Long Game 24: The Godless City

[TheMightyLopen]

6 minutes ago, Alvron said:

But if you hear from us then we wouldn't be lurkers.

True enough. Let me rephrase.

I'd like to hear from the players that have yet to post. Specifically Aonar, as he's been around but hasn't posted. I'm not sure about Sart and antgrmn, but I know Aonar has been online since the game started.

Also, lurkers will lurk but it is important to give your opinion on game relevant stuff at times so that the village can get a read on you.

[Alvron]

2 minutes ago, Magestar said:

Wow.  That's.  Wow.  

Guys, this new info has lead me to believe that Mailliw is an Eliminator!

No no no.  You're misreading my posts.  Let me try another way.

In 1567, the man said to have the longest beard in the world died after he tripped over his beard running away from a fire.
The northern leopard frog swallows its prey using its eyes — it uses them to help push food down its throat by retracting them into its head.
Light doesn’t necessarily travel at the speed of light. The slowest we’ve ever recorded light moving at is 38 mph.

[Magestar]

Hey. Wait. 

 

The common goldfish is the only animal that can see both infra-red and ultra-violet light

So, if that's true, and;

King Kong is the only movie to have its sequel (Son of Kong) released the same year (1933)

The Bombardier Beetle releases an explosive spray from it's rear, which is composed of Hydroquinone and Hydrogen Peroxide.

What you say makes no sense.

[Alvron]

You didn't factor in that the loneliest creature on Earth is a whale who has been calling out for a mate for over two decades — but whose high-pitched voice is so different to other whales that they never respond.

Also powerful earthquakes can permanently shorten the length of Earth’s day, by moving the spin of the Earth’s axis. The 2011 Japan earthquake knocked 1.8 microseconds off our days. The 2004 Sumatra quake cost us around 6.8 microseconds.

However, in 2008 scientists discovered a new species of bacteria that lives in hairspray.

[Arrae]

Just a heads up: Joe will not post clarifications or answers to questions except to correct massive misunderstandings, such as the idea that neutral roles don't exist. However, if that massive misunderstanding has been deliberately perpetrated, Joe will not post the clarification inthread.

I don't quite see how Emerald is tunneling. Is it even tunneling if it's for less than a full Day? Tunneling usually lasts a bit longer than that.

[Magestar]

Wait, just a clarifying question.  How much of what you say is true?

 

And for the record, Vanilla Ice's real name is Robert Van Winkle.

Also,in the 1950's the hula hoop was banned in Tokyo due to the large number of traffic accidents it caused.

Your lying to me.  Guys, Alv is an Elim.

Edited July 29, 2016 by Magestar
All the things I'm saying are true. At least, I found them on the internet. And that's the same thing, right?

[Alvron]

1. The longest musical performance in history is currently taking place in the church of St. Burchardi in Halberstadt, Germany. The performance of John Cage’s “Organ²/ASLSP (As Slow As Possible)” started on Sept. 5, 2001, and is set to finish in 2640. The last time the note changed was October 2013; the next change isn’t due until 2020.

2. The Dance Fever of 1518 was a month-long plague of inexplicable dancing in Strasbourg, in which hundreds of people danced for about a month for no apparent reason. Several of them danced themselves to death.

3. The tiny parasite Toxoplasma gondii can only breed sexually when in the guts of a cat. To this end, when it infects rats, it changes their behaviour to make them less scared of cats.

Proves that I can't be an Eliminator

[Magestar]

Fine.  You have proven irrevocably in my mind that you are innocent.  Touché, my friend.  

Well, I think I'm done for the day, guys.  I will return tomorrow.

[STINK]

5 minutes ago, Arraenae said:

Just a heads up: Joe will not post clarifications or answers to questions except to correct massive misunderstandings, such as the idea that neutral roles don't exist. However, if that massive misunderstanding has been deliberately perpetrated, Joe will not post the clarification inthread.

Someone's asking questions in an elim doc

[Alvron]

1 minute ago, Magestar said:

Fine.  You have proven irrevocably in my mind that you are innocent.  Touché, my friend.  

Well, I think I'm done for the day, guys.  I will return tomorrow.

That was fun.  But I think I've used up all my words for the next three games.

[Arrae]

Nah. I'm shooting for longest GM PM at the end of the game.

[Elenion]

I've still got no response from my latest poke-vote on @Sart. Hopefully he shows up before too long.

[Silverblade5]

Hi everyone. I've been without internet for hours, and I'm still catching up on the thread. Did I miss anything important?

[STINK]

8 hours ago, Amanuensis said:

I had considered asking why, but I figured it'd be for a nonsensical reason, or that if I asked you wouldn't actually say it, anyway. What do you mean by "still set to die" though?

Posting on mobile so can't get rid of that damnation quote. But basically I role claimed and everyone thinks I'm a liar even though I don't lie, cause the truth is always better

[little wilson]

1 hour ago, Amanuensis said:

She gets off work in approximately 22 minutes, so I reckon she can whip something up within the next hour.

You seriously over estimate my speed at composing my essays. The Lynch Maill essay in MR4 took me about 5 hours to put together. No joke. In fact, I might be underestimating that, since it was over a year and a half ago. Suffice it to say that they are works of art, filled with quotes, links, analysis, and logic. Not something I can do in an hour.

1 hour ago, Mailliw73 said:

As long as it's wrong.  

Can't I be right once?

22 minutes ago, Amanuensis said:

The problem isn't necessarily that Stink is claiming it as a role, it's the circumstances surrounding his claim. It's completely pointless, and for me in particular, absolutely frustrating.

I believe that is par for the course with Stink, so I wouldn't read too terribly much into that.

23 minutes ago, Ecthelion III said:

Honestly, what is this bandwagon on Elenion about? I think Kipper is just salty about last game when Elenion got Kipper lynched (even though Kipper never posted a reason why not to).   Kipper, remember last game when you were suspicious of Elenion for using certain words like "us"? You can't instantly judge a new player as suspicious because of certain words. Also, the *groan* was in response to Stink's joke, which I thought was rather good.

Emerald, what do you mean Elenion is overreacting? I think 5 votes would elicit a strong reaction, don't you? Bard wasn't exactly happy last game when that exact same thing happened. Stop tunneling so hard D1.

Emerald's not tunneling. He's making an accusation:

2 hours ago, Emerald101 said:

On a separate note, that last post by Elenion seems to be strong on defending himself after only very minor accusations. At the risk of causing a bandwagon, I want to point that out as a possibility of being one of those knee-jerk reactions people have been mentioning. Granted, I didn't play LG 23 so I have no way of knowing what typical behavior for him would be.

I see nothing in that post to indicate a tunnel. I see someone pointing out something suspicious and calling the person out on what they saw. He's not saying that Elenion must be evil. He's not refusing to listen to anything Elenion says. What Emerald is doing is not tunneling. (Note: this doesn't mean that I don't think Emerald has been a little suspicious. On the contrary, I do. I think he's using the idea of getting lurkers and others who haven't posted yet to start posting by pinging them as a way to make it seem like he's useful to the village and therefore must be village. It's something that reminds me distinctly of people who post quick links and only quick links. It looks helpful on the surface, but it's not actually at all).

Moving on to Elenion himself. I don't particularly find anything suspicious with the bandwagon vote. For me, it's the comments that Kipper pointed out about how he's never been an eliminator and all the other joking he did about alignments. I can absolutely see why someone would get an eliminator read from that, Kipper in particular. I'm not at all surprised that Kipper voted for Elenion based on those comments. It reads like a first-time eliminator trying to get people not to look at him because "I've never been an eliminator! I couldn't be an eliminator now!" Nope, sorry, you could.

We used to have a player here by the name of Jain (his member name is Lightsworn Panda but all of his characters were always named Jain). Now, Jain played 11 games before he was finally evil on his 12th game. By about game 5-6, he started making frustration posts about "VILLAGE AGAIN!!! WHY?!?!?!" for his first post in the game. By 10-11, he wasn't doing them quite as vocally. Well, game 12 rolled around, and he was finally evil. He made that post again. He was killed for it. And rightly so.

Declaring your innocence by saying that you've never been evil is not a way to declare your innocence. It's by doing things to show that you're innocent. That you're village. Of which, Elenion has done virtually none. Fine, he's claiming that he's acting the same way as MR15, but guess what? A good eliminator acts the same way as they always act.

In LG20, Deathclutch listed off 6 reasons as to why I had to be evil. All of his reasons weren't alignment indicative for me at all, and the people who had played with me and knew that defended me against him and he ended up getting lynched instead. But guess what? I was actually evil. I was just playing like I usually do when I'm good.

But anyway, let's look at his first defense:

2 hours ago, Elenion said:

@Magestar

Let's do it, for the sake of discussion.

Okay, so I have already made a few comments that people might call dodgy. But those who have played against me before (my only previous game is MR15, so I'll be referring to it) will find my playstyle is the exact same as MR15's: I use every power given to me in order to deal out votes and panic. In MR15 that got me accused of bandwagoning, tunneling,  and running the senate on my whims. And I won't lie: I was guilty of all 3, along with abusing my vote-adding role (Landlord FTW!). But my unconventional means led to great results. D1 I called Eramit and for suspicious rabble-rousing, and he ended up being the head role of the Derethi elim team. Sure there were some bad results: I campaigned for Elodin's lynch D2 only to get him killed and find out he was a villager.

In short, crazy votes changed around on a moment's notice are my hallmark. Me slinging votes like dodgeballs is like Aman manipulating people or Stink being Stink. I am an unashamed bandwagoner, vote-slinger, and fear-monger. But I am your ally against the elims, and will use my vote and role to their detriment and our benefit.

Do you want to know what I think of when I see someone use evidence of their previous games to prove why they must be good now? I think that that person wants you to think they are good, but aren't willing to actually do anything in this game to prove it. They want to ride off of their actions in the previous game. Sorry, doesn't fly for me. I want proof now. I want actions now. I don't care what you did then. Then isn't now. I will not accept anything from MR15 or virtually any other game as a reason for your alignment in this game.

Post-"defense" the only vote that strikes me as even possibly off is Lopen's, but I'm not even sure about that. Kipper had mentioned a bandwagon, other people had also mentioned it, and Lopen threw his vote onto it. To my recollection (though I could be wrong about this), Lopen isn't opposed to supported bandwagons unlike some players, so him contributing to it doesn't really mean much. I'd bet that he also found Elenion suspicious and didn't care to elaborate because so many others had already said basically the same thing. Or maybe he did it as a joke, knowing that there's still over 24 hours left in the turn, which is plenty of time to retract a vote. Because of this, I don't really mind Lopen's vote.

Elenion's conspiracy theory is mostly nonsense.

Onto his counter plan.

Quote

I stick with what I said. Yes, I am aggressive. Yes, I bandwagon. No, that doesn't mean I'm an elim. Yes, feel free to gather more evidence.

You're what I call uber-aggressive. Aggression in these games is just fine. Uber-aggression gets out of hand and makes people stop having fun, regardless of their alignment.

Quote

I call for solid evidence to be presented against me. No more gut reads, no more bandwagons for the sake of the wagon.

You can ask for solid evidence to be presented, but you're not really going to find anything on the first day. So calling for it won't really help. The best people can do is exactly what I'm doing right now: analyze your posts to try to find your motivation. (Hint: your motivation isn't looking very villagery to me right now).

Oh, and good luck getting people not to gut read or vote on those gut reads. There are many players who solely use their gut to vote in these games. And your demands for them to stop will not endear you to them. In fact, it's more likely to get you killed faster. Just saying. Ties back to the aggression: no one likes an aggressive person who demands everyone obey/listen/follow them. We're all intelligent players who are perfectly capable of making our own decisions.

Quote

I am willing (and always ready) to roleclaim and prove such. However, I would not like to (for obvious reasons) unless absolutely necessary. I will admit that I have already role-claimed in one PM, although I'd prefer the player in question to hold that information back.

Um. And that's supposed to support your alignment how? There are no safe roles in this game, to my knowledge. Any known role can be held by any faction and any alignment, so you roleclaiming hardly makes you certain to be a villager. It just means that you're claiming to be a role and if you can support it, that you are that role. Only a Dula can know your alignment, after checking it. And if you are a Dula, that still doesn't guarantee your alignment, even if you think it does. And if you're wondering why an eliminator team would have a Dula on it, the answer is for that very reason: Because people don't expect the alignment scanner to be evil--why would they be? So they trust the alignment scanner. You make the alignment scanner evil, and all the villagers trust them. And yes, I've seen a game on this very forum where the alignment scanner was evil. In fact, I encouraged the GM to run with the distribution that made the alignment scanner evil. So no role is safe. You roleclaiming will not help you. All it will do is make you look like you really want people to trust you and think you're good. But why does any villager need to make people think they're good? If you're good, won't your motivations and what you're doing prove that in the end? You shouldn't need to go declaring it in the thread at the top of your lungs.

Note: I'm not saying that if you're good you can't defend yourself from accusations. On the contrary, I've been known to fight tooth and nail against unfair accusations when I'm good. The difference is your motivation. Are you doing it to defend yourself against an incorrect accusation or are you doing it to make everyone think you're good? One motivation is a villager motivation. The other isn't really. Not that it's inherently evil, but it's definitely used by more eliminators than by villagers.

Quote

I call for no counter-wagon as of yet, because I want an educated lynch. I'm all for causing fear with votes, but the final consensus should always be educated.

The final consensus should always be educated? So are you saying that if there's suspicion against a player, but no solid evidence against them, but 5 or so players have all expressed strong gut reads on them, and no one else is up for the lynch, you'd say that we shouldn't be lynching that person? If so, I strongly disagree. Usually, if multiple players have a strong gut read about someone, even if they have no evidence for it, there's usually a reason for that gut read. Does that mean that the person is always evil? No. But I think there's a higher chance for them to be evil than there is for them to be good, and if they're good, they're probably doing something different that game that's the reason why they're gathering suspicion.

Regardless, eliminators have been caught and killed for fluke things in the past. No real evidence against them. The most recent examples I can think of are from LG22 with Sart and Gunshy. Killed Day 1 and Day 2 respectively, for reasons that amounted to semantics, basically. Are semantics strong evidence? Heavens no. I'm still a little surprised that they got lynched for the reasons they were lynched for, even if it was right. The semantic evidence against them was a good start for evidence. Not a good ending point. But regardless, it happened, and those types of lynches will continue to happen. Strong evidence is a commodity you don't usually come by until mid-game unless you're lucky. But the village can't exactly wait for the strong evidence to be gathered before lynching.

See, the lynch and the discussion surrounding the lynch are the villages best way of collecting evidence and finding eliminators. Even if you mislynch, those paying attention will gain information from the discussion. And as the game progresses, the evidence builds up until finally, someone has a good case against another player, based purely on things they've said. But if you wait to lynch, the discussion loses it's power, because there's no reason why someone should talk or make their opinions really known. It's not like they're going to die if they don't speak their mind. So how do you get people to really make their opinions known? The lynch. Voting. Seeing who jumps to support who and how and how quick they do so. Seeing who accuses them. It's that that gets your thoughts out there. You can't get that if there's not a lynch. Which means that you can't collect that evidence against people. Which means that your "strong evidence" is from roles or eliminators just blatantly screwing up.

Eliminators don't often screw up that blatantly. It's usually other things that catch them, if they get caught at all. And counting on a role to help you out is a recipe for disaster. For example, we can say "Let's wait for the Dula to scan an eliminator," but what if there's no Dula this game? Or what if the Dula is evil? What if the Dula dies early? Any number of things can go wrong with relying on a role or a couple of roles. Plus, the game loses its fun. No one wants to play a game if there's only 1-2 people who actually matter and everyone else is forced to listen to them or be considered evil. That's a dictatorship. I don't play Follow the Cop games, and a lot of other people don't either.

 

----

TL;DR version: Elenion is using evidence from past games to try to show his alignment this game, even though a good eliminator will act exactly the same from game to game. His motivation for a lot of the things he's saying seems to be "Let's get people to think I'm good" rather than a villager just being good and trying to figure things out. None of this is inherently evil, but it is something that will make me watch him very closely.

Emerald isn't saying much, but he's trying to appear useful by getting others to speak.

I will withhold my vote for now. If I were to vote, however, it would be on Emerald.

 

[STINK]

That's a nice little TL;DR you got there, you taking notes, Aman and Elb?

[TheMightyLopen]

Currently, I think my top suspicion is Magestar. His defense of Elenion directly after his(Elenion's) defense read to me like an eliminator defending a player he knows isn't an eliminator. Also, was getting somewhat of an evil gut read on Magestar even before that post.

[Silverblade5]

Can someone please explain to me what tunneling is?

[STINK]

When you really wanna kill someone and ignore like all the evidence except the ones that can lead to the death of that person.

[Ecthelion III]

Oh really? Len said it's just when you focus on one player and single them out.

[Elenion]

58 minutes ago, Silverblade5 said:

Hi everyone. I've been without internet for hours, and I'm still catching up on the thread. Did I miss anything important?

You missed a pretty epic lynch train. 

25 minutes ago, little wilson said:

You're what I call uber-aggressive. Aggression in these games is just fine. Uber-aggression gets out of hand and makes people stop having fun, regardless of their alignment

How can I modify my playstyle so that it's less uber-aggressive, because the ultimate goal of these games is, after all, to have fun?

[Alvron]

8 minutes ago, Silverblade5 said:

Can someone please explain to me what tunneling is?

Tunneling: To dig or force a passage underground or through something.

But really, Tunneling, or Tunnel-vision: When a player is so convinced of another Player’s alignment that they are unwilling to look at other cases or consider that they might be wrong. It becomes the only thing they post about, and every post the other player makes is seen as confirmation of that result. This happens most frequently when someone thinks someone is an Eliminator.

Edited July 29, 2016 by Alvron

[Ecthelion III]

Ah. Sorry Emerald, it appears my SE vocabulary is terribly uneducated.

[Amanuensis]

19 minutes ago, little wilson said:

 

Emerald isn't saying much, but he's trying to appear useful by getting others to speak.

I will withhold my vote for now. If I were to vote, however, it would be on Emerald.

Pretty much agree with everything except for the bit about Emerald. It was Magestar that suggested he poke the Lurkers with @s, technically. And I think he did bring up some pretty good points (or at least that first article he linked aligns pretty well with my thoughts, so naturally I'm like, okay, cool). Now, technically he was just adding a third party's thoughts to the game rather than directly putting himself out there, but it at least shows us where his head is at. Not discounting the fact that he could be evil, but I'm really that suspicious of him for that. Then again, I do tend to be super misguided when it comes to new / returning players, so... /shrug

9 minutes ago, TheMightyLopen said:

 

Currently, I think my top suspicion is Magestar. His defense of Elenion directly after his(Elenion's) defense read to me like an eliminator defending a player he knows isn't an eliminator. Also, was getting somewhat of an evil gut read on Magestar even before that post.

I can see that, and think it's totally note worthy, but I dunno if it's lynchable, per say (mostly because this is his first game, too).

9 minutes ago, Silverblade5 said:

Can someone please explain to me what tunneling is?

 

6 minutes ago, STINK said:

When you really wanna kill someone and ignore like all the evidence except the ones that can lead to the death of that person.

 

5 minutes ago, Ecthelion III said:

Oh really? Len said it's just when you focus on one player and single them out.

 

2 minutes ago, Alvron said:

 

But really, Tunneling, or Tunnel-vision: When a player is so convinced of another Player’s alignment that they are unwilling to look at other cases or consider that they might be wrong. It becomes the only thing they post about, and every post the other player makes is seen as confirmation of that result. This happens most frequently when someone thinks someone is an Eliminator.

Stink / Alvron's interpretation is correct; at least, according to the definition I know.

[STINK]

2 minutes ago, Elenion said:

How can I modify my playstyle so that it's less uber-aggressive, because the ultimate goal of these games is, after all, to have fun?

Eh, if anyone wants to know, this is STINK's guide to fun!

1. Never be 100% certain of anything,

2. If someone says something and you trust them, continue to trust them until they do something untrustworthy.

3. Continuing on from that, find players you trust before players you don't trust, so that you always have some communication that can be fun going.

4. Not every post has to be 100% about SE

5. If you've just made multiple posts about something, it's probably time for you to stop posting about it, you're way too biased by then.

6. This is starting to look like a proper thing woah.

7. Remember that part of the fun to you might be winning, but to others its the personal interactions  So don't try to shut down all OOG talk.

(damnation this does look pretty good)