it's some of the clearer perspective I've seen and he's helped inform some of mine as well, though there also seems to be a lot of uncertainty baked into this. I'd like to see a take-away set of reads and a choice for a VTL that isn't an RVS. Until then, null with a slight town bias.

Magoroth - I'm having the hardest time nailing Magoroth down. He takes the biggest swings to try and nail down information in this game, but the choices he's made (like mass fullclaiming and outing the Empress) come off as pretty anti-town. I've at least come to a point where I understand the latter, but the pushes for the former I still don't get fully. They're also hard to read as likely scum since I think if he was scum, he'd likely have dropped this argument far earlier. Maybe the goal was to get some idea of how each of us would respond and get some take-aways from that, but I can't say I've seen anything meaningful. He hasn't been super defensive, instead just being thorough in responding to accusations. He's probably the most variable null player for me, mainly because I just can't decide if the balance places him in scum or town.

Read my previous posts. I think I’m seeing exactly what Awesome sees

We've discussed it more since this post. I'm still going through Magoroth's posts, so I'll give my thoughts on him soon enough.

I think you’re just forgetting the ranking piece.

Yeah, I didn't get to those specifics.

I agree with the Miller being activated with more favor being odd. But on the flip side from a balance standpoint it makes more sense. My concern is that this was a fake claim and the back track was a consequence of fellow scum realizing the slip

Not where I'm leaning atm, but given the mechanics of this setup, it's possible.

Maybe let’s talk about this D2. Thoth said I might be too emotionally invested in this and might not be able to see the other side of the equation, which might be true. Plus I’m a little embarrassed to be pushing this hard for a mass claim when I seem to be the only one who thinks it’s a good idea XD

Alright, we can revisit this later.

This might be a dumb question. But do you have a read on Thoth/Wryly/Wylted

I'm working through their posts now, so I'll have reads for them plus you and Shining before the night is up.

...So now you're advocating for everyone to just massclaim their character and all their roles going into NP1? That's certainly bold, but that basically places everything on the table for scum, particularly dangerous if they have manipulative roles in play.

I'll just get the basic ones out of the way and delve into people who have posted more in a separate post.

awesome5000 - Beyond just coming in aiming for a lynch on Magoroth with limited explanation (others have given significantly better reasons) and questioning a connection elsewhere with Wylted, there's nothing to his posts. Null.

Banana - With one post just expressing confusion, there's not any substance to go off of for Banana, but her sudden appearance only after being tagged in the thread leaves me with a slight town lean. I could see a scum team taking advantage of the opportunity to look more townie, but that's where I'm sitting for now.

Vader - Your Imperial Highness. Mod-confirmed town.

Pie - Now up to 3 posts. Discussed game balance, pushed Wylted to fulfill his SOP claim, and apparently an avid skier. Null.

Mikal - Absent since 2 days ago, said he'd start posting more yesterday but never did. Tempted to scumread that, but he said he's moving and timelines for that are... shifty. Null.

Luna - Good reasoning for townreading Wylted, largely just expressed frustration with the mechanics of this game. Null.

Alright, now that I have a minute, I'm going back through the DP to compile some reads. Those will be up tonight. We're at a little under 18 hours remaining in the DP, so everyone should be getting their thoughts together.

Must be having a brain fart, but limit night actions how?

Magoroth has already answered this from what I can see, but the long story short is that I don't think it's enough to warrant giving out this much role info. If everyone cooperates, we can assume both scum will claim their fake roles and we can't be sure just how many people will claim roles they currently have access to (see: Wylted who has already claimed a role that he's said requires more favor to be in play, Miller). So even among players who are telling the truth about their roles, they can always just say they used a different role from the one they claimed, leaving us in virtually the same predicament. Maybe Magoroth's thinking was to get everyone to claim the roles they would use, but that's not how he framed it and it would be even more dangerous to do so.

Scum were given fake role claims in addition to fake character claims. Zero benefit to town in mass claiming.

I think Magoroth's point was that pushing everyone to claim would limit night actions, but even if that's true (and I question that since someone could just claim their Even Night role or something they don't yet have access to), I don't think it's worth the cost of giving scum so much information so early.

Since we're kind of just spinning our wheels and there's no point softing and not much to go on, I think our only way forward DP1 is just to find a way to generate as much behavioral data as possible while starving scum of role information to base an NK on.

Yep, pretty much. I noticed you asked for reads earlier from everyone else and I think I just got left out of the pinged set. Once I'm done at work, I'll go back through the DP and derive a set myself.

We don't know what happens when scum gets favor so a conservative strategy I think is to reserve favor for strong town reads

I think it's a given that Vader should be careful whom he gives favor. Giving scum favor is practically guaranteed to be a problem. Vader is restricted in how he can distribute favor this NP, though, so he has to have a minimum of 3 strong townreads (the 2,1,1 distribution mentioned in the OP).

I do want favor. I have roles under the empress/miller level. So hook a nigga up

So now you're saying that you only get the Miller role at higher ranks? I guess that makes sense since Imperial Noble Consort does include a passive ability, but weird that it's something you'd only gain access to when you're highly favored.

I still think we should mass claim what abilities we have access to. If scum tells the truth, and they don’t use their fake claim, they will be forced to use their abilities either in a pro-Town way, rendering them kinda useless to them, or take a risk and use their abilities anyway in spite of lying about it.

I will go first. One of my abilities is Watcher.

I just don't get this thinking. Based on this, your best case scenario is one where scum are more limited in their pool of actions (assuming they have a confirmable role or someone else can confirm what they did), and that's only for one of their abilities. That is something, but it's also a massive risk to give so much role info away before the first NP, giving scum everything they need to inform NKs and manipulations. It doesn't help that some people may feel tempted to claim a role that they don't currently have access to, which could make any confirmation difficult if not impossible based on whether they get enough favor to use it.

I still think it’s a good idea to mass claim. We get more information that way, not less. The Emperor can assign favour. I assume the scum can also influence favour in some way, e.g. through stealing favour from others. So if we mass claim we put all our cards on the table, and especially if we mass claim how much favour we have; we can make a decision on who should have how much favour. Scum can lie, but then they would have to use their role and prove it.

As Thoth already mentioned, even with apparently town-aligned role claims, this thinking may only lead us astray. As for claiming the amount of favor we have, I'm not sure what the point of that is beyond clearly delineating between ranks and likely outing the Empress and Empress Dowager. Unless Vader sees some value in receiving that information (and I'm not sure there is any unless there's some way to verify the amount and check for inconsistencies), it's a non-starter for me since he's the one who's going to be delivering favor.

Apologies, I fell off for a bit there.

Based on a quick "ISO" (Profile page > Mafia > Comments):

I've read through the back-and-forth between you two since you posted this, and while I think the points make sense, only the third one really has any bearing for me. It does seem like a pretty weak reason to sus Wryly specifically when it's clear a lot of players are struggling to come up with original thoughts to post. If the idea is just to pick someone and push them to post something more substantial, I guess I get it, but it comes off as pretty selective thinking.

So, wait, what's the issue with Magoroth now? Awesome says his "posts are atrocious" and Wylted's just buying in because he trusts Awesome. I guess the pushback on softclaiming flavor is a little off because he's almost defensive of scum here (who have been given two fake claims anyway), but nothing has looked that bad.

Speaking of soft-claims needing to have a point to them, I'm not sure that knowing whether it's (8+1)v3 or (8+1)v2v1 or even (9+1)v2 is actionable information yet.

The distinction should matter at some point, but no, it's not actionable right now.

I'm not saying that I don't want to know what the numbers are. I'm just saying that I think people bring up questions like that because, in most games, there's almost nothing to do on day 1 other than Random Vote Start and unverifiable speculation about the setup.

That, and there's a lot of mechanical information to parse through and people are trying to hang onto elements they can parse easily.

There really is none. Sorry if it was unclear, but I was implicitly responding to Wryly's question on page 1 about how we should soft. You are probably right that the answer is, "not at all".

Ah, must've missed the context. Though I often suggest softing, I'm a believer that there has to be a point to it.

Yeah, but if we know the theme split is complex, it's plausible that scum could straight-claim a pair with a noticeable split and say, "I can find relationships between these two other characters too, so that's no reason to sus us."

Would not be a first for plausible theme splits to confound town.

On a different topic, I'm not much of a soap-opera type, but this show's premise does interest me.

I should check it out. I'm a fan of shows that explore the inner workings of the Chinese palace (The Apothecary Diaries being a personal favorite, and Ooku: The Inner Chambers being a great one for the Japanese equivalent), so it seems right up my alley.

The flipside of experimental setups being unbalanced is that, when nobody has experience playing a similar setup, it's much more likely for them to screw up wildly, so the odds gravitate back to 50:50.

They tend to be pretty swingy for a number of reasons, lack of experience being one of them.

I agree, but this whole game is odd. I can see Rex putting in negative utility that gets negativer with favor.

There could be built-in reasons not to give certain players favor or to only give them favor when doing so would get them to a certain status. It does give a more than valid reason for the SOP claim at least.

I do want a character and justification claim from Wylted because I can imagine this is something like, "the court gets more dangerous for you the more attention you attract".

I'm interested, but not enough to push him to claim, especially given how the role claim already looks pretty townie.

Given that Rex said the theme split is not simple, I'm curious why scum got two full-fake claims. That makes me think there's a reason why they would be reluctant to claim their characters.

It may still be a noticeable split, even if it isn't simple.

Do any of you know this show well enough to catch even an obviously theme-splittable pair?

I know absolutely nothing about this show, so I'll be doing some research as we go. That being said, I don't think REF would specifically say it's not a simple theme split if there was an obvious pair.

We can soft-claim whether our given name, not our harem name, starts with a letter from A-M or N-Z.

What's the point of this if scum have fake claims?

Much as the mechanic for the Wylted's miller claim seems odd given the structure of this game, I'm inclined to agree with Luna that he's likely town. Wylted has done weird gambits before, but this would be particularly off even for him.

As for the structure of the flavor mechanics this game, we'll have to see how they play out, but I'm intrigued. Main concern in games like this is balance, but that's an issue that comes up with some regularity.

I'll have more time to post later, but I wanted to at least give some thoughts on the structure of this game, which is rather distinctive and complex.

If I have this right, we've got an Emperor (Vader) who will be handing out favor every NP. The favor determines your ranking, which can fall into one of five categories: Concubine, Consort, Noble Consort, Imperial Noble Consort and Empress.

Scum have been given two fake claims (I don't think we get a lot out of pushing for softclaims with those, nor do I think outing the Empress is a good idea with a complex theme split), which means it's likely there are two scum in this game, with maybe a TP in the mix.

Hopefully I've at least got the gist. I've read through the posts so far and I find it pretty confusing that a negative utility role like Miller would activate from having more favor.

Nah, it wasn’t just on you. As I wrote out in that last DP, I had strong mechanical suspicions that there weren’t 3 Vanillas, but I talked myself out of it and I found Mag1c’s argument on the bus persuasive. Came in questioning him a lot more than I left, and Wryly ended up feeling like a default even though I had nothing on her.

Oh well. Congrats to Mag1c and Shining, crazy that you figured out Pie was Ted Lasso.

That's the hammer. I am not scum, so fingers crossed.

Yeah, I don't think my thoughts on this are going to change. I think Wryly's most likely the second scum. If Mag1c was playing the long game here and hard bussed his own partner that early, then that baffling play will have earned him the win. I'll leave the final decision in Banana's hands and post my vote.

VTL Wryly

I wonder what the statistics are that I am facing yet another Shining/whiteflame pairing

Considering our back-to-back scum pairing? I guess pigs can fly, definitely can’t argue it’s impossible. I’d say this game is night and day different from a couple of games back when we were scum together, but there’s always going to be some room to question that.

I've asked some questions of Luna and I'm less torn than I was. The Universal Back Up can just inherit a Vanilla role, so if I'd been the target of the first NK, REF would have just turned Vanilla. Also, if shots are used (say, Banana's Popular), then they would have been restored for REF when his role activated upon their death. It's still a little off just how likely it was for REF to turn Vanilla if there are truly 3 Vanilla players in this game, and it's surprising how limited the value of his role would have been with just 2 positive utility roles (Popular and Cop) and 1 negative utility role (hidden Miller) in play, but having a lot of fail states isn't as supportive of the existence of Wryly's role than I'd previously surmised and I don't want to focus too much on modpsych at this point anyway.

That tips the balance against Wryly in my book. I think she's scum.