[S] All The King's Men - Loyalists win!

[Mavketl]

what the fuck, people, stop with the monkey-see-monkey-do on the cop claims? keep it up and we might out an actual cop to scum ffs.

my list was for a specific purpose which i will explain later (hence 'experiment'). unless you guys all have the same role/plan as i do, i dont think you can justify those damn lists.

will post the 'i am scum' list from home later.

(crappy capitlisation etc because posting from ereader)

[weiyaoli]

I was going to be lenient to allow for the strategy of using two or three similar statements but I guess to remove all confusion/prevent abuse, all identical statements will now be "golded" to prevent abuse.

[Mavketl]

Interestingly, we've been referring to scum as "rebels" ever since Adam H coined that term. It is not in the flavour. Scum are (presumably) called 'revolutionaries' there. So yeah, FoS at Adam H. And then another FoS at Adam for claiming vanilla town and sort of asking/daring people to check it? Not sure what's up with that. Awkward.

With the latest modpost this isn't all that useful anymore, but it can't hurt. My anti-claims:

I am not town. I am not a loyalist. I am scum. I am a rebel. I am a revolutionary. My faction has a kill. I know who the scum members are. I am a serial killer. I am an independent.

[Angua]

I assumed that Adam H got rebel from the terminology used by weiyaoli when talking about how the lie detector, truthify thing works.

[Angua]

ebwop, actually, looking back (I couldn't when I wrote the first post as the quotes don't go back far enough) - you're right, Adam H says damn rebel first, and I misremembered.

[BoomFrog]

I am scum. I am a rebel. I am not a loyalist. My faction has a kill. I have a kill. I know who some of the scum are. I know who the rebels are. I am independent. I am a serial Killer. I have night chat. I know some members of my faction. I know all the members of my faction. I can send PMs to other players.

I am town. I am a loyalist. I am not a rebel. My faction does not have a kill. I do not have a kill. I do not know who any of the scum are. I know who the rebels are. I am not an independent. I am not a Serial Killer. I have no night chat. I do not know who is in my faction. I cannot send PMs to other players.

my list was for a specific purpose which i will explain later (hence 'experiment'). unless you guys all have the same role/plan as i do, i dont think you can justify those damn lists.

I assume your explanation will be in the morning first thing D2? I'm having a lot of trouble imagining a non-scum role that would benefit from a list like that, but your boldness in saying what your doing makes me feel your more likely town. I really wish you hadn't included one-shot vigkill on the list though it makes me nervous.

even the 4-2-2 seems a little out matched for the town, even with a successful lynch the mafia could win just by each lynching a townie, then over very soon, either 5-2-1, or 6-2 i think any way,

It depends on how many powers town has. The way things have worked out everyone in town is very close to a one-shot daycop, but I don't think the mods realized the set up would be quite this powerful. I think 4-2-2, 5-3, and 5-2-1 are all possible depending on the powers people have. I expect things to go very quickly so we need to make the best use of D1 and N1 that we can.

[BoomFrog]

ebwop, actually, looking back (I couldn't when I wrote the first post as the quotes don't go back far enough) - you're right, Adam H says damn rebel first, and I misremembered.

I think AdamH was just being flippant.

[Adam H]

FoS on me for saying rebel instead of revolutionary! My head is like a friggin thesaurus!

i dont think you can justify those damn lists.

Well, if a scum checks one of my statements, they'll waste a lie detection... so... I didn't see any harm from it. Justification - COMPLETE.

And then another FoS at Adam for claiming vanilla town and sort of asking/daring people to check it? Not sure what's up with that. Awkward.

My vanilla townness is the reason that I believe there probably isn't 3 rebels... how was it awkward?

[slbub]

right now FoS everyone that hasn't posted the list

i do suspect a few people but i don't think i'll vote until i'm really sure, i will be gone for the next 60 hours i'm not sure if i will be back in time to vote or anything but if not then lynch someone that seems like a good target.

[Angua]

Well, now that all identical statements are golded, the lists aren't any help anymore. Also, the lists are so long, that they probably wouldn't have been very useful to scum anyway.

[BoomFrog]

The deadline is coming up really fast here. I'm getting the same vibe here that I got in Homestar Scummer. There's a huge lack of activity which makes me think the scum are trying to stay out of the spotlight and there's a lot of scum or independents. I'm thinking we've only got about four actual town here. Maybe 4-2-1-1.

I'm going to do a readthrough and place a vote. I suggest everyone else do the same or we'll have nothing to go on D2.

2. slbub - minor points but at least active. Neutral
3. webby - First to mention using negative statements to break the game. Also, first to mention Scum manipulating detect truths. Good point, although if he is scum and scum do not have that power this is a good way to sow doubt. Still mostly towny vibe for now.
4. Silknor - Has made one post and never made a list of statements, only a single "I am a loyalist" even though at that point making a long list was obviously good for town and risky for scum. Scummy.
5. Mavketl - High profile "experiment" a bold move for scum. Leaning Town today
7. Adam H - Claims Vanilla town, not a good move as town. Scummy
8. Angua - Seems to be putting in a good effort and trying to wrap her head around the mechanics from a town point of view. Townish

Vote: Silknor

@Silknor, why didn't you make a list of statements, or at the time at least say "I am not a rebel" as well as saying you're a loyalist? Everyone else was at the time making lists of statements. Also please repeat my list of loyalty statements for the court records.

If Silknor makes a list and is tested then I will remove my vote. (This feels like a McCarthy hearing... :p )

I'm setting a tentative deadline of 1 week (i.e. D1 will end sometime Monday 26th) but this is very tentative.

When is the deadline?

[webby]

I've been pretty busy (just had enough time to make one post before deadline in the other game I'm in), but it doesn't look like I missed much anyway.

I agree with Boomfrog on Silknor - he's the one player (not counting Misnomer) who hasn't made a list, or contributed anything useful/new. Also, perhaps more significantly, he was the only player who agreed with me suggesting that scum might have a 'falsify' or similar - which is possibly looking for an excuse if he or one of his teammates fails the lie detector.

The rest of the players:
slbub - I can never tell with him - I think he's acting townie, and in fact more townie/looking to be useful than usual? I'm not sure if he's a player like more_people who acts way townier as scum than town. Neutral for now.

Mav - pretty solidly townie, seeming to be helpful. Small things stop me from being sure such as the possibility of her list being an intentional trap to try and make the lie detector actually useful for scum as well, but I don't consider that particularly likely. Slightly townie.

Boomfrog - not as active as usual, but good that he came back rather than just letting time run out before deadline. First to post the idea about making everyone say that they're a loyalist, but that was a pretty obvious plan. Reasonable posts, not that much I disagree with in his analysis. Slightly townie.

Adam H - I want to truth test 'My head is like a friggin thesaurus'. First to suggest multiple statements so that scum can't truthify all of them. Don't like the vanilla town claim, but that strikes me as newish player as much as scummy - I remember people thinking he was scummy in magicians for similar dodgy statements. Neutral.

Angua - Agree with Boomfrog here - she seems to genuinely be working to understand the game from a town perspective. Slightly townie.

So in order from most to least scummy:
1. Silknor
2. slbub
3. Adam H
4. Mavketl
5. Angua
6. Boomfrog

Vote: Silknor

Before we lynch someone, they need to lie detect something. I'm not going to suggest what yet, because I'm not sure whether it's worth discussing or not. The advantage of discussion is obviously that it can make it useful even if the lynched player turns out to be scum, while the disadvantage is that we give the target a chance to truthify. I would suggest day 1, when scum may not have truthified yet and the lynch is less likely to be correct, we don't discuss which statement the lynch target tests. Any other opinions?

[BoomFrog]

Before we lynch someone, they need to lie detect something. I'm not going to suggest what yet, because I'm not sure whether it's worth discussing or not. The advantage of discussion is obviously that it can make it useful even if the lynched player turns out to be scum, while the disadvantage is that we give the target a chance to truthify. I would suggest day 1, when scum may not have truthified yet and the lynch is less likely to be correct, we don't discuss which statement the lynch target tests. Any other opinions?

Think the bolded part through a little better. Scum could report any result they want when claiming that they used a detect, we'll only know they were reliable after they flip town. I think we just let the lynchee decide what to use detect on, if they are town hopefully they make a good choice if they are scum who cares it was useless anyway. Discussing only gives scum a chance to influence things or prepare with a truthify.

[webby]

Before we lynch someone, they need to lie detect something. I'm not going to suggest what yet, because I'm not sure whether it's worth discussing or not. The advantage of discussion is obviously that it can make it useful even if the lynched player turns out to be scum, while the disadvantage is that we give the target a chance to truthify. I would suggest day 1, when scum may not have truthified yet and the lynch is less likely to be correct, we don't discuss which statement the lynch target tests. Any other opinions?

Think the bolded part through a little better. Scum could report any result they want when claiming that they used a detect, we'll only know they were reliable after they flip town. I think we just let the lynchee decide what to use detect on, if they are town hopefully they make a good choice if they are scum who cares it was useless anyway. Discussing only gives scum a chance to influence things or prepare with a truthify.

I thought the result was posted in thread? Actually looking back at the rules that's not completely clear - I may be misinterpreting this:

1. A one-shot lie detector that can be directed at any one statement in a post by the following format:

So I thought you posted what you want to detect in thread, then the mod responds in thread. But re-reading, it actually seems more likely that 'a post' refers to the post that the statement you're detecting is in, not that you direct it by posting.

Mod: Can you clarify this?

[Angua]

Ooooh, activity again!

Anyway, what do other people think about my earlier post wondering if the flavour text actually does strongly hint at independent roles. Again, I think that it is likely to be some sort of serial killer going down the kill everyone for the crown route.

I would like to hear more from silknor to see why they have been so inactive compared to the rest of us.

[BoomFrog]

This revolution is going to pick us off one at a time until every man loyal to his majesty will die.

I'm not seeing anything that really points to multiple scum factions, and actually the above hints that there will only be one NK. It's tenuous at best though. We'll see at the start of D2.

[Adam H]

I'm interested as to how my vanilla town claim is scummy? Isn't everyone else scummy for not claiming it?

Consider me on the Silknor bandwagon. I agree that he should lie detect someone and then we'll have a proper discussion, and I think he should choose someone without our input. We'll get more information that way - both the results of his detection and his choice of target.

Hopefully the deadline isn't today still...

[weiyaoli]

Votals:
Silknor(2): BoomFrog, webby

10 alive, 6 to lynch immediately.

Deadline extended to Thursday at around 8 GMT +1. No further extensions planned.

All lie detecting will take place through PMs to the mod(s) and results thus as well.

Still looking for a replacement for Misnomer.

[slbub]

I was going to be lenient to allow for the strategy of using two or three similar statements but I guess to remove all confusion/prevent abuse, all identical statements will now be "golded" to prevent abuse.

Well, now that all identical statements are golded, the lists aren't any help anymore...

i don't really see how these align entierly, like not scum but am town, but is the whole list useless or no?

if so then i guess we will have to resort to the same old methods or be clever with our lie detectors

if not then we have found a stratagy to find lies in the scums lists (if they (the lists) exist)

[Silknor]

4. Silknor - Has made one post and never made a list of statements, only a single "I am a loyalist" even though at that point making a long list was obviously good for town and risky for scum. Scummy.

@Silknor, why didn't you make a list of statements, or at the time at least say "I am not a rebel" as well as saying you're a loyalist? Everyone else was at the time making lists of statements. Also please repeat my list of loyalty statements for the court records.

You're right, the long list was obviously good for town. Too good*. I believed that a long list of similar, and often logically identical but differently worded statements, was a clear circumvention of the intent of the mods. As such, I contacted Weiyaoli requesting clarification before my post, and urging him to make the ruling he did. As I've modded with him before, I anticipated he would agree that the lists could be gamebreaking, and would modify the rules to prevent this. Because of this, I did not feel it appropriate to participate in the list posting until the clarification was present. Now that the rules have been modified, I see no point in it. As an aside, I do not believe it is ever production behavior to respond to threats, conditional unvotes, etc, and so I do not do so.

*It would be simple enough to generate a list of 20 logically identical statements that none the less would not have clearly fallen under the original golding rule. At that point, everyone using their detector at random could create a substantial list of links which would, after a death or two, clearly identify all or almost all of the scum, much like Dethy except that instead of a 25% chance of a result being sane, the probability would be about 95%, since the scum could only cover one of their statements. This would quickly reduce the reduce the game to a simple logic puzzle, and thus lose any challenge or elegance present in the original design. As such, I petitioned the mod for a rule change, even though the full extent of my fears had not yet been realized, though it was approaching that point.

@AdamH: Many consider that Vanilla town claims are problematic. One reason for this is that townies should always tell the truth, however, if they do so, they may assist the scum in power-role hunting. It's a subtle form of WIFOM. Whether or not it's productive or scummy in this particular game, I am not sure.

@Webby: Or I could be bringing up the possibility of a "Falsify" type power (though such a power could also take the form of say, disabling target's lie detector for a night, instead of targeting a specific statement), because I believe it is important that people do not rely excessively on a power in a partially closed setting.

[Angua]

Silknor - why did you petition the mod to change things in private, instead of within the game, especially if you were just going to tell us that you'd done it anyway.

[Adam H]

reason for this is that townies should always tell the truth

OK well that's not how I have ever played. Why should town always tell the truth? Shouldn't we say whatever we need to say to win? I figure(d) it's assumed that everyone claims vanilla town (which therefore doesn't really mean anything). If I were scum (I am not) or a power town (I am not), I would truthify the vanilla town statement, therefore if I were scum I cannot now claim power role. So... yeah it wasn't scummy. Honestly, I disagree so completely that I'm going to push Mav, Webby, and BF (and silknor) into my scummy list - not for FoSing me, but because from what I can tell only scum would not approve of a mass vanilla town claim.

Of course, I AM new (to the pro league at least), so please correct me if I am not thinking clearly. Rather than waste 50 posts arguing the merits of vanilla town claim, if you could link to a game where vanilla town claiming was "problematic", that would be greatly appreciated.

Anywho, Silknor, that's fine... don't use your lie detect... you damn rebel!!!

Vote: Silknor

This would quickly reduce the game to a simple logic puzzle, and thus lose any challenge or elegance present in the original design.

Apparently, the original design was neither challenging nor elegant, but broken...

Honestly, after a couple pms with the mods, I have barely any idea what "identical statements" are. I completely fail to see how "I am town" and "I am not scum" are identical, let alone "I do not know any members of my faction" (I guess we're assuming there are no masons or neutrals of any kind?). But whatever. I will play along. Scum will truthify "I am town" and now the lie detector is completely useless. But it did give us silknor, so that's good.

[Mavketl]

I wonder if I'm overlooking something here...

Why do several people suggest that it could be useful for scum to post a list with town power roles? It's a bad idea for many regular townies to do so, because it has the unnecessary risk of outing power roles, but I don't see how it would be a good scum tactic.

I really wish you hadn't included one-shot vigkill on the list though it makes me nervous.

Why?

I assume your explanation will be in the morning first thing D2?

I hope so, but it depends on some N1 things. I'm not going to promise, because I can't guarantee that I'll have something useful in the morning.

Re: Adam H repeatedly claiming vanilla town. Let's just say that if you're actually vanilla town it's a bad idea to try to convince people you are vanilla. The other options are power role lying to protect themselves, or scum falseclaiming something that's pretty uncheckable (it's much more dangerous to claim cop or doc). To be honest, it feels more like the latter than anything else. I wasn't really impressed by your response to the rebel thing either.

I think it's interesting that Silknor is getting so much flak. I was having bad feelings about him before any of that started, and apparently I'm not the only one? I don't like that he was rather late in even posting the single "I'm town" thing, but I think y'all are blowing the list thing out of proportion. From what I can tell, it fits Silknor's usual playing style to address balance issues with the mod and refrain from acting before things are clear. I don't think I will vote for Silknor today.



Ehm, slow ninja (I took a long time/a break typing this post ),

from what I can tell only scum would not approve of a mass vanilla town claim.

Dude, what the fuck. You're imposing some sort of bizarro world meta on us that does not fly in this mafia community. And it's really annoying, because it's super scummy behaviour that might as well be caused by some weird kind of noobish stubbornness and it would be the gazillionth time we lynch someone because they're being completely unreasonable while being town.

Rather than waste 50 posts arguing the merits of vanilla town claim, if you could link to a game where vanilla town claiming was "problematic", that would be greatly appreciated.

How is this basic logic lost on you? If every player claims vanilla town, it is meaningless. If only the actual vanilla townies claim vanilla town, it outs the power roles. The claiming vanilla town thing was already weird, but stating that only scum could possibly be against it...

[Mavketl]

Addendum to "I don't think I will vote for Silknor today": I do think I want Silknor to have opinions and suspicions today. So get on it.

(And that goes for more of you! And also for me a bit!)

[Mavketl]

One more thing to screw with the system a little: if anyone is making lists with "I think this player is scummy, this person seems townie to me", et cetera... use a different format. Say "[Person X] is scum" and "[Person Y] is town". Those statements should show up true when true and made by scum players (they presumably know everyone's alignment), and statements that you do not know the answer to show up as false (see OP). I will post such a list today or tomorrow.

I know that people like to be all "well maybe this person is a little scummy", but don't worry, we'll just imagine you said that when you actually say "X is scum". It should work fairly well I think?

[Silknor]

Silknor - why did you petition the mod to change things in private, instead of within the game, especially if you were just going to tell us that you'd done it anyway.

Whenever possible, I address questions privately to the mod. I encourage the same in games I mod because I prefer that questions be asked and answered out of character, not used as a means of subtly influencing opinion by which questions are asked and how (eg. it's obvious a scum has more to gain from the rule change in question than a townie who is concerned solely with winning and not with game balance and design). I had no intention of mentioning this, for it would naturally lead to suspicions that I was trying to influence the rules to increase my chance of winning, thus implying my guilt. Unfortunately, circumstances arising later demanded I provide an explanation for my actions, and only the truth could suffice.

@AdamH: The reason townies try to avoid lying, or at least use lies of omission instead, is simple. Should a townie die, people will trust their statements more, and should they have lied, they will be unable to correct any wrongly drawn conclusions based on those lies.

In general, I do not see the purpose a mass vanilla town claim serves. It makes it no more difficult for the scum to target power roles earlier in the game, for as with the total absence of information, the only rational strategy when the only information is irrelevant is clearly to pick at random. It does however help to ensure that should a tower power role want to claim later in the game, they are less likely to be believed. This may matter little for a vigilante, but it can undermine the effectiveness of a cop or other investigative role. I see no benefit from a mass vanilla claim over simply not claiming any specific town role (eg. I am a pro-town). Thus, I fail to understand the basis for your suspicion of those listed.

There's no game I can cite to support this, for I am not aware of a single game in which a mass vanilla town claim was executed (I haven't played for a long time except for day 1 and night 1 in Dreamers 2, so it's possible there has been one recently).

However, in this game in particular, a mass vanilla town claim seems like a particularly bad idea. It gives the scum a tool to identify power roles with some accuracy (if I am Vanilla is false, the scum know they are a power role or an independent). This weakness can be covered up with the Truthify power, but in that case, all we've done is forced some power roles to waste their Truthify power (which may not be much of a loss, if townies are truthful to start with, it is difficult to see what benefit they get from using Truthify in the absence of some other power, eg. nullifying a Falsify power or a power conditional on true statements). Still, I see only harm coming to the town from a mass vanilla claim, and I'm not aware of any reason you've posted to support this strategy besides the dubious claim that it's prima facie obvious and right for the town to do so.

If there are no independents, masons, lovers, etc, then there are a wealth of logically identical statements. For example, I am town, I am not scum, my faction does not know its members, my faction cannot communicate, my faction does not have a leader, my faction does not have a night kill controlled by a leader or the collective decision of its members, etc. If there are such roles, then there may be some differences among these statements, though they could certainly mislead us (eg, a survivor and a scum failing a I am a loyalist statement).

The presumption that the only statement for which a lie detector could be useful is an explicit or implicit role/alignment claim seems to me to be a mistake. I am confident other statements will present themselves.

@Mavketl: I want to have opinions and suspicions too! And hopefully more will emerge. All I have now though is a strong sense that Adam H's strategies should not be trusted. Whether this is because of inexperience or scumminess combined with inexperience, I do not know.

As I see it, the statement "X is(isn't) Scum" is, in absence of a guaranteed sane investigation (a lie detector result cannot be known to be true since a true statement could have been truthified, and a false statement could have been affected by an unknown power), equivalent to the statement, "I am Scum". Thus it seems to me that each statement would be gold-protected by the scum truthifying "I am town" or some similar statement. So I do not see what additional information we can gain by investigating that statement instead of the statements already made.

[BoomFrog]

I really wish you hadn't included one-shot vigkill on the list though it makes me nervous.

Why?

Well we probably shouldn't discuss my theory unless we want to discuss your power. You've already essentially claimed power town, I don't think we should narrow down what your power is by discussing what it isn't. Although, if my thoery were correct you would have claimed "I am a vigilante" instead of "I have a one-shot vig kill" so I'm willing to assume for now that my theory is not correct.

Those statements should show up true when true and made by scum players (they presumably know everyone's alignment), and statements that you do not know the answer to show up as false (see OP).

The theoretical existance of independents means that scum will still be stating an opinion when they say X is town. But why hold back on who we declare are scum?

Spoiler:

Misnomer is scum
slbub is scum
webby is scum
Silknor is scum
Mavketl is scum
BoomFrog is scum
Adam H is scum
Angua is scum

Tomorrow if we have a scum flip then we can check the D1 statements declaring them scum. Only thier teammates would know they were scum D1, so the applicable above statement would only be true when said by a teammate.

As I see it, the statement "X is(isn't) Scum" is, in absence of a guaranteed sane investigation (a lie detector result cannot be known to be true since a true statement could have been truthified, and a false statement could have been affected by an unknown power), equivalent to the statement, "I am Scum". Thus it seems to me that each statement would be gold-protected by the scum truthifying "I am town" or some similar statement. So I do not see what additional information we can gain by investigating that statement instead of the statements already made.

Hmm, good point.
If a scum player states about his teammate "X is scum", but he has previously Truthified the statment "I am town" what will be the result of a detect truth on "X is scum"?

In general I'm pretty comfortable with Silknor's response. I haven't played with him before, but I do agree that although breaking a game system is fun, playing a broken game is not fun. I do expect more actual scumhunting from him and he's still on my slightly scummy list for bieng pretty lurky, but he's not at the top of the list anymore.

@AdamH, your answers to criticisim against you has been quite flipant. However, I know from resistence that you are a fairly logical person so I am suprised that you really don't get why the vanilla town claim is problematic. Although your gunuine seeming ignorence does lend credince to the thoery that you really are town. I haven't played with you enough though to know if your the type who would fake ignorence to gain townie cred. Let me explain clearly why claiming vanilla town is so extra bad in this game.

First of all, as has been pointed out numerous times there is no benifit to mass claiming vanilla town and the fact that you pushed that angle clearly shows that you regret claiming, either because your actually town and realize why it was bad or because your scum and regret the attention it has brought upon you. But to stress the point, if everyone claims vanilla then town has gained nothing but scum has gained a statement that they can use detect truth on to try and find power town. This alone is reason to think your action was scummy and I don't see how you could have overlooked this problem.

However, there is a second subteler problem. Since everyone has claimed "I am town" the scum needs to be worried about this false statement hanging out there and so may want to truthify it. However if on a later day we decide to full claim, now the scum cannot truthify thier full claim. So if they claim power town or even vanilla then their new statement will still be false because "I am town" does not logically include and therefore does not gold the statement "I am vanilla town". BUT if you claim "Vanilla town" on D1 then that DOES include "I am town". Therefore scum will want to make the broader inclusive statement on D1 so they can truthify it directly and not worry about lie detectors for the rest of the game.

Therefore (wow this got long) there is no motivation for you to claim vanilla D1 if you are town but there is motivation to claim it if you are scum and want to get your full claim truthified immediatly.

Unvote
Vote AdamH

[webby]

Unvote

We have more time until deadline and Silknor's more recent posting was better.

I've seen Adam H act kind of like this before as town - I've never seen him as scum, but in Magicians he did look really scummy (and got lynched day 1) and in Resistance he got into some arguments that he came out of looking bad. He seems to me like the type of player that would actually be less argumentative/stubborn as scum.

The other one high on my list is slbub - haven't heard many opinions on him - what do people think? Is this normal for slbub, or is he acting differently?

[Angua]

Ok, so we have some meta-analysis going on which seems to make sense as different people's assessments seem to coincide.

In response to what mavketl said, having scum say X is town won't necessarily work, because the possibility of independents means that they can't be sure.

[Adam H]

Spoiler:

from what I can tell only scum would not approve of a mass vanilla town claim.

Dude, what the fuck. You're imposing some sort of bizarro world meta on us that does not fly in this mafia community. And it's really annoying, because it's super scummy behaviour that might as well be caused by some weird kind of noobish stubbornness and it would be the gazillionth time we lynch someone because they're being completely unreasonable while being town.

Rather than waste 50 posts arguing the merits of vanilla town claim, if you could link to a game where vanilla town claiming was "problematic", that would be greatly appreciated.

How is this basic logic lost on you? If every player claims vanilla town, it is meaningless. If only the actual vanilla townies claim vanilla town, it outs the power roles. The claiming vanilla town thing was already weird, but stating that only scum could possibly be against it...

However, in this game in particular, a mass vanilla town claim seems like a particularly bad idea. It gives the scum a tool to identify power roles with some accuracy (if I am Vanilla is false, the scum know they are a power role or an independent). This weakness can be covered up with the Truthify power, but in that case, all we've done is forced some power roles to waste their Truthify power (which may not be much of a loss, if townies are truthful to start with, it is difficult to see what benefit they get from using Truthify in the absence of some other power, eg. nullifying a Falsify power or a power conditional on true statements). Still, I see only harm coming to the town from a mass vanilla claim, and I'm not aware of any reason you've posted to support this strategy besides the dubious claim that it's prima facie obvious and right for the town to do so.

First of all, as has been pointed out numerous times there is no benifit to mass claiming vanilla town and the fact that you pushed that angle clearly shows that you regret claiming, either because your actually town and realize why it was bad or because your scum and regret the attention it has brought upon you. But to stress the point, if everyone claims vanilla then town has gained nothing but scum has gained a statement that they can use detect truth on to try and find power town. This alone is reason to think your action was scummy and I don't see how you could have overlooked this problem.

However, there is a second subteler problem. Since everyone has claimed "I am town" the scum needs to be worried about this false statement hanging out there and so may want to truthify it. However if on a later day we decide to full claim, now the scum cannot truthify thier full claim. So if they claim power town or even vanilla then their new statement will still be false because "I am town" does not logically include and therefore does not gold the statement "I am vanilla town". BUT if you claim "Vanilla town" on D1 then that DOES include "I am town". Therefore scum will want to make the broader inclusive statement on D1 so they can truthify it directly and not worry about lie detectors for the rest of the game.

Therefore (wow this got long) there is no motivation for you to claim vanilla D1 if you are town but there is motivation to claim it if you are scum and want to get your full claim truthified immediatly.

Apologies for seeming flippant. I do not think my posts are unreasonable though - I simply do not completely understand where you are all coming from. I did not say and I do not think that we should mass vanilla town claim, only that I do not see why we (collectively or individually) should not claim vanilla town. You have given some decent arguments, and now please allow me to counter those with my point of view. Let me know if I misunderstand something.

1) In a normal game, if every player claims vanilla town it is meaningless.
My response: I agree, but meaningless is not necessarily bad. I only made the claim in the context of a larger discussion, which I did not think was meaningless.

2) Power roles cannot or should not claim vanilla town in a normal game.
My response: I disagree. But I'm not imposing any weird meta on you, I'm just saying that I said what I said because based on my past play, I saw no reason not to. But anyways, this is not a normal game.

3) Power roles cannot or should not claim vanilla town in this particular game.
My response: I disagree. I cannot think of anything else a power role would truthify, so there is no harm and probably a benefit (if scum thinks they are vanilla) in stating this and then truthifying it. If the power town wants to claim later, a statement of what they've done (i.e. healed so-and-so, copped so-and-so) should come back true. Silknor, you summed up my argument, but then went back and said "still it's a bad idea" - I'm not sure why. I have not thought this all the way through, however, and perhaps there are ways for scum to trick us up... but if so, I think scum would most likely just make a mistake doing something convoluted.

4) Scum would want to claim vanilla town early because truthifying "i am town" would not truthify "I am vanilla town".
My response: This is a valid concern and I did not think of this. I am unsure about the whole "golded statements" thing... however, I think that if a vanilla scum truthified "I am town" and then stated "I am vanilla town", it would come back true. This more or less nullifies the point, i think.

If a vanilla scum truthified "I am town" and then stated "I am vanilla town", would it would come back true?

To summarize our opposing views, you say:

Let's just say that if you're actually vanilla town it's a bad idea to try to convince people you are vanilla. The other options are power role lying to protect themselves, or scum falseclaiming something that's pretty uncheckable (it's much more dangerous to claim cop or doc).

While I say: a) vanilla town convinces the other town of their innocence b) scum thinks power role is vanilla town c) scum can't claim cop or doc.

That is clearly not what you meant, but that's what I'm hearing. You'll have to tell me why "if you're actually vanilla town it's a bad idea to try to convince people you are vanilla," because I don't see it.


Lame and possibly useless list of statements:

Spoiler:

Misnomer is scum
slbub is scum
webby is scum
Silknor is scum
Mavketl is scum
BoomFrog is scum
Adam H is scum
Angua is scum

Maybe mods could just tell us not to be lame. That might fix the brokenness.

[Mavketl]

Quick post, more later.

@Everyone saying "but there could be independents!" - I think that has been practically excluded by the mod when he said that "I am town" and "I am not scum" (or "I am scum" and "I am not town") will be treated as identical statements for golding. They could not possibly be treated as such if there would be other factions than "scum" and "town" and if there are, I'm going to scowl at the mod for at least three full seconds.


Ninja:

I did not say and I do not think that we should mass vanilla town claim...

...a mass vanilla town claim...

You'll have to tell me why "if you're actually vanilla town it's a bad idea to try to convince people you are vanilla," because I don't see it.

Let's try to make this EVEN SIMPLER.

Scum want to kill the powerful townies. If they know who is vanilla town, that narrows down their "possible power roles" list, which makes them more likely to kill powerful townies.

I would reply to the rest of your argument but I don't even get your a)b)c) thing. If you could clarify...?

[weiyaoli]

Votals:
Silknor (1): Adam H
Adam H (1): BoomFrog

10 alive, 6 to lynch immediately.

If a scum player states about his teammate "X is scum", but he has previously Truthified the statment "I am town" what will be the result of a detect truth on "X is scum"?

As the scum truthified that he is town, the statement will be treated as coming from town and would therefore show FALSE.

If a vanilla scum truthified "I am town" and then stated "I am vanilla town", would it would come back true?

That would come up TRUE.

[Adam H]

I did not say and I do not think that we should mass vanilla town claim...

from what I can tell only scum would not approve of a mass vanilla town claim.

FTFY. Don't misquote me please. Notice that I was not advocating a mass vanilla town claim, only asking for reasons why we should not. Which I got, kind of...

Scum want to kill the powerful townies. If they know who is vanilla town, that narrows down their "possible power roles" list, which makes them more likely to kill powerful townies.

Scum has not gotten any information. All they know is that A) I claimed vanilla town, and B) I claimed that if I were power role I would have claimed vanilla town.

You said:

Let's just say that if you're actually vanilla town it's a bad idea to try to convince people you are vanilla. The other options are power role lying to protect themselves, or scum falseclaiming something that's pretty uncheckable (it's much more dangerous to claim cop or doc).

You listed three options, and said they were bad:

a) "if you're actually vanilla town it's a bad idea to try to convince people you are vanilla"
b) "power role lying to protect themselves"
c) "scum falseclaiming something that's pretty uncheckable (it's much more dangerous to claim cop or doc)"

I listed the same three options and say that they are good:
a) vanilla town convinces the other town of their innocence
b) scum thinks power role is vanilla town
c) scum can't claim cop or doc.

[Mavketl]

You listed three options, and said they were bad

Wrong. I said that it was bad if you are actually vanilla town.

[Mavketl]

Also you say that only scum would disapprove of [tactic X] but at the same time you won't endorse using [tactic X]? Surely saying that only scum would disapprove of it means that you think it's good for town? Why would you not advocate something that you are saying is good for town?

And don't go "I was only asking for reasons without having an opinion", you were literally saying that people were being scummy because of this. You were not some sort of neutral observer in this issue.

[Adam H]

You listed three options, and said they were bad

Wrong. I said that it was bad if you are actually vanilla town.

OK, but your logic is: vanilla town should not claim vanilla town because power roles and scum would not/should not claim vanilla town. Power roles and scum would not/should not claim vanilla town because vanilla town should not claim vanilla town. You are saying that no matter my role, it's a bad idea. I'm saying that no matter my role, it's NOT a bad idea.

Also you say that only scum would disapprove of [tactic X] but at the same time you won't endorse using [tactic X]? Surely saying that only scum would disapprove of it means that you think it's good for town? Why would you not advocate something that you are saying is good for town?

And don't go "I was only asking for reasons without having an opinion", you were literally saying that people were being scummy because of this. You were not some sort of neutral observer in this issue.

Yes, my opinion was and is that scum would vehemently argue against being forced to claim vanilla town.

[Adam H]

EBWOP:

I'm saying that no matter my role, it's NOT a bad idea.

Sorry, "bad idea" should be "bad idea for town" or "scummy"... if I were scum, I would not want to claim vanilla town.

[Mavketl]

Adam H: I think we've been going on long enough about this. I can reply to some more stuff point-by-point if you insist, but we're going in circles and the goal posts seem to be moving all over the fucking place which makes me think that you will just move on to the next argument and say that that's what you've been saying all along. More on that below.


So, here goes. I'm using the format I suggested earlier, so I'm going to say "X is town" or "Y is scum" without qualifiers. Don't get all bothered with the phrasing.

First, some minor things.
A point against Angua, slbub, Adam H and webby for copying the "I'm a cop" list when it has no clear value for town (but potential value for scum).
A point against Adam H, Silknor (oops, that was only a 'confirm', I think it mostly doesn't count), BoomFrog, Angua for not claiming town in their first post.

Angua, 14 posts.
Active, trying to contribute to discussions. I'm not so happy with this:

I'm sort of getting confused by all the ins and outs of what is the best way to beat the lie detector, truthify thing, so I'll probably just go with what people are saying.

While understandable, it's also a very convenient position for scum to take. Her later posts about lie detector issues have compensated for this quite convincingly, though.
I'd like Angua to be a little more proactive, but I think it has to do with general playing style rather than alignment. Therefore: Angua is town.

BoomFrog, 9 posts.
He was one of the first to insist that everyone should claim town, and has generally had no problem arguing and disagreeing with people/arguments (which is a good thing). Early voter (also good thing). I can't really find anything that points to "scummy" in his posts.
BoomFrog is town.

slbub, 7 posts.

i do suspect a few people but i don't think i'll vote until i'm really sure, i will be gone for the next 60 hours i'm not sure if i will be back in time to vote or anything but if not then lynch someone that seems like a good target.

This is sloppy play. If you're town, then you want us to know who you suspect (and not that you "suspect a few people"). slbub has been pretty lurk-y, which is not a good thing.
However.
Considering my usual read of slbub, and how I'm not yelling at him for being so fucking scummy, I'm going to hesitantly conclude:
slbub is town.

webby, 6 posts.
I actually had a pretty bad feeling about webby, but after closely reading his posts... I don't really know why. His analysis is fine, and he has contributed some stuff. At the same time, I'm not sure what to think of his vote-unvote on Silknor and his semi-defense of Adam H. I think my opinion of webby will depend on how he goes from here with accusations and, importantly, voting behaviour.

Adam H, 14 posts.
Good thing: he is active.
Unsurprisingly, I'm not impressed with some of his posts. Not only do I disagree with him on many things, the way he makes his points bothers me as well. Whenever someone calls him on an inconsistency or counters an argument, he comes up with something new and acts as if that is what he said originally. That lack of taking responsibility for one's earlier opinions/statements/etc is what I consider the most scummy thing about his posts. There's a possibility that this is his general playing style and/or inexperience is part of the cause, but I try to avoid pitfalls like "but player A is always scummy" as some sort of excuse.
Adam H is scum.

Rest of the list + conclusions tomorrow, I'm out of time.

[BoomFrog]

I'm going to be on baby duty for the rest of the day so I won't be able to post much today.

@Mav: I am confused why you are persisting saying we should make our scum lists in your unusual format. Saying "X is town" will read as false no matter who says it and "X is scum" will read as false if the scum saying it has truthified "I am town". Therefore your scheme is useless.

[slbub]

guys i'n not sure how well i will play like 8 exams in the next 2 days that i didn't know about, i don't know if i will be able to post by deadline but i will try for tomorro