Long Game 54: Cognitive Diversions

[TheMightyLopen he/him]

7 hours ago, Fifth Scholar said:

Happy Easter to you as well, Sart.  That’s fair enough, though I’d appreciate more justification later, if possible. My last post was wishy-washy, but so are my feelings on Lumgol.  

Looking back over Elandera’s posts, we see a moderate amount of suspicion for Sart, a defence of Lumgol, and a declaration of lowered activity. Depending on the type of Elim we have, she could have been killed for any of the three, but I doubt Sart is the type of Eliminator to kill those suspecting him just because of that. That doesn’t disclude him from being evil, obviously, but I think a more likely reason for the Elandera kill is simply removing a lower-active player (even though Elan is typically more active than the normal “active” player when she’s lower-activity, but I digress ). Such a move would probably be performed by a team which had at least one veteran player on it, which includes...quite a few people, unfortunately for the purposes of narrowing our list down. Still, it’s worth noting. 

The final possibility is that the Elims intend to mislynch Lumgol, and want to remove one of her defenders. I find this as implausible as the Sart case. 

What's your logic behind the elim team deciding to kill Elandera because of her lower-activity? 

9 minutes ago, Snipexe said:

Here’s a fun essence result:

metal+flesh=small stiff homunculus with no apparent purpose.

my current goal is to give it a soul, if anyone’s willing to work with me.

I wonder if adding Wind(breathing) and Water(blood) to that would give it life? Or maybe just one of those?

I combined Fire/Oil/Metal to create Liquid Metal, which apparently doesn't do anything either. I don't really see any obvious additions to help make it useful either, so any suggestions are welcome.

I'm gonna try to look over everyone's posts and place a vote later tonight, so that's all from me for now.

[Snipexe he/him]

28 minutes ago, TheMightyLopen said:

I wonder if adding Wind(breathing) and Water(blood) to that would give it life? Or maybe just one of those?

I was talking to Fifth in pms about it, and he suggested Fire, Crystal, and Wind combined. Both of these are really good suggestions.

[Furamirionind They/Any/All]

30 minutes ago, TheMightyLopen said:

What's your logic behind the elim team deciding to kill Elandera because of her lower-activity? 

As I agree with the elims killing Elandera for low activity, I will share my personal reasoning.

Elandera is a skilled player, who just almost won the previous MR as a sole eliminator, so killing her wouldnt be a bad idea.

On top of that, she didnt post any thought on other players (that I can recall) which means that her death wont give us much information as to the elim team, now or down the road when we relook over this stuff.

Now that I am back home, I will reread the thread, and try to gather some thoughts on the game.  I will also try to do a player analysis post tomorrow.

[Steeldancer he/him]

You have less than 24 hours left in the cycle. Get your actions in earlier folks, it makes rollover quicker and tomorrow is not going to be an easy day for me. I'm taking 3 exams tomorrow and do not have the time or patience to babysit you. Thanks! 
Oh, and votes are important too, and hardly anyone has voted. Please do that for maximum chance of being bonded. 

Edited April 22, 2019 by Steeldancer

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

1 hour ago, Levitaph said:

Devotary is keeping himself VERY neutral, choosing to act as an impartial researcher rather than a village/elim. This raises a few flags for me, as this becomes an easy way to shift focus away from him, and to gain favor with both elims and town.

Item creation is what I spent my early actions on, but I'll likely shift away from that as the game moves on. I would like to end up creating at least one useful item by the time I die/the game ends, but that may not be the most useful thing for me to spend actions on.

1 hour ago, Snipexe said:

Here’s a fun essence result:

metal+flesh=small stiff homunculus with no apparent purpose.

my current goal is to give it a soul, if anyone’s willing to work with me.

Water alone didn't complete my water+flesh+metal Unawakened homonculus, though I think it helped. My main guesses for additional essences are fire and wind, which I'll probably get around to adding eventually.

I don't have much more to say than I did at the end of D1. Vote swing patterns won't be as useful given fewer than usual starting elims, although it is clear that the swing to Sart was not an attempt to save elim!Coop. The odds of Sja-Anat starting with an Inkspren ally are relatively low, enough that I would not vote for Sart on suspicion of him being an original elim. The swing away from Lumgol appears to have been more about people moving votes away from her than moving votes towards Coop, though the two movements did coincide. Surviving a five vote tally appears to have made Lumgol far less afraid of the lynch than she was yesterday. I would like to hear more about why a self-preservation vote was necessary at a vote count of 2-1 27 hours before the cycle ended. Some other concerns are currently being addressed in PMs, which means it would be helpful for a potential second Cryptic to continue PMs, as they'll presumably fall if they aren't renewed this turn. 

[Lumgol she/her]

1 minute ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

I would like to hear more about why a self-preservation vote was necessary at a vote count of 2-1 27 hours before the cycle ended.

This would have been the second game in a row where I would get lynched C1, so I panicked.

It really wasn't necessary.

But I didn't know that at the time.

[old man moomba he/him]

2 hours ago, Levitaph said:

Devotary is keeping himself VERY neutral, choosing to act as an impartial researcher rather than a village/elim. This raises a few flags for me, as this becomes an easy way to shift focus away from him, and to gain favor with both elims and town.

Otherwise, Sart seemed a little agressive, but I'd let that pass as him simply being annoyed at the other players. Dapper's lack of useful content is frustrating, and could be a guise for insidious actions he's taking otherwise. 

Bah. 99% of any content I produce on the Shard is useless. It's just what I do.

I've been in two minds about Sart. Part of me wants to believe he's an elim, but the logical, calculating sides says to trust him. I'm not sure what to think. Actually, I think I'm tunneling too much on Mr. Sart and should start looking around. 

I'm off to go read though the previous cycle to see what I can find.

[Shqueeves]

I'm tired and on mobile, so I'll make this short. I'm a little surprised that the elims killed elandera, but it wasn't a terrible choice on their part. I think some of you are focusing a little too much on Sart. I have no immediate suspicions right now, but I'll recheck tomorrow morning after some sleep.

Current vote is

Lumgol(2): Levitaph, Ark1002

Fifth Scholar(1): Sart

Shqueeves(1): Fifth Scholar, 

[Fifth Scholar he/him]

4 hours ago, Shqueeves said:

I'm tired and on mobile, so I'll make this short. I'm a little surprised that the elims killed elandera, but it wasn't a terrible choice on their part. I think some of you are focusing a little too much on Sart. I have no immediate suspicions right now, but I'll recheck tomorrow morning after some sleep.

Current vote is

Lumgol(2): Levitaph, Ark1002

Fifth Scholar(1): Sart

Shqueeves(1): Fifth Scholar, 

Hmm. Thank you for checking in, Shqueeves. I agree that there’s currently an outsized focus on Sart, and also Lumgol to some extent, but the focus is somewhat justified considering how narrow D1 discussion was. Hopefully we’ll break out of that box soon enough. One of those two lynches may end up being the most informative for this cycle, though, and of the two I’m leaning still towards Lum as a suspect (though I’m trying to avoid tunnelling). Some people I believe simply aren’t Sja’anat, and others have a very low likelihood of being her, so a current list of immediately suspicious people would be Lopen, Ark, Lumgol, Dr Dapper, Rath, Snip, Levitaph, Shqueeves and perhaps Xino. A lot of people are on here because they simply haven’t roleclaimed to me, though some of these I find a bit more unlikely (such as the newer players, and Snip, who I’ve gotten a good read on from PMs). Others have roleclaimed, but I find their roleclaim hard to verify, suspect them even if the roleclaim is believable, or want more content from them in-thread before making a judgement. 

[DeTess she/her]

This game feels pretty slow for some reason. Slow enough that I'm having trouble forming suspicions, at any rate. I wouldn't mind resolving Lumgol's slot at some point, but I see little reason to do that right now, given that she is one of the more active players. If they're evil, giving her more time will give us more to look at. If she's good, giving her more time increases the chances of her contributing something that proves her alignment.

@Rathmaskal, you haven't posted yet this cycle.

I'm currently harboring some mild suspicion of Levitaph, though that's fueled in large part by a lack of familiarity with their playstyle. The thing that bothers me a bit was them repeatedly bringing up people using one playstyle or another as a smoke screen for being an elim while tunneling  pretty hard on Lumgol. Tunneling would actually make for a pretty decent smokescreen in and of itself, as it creates the illusion of activity and involvement with finding elims while reducing the amount of info you give away about yourself.

[Snipexe he/him]

8 hours ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

Water alone didn't complete my water+flesh+metal Unawakened homonculus, though I think it helped. My main guesses for additional essences are fire and wind, which I'll probably get around to adding eventually.

 

Once I get my stormlight back, I can test the wind portion of the statement. I will however has to waste a cycle to pick up water. (Unless some kind soul wants to pass it to me )

Projected time until homunculus awakening: 2 Full Cycles. 

[Steeldancer he/him]

12 hours left, folks, and not many actions have been put in. 

[Rathmaskal he/him]

4 hours ago, Randuir said:

 

@Rathmaskal, you haven't posted yet this cycle.

And here I am!

So, Fifth did pm me asking for a roll claim, and I was about to actually send my claim back, but then some red flags went off for me.  So, one of the key aspects of a phishing email is to put a sense of panic in the recipient so that they end up acting without thinking.  Part of Fifth's pm to me basically said that if I didn't roll claim directly to him, that would be suspicious.  I probably wouldn't have thought too much about it, but the early jump Fifth had on Lumgol D1 rang similar alarms.  I feel like most of the time I've seen Fifth in games, I haven't seen these kind of moves, especially this early in the game.

Dapper is the other person I am really looking at right now as suspicious...although this one is tough.  I don't know if an elim would be this blatant about not providing information helpful to the village, but it would be nice to get a post with some content.

For other information, I used my action to acquire essence items.

[+Ark1002]

12 hours ago, Dr. Dapper said:

Bah. 99% of any content I produce on the Shard is useless. It's just what I do.

Can confirm

[Lumgol she/her]

Fifth also sent me a PM asking for a roleclaim, and I have claimed back, but I'm still on his suspicion list. I think it's because my role just happens to be one of the ones that's harder to prove, even though it's possible in the long term.

For now, I'm going to tentatively vote Dapper. They're too active to be inactive, but their posts just aren't constructive and "it's my playstyle" isn't an excuse. This lack of serious discussion aside from a few brief lines could be covering up elim activity, and even if Dapper is village (and I know this might come off as cruel but that's really not my intention), they're not driving discussion and the village won't suffer if Dapper is lynched. Again, sorry if this isn't phrased very nicely and I hope my point comes across.

This is still a tentative vote and I'd be willing to change if I find someone to be more suspicious.

[+Ark1002]

Sorry, Dapper, but my opinion is changed by that.

I'm gonna change to Dapper.

[Mailliw73 he/him]

2 minutes ago, Ark1002 said:

Sorry, Dapper, but my opinion is changed by that.

I'm gonna change to Dapper.

Would you like to green out your vote for Lum?

[+Ark1002]

Yeah, sorry. Lumgol

[old man moomba he/him]

Haha.

Ok buddy Ark.

Edited April 22, 2019 by Dr. Dapper

[TheMightyLopen he/him]

I never got the chance to review, so I don't have any new suspicions or anything, and I'll be at work the rest of the Day Turn, so don't expect much from me for a bit. I will try to vote, but it'll either be me bandwagoning with someone I agree with or placing a vote just for the bond.

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

10 hours ago, Fifth Scholar said:

Some people I believe simply aren’t Sja’anat, and others have a very low likelihood of being her, so a current list of immediately suspicious people would be Lopen, Ark, Lumgol, Dr Dapper, Rath, Snip, Levitaph, Shqueeves and perhaps Xino. A lot of people are on here because they simply haven’t roleclaimed to me, though some of these I find a bit more unlikely (such as the newer players, and Snip, who I’ve gotten a good read on from PMs).

So you've cleared Fura, Randuir, me, CadCom, and Sart of being Sja-Anat based largely on your PM conversations? I agree that Sart is highly unlikely to be Sja-Anat, but the suicide conversion mechanic means that a roleclaim isn't worth too much until it is proven. Even then, a Highspren or Truthspren scan might be necessary to prove a roleclaim. 

5 hours ago, Rathmaskal said:

So, Fifth did pm me asking for a roll claim, and I was about to actually send my claim back, but then some red flags went off for me.  So, one of the key aspects of a phishing email is to put a sense of panic in the recipient so that they end up acting without thinking.  Part of Fifth's pm to me basically said that if I didn't roll claim directly to him, that would be suspicious.  I probably wouldn't have thought too much about it, but the early jump Fifth had on Lumgol D1 rang similar alarms.  I feel like most of the time I've seen Fifth in games, I haven't seen these kind of moves, especially this early in the game.

For other information, I used my action to acquire essence items.

I will note that you get two actions per cycle, though you cannot take the same action on both turns. From what I've seen, Fifth has indeed been rather aggressive in asking for role claims, more so than many previous games. I think part of this might be fear that PMs will permanently close at the end of the cycle, but this behavior isn't usually exhibited unless Fifth can prove his role and alignment, which is more difficult in a conversion game.

When did Fifth's vote for Lumgol last cycle start raising red flags for you? 

[DeTess she/her]

Has Dapper played before? That influences how I'm reading his actions so far.

[Snipexe he/him]

25 minutes ago, Randuir said:

Has Dapper played before? That influences how I'm reading his actions so far.

I don’t think he has

[old man moomba he/him]

I have not.

[Fifth Scholar he/him]

My apologies all, I’ve had a very busy day and likely an even busier night. I’ll try catching up on PMs now and I’ll get a post up later tonight, hopefully. 

Does anyone have a vote count?