Mid-Range Game 61: Shadows and Dust

[Kasimir]

19 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

edit: and yes, I did actually use an online card drawer to pick those cards

Are you playing sabaac or pazaak, good sir :eyes:

There's one version of sabaac that's kind of cool because the cards shift depending so you can be playing with a different hand when the field kicks in. Presumably holo-cards.

Of course, there's always a good old game of dejarik...

[Channelknight Fadran]

I don't know how to play either of these games. Any good links to where I can teach myself?

[Ashbringer]

1 hour ago, Kasimir said:

Yeah. As a matter of policy, I don't accept votes or retractions in spoilers because players will often use them for notes and that makes sifting through them a pain. 

... I thought that was a general policy? I definitely don't sort through quote boxes looking for votes. Too easy to gloss over them or end up counting a vote someone else quoted.

 

Kill analysis time?

JNV Ashbringer Matrim Devotary xinoehp Drake Hael Wizard Bookwyrm Fifth Ventyl Shining Madagascar Fadran Turtle Alvron

Ventyl is entirely inactive. Thus, no. 

Madagascar is also new, thus unlikely

JNV Ashbringer Matrim Devotary Xinoehp Drake Hael Wizard Bookwyrm Fifth Shining Fadran Turtle Alvron

xino was almost entirely inactive, and also if they were deciding a kill I feel like they would have been a bit more aggressive since they were the 2nd closest exe candidate for a bit. Also an E!xino world has a few other people to look at (ie late Szeth switchers)

Fadran is also new, but not new to the Shard and iirc has looked at a few of the older (not that much older) SE games. Don't know if they would pick a kill, but that makes them feel slightly more likely than Madagascar.

JNV Ashbringer Matrim Devotary Drake Hael Wizard Bookwyrm Fifth Shining Turtle Alvron

Here's the neat thing. I feel like TUN gets killed early a lot, so I went back and looked, and TUN was last NK'd the first cycle in... MR60. You know. The last MR. 4 games ago. 

Of the people here, JNV, Matrim, Devotary, Xino, Wizard, and Shining were in that game. Ash, Drake, Hael, Bookwyrm, Fifth, Turtle, and Alvron were not. Not going to clear the in-game group for that immediately, but I will clear Devotary, because she was the one who actually decided that kill. Everyone else (JNV / Mat / Wiz / Shining) I feel would be unlikely to do it, but could - I'm hesitant to use their Village reactions to clear one of them, but Wiz called a C1 TUN kill "strange", Mat countered that it wasn't and was simply low info, and JNV was the C1 exe. If any of the MR60 crowd wants to chime in, that might help. Or might not, MR60 had weird mechanics.

JNV Ashbringer Matrim Drake Hael Wizard Bookwyrm Fifth Shining Turtle Alvron

TUN interacted with: Alv (jokingly), Fadran (jokingly), Drake, Mat, Szeth (saying is cuckoo maloo... which... idk if it's jokingly or not but Szeth is V anyway) and that was it. I'm not really up to date on people's kill methods, with of these only Mat and to some extent JNV are not vastly older or newer than me. But TUN fits low info like a glove, which makes it harder to find people to discount. Would like some thoughts on this.

 

Of these... I'll toss a vote on Fifth to start. Mostly for leaving me on Xino all alone, but also hopefully to use a bit of what I learned in ye olde LG74 

[Kasimir]

6 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

... I thought that was a general policy? I definitely don't sort through quote boxes looking for votes. Too easy to gloss over them or end up counting a vote someone else quoted.

No, because Xino absolutely did that in LG86 and Fifth and I were screaming over where the vote we missed was, after which I proceeded to place very big reminders we don't accept votes in spoiler/quote-boxes

Yeah I'm reading LG86 now, what gives?

A freshly-scribbled flimsi on the notice board at the Drunk Side:

Quote

Additional Rule Clarifications:

• If Wyrm submits a duel order to fight Kas just as Kas sends a duel order to fight Ren, RNGesus determines who gets to fight. Yes, that's right, duels are just like fight club: two players to a duel at once, one duel at a time only.

 

Edited November 29, 2022 by Kasimir

[DrakeMarshall]

5 minutes ago, Ookla the [Redacted] said:

I don't know how to play either of these games. Any good links to where I can teach myself?

Well, I'm using this as a reference: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Corellian_Spike

It's kind of like a mashup of blackjack and poker, but IN SPACE!

12 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

pazaak

Spoiler

 

[Alvron]

I love Pazaak.  I had a couple of pazaak decks once and would play it at work with colleagues to relax.  Once they found out it was from Star Wars though, it kinda died off.   Still have my decks somewhere.

[DrakeMarshall]

RIP pazaak was a neat thing

Also there's only like 3 votes so I guess maybe I should probably do my part

Wizard (AKA @Ookla the Myopic) I choose you for consideration!

[Madagascar]

Jedi Mind Trick or Force Lightning, the vote strangeness could have done. The reason for the action, only the actor can know for sure, and tell us they will not.

There is no one here that Moff trusts, but Moff knows one thing for sure: five of us here have the blood of an innocent, if somewhat weird, Settler on their hands. So what shall Moff think? Think that the Cultists would have been eager to take advantage of the erratic behavior of the Ookla and turn it against him in order to get rid of a troublesome loudmouth, I do. Lurking in the shadows, some may be, but not all. For the Ookla, many people voted to eliminate him, but of all those I will look that those who spent the least time arguing against him. Suspect I do that a Sith would not want to draw excessive attention by vehemently pushing for the death of one they knew was innocent, but would want to give enough reason to deflect suspicion if questioned. Dogpile upon the martyr, they might, in order to avoid the possible fickleness of the mob against them to turn. So if choose I had to do, choose to feed Wizard to a rancor to see if the rancor poops out any red lightsabers. 

Jeez Louise, what's in this death stick?

[Channelknight Fadran]

3 hours ago, DrakeMarshall said:

"Well, I'm not really the speculating type, as I'm sure you know," Dr. Dacken Humtumb lied, "but I can tell you the bare facts."

He lifted his own cards from the table and peeked: a red nine and a green ten. He tried for an enigmatic smile, with mixed success. There was an art to an enigmatic smile, he figured. Layers. Most people didn't appreciate a good enigmatic smile.

"Something's thoroughly blundered and beefed up the spaceport central communications array. I don't mean just a little short-circuit either, I mean it's properly slagged. Practically melted. Here, take a look," he held up a half-burned circuitboard. "I salvaged this from what was left of the comms, which is very different from stealing, because I'm reasonably sure nobody wanted it."

As the player to Nodice's left, it was Dacken's job to start off the betting. He threw in three credits, signalling his intent to raise the bet by a pittance.

"Coulda been a mechanic with a welding tool and a grudge a couple parsecs long. Coulda been a few rounds of blaster fire from one of the sith worshippers that are supposed to haunt the place even to this day. Coulda been a bloody terentek swinging a bloody lightsaber while beatboxing to the tune of the bloody imperial march. Force if I or anyone else knows for sure. Point is, we don't have comms anymore. And it for sure wasn't the gizkas fault. I was thinking of trying to rig something up to replace comms, but we seem to be a bit low on parts, so that might be off the menu."

"Anyways," Dacken looked expectantly at the betting pot. "Not dwelling on it, that's my policy. What'll it be, stand, raise, or scrap?"

edit: and yes, I did actually use an online card drawer to pick those cards

Tantyck met and raised it to four, fairly confident in his hand. "How they did it is unimportant. As I see it, only two truths matter: one, that these cultists hold ill intent towards this town; and two, they don't want - or don't need - to be subtle about it. My first bet would be on a gang swooper, of course, but not even they would choose to damage this establishment. Of course, that leaves just about everyone else here."

He glanced around the table. "Could be me, for all you know."

edit: I picked my cards with a normal number generator. imma throw them into a spoiler box so I don't forget them

Spoiler

Red 1, Green 3

(I rolled good)

---

There are quite a few poke votes on Wizard rn. Any particular reason?

Edited November 29, 2022 by Ookla the [Redacted]

[DrakeMarshall]

9 minutes ago, Ookla the [Redacted] said:

Tantyck met and raised it to four, fairly confident in his hand. "How they did it is unimportant. As I see it, only two truths matter: one, that these cultists hold ill intent towards this town; and two, they don't want - or don't need - to be subtle about it. My first bet would be on a gang swooper, of course, but not even they would choose to damage this establishment. Of course, that leaves just about everyone else here."

He glanced around the table. "Could be me, for all you know."

edit: I picked my cards with a normal number generator. imma throw them into a spoiler box so I don't forget them

  Reveal hidden contents

Red 1, Green 3

(I rolled good)

---

There are quite a few poke votes on Wizard rn. Any particular reason?

@Ookla the Forgotten I do believe it's your turn on the betting pool

I have elected not to peek at the spoilered cards for a more complete card game experience

---

Re: Wizard

There are only two votes on Wizard, though I will grant, they basically happened one right after the other and so it may feel like there are more:

Vote Tally
Shining Silhouette the Debonair (2): Matrim the Tall, Fadran the [Redacted]
Wizard the Myopic (2): DrakeMarshall, Madagascar
Fifth Scholar (1): Ashbringer

That is the same number of votes as there are on Shining. I would further point out that Madagascar has provided a nice paragraph explaining their reasoning for voting Wizard, whereas to my knowledge neither you nor Matrim seem to have done the same for your votes on Shining, beyond implying that your motives stem from the vote manipulation last cycle, so I think I could reasonably ask you to answer your own question

...but anyways, I literally didn't explain my vote at all, making me the worst culprit of the bunch, so maybe I should share some answers, yes?

I'm pretty much in accord with Madagascar on the subject honestly.

To be more specific, the justifications provided by Wizard for voting on Szeth had evil vibes:tm: No shade for the actual fact of voting on Szeth, I mean, I pushed voting for Szeth. But the reasons Wizard provided felt... Both fairly short, and like they were trying to come up with as many reasons as possible.

I guess I'd say that sometimes villagers don't do a lot of reasoning, which some amount of is well and fine with me tbh, in which case I wouldn't expect them to communicate a lot of reasoning. And sometimes villagers do a lot of reasoning, in which case I'd expect them to communicate a lot of reasoning, and possibly come up with points that nobody else came up with before. But Wizard cited quite a lot of reasons without convincing me that they were putting a commensurate amount of effort into evaluating the validity of the case against Szeth specifically, since at the end of the day like Madagascar says it was a pretty darn short post and I believe all of the reasons Wizard cited had already been brought up by somebody at the time. Which leaves me with the feeling that more effort was placed into the presentation of the vote than in choosing who to vote for. If that makes sense. Idk. I realize Team Evil members aren't the only ones who have good reason to care about how their reasoning is presented, but I do think they care about it disproportionately more than villagers, since it's their goal to make their arguments seem justified without actually in most cases being justified. That is my reason for wanting some voting pressure to exist on Wizard, which hopefully makes sense.

 

I find Ashbringer's analysis interesting too tho. I don't think it's an ironclad case, because I guess 4 games ago sounds like a decent amount of time to me and I honestly might not remember that somebody died early on in a game 4 games ago, but at the very least I do buy that it makes Devotary more likely to be village.

...man, analysis is hard

[xinoehp512]

5 hours ago, DrakeMarshall said:

My name isn't Drake and I approve of most of this message

ur one to talk

I don't even recognize your pfp I don't think. Do I know you? I've been wondering and I can't tell.

"Well, I'm not really the speculating type, as I'm sure you know," Dr. Dacken Humtumb lied, "but I can tell you the bare facts."

He lifted his own cards from the table and peeked: a red nine and a green ten. He tried for an enigmatic smile, with mixed success. There was an art to an enigmatic smile, he figured. Layers. Most people didn't appreciate a good enigmatic smile.

"Something's thoroughly blundered and beefed up the spaceport central communications array. I don't mean just a little short-circuit either, I mean it's properly slagged. Practically melted. Here, take a look," he held up a half-burned circuitboard. "I salvaged this from what was left of the comms, which is very different from stealing, because I'm reasonably sure nobody wanted it."

As the player to Nodice's left, it was Dacken's job to start off the betting. He threw in three credits, signalling his intent to raise the bet by a pittance.

"Coulda been a mechanic with a welding tool and a grudge a couple parsecs long. Coulda been a few rounds of blaster fire from one of the sith worshippers that are supposed to haunt the place even to this day. Coulda been a bloody terentek swinging a bloody lightsaber while beatboxing to the tune of the bloody imperial march. Force if I or anyone else knows for sure. Point is, we don't have comms anymore. And it for sure wasn't the gizkas fault. I was thinking of trying to rig something up to replace comms, but we seem to be a bit low on parts, so that might be off the menu."

"Anyways," Dacken looked expectantly at the betting pot. "Not dwelling on it, that's my policy. What'll it be, stand, raise, or scrap?"

edit: and yes, I did actually use an online card drawer to pick those cards

Nodice looked at his cards again and sighed. "Scrap", he answered, tossing his cards into the middle. "So nobody really knows what happened?"

[DrakeMarshall]

16 minutes ago, Ookla the Forgotten said:

Nodice looked at his cards again and sighed. "Scrap", he answered, tossing his cards into the middle. "So nobody really knows what happened?"

"Scrap is a most apt designation, yes! Precious little remains of our communications infrastructure but scrap. Nobody knows for sure what happened, except for I reckon the folks who did it, of course they would know. Smarts was the clever droid who reported the damages to our communications infrastructure when it happened. I wonder if perhaps Smarts saw more than I did? Or perhaps Smarts even did the breaking?"

Dacken wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, tossing in the necessary credits to stay in the running with Tantyck. It was too soon to call the game for sure, with the third card not yet revealed and the spike dice not yet rolled, but Dacken was a great believer in optimism.

"A thought occurs: a place such as this one usually has security footage, right? I've no doubt the likes of this world's security systems are primitive and rundown to my cosmopolitan eyes, yes, perhaps, but... Has anyone thought to check?"

[Fifth Scholar]

17 hours ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

The cycle ended an hour earlier than I thought it would but my vote wouldn't have accomplished anything it seems. Someone moved a vote from Silho to Szeth, though it's unclear why since Silho wasn't in danger and both Jedi and Sith have better things to do when the vote isn't close. Maybe a Jedi who saw Mat's vote and wanted to make sure Szeth couldn't be saved if he was a Sith, or as Mat says someone who didn't see him retract and wanted to make sure Mad lived/Szeth died. Before that vote for Silho Mad was the better target to remove a vote from to kill Szeth, or xino before Fifth switched.

Multiquote!Fifth has returned from the grave (he never really died; he was just waiting for schoolwork to give me less opportunity to respond in real time >>)

I was also initially thrown by the DST switch, which meant I couldn’t do the AM/PM switch I normally do with Kas’ time zone, though this kind of comment, while I would normally chalk it up to being an attempt to be Village-read (as your doc-mates would presumably correct you on rollover times), I can actually believe, because I think e!Devo would hesitate to make this kind of argument precisely because it is so flimsy.  (Side note: This is the most I’ve village-read you since you’ve burned me in LG54, which…I don’t know how I feel about that.)

I would tentatively suggest this is Jedi manipulation—one of the Sith have to be using Force Drain to kill, and I doubt the other one would let themselves get action-pinned by something as obvious as vote manip to try and protect Szeth, who’s village. The alternative is that before the cascade of Szeth votes, a Sith decided to stoke paranoia on Szeth by killing Mad with manipulation instead; in this universe, Mad is likely Village (which is aligning with my general read of her) and the manip is to mess with our heads. The problem with this theory is that there aren’t a ton of people who would be active enough to see that Mad was up for shrekking 6-8 hours earlier but not active enough to withdraw the unnecessary manip once Szeth was in a clear lead. (Tbf, this is also a problem for the Jedi! Manip side of things as well, so I likely shouldn’t be hinging too many AI considerations on it anyway.) It’s just odd.

17 hours ago, Ookla the [Redacted] said:

Shining Silhouette

for the time being I'm going to assume the vote manip was an amateur move and go from there.

Yeah this vote does not make me feel good about Fadran, sorry Fadran defenders  

14 hours ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

Did you paste this out of your doc? Mat voted for Silho, not Szeth, and that vote should have counted since it was before 01:00 and Kas's closing post. So there definitely was vote manip.

I am not completely sold on e!Fadran but this gave me a good chuckle. Though if you do win SE quote of the year for two years running, I think that’s a bit unfair  

13 hours ago, Ookla the [Redacted] said:

I don’t think it’s Silhouette. I think it’s more likely a sith pushing to kill Szeth than someone trying to save Sil.

Reads on the vote manip in ascending order of big brain:

- Haha vote manip go brrrrr

- Oh noes my teammate is in trouble I must protecc

- I’m gonna shift a vote harmlessly to get some reactions and reads

- I want to ensure that Szeth is killed to keep things neat

- I have predicted every one of Fadran’s actions and he is now scrambling to account for my decisions mwahahaha

- My schemes go far beyond what evidence is laid out here

Reads on vote manip in ascending order of likelihood:

- I have predicted every one of Fadran’s actions and he is now scrambling to account for my decisions mwahahaha

- Oh noes my teammate is in trouble I must protecc

- My schemes go far beyond what evidence is laid out here

- Haha vote manip go brrrrr

- I want to ensure that Szeth is killed to keep things neat

- I’m gonna shift a vote harmlessly to get some reactions and reads

So the two most likely outcomes (that I think) of this are either “we’re reading too far into this” or “one or more of the people who voted Szeth is a sith.”

A few notes on this admittedly amusing analysis: 

1) As I think has already been pointed out, votes were manipped away from a majority Szeth train (assuming intent to kill Mad), not towards him. This suggests either that the Jedi believed Szeth was innocent/Mad was guilty, or that the Sith wanted to frame Szeth (this assumes v!Mad). A third very risky but still plausible world is that Mad was Sith and shifted a vote onto herself once the Szeth train took off to deflect suspicion, which would be a stroke of genius but hopefully one which the late voting prevented. That seems too risky a C1 play for even me to stomach  

2) (this is more addressed at Jedi who are possibly doing this) there is no such thing as a “harmless” vote switch, especially with how volatile things are. If you want to be harmless with your manip, move it onto someone with no votes, not someone in second place. If the Jedi are doing this…okay, fine, but recognise that these sorts of gambits cut both ways.

3) vote manip go brrrr is definitely not something to be discounted—I was guilty of this myself at several points in my SE career, so I actually appreciate your analysis for taking this into account  

8 hours ago, Ashbringer said:

... I thought that was a general policy? I definitely don't sort through quote boxes looking for votes. Too easy to gloss over them or end up counting a vote someone else quoted.

 

Kill analysis time?

JNV Ashbringer Matrim Devotary xinoehp Drake Hael Wizard Bookwyrm Fifth Ventyl Shining Madagascar Fadran Turtle Alvron

Ventyl is entirely inactive. Thus, no. 

Madagascar is also new, thus unlikely

JNV Ashbringer Matrim Devotary Xinoehp Drake Hael Wizard Bookwyrm Fifth Shining Fadran Turtle Alvron

xino was almost entirely inactive, and also if they were deciding a kill I feel like they would have been a bit more aggressive since they were the 2nd closest exe candidate for a bit. Also an E!xino world has a few other people to look at (ie late Szeth switchers)

Fadran is also new, but not new to the Shard and iirc has looked at a few of the older (not that much older) SE games. Don't know if they would pick a kill, but that makes them feel slightly more likely than Madagascar.

JNV Ashbringer Matrim Devotary Drake Hael Wizard Bookwyrm Fifth Shining Turtle Alvron

Here's the neat thing. I feel like TUN gets killed early a lot, so I went back and looked, and TUN was last NK'd the first cycle in... MR60. You know. The last MR. 4 games ago. 

Of the people here, JNV, Matrim, Devotary, Xino, Wizard, and Shining were in that game. Ash, Drake, Hael, Bookwyrm, Fifth, Turtle, and Alvron were not. Not going to clear the in-game group for that immediately, but I will clear Devotary, because she was the one who actually decided that kill. Everyone else (JNV / Mat / Wiz / Shining) I feel would be unlikely to do it, but could - I'm hesitant to use their Village reactions to clear one of them, but Wiz called a C1 TUN kill "strange", Mat countered that it wasn't and was simply low info, and JNV was the C1 exe. If any of the MR60 crowd wants to chime in, that might help. Or might not, MR60 had weird mechanics.

JNV Ashbringer Matrim Drake Hael Wizard Bookwyrm Fifth Shining Turtle Alvron

TUN interacted with: Alv (jokingly), Fadran (jokingly), Drake, Mat, Szeth (saying is cuckoo maloo... which... idk if it's jokingly or not but Szeth is V anyway) and that was it. I'm not really up to date on people's kill methods, with of these only Mat and to some extent JNV are not vastly older or newer than me. But TUN fits low info like a glove, which makes it harder to find people to discount. Would like some thoughts on this.

 

Of these... I'll toss a vote on Fifth to start. Mostly for leaving me on Xino all alone, but also hopefully to use a bit of what I learned in ye olde LG74 

Madagascar is by no means new. She played in AG3 (and won the CR competition with her drunken crazy cat lady). So I wouldn’t exclude her from the pool based on that (and Kas likes giving power roles to newbies anyway)—I might do so based on the vote manip analysis above, but since the Jedi are presumably not outing themselves to tell us whether that was their fault or not, we can’t do even that at this juncture. 

Your logic on Xino is fair—I’m not discounting him from being evil, but I don’t think he’s a priority target. Can’t speak to either Fadran or MR60, but obviously I’m not really clearing either group. 

I mean, if you’re gonna vote me for being evil in 74, I can’t really refute you other than pointing out that this is a different game, unless you have certain things that are pushing your paranoia buttons.  

6 hours ago, Madagascar said:

Jedi Mind Trick or Force Lightning, the vote strangeness could have done. The reason for the action, only the actor can know for sure, and tell us they will not.

There is no one here that Moff trusts, but Moff knows one thing for sure: five of us here have the blood of an innocent, if somewhat weird, Settler on their hands. So what shall Moff think? Think that the Cultists would have been eager to take advantage of the erratic behavior of the Ookla and turn it against him in order to get rid of a troublesome loudmouth, I do. Lurking in the shadows, some may be, but not all. For the Ookla, many people voted to eliminate him, but of all those I will look that those who spent the least time arguing against him. Suspect I do that a Sith would not want to draw excessive attention by vehemently pushing for the death of one they knew was innocent, but would want to give enough reason to deflect suspicion if questioned. Dogpile upon the martyr, they might, in order to avoid the possible fickleness of the mob against them to turn. So if choose I had to do, choose to feed Wizard to a rancor to see if the rancor poops out any red lightsabers. 

Jeez Louise, what's in this death stick?

Actually solid logic from Mad here, only slightly undercut by the fact that Wizard was an existing wagon (thank you Drake) and this could be read as opportunism. As a whole though, this corresponds with my largely village impression of her. 

I will toss my vote on Fadran for the time being; I think he’s getting away with suspicious behaviour on the grounds that eliminators want to avoid looking obviously suspicious, which I have a long record of opposing as an argument.  I still want to look more into Mat’s interactions with him, but I should go and actually do RP/work now, so sadly that will get tabled and probably eventually forgotten unless @Ookla the Tall is kind enough to remind me to begin an inquisition on him later  

---

The bar, and its ungrateful residents, were left choking in a cloud of dust as Hamartano accelerated at high speed away from the town, swoop bike skilfully weaving between terrified pedestrians. He had nearly joined in on the sabaac table just to crush everyone and take all their money, but he could do that at any time. Best to avoid that chittering hunk of metal calling itself a droid which would inevitably consider his creative shuffling and extra decks of cards in his belt “cheating.” It was obnoxious enough that the droid thought it was a better marksman, or a faster one. Hamartano sped into the open desert, honking at a passing creature which simply stared at him, and went to the “course.”

It was simple: an open stretch of land with stone pillars of various heights, with blaster-proof steel balls atop each of them. The gang knew to set them back up after his practice sessions, and this time was no different. He executed a perfect wheelie on the bike, coming down with a buzzing of rubber and two targets now perfectly knocked down. He then braked, drifting into a spinning U-turn, and knocked down four new “enemies” with his free hand, and judiciously placed shots from the trusty blaster in his hand. As he brought himself back up to speed and continued practicing on targets while moving at breakneck pace, Hamartano felt a surge of justification. Sure, a droid could be programmed with more useless knowledge that he’d never need, like how to speak languages that weren’t Common. And perhaps it had more potent weaponry and machine-perfect aim. But none of that calibration could ever beat out human instinct. If the HK drone tried what he was doing and failed? It’d be discontinued, picked apart, reassembled, designated as a waste. But him? Every shot which went astray from one of the metal balls (there were not many of these anymore) was proof that he could achieve greater mastery, that he would never misjudge an angle like that again, that he would keep his bike better attuned to the needs of his shooting. And when the algorithms failed to hold back the Sith threat when they pulled something out of their back pocket?

Hamartano would be there. And, as he assured himself knowingly, he would crush them. 

[Kasimir]

Giving you your GM announcement early because I need to take meds and get sleep - still recovering, unfortunately. This flu hates me.

There are twenty seven hours left in the cycle! Get those votes and actions in!

5 minutes ago, Fifth Scholar said:

Kas likes giving power roles to newbies anyway

A guy gives Bip and Tani Coinshot and Mistborn once and he's destined never to hear the end of it, I see >>

If anyone is reading this and would like to pinch-hit, please let me know! I have a player slated for death row if he doesn't show up by EoC, so this is a matter of mild urgency.

Thank you, happy shrekking, and hopefully I will recover soon >>

[The Wandering Wizard]

3 hours ago, DrakeMarshall said:

To be more specific, the justifications provided by Wizard for voting on Szeth had evil vibes:tm: No shade for the actual fact of voting on Szeth, I mean, I pushed voting for Szeth. But the reasons Wizard provided felt... Both fairly short, and like they were trying to come up with as many reasons as possible.

 

I often try to provide some sort of reason for my vote, even if it's been brought up before, which I do see makes me look rather bad. 

3 hours ago, DrakeMarshall said:

I guess I'd say that sometimes villagers don't do a lot of reasoning, which some amount of is well and fine with me tbh, in which case I wouldn't expect them to communicate a lot of reasoning. And sometimes villagers do a lot of reasoning, in which case I'd expect them to communicate a lot of reasoning, and possibly come up with points that nobody else came up with before. But Wizard cited quite a lot of reasons without convincing me that they were putting a commensurate amount of effort into evaluating the validity of the case against Szeth specifically, since at the end of the day like Madagascar says it was a pretty darn short post and I believe all of the reasons Wizard cited had already been brought up by somebody at the time. Which leaves me with the feeling that more effort was placed into the presentation of the vote than in choosing who to vote for. If that makes sense. Idk. I realize Team Evil members aren't the only ones who have good reason to care about how their reasoning is presented, but I do think they care about it disproportionately more than villagers, since it's their goal to make their arguments seem justified without actually in most cases being justified. That is my reason for wanting some voting pressure to exist on Wizard, which hopefully makes sense.

 

What is in my head doesn't always make it down to text, it's just often how I play. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've been trying to actively shift my playstyle a bit each game and this often gets me murdered early. 

The problem I'm having is finding time to do analysis. Because I don't have time after school, but I have time during a few periods during the school day. 

Looking back on my thought proccess, I mostly wanted to break the tie. The other stuff was bullets of what was going through my head a bit, which is contradictory to what I said before. But I've been trying to get my thoughts down more. 

Sorry in advance if this doesn't make sense, it's been written during the short snipits of time I've stolen from the rest of my schedule.

[Mat]

1 hour ago, Fifth Scholar said:

As I think has already been pointed out, votes were manipped away from a majority Szeth train (assuming intent to kill Mad), not towards him.

...No? I mean, here's the VC:

Quote

Szeth (6): Xino, Drake, Wiz, Fifth, Fadran
Madagascar (2): Szeth, Hael
Silho (1): Mat, Bookwyrm
Xino (1): Ash
Turtle (1): Silho
Ventyl (1): Madagascar

Sure as heck looks to me like a vote was moved from Shining to Szeth.

2 hours ago, Fifth Scholar said:

I will toss my vote on Fadran for the time being; I think he’s getting away with suspicious behaviour on the grounds that eliminators want to avoid looking obviously suspicious, which I have a long record of opposing as an argument.  I still want to look more into Mat’s interactions with him, but I should go and actually do RP/work now, so sadly that will get tabled and probably eventually forgotten unless @Ookla the Tall is kind enough to remind me to begin an inquisition on him later  

My argument for v!Fadran never was that he's too obviously evil to be evil, and I don't think anyone else has made that argument either :P. My argument has been about his tone, and general feel like he's just vibing in the thread with no pressure or elim teammates or any of that. Rereading the thread a bit, I think this is a good reason to v!read him:

11 hours ago, Ookla the [Redacted] said:

You did? Thank goodness

(it’s the first piece of actual effort I ever put into an SE so that gives me serotonin)

Which to me feels very genuine. I guess it could be genuine in the case of e!Fadran too, but eh, I don't really see that so much.

6 hours ago, DrakeMarshall said:

whereas to my knowledge neither you nor Matrim seem to have done the same for your votes on Shining

I swear I've answered this question like five times lol ok here's a quote from me from pg. 1

Quote

Last EoD it was a snap decision based on a stab of gut and a light activity profiling, but as that vote did effectively nothing I thought I’d cast it again :P.

So half a joke and half legitimate pressure. Or more like a quarter of a joke and three-quarters pressure.

I want to reread and iso him and all that but in essence this is it. I feel like v!him is normally more into it and I also wanted to see what happened if he started getting votes.

Examining the votes on Szeth:

-Poke from Drake (he later elaborates, criticizing Szeth's poke vote jumping)

-xino self presses (this is weird for two reasons- first, it's twelve hours early, and second, Szeth only had one vote-- xino's count had Hael and I voting Szeth but we were voting Madagascar. xino actually missed Drake's vote entirely).
     ~xino unvoted two posts later, voting turtle instead, effectively making his self pres useless, especially since Szeth voted him. Technically his self pres had already been useless but he didn't know that :P.

-xino goes back to Szeth, catching Drake's vote but still not seeing that Hael and I were voting Madagascar.

-Fadran votes Szeth because xino's his pal. This reads genuine to me, I don't think if e!xino this means e!Fadran necessarily. 

-Wiz breaks the tie, citing little things and agreeing with Fifth (who isn't even voting Szeth and openly preferred xino, maybe he meant Drake?).

-Fifth condemned Szeth, solidifying that train despite preferring xino.

• Of those, the order of most reasons to least reasons is as follows: Drake, Wiz, Fadran, xino, Fifth
• And only the first two had 'real' reasons. Madagascar's point is valid, but I'm kinda surprised she didn't mention Fifth at all since he checks all her boxes and does it arguably more than Wiz does. Wiz didn't really recycle reasons since there weren't much reasons to begin with  A poke that stuck with some explanation, a misguided self pres, and playing favorites is all that came before.

Reads list to come hopefully, but it might be tomorrow morning as I have school work and USA plays today.

[Madagascar]

 

1 hour ago, Ookla the Tall said:

• And only the first two had 'real' reasons. Madagascar's point is valid, but I'm kinda surprised she didn't mention Fifth at all since he checks all her boxes and does it arguably more than Wiz does. Wiz didn't really recycle reasons since there weren't much reasons to begin with  A poke that stuck with some explanation, a misguided self pres, and playing favorites is all that came before.

Contrived, the argument to kill Szeth was to me. Erratic, the ookla was, but not evil. I was more suspicious of Wizard for breaking the tie in conjunction with the secret vote. More likely to use their secret vote first day the Sith seem to me; for to protect others from death, a Jedi would more likely want. For some nefarious reason, did the Sith want to make sure that the votes away from them tipped and towards Szeth go? Frightened perhaps they were, and grasping for excuses to turn the wrath of the mob away and towards a blameless, albeit ridiculous, innocent. Fifth's vote was cited as purely "to avoid shenanigans." Suspect this may also be, but I did have same thought, that due to potential for voter fraud perhaps votes should be completed by a clear margin, so in the end decided I did to let the Force guide my hand and with my gut to go. Blood on their hands, both of them have.

Drake, however, I did just notice was the one who started the whole "kill Szeth for voting a lot" thing and now he vote for Wizard also... blood on their hands so many of you have... hmmmm....

*taps a death stick over his mouth* Jeez Louise, in these things, what is? Paranoid, it's making me. Oh gosh now there are cats are everywhere

Edited November 29, 2022 by Madagascar

[Fifth Scholar]

1 hour ago, Ookla the Tall said:

Sure as heck looks to me like a vote was moved from Shining to Szeth.

I swear the vote count changed from the beginning of the cycle then because it looks different  but it seems you are correct, and I completely misidentified what actually took place. In that case most of what I said is nonsense because I misinterpreted the interactions, though my point about manipulation to stoke paranoia perhaps still stands if it was your vote that was shifted, since you were on Mad for a while. But still we have to look a little more closely at an e!Mad world, even though I don’t think she was under enough actual pressure to need the manip. Unfortunate. 

[DrakeMarshall]

2 hours ago, Ookla the Myopic said:

I often try to provide some sort of reason for my vote, even if it's been brought up before, which I do see makes me look rather bad. 

What is in my head doesn't always make it down to text, it's just often how I play. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've been trying to actively shift my playstyle a bit each game and this often gets me murdered early. 

The problem I'm having is finding time to do analysis. Because I don't have time after school, but I have time during a few periods during the school day. 

Looking back on my thought proccess, I mostly wanted to break the tie. The other stuff was bullets of what was going through my head a bit, which is contradictory to what I said before. But I've been trying to get my thoughts down more. 

Sorry in advance if this doesn't make sense, it's been written during the short snipits of time I've stolen from the rest of my schedule.

Comprehensible, have a nice day.

Wizard.

You pass the vibe check.

Can I ask why you wish to avoid ties?

45 minutes ago, Ookla the Tall said:

I swear I've answered this question like five times lol ok here's a quote from me from pg. 1

I want to reread and iso him and all that but in essence this is it. I feel like v!him is normally more into it and I also wanted to see what happened if he started getting votes.

Welp, I must have skimmed over that post  Sorry.

I was not observing that you haven’t tried to explained yourself at all though, more just that I think the Wizard train had arguably been explained in more detail than the Shining one at the time.

Also, I’m not sure your explanation actually changes my assessment. I believe in pressure absolutely, but with all due respect, I do not consider it a reasoning for voting, since it applies equally to everyone. So if applying pressure is the main additional reason for following up on a self-proclaimed throwaway vote last cycle, I am gonna mentally sort the vote as kinda arbitrary.

And for the time being, that’s okay. I don’t think voting should need a bunch of great reasons, at least not this early on, or not without other factors creating suspicion. None of us know what we’re doing.

While I have your attention, though, didn’t you say last cycle that you were feeling paranoia about Devotary? Has that read changed any?

[Ashbringer]

4 hours ago, Fifth Scholar said:

Madagascar is by no means new. She played in AG3 (and won the CR competition with her drunken crazy cat lady). So I wouldn’t exclude her from the pool based on that (and Kas likes giving power roles to newbies anyway)—I might do so based on the vote manip analysis above, but since the Jedi are presumably not outing themselves to tell us whether that was their fault or not, we can’t do even that at this juncture. 

Your logic on Xino is fair—I’m not discounting him from being evil, but I don’t think he’s a priority target. Can’t speak to either Fadran or MR60, but obviously I’m not really clearing either group. 

I mean, if you’re gonna vote me for being evil in 74, I can’t really refute you other than pointing out that this is a different game, unless you have certain things that are pushing your paranoia buttons.  

... oh Madagascar's not? Hmm. Yeah that would bump them up a bit, I'll have to go look at their game-relevant RP a bit more.

Slightly paranoid on you for taking the same ideas on Xino vs Szeth as me, then going Szeth while I stayed Xino - Xino did post, but their post seemed a lot like C1 thoughts summary rather than new things, which seemed NAI to me. But also of the Fifth-Hael-Drake-Alvron, I played with E!you before (or did so more recently) and thus have a bit more to base stuff off of. So thanks for a big post I'll look at it in more detail later 

[Fifth Scholar]

1 minute ago, Ashbringer said:

Slightly paranoid on you for taking the same ideas on Xino vs Szeth as me, then going Szeth while I stayed Xino - Xino did post, but their post seemed a lot like C1 thoughts summary rather than new things, which seemed NAI to me. But also of the Fifth-Hael-Drake-Alvron, I played with E!you before (or did so more recently) and thus have a bit more to base stuff off of. So thanks for a big post I'll look at it in more detail later 

If more people than just you and me had been voting Xino, I would have stayed, but with the way things were I didn't want the Sith pulling off a lot of vote manip to make us paranoid of v!Szeth by directing a lot of votes away from him and saving him. Obviously the opposite happened, which isn't ideal either, but I was happier keeping some distance between the leading candidate and the two or three people trailing him. As for my long post, the greater part of the actual analysis in it is now irrelevant (thank you Mat, I think) but fire away  

19 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

Also, I’m not sure your explanation actually changes my assessment. I believe in pressure absolutely, but with all due respect, I do not consider it a reasoning for voting, since it applies equally to everyone. So if applying pressure is the main additional reason for following up on a self-proclaimed throwaway vote last cycle, I am gonna mentally sort the vote as kinda arbitrary.

Surely you can't say that pressure applies the same to everyone even in the context of voting though. If a person is being minimally helpful and goes from 0 to 2 votes, that's a more significant application of pressure than splitting those votes between lower-actives; similarly, putting a candidate in the lead by more than one vote creates a set of incentives as well (especially in this game, where both factions have single actions that produce two-vote swings). I don't trust Mat, but on a purely intellectual level, putting one of his suspect's names in red to see what he does about it makes sense to me.

[Mat]

12 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

Also, I’m not sure your explanation actually changes my assessment. I believe in pressure absolutely, but with all due respect, I do not consider it a reasoning for voting, since it applies equally to everyone. So if applying pressure is the main additional reason for following up on a self-proclaimed throwaway vote last cycle, I am gonna mentally sort the vote as kinda arbitrary.

I mean, that's fair for sure. And Shining responded to my pressure essentially the same way Mad did C1; by not responding to it at all. Though I think of the two Mad gets more v points for continuing to post and RP and stuff whereas Shining didn't really do anything except acknowledge it and then leave. I don't really intend to stay here but as you said none of us know what we're doing and I have no clue where to go  

14 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

While I have your attention, though, didn’t you say last cycle that you were feeling paranoia about Devotary? Has that read changed any?

I mean, it wasn't so much a read as it was, as you say, paranoia  There's been nothing that voids that paranoia since it happened, if that's what you mean, but imo it's a different question if you ask what I read her as. Truth be told I can't really remember anything she's posted (except for saying multiple times how strong the elim manip was, which is the source of said paranoia) so I guess that means null. Like many other people in this game, I should reread her posts :P.

[DrakeMarshall]

13 minutes ago, Fifth Scholar said:

Surely you can't say that pressure applies the same to everyone even in the context of voting though. If a person is being minimally helpful and goes from 0 to 2 votes, that's a more significant application of pressure than splitting those votes between lower-actives; similarly, putting a candidate in the lead by more than one vote creates a set of incentives as well (especially in this game, where both factions have single actions that produce two-vote swings). I don't trust Mat, but on a purely intellectual level, putting one of his suspect's names in red to see what he does about it makes sense to me.

I do think Mat's general strategy is intellectually sound. But I'd also say two things:

1. Mat was the first vote on Shining this cycle, so I don't think the logic of stacking multiple votes on somebody to increase the pressure is necessarily relevant.
2. Putting a suspect's name in red to see what they do makes very good sense, yes, but it doesn't explain why they are a suspect.

7 minutes ago, Ookla the Tall said:

I mean, it wasn't so much a read as it was, as you say, paranoia  There's been nothing that voids that paranoia since it happened, if that's what you mean, but imo it's a different question if you ask what I read her as. Truth be told I can't really remember anything she's posted (except for saying multiple times how strong the elim manip was, which is the source of said paranoia) so I guess that means null. Like many other people in this game, I should reread her posts :P.

Yeh, fair.

I guess what I'm asking indirectly is whether or not you think the fact that Devotary apparently killed TUN (early) in the last MR is relevant or not, and somewhat by extension what your thoughts on Ashbringer are

Edited November 29, 2022 by DrakeMarshall

[The Bookwyrm]

...I'm going to vote Fifth.

I'm going with my assumption that there's at least one elim on the Szeth train, and of the options, I think Fifth is the best. I don't have much solid reasoning right now (it's primarily a gut read), but because I'm assuming I'm going to get grilled for this, I will find some more concrete evidence.

And if the concrete evidence says that I should vote for someone else, then I'll change my vote!

[Mat]

Just now, DrakeMarshall said:

I guess what I'm asking indirectly is whether or not you think the fact that Devotary apparently killed TUN in the last MR is relevant or not, and somewhat by extension what your thoughts on Ashbringer are

It feels relevant but

• It could be relevant because, it could be argued, that makes Devo more likely to have killed TUN because there'd be an established pattern.
• Or it could be relevant because, it could be argued, that makes Devo less likely to have killed TUN because she just did it and wouldn't want to again right away.

And there's not really a way to tell the difference. I for one did not remember TUN was killed early in the last MR and dunno if Devo would have either, but part of that is the last MR was a little bit ago.

On Ash, idk, kill analysis always feels kinda weak to me but I've seen Ash narrow a team down ridiculously well with that strategy multiple times so I think it's just a strategy I don't understand  I'm not really sure how he ended up voting Fifth out of that but I also think it might not have been specifically out of the kill analysis.

Can I just nope out of deciding what I think about that Bookwyrm vote on the grounds that I don't know what I read Fifth as >>