Long Game 12: Shadows of Elantris

[Kasimir he/him]

Oh, so <n> indicates that it's the players nth vote. Makes sense now.

I've been trying to come up with a system to reflect vote order/chronology because you can pick up interesting things from that. Such as Jain stacking what essentially turned out to be a fourth vote on Wonko without substantially adding to what had already come up in the discussion. Granted, I'm guilty of that too since I wanted him to answer why he wanted to reveal vote manipulators in-thread. I later removed my vote because Mek's argument had convinced me.

[Wonko the Sane he/him]

Kas: Just the general principle that more information is good for the village. Should I have kept it to myself? It's only analysis of information that was already publicly available.

 

You said that the only reason to talk to Elantris at night was to keep my identity secret; since I'm public, should I wait until day to send my Seon in, and PM someone else tonight, or contact Elantris now?

Edited May 28, 2015 by Wonko the Sane

[Kasimir he/him]

Kas: Just the general principle that more information is good for the village. Should I have kept it to myself? It's only analysis of information that was already publicly available.

 

You said that the only reason to talk to Elantris at night was to keep my identity secret; since I'm public, should I wait until day to send my Seon in, and PM someone else tonight, or contact Elantris now?

When you put it that way, fair enough. I'm just a bit paranoid about role information being revealed, but you're right that they could analyse it for themselves and draw the same conclusions.

I would say it's basically up to you. If you think you have a better target to talk to tonight, you can talk to them. If you don't, try an Elantrian? Come on, man. I'm in a very informationally-poor position here so I'm definitely in no place to advise other than to leave it to your best judgement You have 48 hours this time, so may as well make the best of it, right?

 

[Clanky he/him]

And then it was edited. Seems we have another case of King/Queen or a second Keeper. Think probably the latter.

 

I tend to lean towards the former since both dow and mckeedee had votes on Fel and Spencer. I think there is a good chance one of them is King.

[Haelbarde he/him]

Would not be Mckdee - his role changed I thought.

[Clanky he/him]

Oh yea I still get confused by that whole role change.

[Kasimir he/him]

I’m pretty sure some people will go ‘I told you so’ about this one… >>

Some mislynch. I’m kind of conflicted about this one because although spencer was Arelish, I’m not particularly fond of the Debtor mechanic. (That might be an understatement.) All the same, what’s done is done. Right now, I’d prefer it if we didn’t entirely go dark at night, since we have 48 hours before the lynching and the bloodshed starts again. So, I’ve been relooking through the thread and coming up with some questions I’d like answered.      

1. Jain—you put a vote on Wonko when he had three on him, with no particular/additional reason you would like to see answered. Why? If Wonko had not replied to a third vote, what’s the logic in throwing yet another vote on him somewhat after the 24 hours mark? In answer to my question, you said you were outlining the Gyorn’s potential playstyle and predicting targets. My question stands: why would you do that? Why would you strategise for the Gyorn?

2. Maili. You spoke of throwing a vote on Wonko because of his responsibility for the bandwagon on Fel as well as to ‘tie things up’. Given that we don’t have a general consensus on vote manipulation, why do you persist in seeking a tie? You yourself mentioned earlier that you felt we should not simply let Debtors go gently into that good night. Yet, by aiming for a tie, isn’t that a likely consequence? (I note as well that Twei has a good point about how this effectively either ignores occurrent vote shifts late into the cycle or effectively demands the stifling of further discussion.)

3. Seonid. ‘A priori’? Really? (Just kidding; had to get excited and crack a joke about seeing that, of all things, in a Sanderson Elimination game!)

4. Kipper. If you felt that it was irrelevant to discuss the various convolutions and implications of Orlok’s death, why did you then discuss it—at, I might add—greater length than any reasoning behind voting for Clanky?

5. Honey Badger. Why attempt to push the discussion back to a futile one on Orlok’s death? [same question for Aonar. If you already realise that most of the discussions surrounding the issue involve vague and shoddy guesses, why strip and jump into the muck pit with the rest of us?]

I’m not sure what to make of the vote shenanigans. But have a look at this snapshot of the vote tally from 6:54PM yesterday:

M’Hael (0): Clanky<1>
Karlin (0): dowanx<1>
Dowanx (1): Jain<1>, Bort
Luckat (0): Kas<1>
Wonko (4): Araris, Maili, Kas<2>, Jain
Clanky (0): Winter, Kipper
Piff (0): Meta<1>
spencer (1): dowanx<2>, Kas<3>
Alv (1): Aonar
Maili (1): Wilson
Twei (1): Clanky<2>
Jain (1): Meta<2>

From 10:23AM onwards yesterday (sorry guys, this is my time, but I’ve linked to the post so you guys can compare with your respective timezones), Wonko leads the lynch with three votes. At 6:54PM, Jain shifts his vote from dowanx and puts a fourth on Wonko. Wonko is effectively headed for the lynch.

At 7:30PM, I retract my vote from Wonko and go for spencer instead. But even with 3 votes on him, notice that Wonko is still leading the lynch to spencer’s 2 votes.

It’s only at 10:04AM today that Maili retracts his vote on Wonko, places one on Dow, and effectively turns the state of the votes to something like this:

Wonko (1): Araris
Dowanx (2): Bort, Maili<2>
spencer (2): dowanx<2>, Kas<3>

The way it looks like to me, it doesn’t make sense for a Prince/Princess to change Ostrich to vote for Wonko unless it was done by someone active during the period where Wonko was leading the lynch or leading the lynch by just a very close margin. Otherwise, it’s essentially pointless. But I think parsimony would at least require that we assume this is the same character who tried shifting a vote onto Mek.

Edited May 28, 2015 by Kasimir

[Surgebound Rainspren he/him]

So from this its most likely one of these players have more than one vote, whether that's because they are a duke/duchess or king/queen or some other reason thought we can't be certian

[Bort he/him]

I got Duked! And someone shifted my vote onto someone I believe is inactive, instead of leaving it where I have my suspicions.

 

I wish you guys would stop with the last minute bandwagons. I'm in the UK here, so I'm in bed four hours before the end of a cycle. Both day cycles we've had this game, when I've gone to bed the board has looked one way, and when I wake up, something completely random has happened.

 

I'm doubly suspicious of these bandwagons as they have done nothing apart from kill innocents. Honestly, this just makes me even more suspicious of Dowanx. First, he advocates for the deaths of the inactives/lurkers. Then, thanks to his decision to support Wilson's vote on Feligon (I believe it was Wilson), a bandwagon starts, resulting in the (rather complicated) death of a Keeper. I'll not complain about the loss of a secret vote, although it is a shame to lose an innocent.

 

After that, the day two votes. I place a vote on Dow, fairly early on because I'm dubious about him, then when we see the write up, not only is another innocent dead, but also another inactive (judging from his lack of posts in the threads). This was someone who Dowanx voted for, and I find my vote has been shifted off Dowanx, and onto Spencer.

 

Highly dubious. The question is though, is someone framing Dowanx, and making him look guilty, or is he?

 

Edit: So, it seems Spencer did make an appearance last night, but it wasn't enough to save him. Still, for the vast majority of the cycle, he did appear to be inactive, so I can see why the votes swung his way. I think lynching inactives is a bad plan. They are the reason we've got pinch hitters waiting on the sidelines. Rather than kill inactives, we should just leave them so a different, active, player can take over.

Edited May 28, 2015 by Bort

[Guest]

Kas, I'm not even sure how to respond to your suspicion, because I didn't do what you say. I posted one time about Orlok, yet that is somehow too much?

If you are simply pointing out that by comparison, I said a greater amount about Orlok than Clanky, this is true, but only because I didn't have that much suspicion of Clanky; I just wanted to elicit a reaction. If you need any more clarification, I'm here for you.

All that said, it seems like you've set up the criteria for what a useful post is all by yourself. Dangerous position.

[Metacognition he/him]

 

I'm doubly suspicious of these bandwagons as they have done nothing apart from kill innocents. 

 

While I don't disagree with a lot of what you said, I (and remember, I didn't even take place in these late changes) have to argue against this. 

 

It's why I also tend to argue in favor of first day lynches most games! Killing innocents is bound to happen. Accept that fact and remember that it's just a game and you'll be a lot happier. 

 

We are going to kill some innocent players. That's a fact. There are far more of us than there are of the Cultists. To blame anyone and everyone who ever caused the death of an innocent player just for that action is ludicrous. This game requires you to go a level deeper than that and try to discover the reasoning behind the individual lynches. Then take into consideration that this is just the second day! How many Cultists have you picked out within that time frame, eh? Yet you expect that the rest of us are to do much better? 

On top of that, I thought Mek pretty much cleared the first day lynch. The Cultists already had two confirmed Villagers on the table well before the bandwagon on Fel came through. What would be the point of putting themselves out there to get another random and (this is important) basically inactive player out of the way? Personally, I think that the first day lynch actually threw the Cultists off of their game, which is why I suspect those that came out strongly against it.

Now, this isn't a defense of Dow. He very well could still be a Cultist. I do happen to agree with him on his stance on lurkers though. Those that aren't speaking up aren't helping us find the Cultists and I, personally, don't have any qualms about killing someone that isn't trying to help out (not that I have many qualms about killing anyone; it's still just a game after all, but even less so in this instance). So, if someone wants to try to encourage those that aren't speaking up to do so, I'm not going to fault them for that and the amount of people who view "trying to get lurkers to stop lurkering" as a bad thing is something that I find incredibly suspicious.  

 

As I said, I'm not defending Dow. I just find the reasoning behind the suspicion on him to be shoddy. Shaky suspicions are the bread and butter of the Cultists as they'll use whatever reasoning they can get to accuse someone. 

 

That said, the fact that you came forward as someone that was 'Duked' means that I don't think that you're a Cultist. Most of this isn't directed at you specifically anyways, just a general vibe I've gotten off of everyone so far. 

 

 

 

[Lightsworn Panda he/him]

1. Jain—you put a vote on Wonko when he had three on him, with no particular/additional reason you would like to see answered. Why? If Wonko had not replied to a third vote, what’s the logic in throwing yet another vote on him somewhat after the 24 hours mark? In answer to my question, you said you were outlining the Gyorn’s potential playstyle and predicting targets. My question stands: why would you do that? Why would you strategise for the Gyorn?

 

At that time, it seemed to me that Wonko was the one about to be lynched by a two-vote majority. As usual, I was wrong. As for the Gyorn question, I was trying to do some analysis, although I seem to have picked a taboo topic.

 

Anyone else want to heckle me for my problems? I'm here all night.

[Bort he/him]

First day lynches I can understand, and we had that with the Mek/Orlok vote (with no knowledge that both were definitely friendly). It is when someone comes along in the final moments of a cycle and with a few prompts, they manage to change everything. Result? Feligon and Spencer were both killed with minimal discussion about them. Whether you're right or not about it throwing the Cultists off their game, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who woke up to a completely different result than they were expecting, for no other reason than someone apparently wanted to mess with the vote. Now it has happened a second time. Both times Dowanx was involved, and both times a citizen has died.

 

I don't know for definite he is a Cultist, but I do think it looks dodgy. Lurkers, while annoying, true, can be forgiven I think. Some of them are probably like me. When I get to work in the morning, or home in the evening, This thread is one of the first I open on my PC, and I leave it open to keep coming back to, no matter what else I'm using my computer for. It is only when they are repeatedly seen in the thread, but still don't post that I get suspicious, but I don't think I've seen anyone like that so far this game. Not that I've noticed anyways.

 

As for inactives, lynching those is a bad idea anyways. Sure, they don't contribute to votes or discussion, but they are all bodies that both the Cultists and the Converts have to get through. Killing them only speeds things up for the bad guys. Surely it would be better to not kill them, let a pinch hitter take over, and give us someone new to work with? Yeah, we may get a Cultist replaced if one was inactive, but I think, given the numbers, that is pretty unlikely, and we'll most likely end up with a new ally who will, hopefully, be more active than the person they replaced.

[Bort he/him]

Anyone else want to heckle me for my problems? I'm here all night.

 

Do we get to throw rotten fruit too?

 

Kasimir, I can understand why you wouldn't want us regular citizens to strategise for the Gyorn, but without any kind of discussion on him, his targets (actual and potential), how do you expect us to find him? It doesn't really matter who the Gyorn converts, he still has to get everyone converted in order to win the game, so what does it matter if we talk about how he might go about it? It may give him (or her. Not being sexist here ) an idea or two, but the workload is the same.

 

Edit: Sorry for double post. Not sure how to edit a quote into a post.

Edited May 28, 2015 by Bort

[Kasimir he/him]

Do we get to throw rotten fruit too?

 

Kasimir, I can understand why you wouldn't want us regular citizens to strategise for the Gyorn, but without any kind of discussion on him, his targets (actual and potential), how do you expect us to find him? It doesn't really matter who the Gyorn converts, he still has to get everyone converted in order to win the game, so what does it matter if we talk about how he might go about it? It may give him (or her. Not being sexist here ) an idea or two, but the workload is the same.

 

Edit: Sorry for double post. Not sure how to edit a quote into a post.

Let me put it this way. I think it's fallacious to suggest that absolutely no discussion of the Gyorn means we can't find them. It's fallacious simply because it makes a dangerous conflation. We have other ways of finding the Gyorn--particularly once we get the information from whoever the converts are--than just sitting around and speculating what the Gyorn might do, with absolutely no evidence as to what the Gyorn has actually chosen to do.

Consequently, no, I'm not against discussion of the Gyorn's activities--but you genuinely think these are more helpful to us than the Gyorn? Then I'd challenge you to show me how these help us They give the Gyorn an idea of what we think they are up to. But that's about it. Without solid information, it's just hot air and our being gratituous about us having made some sort of solid discovery. So that's my point: don't conflate discussion about what the Gyorn is doing with discussion about what the Gyorn might do. One helps the Village, the other the Gyorn, and I'm for one and against the other.

I recognise I should not have done that either with Orlok, and quite honestly, the only reason I can give is having been very exhausted of late and just outright losing my temper in frustration. (So you're not the only one, Mek.) I normally don't do that anymore since the first time I made that blunder in MR4, and would've kept to my own advice otherwise.

I think you underestimate most of what the players here are capable of, if you think that this can't substantially help the Gyorn. These are not 'an idea or two'. I've been in contact with one or two people by Seon who have suggested things we need to look out for and by extension, extremely deadly strategies the Gyorn could employ. I am glad that none of these have made appearances in the thread, though I'm none too happy about having been told them in a Seon PM. (Come on people! I could be the Gyorn! You didn't know I'm on Team Village! Seon safety! Practice it!)

With regard to Kipper's comment on my having set up the criteria for a useful post all by myself: another problematic slip in reasoning; more rhetorical, I've noticed, and an interesting counterattack. As a lone player, I make my own judgements and ask questions. It is not my task but that of the rest of the Village to decide if those are useful questions. As I neither have a Seon, nor do I believe in dictatorship, I have no other resources than my own cognitive ones to point out that something seems strange to me. I do not expect the Village to immediately accept a claim I've made simply because I'm the one who said it, and will stand by that position and judgementally side-eye anyone who tries to do otherwise. (This holds even if I were a safe role.) And I might very well note I'm not the only one to have been slightly intrigued by the content of that post. (Funny things, Seons. They can carry a lot of information.)

[Bort he/him]

You are probably right, Kas. I have no doubt I am underestimating some of the players here. There are several I've never played with before (including yourself), and even those that I have been in other games with, I doubt I know the full extent of their abilities. Certainly in the last game, I wasn't expecting Gamma to screw over his team, just because it would be fun. So, yeah, I don't know these players as well as I might, or as well as others will.

 

It may also be that I've not yet played a game on the Dark Side, and I even think this is my first game with a Gyorn-like system involved, so yeah, I probably am missing a lot. At the same time though, without discussion about these things, I'm not likely to learn a lot either. Observation only goes so far.

 

Edit: Speaking of Seon safety, did you know that one of the original inventors of the condom was named Seon? Linky

Edited May 28, 2015 by Bort

[The Honey Badger he/him]

@Kasimir, I wanted to talk about Orlock, because I have been a mac. before, and while you attack randomly sometimes. You often go after someone. And I think that understanding why they killed him, can lead us to who killed him. I also think that you guys weren't focusing on that issue, and I felt that I wanted to bring it up. 

 

About the gyorn, I think he first needs to make a move before we can find him, we haven't seen any converts yet. If he isn't converting he isn't an immediate problem. Oh, he will be a problem later, but until he does anything, we won't have any evidence to use against him.

[Bort he/him]

5 guests? Seriously? It looks like some people are taking accusations of lurking far too seriously.

[little wilson she/her]

That said, the fact that you came forward as someone that was 'Duked' means that I don't think that you're a Cultist.

 

We have no evidence that the Duke or Duchess is a Cultist. It's a guarantee a Prince/Princess is, since we know one of them moved Spencer to Mek on Day one, and likely the same one moved Ostrich to Wonko on Day 2. I actually think that the Duke/Duchess is probably a villager and since they were suspicious of Spencer, they wanted to guarantee that lynch since the votes were so close. So they pulled someone off the next biggest lynch target.

 

Announcing that he'd been Duked in no way exonerates Bort. In fact, I think it was ploy to get people thinking exactly as you are: that he's a villager because why would he announce something like that? Well, because he could be the Cultist Prince/Princess who wasn't online to see the bandwagon switches so couldn't change his action orders to accommodate the new lynch and now he's been Duked and with all the conversation about the vote manipulation roles and that villagers shouldn't be using them, he's using that as a way to make himself seem clear. Yes, I know it's convoluted. But that's what I would try to do if I were the Prince/Princess Cultist and my vote had just been Duked.

 

First day lynches I can understand, and we had that with the Mek/Orlok vote (with no knowledge that both were definitely friendly). It is when someone comes along in the final moments of a cycle and with a few prompts, they manage to change everything. Result? Feligon and Spencer were both killed with minimal discussion about them. Whether you're right or not about it throwing the Cultists off their game, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who woke up to a completely different result than they were expecting, for no other reason than someone apparently wanted to mess with the vote. Now it has happened a second time. Both times Dowanx was involved, and both times a citizen has died.

 

The Mek/Orlok lynch came about because of an argument based on a misinterpretation. I wish I'd said something before it blew up like it did and ended up making both of them viable lynch targets, though the only reason I was fairly sure both were villagers was because of the way it blew up. My point here is that the bandwagon at the end of Day 1 was unideal, yes, but I kind of doubt that there was more than one eliminator involved in it, and even if one was involved I don't think it was Dow. I mean, I guess he could've been, if he was the only eliminator online and he could tell that the lynch wasn't going to go the way they'd planned towards Mek and he made an executive decision to move it elsewhere. But if that's the case, I definitely don't think he'd get involved with the very next bandwagon that happened. That's foolhardy.

 

So looking at the votes on Fel in the order they were placed: Me, Dow, Wonko, C1Mek, Phatt. C1Mek has been guaranteed to be good (saying nothing of his current state). I'm inclined to think that Wonko is as well. Dow's actions yesterday I feel exonerate him for the most part. As the first vote placed 30 minutes before the bandwagon started and with none of my own pressuring to get people to support me, I'm pretty sure the clears me. Phatt's the unknown, and I'm still entirely undecided about him.

 

I don't know for definite he is a Cultist, but I do think it looks dodgy. Lurkers, while annoying, true, can be forgiven I think. Some of them are probably like me. When I get to work in the morning, or home in the evening, This thread is one of the first I open on my PC, and I leave it open to keep coming back to, no matter what else I'm using my computer for. It is only when they are repeatedly seen in the thread, but still don't post that I get suspicious, but I don't think I've seen anyone like that so far this game. Not that I've noticed anyways.

 

But the lurkers being voted for aren't like you. You're posting. They are not. There's a difference between someone who consistently has a tab open to 17th Shard and refreshes the page every once in a while to see if people have posted in the thread and then responds when they're called out and someone who is checking the thread and refuses to say anything when called out. And yes, there have been lurkers this game. Aonar is a huge lurker. I see him on the thread over 60% of the time I refresh the boards, and yet he's posted a grand total of two times this entire game. It's obvious he's checking the thread and keeping up with it, but he's not commenting. Yes, I know, he gave some real life reasons about why, but that was only yesterday that he explained it (and he still placed a vote with some fairly sketchy logic behind it knowing that he wouldn't be online again to change it).

 

But this isn't about Aonar. The point is that there have been lurkers. And voting for them is one of the best ways to draw them out if it's even possible to draw them out.

 

As for inactives, lynching those is a bad idea anyways. Sure, they don't contribute to votes or discussion, but they are all bodies that both the Cultists and the Converts have to get through. Killing them only speeds things up for the bad guys. Surely it would be better to not kill them, let a pinch hitter take over, and give us someone new to work with? Yeah, we may get a Cultist replaced if one was inactive, but I think, given the numbers, that is pretty unlikely, and we'll most likely end up with a new ally who will, hopefully, be more active than the person they replaced.

 

I completely agree about lynching inactives. But that's not what we're doing. Did you see anyone tacking on a vote for Ostrich? Even Meta backed off of Piff. Spencer wasn't inactive. Spencer was active in another game and he just wasn't doing anything in this one. Does this mean I support the lynch on Spencer? Heavens no. He posted. He responded. Sure, he didn't give a great excuse as to why he hadn't been active beforehand but he said he'd be active in the future. Was he? Yes. He posted 5 times in the last 4 hours of that cycle. In comparison to the rest of the people who posted during the day, that's better than or equal to over half of the players, myself included (sure, 2 of his posts weren't contributing to discussion but they weren't detracting from it, which is more than I can say for some people in some games). And we lynched him? I thought the point was to get lurkers active in discussion and if we succeeded, to move onto someone else. We didn't even give him a chance. I'm a little disappointed, to be honest.

 

Again the people being targeted aren't the ones who are completely inactive (or seemingly so). They are people seen in the thread. They are people who might eve be posting once every cycle or two. They are people who are sending in orders. They won't be replaced by pinch hitters. These are people who are playing the game; they just aren't participating in discussion. There's a very big difference between the two and I'm positive that difference has been discussed before at length. I know because I wrote quite the post breaking it down.

 

Basically, Bort, you're my biggest suspect right now. I don't normally make those kinds of statements at night (nor do I typically talk much at all) because I prefer to maintain a low profile and not make myself more of target, but this is a 48 night so we might as well take advantage of the discussion opportunity.

 

Why do I suspect you? Well, it's a combination of things. One, your timezone and online schedule matches up with the Cultist Prince/Princess. Though so does anyone in Europe. Two, it seems like you're intentionally misrepresenting arguments about inactives/lurkers. Three (and this might just be me), your comment to Kas about "us regular Citizens" strategizing for the Gyorn. I typically look askew at those. It's one thing for someone to come right out and say after a lot of pressure that they're a regular villager. It's something else for people under no flak at all to make comments like that. Strikes me as a way to weasel your way into people's trust. Four, there's your whole argument to Kas about strategizing for the Gyorn and how that's the only way to find him, but Kas already addressed that part far better than I ever could.

 

Ultimately, there are a lot of red flags I'm seeing. Just in those last few replies.

 

Of course, you're not the only one I'm looking at. Jain's another:

 

At that time, it seemed to me that Wonko was the one about to be lynched by a two-vote majority. As usual, I was wrong.

 

I know you've sealed lynches before, but it's typically only been after a pretty decent pile of evidence is found against them. It's not normally a tacked-on vote for someone who's only been vaguely suspicious and is only barely leading the lynch. And anyway, the whole point about the discussion and the lynches is to hear people's reasons for lynching people. With someone like Wonko, it does no good to throw a vote on there to seal the lynch without providing your reasons for why you think that Wonko should die over anyone else. The vote was close enough that it could've gone any direction (as we saw). So what exactly made Wonko stand out to you?

 

 

Anyone else want to heckle me for my problems? I'm here all night.

 

Meta already pointed out that you've never reacted like this before in a game. Every time you get called out, you address the fact that people are disagreeing with you, but you don't actually do anything to really alleviate those suspicions or disagreements. Why?

[Wonko the Sane he/him]

 

First day lynches I can understand, and we had that with the Mek/Orlok vote (with no knowledge that both were definitely friendly). It is when someone comes along in the final moments of a cycle and with a few prompts, they manage to change everything. Result? Feligon and Spencer were both killed with minimal discussion about them. Whether you're right or not about it throwing the Cultists off their game, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who woke up to a completely different result than they were expecting, for no other reason than someone apparently wanted to mess with the vote. Now it has happened a second time. Both times Dowanx was involved, and both times a citizen has died.

 

Okay, Bort, I think you're misunderstanding what happened Day 1. The bandwagon should have changed and potentially ruined the lynch discussion; I've admitted and apologized for that. However, that's not what actually happened. Fel wasn't lynched. Due to GM error, your 'perfectly good' lynch wasn't ruined; it hit Mek, just as predicted, and he turned out to be a Village Keeper. We still have absolutely no idea what Fel's faction and role are. Fel, the player, left the game because kicking Mek out on an error would have been unfair, but his character -- with its original alignment -- is still in, being played by Mek. So, while I admit that it may have been a bad idea at the time, I think that, in retrospect, this result was better. Not only did the bandwagon not damage the lynch results, it also enabled us to keep the more active player; we got to have our cake and eat it, too.

 

I agree that Spencer's death was unfortunate. I admit that I was all for it up until the last few hours, when he started posting, but even his first, unhelpful post pushed me back into neutrality, and by the time he revealed his role and item, I was fully willing to give him a shot. At that point, though, I was extremely reluctant to get involved; can you honestly say that if I started another last-minute bandwagon, it would have lessened your suspicion of me? I held back from putting my vote on him; what else would you have had me do?

 

Wilson, I agree that someone needs to talk to Phatt, but I'm going to wait until tomorrow (Day 3) to send my Seon in; the Elantrians will have found another secret by then, so they'll have more to tell me. Maill or Spencer's heir, if you aren't willing to wait, feel free to do it tonight. I would add that if anyone wants any questions answered by Elantris, they can post them in the thread; remember that the Elantrians can see us, so no matter who contacts them first, they can answer publicly announced questions.

 

Since I'm not doing it tonight, does anyone have any suggestions or requests concerning what I do with my Seon? Or should I just send her to another semi-randomly selected player again, hoping to find a priest?

[Metacognition he/him]

Wilson, you are quite right. I could easily see that happening too. I don't ever let my suspicions/confirmations settle, so they are never set in stone, but that was a huge assumption on my part. 

 

Not to pile onto you, Bort, but you basically just repeated yourself using different words. You're looking at the result of the turn, rather than looking at the motivation. I still maintain that the Cultists had no reason/motivation to try to switch Day 1's vote (though that's clever. If I'm ever evil, I'll have to remember this one), so using that to implicate someone else just doesn't work for me. If you want to be suspicious of Dow for Day 2, by all means, but I find that reasoning a lot weaker when you don't have Day 1's lynch as well. 

 

As far as inactives/lurkers, just literally everything Wilson said on the matter. You're suffering from Representative bias when you're not even a representative of them! 

 

Wonko, you should definitely be using your Seon. If you don't know what to do with it, just get a hold of someone. Even if you don't find a Priest, people might share more in private what they're unwilling to put in thread and that will help give you a clearer picture of what's happening in the game. 

[Lightsworn Panda he/him]

We have no evidence that the Duke or Duchess is a Cultist. It's a guarantee a Prince/Princess is, since we know one of them moved Spencer to Mek on Day one, and likely the same one moved Ostrich to Wonko on Day 2. I actually think that the Duke/Duchess is probably a villager and since they were suspicious of Spencer, they wanted to guarantee that lynch since the votes were so close. So they pulled someone off the next biggest lynch target.

Announcing that he'd been Duked in no way exonerates Bort. In fact, I think it was ploy to get people thinking exactly as you are: that he's a villager because why would he announce something like that? Well, because he could be the Cultist Prince/Princess who wasn't online to see the bandwagon switches so couldn't change his action orders to accommodate the new lynch and now he's been Duked and with all the conversation about the vote manipulation roles and that villagers shouldn't be using them, he's using that as a way to make himself seem clear. Yes, I know it's convoluted. But that's what I would try to do if I were the Prince/Princess Cultist and my vote had just been Duked.

The Mek/Orlok lynch came about because of an argument based on a misinterpretation. I wish I'd said something before it blew up like it did and ended up making both of them viable lynch targets, though the only reason I was fairly sure both were villagers was because of the way it blew up. My point here is that the bandwagon at the end of Day 1 was unideal, yes, but I kind of doubt that there was more than one eliminator involved in it, and even if one was involved I don't think it was Dow. I mean, I guess he could've been, if he was the only eliminator online and he could tell that the lynch wasn't going to go the way they'd planned towards Mek and he made an executive decision to move it elsewhere. But if that's the case, I definitely don't think he'd get involved with the very next bandwagon that happened. That's foolhardy.

So looking at the votes on Fel in the order they were placed: Me, Dow, Wonko, C1Mek, Phatt. C1Mek has been guaranteed to be good (saying nothing of his current state). I'm inclined to think that Wonko is as well. Dow's actions yesterday I feel exonerate him for the most part. As the first vote placed 30 minutes before the bandwagon started and with none of my own pressuring to get people to support me, I'm pretty sure the clears me. Phatt's the unknown, and I'm still entirely undecided about him.

But the lurkers being voted for aren't like you. You're posting. They are not. There's a difference between someone who consistently has a tab open to 17th Shard and refreshes the page every once in a while to see if people have posted in the thread and then responds when they're called out and someone who is checking the thread and refuses to say anything when called out. And yes, there have been lurkers this game. Aonar is a huge lurker. I see him on the thread over 60% of the time I refresh the boards, and yet he's posted a grand total of two times this entire game. It's obvious he's checking the thread and keeping up with it, but he's not commenting. Yes, I know, he gave some real life reasons about why, but that was only yesterday that he explained it (and he still placed a vote with some fairly sketchy logic behind it knowing that he wouldn't be online again to change it).

But this isn't about Aonar. The point is that there have been lurkers. And voting for them is one of the best ways to draw them out if it's even possible to draw them out.

I completely agree about lynching inactives. But that's not what we're doing. Did you see anyone tacking on a vote for Ostrich? Even Meta backed off of Piff. Spencer wasn't inactive. Spencer was active in another game and he just wasn't doing anything in this one. Does this mean I support the lynch on Spencer? Heavens no. He posted. He responded. Sure, he didn't give a great excuse as to why he hadn't been active beforehand but he said he'd be active in the future. Was he? Yes. He posted 5 times in the last 4 hours of that cycle. In comparison to the rest of the people who posted during the day, that's better than or equal to over half of the players, myself included (sure, 2 of his posts weren't contributing to discussion but they weren't detracting from it, which is more than I can say for some people in some games). And we lynched him? I thought the point was to get lurkers active in discussion and if we succeeded, to move onto someone else. We didn't even give him a chance. I'm a little disappointed, to be honest.

Again the people being targeted aren't the ones who are completely inactive (or seemingly so). They are people seen in the thread. They are people who might eve be posting once every cycle or two. They are people who are sending in orders. They won't be replaced by pinch hitters. These are people who are playing the game; they just aren't participating in discussion. There's a very big difference between the two and I'm positive that difference has been discussed before at length. I know because I wrote quite the post breaking it down.

Basically, Bort, you're my biggest suspect right now. I don't normally make those kinds of statements at night (nor do I typically talk much at all) because I prefer to maintain a low profile and not make myself more of target, but this is a 48 night so we might as well take advantage of the discussion opportunity.

Why do I suspect you? Well, it's a combination of things. One, your timezone and online schedule matches up with the Cultist Prince/Princess. Though so does anyone in Europe. Two, it seems like you're intentionally misrepresenting arguments about inactives/lurkers. Three (and this might just be me), your comment to Kas about "us regular Citizens" strategizing for the Gyorn. I typically look askew at those. It's one thing for someone to come right out and say after a lot of pressure that they're a regular villager.

I know you've sealed lynches before, but it's typically only been after a pretty decent pile of evidence is found against them. It's not normally a tacked-on vote for someone who's only been vaguely suspicious and is only barely leading the lynch. And anyway, the whole point about the discussion and the lynches is to hear people's reasons for lynching people. With someone like Wonko, it does no good to throw a vote on there to seal the lynch without providing your reasons for why you think that Wonko should die over anyone else. The vote was close enough that it could've gone any direction (as we saw). So what exactly made Wonko stand out to you?

Meta already pointed out that you've never reacted like this before in a game. Every time you get called out, you address the fact that people are disagreeing with you, but you don't actually do anything to really alleviate those suspicions or disagreements. Why?

I'm fairly sure I've said this above, but I'll say this again. I thought Wonko was about to be lynched by a majority. The naive me thought "what harm would another vote do?" So I stacked another. Good job, Jain. Well played. Very thought out.

I've also explained this one before.I'm sick, and I'm tired, and I'm getting irritated. Most of the suspicions on me were caused by the record-breaking streak of blunders and mistakes I've been causing this game. How do you suggest I "alleviate those suspicions and disagreements", when they're idiotic errors? I've already admitted this before. What more do you want me to do?

Edit: Grammar

Edited May 28, 2015 by Lightsworn Panda

[Claincy he/him]

One thing that confuses me, why are people talking about Bort coming forward as having been duked? Just looking at the votes already tells us that. I checked through yesterdays thread and I didn't see Bort remove his vote anywhere so the prince/princess couldn't have shifted his vote. So why are we spending time discussing whether "revealing" it makes him more or less suspicious?

 

Personally, I think that the first day lynch actually threw the Cultists off of their game, which is why I suspect those that came out strongly against it.

(Just checking I understand what you're saying.) So you think that the Cultists do not like the sudden bandwagons because if one of them was targeted by one they wouldn't have much of an opportunity to prevent it and so they are likely to argue/have been arguing against those bandwagons in the thread?

 

I'm not sure I agree with that logic. I think the late bandwagons are bad for the citizens. We can spend all day discussing between a couple of targets, and there is information we get from that. But a lot of that information is very speculative until we actually lynch someone involved and learn their alignment and if we lynch someone entirely different at the last minute we don't get that.

 

For a simple example: when an eliminator is under suspicion and some people are pressing them and others are defending them. Whoever started the suspicion on them or joined it early is less likely to be an eliminator and those who defended them are more likely. Sure people do all kinds of tricksy things but the basis of choosing targets for lynching is built off information like this. If none of the people being discussed are lynched we don't get that information. Sure we know that X was suspicious of Y and Z was defending them but without a clear indicator of any one of them being guilty or innocent it doesn't tell us nearly as much. Course the eliminators might view things differently to me and it's entirely possible that they would speak out against them but I think the bandwagons are more detrimental to the citizens than the eliminators.

 

If the trend continues it could also be relatively easy and safe for the eliminators to cause a last minute bandwagon whether or not they have done so so far.

 

(And yes I am aware that I just went, "Oh hey Meta, so you're suspicious of people who say this thing?" *Says this thing*)

[Wonko the Sane he/him]

She thinks the Cultists didn't like that bandwagon, since we now know that both of the standing lynch targets were Villagers. Furthermore, Wilson believes, and I suspect that she is right, that the Prince/Princess who moved Spencer's vote is a Cultist. If that's the case, then that player's last-minute maneuvering takes on the light of a desperate attempt to get the Lynch back on a Villager. Admittedly, that's just speculation, but we know for a fact that, pre-bandwagon, that lynch was beneficial to the Cultists, so they have no reason to prefer the bandwagon; even if old Fel/new Mek's a Villager, they were trading a discussion leader for someone who'd barely posted. (By the way, if they're a Villager, that's exactly what ended up happening).

[Mckeedee123 he/him]

I'm not sure I agree with that logic. I think the late bandwagons are bad for the citizens. We can spend all day discussing between a couple of targets, and there is information we get from that. But a lot of that information is very speculative until we actually lynch someone involved and learn their alignment and if we lynch someone entirely different at the last minute we don't get that.

 

I think that late bandwagons are just going to happen this game. The turnover time is slightly earlier than usual, which means it's relatively early in the night when we Americans hit it (about 10 PM for me.) People feel obligated to throw a vote onto somebody if they're on just before the cycle ends.

 

Not to say that late-night bandwagons are a good thing, I'm just pointing out why they're happening right now.