Long Game 66: A Struggle for Power

[Ashbringer he/him]

38 minutes ago, Magestar said:

Kind of an odd question here.  Doesn't seem particularly Elim behavior, but I'm confused as to why you're asking why someone has a Village read on you.

Mainly I'm just curious, because I've been sitting on the fence as to whether I suspect Drake as Elim or not. If he thinks that I'm the only one he fully trusts as village, I'm curious why when no one else seems to. And if Drake flips Elim, that could look very odd for me.

38 minutes ago, Magestar said:

That post was directed at Drake lol.

Well, then disregard that part 

(Note: I'm going to edit this, but I can't reply to two different things on two different pages at once)

 

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

 

32 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

Apologies, that came out wrong. It would have been better to say that I've been backing the major lynch targets both cycles, and that it seems that some people have voted based on my posts rather than anything Coda/Experience have actually done. 

Edit: Wow, ninja'd by several posts. @DrakeMarshall, I think I may have managed to misunderstand most of what you said. That being said, do you honestly think that I am the best lynch option for this cycle, or that there are even enough people willing to vote on me to lynch me? If so, then we are cool (except for the part where you want to lynch me ). 

Exp voted on Joe, mentioned the votes on Mist, and was part of the post war C1. These are all things that I find mildly suspicious. However, I am uncomfortable with the amount of unoriginal reasoning behind most of the votes this cycle. I'll switch from Exp to Kynedath, although if Drake and/or anyone else doesn't follow, I might have to move my vote elsewhere.

I'm not liking the votes on Emi or Walin, I disagree with the vote on Karnage, and wish that @xinoehp512 could pop in and say some more stuff.

The only person for whom I'm convinced there are enough people willing to vote on to lynch is Experience. To a point, I would rather prioritize accuracy over easiness, and you did already have one vote on you, which is as many votes as anyone else had. While I agree that it is important to be pragmatic about putting your vote somewhere it can actually make a difference, I'm also not sure how I feel about the person I voted for being the one to bring that fact up 

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt about misunderstanding what I said, though. That is, for the time being, a good enough explanation. Araris.

Kynedath is probably my least well-reasoned suspicion, but it's a choice I can go with.

[Walin he/him]

Hey, everyone! Sorry I haven't posted...at all. I'd like to say that I was busy, but it was more procrastination. I likely won't be able to read cycle 1 before the end of this cycle, but I'll read through all the posts of today if I can and offer some insight. And hopefully figure out if it'll be a good idea to claim or not, hehe.

 

[Araris Valerian he/him]

Just now, Walin said:

I likely won't be able to read cycle 1 before the end of this cycle

I'm not sure that reading C1 is entirely worth the bother. You can probably catch most of what happened from the night turn plus what's been posted today. And you won't have to deal with the fluff posts everywhere.

[Ashbringer he/him]

HE SPEAKS! THE SUMMONED ONE SPEAKS!

... also, TGK (The God King?) posted at least once Day 1. So they haven't been entirely inactive, just overwhelmingly inactive.

... now our only inactive is Hatz. Fantastic.

Edit: I second Araris' recommendation.

Edited June 9, 2020 by Ashbringer

[Shard of Reading he/him]

Alright. I find the voting on experience to incredibly suspicious. Multiple people voted on XP with minimal reasoning/logic and I find that incredibly strange. There greatest argument is incredibly flimsy in my opinion, and I don't think that experience has done enough to get this much suspicion. While, they have posted minimal game related things to put them in our good graces, they have not done enough to be sus in my opinion. 

Now, for the people voting on XP, I feel like the only person that their votes come off as villager is Emi, because in MR42 they had the same mistake. They voted with minimal reasoning and jumped on a lynch train. I think that they did the same thing and I don't completely fault them because they are still new. Another person I find MORE villager than elim and that is ventl because I think that an elim would simply not put that much work into a incriminating post. But I disagree with their logic because they find RP's to be elim indicative which I don't like. RP's are just supposed to be fun, not alignment indicative.

I find Arais the most sus because throughout the game they have given opinions, but given them minimal justification.

Edit: I will be done for the day, so please do not do anything too crazy.

Edited June 9, 2020 by Shard of Reading

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

4 minutes ago, Magestar said:

The 17th shard ate the first version of this post.  >.>  Take two, I guess.  Sorry if it's messy but I kinda lost patience lol.

This isn't quite right either, IIRC.  I believe Emi is voting on Exp.  You keep ninja'ing my corrections.   

Also, not voting is not a good idea.  As much as I might have some suspicions of Drake, they're right about one thing; an uncontested lynch isn't super great.  If no one is against it, than it means the Elims aren't losing anything from it.  I'd suggest picking someone who already has a vote on them and giving it a shot.  That would at least be a start. 

Don't worry about it.  I wouldn't actually disagree with this.  I feel like so far a lot of the lynch discussion has come with relatively little backing.

I personally am gonna put a vote on Drake.  I went through all of their posts earlier, and I picked up a few suspicions.  Here's some quick reasoning:

1. They made a few posts early in the game that seemed rather Elim-leaning.  Specifically this one:

Which bothered me a little bit.  I strongly disagree with the idea that it's ok to let the Elims decide the lynch, especially in the early cycles, where the lynch is most likely to be between 2 villagers.  Even in the later cycles, it's kind of iffy.  It gives the Elims more control than I'm comfortable with.  This post just read as off to me.  There were others, but this was the big one.

2.  Odd voting patterns.  There was a lot of switching back and forth in the first cycle, especially towards the end.  There's some more I could say about this, but it's kind of complicated and iffy.  Suffice it to say, I saw some patterns in their voting that matched up with what I'd expect if the Elim team looks like I think it does.

3.  Good info.  Lynching Drake will give us something to go off of next cycle, regardless of which way they flip.  They've interacted with enough people and followed enough votes that lynching them will help us get better reads on other players.  I almost regret trying to get them lynched because of how active they are... I feel similarly about Araris, but the defining differences are that I actually have some suspicions of Drake right now, and that Drake has interacted with the lynch and with other players a little more heavily than Araris has.

There's this stuff, plus I agree with some of the stuff TJ said earlier about Drake.  A lot of my reasoning for voting on them is such that "if drake is Elim, then this that and the other thing" and "if drake is not Elim, than probably not this or that." and it's not all stuff I necessarily want to dive into before knowing Drake's alignment.

Ergh.  I explained this better in the first edition of this post, but I'd kind of been writing it as I trolled through the thread, and I don't feel up to doing that again.  I've already been ninja'd a half dozen or so times while making this post.  >.>  I think I also said some things about the Exp lynch, but I'm forgetting what they were.  Basically, I'm not seeing enough competition for it.  It's too easy, and I'd like to give it some competition.

@Matrim's_Dice, if you feel like your vote doesn't matter, drop a vote on Drake for me.  You don't have to worry about it too much cause I'm suggesting it, and your vote gets to matter.  Plus it brings that lynch closer to the Exp lynch.  Win-win.   

Blech.  I'm posted out right now.  I might be back in a little bit.

Interesting. To answer your points:

1. From your phrasing, you sound like you are saying it's better to give the elims control later on in the game? Clarify? I'd say it's very much the opposite. Early in the game the village greatly outnumbers the elims. We have much more control, but don't know how to use it. What we desperately lack is information. So it can be a good thing for the village to sacrifice control in the early game in exchange for information. But in the late game the gap between the village's control and the eliminator's information has shrunk considerably, and it is much more important for the village to fight for every ounce of control it has and not give any of it up.

2. Since you've declined to explain what you mean by this, I have no way of responding to it. I'd really like it if you did explain what you were thinking here, though. Regardless, I'm not sure why my voting patterns are elimy, because I'm not really sure why elim!Drake would waste so much effort stirring things up and drawing attention to himself. What does he gain from it?

3. I will generate much more information in the long run if you keep me alive. I'm not about to stop generating discussion. In any case, I am curious: you are saying that knowing how I flip would be useful, and you may be right, so if I flipped villager, who would you then be more inclined to trust or suspect due to that information?

What parts of what TJ said do you agree with? Because as far as I can tell the main thing they said this cycle was that I didn't provide enough information up-front in my reads post, which is something I am a bit inclined to say applies to you as well.

[Ashbringer he/him]

I figured out how to copy-paste posts, finally. 

37 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

I feel like I've repeated myself about this a lot, but I don't like targeting people more often than necessary across multiple games, and I recently finished leading a mislynch on Karnage in a different game that is now over. That's why I wanted to pick somebody else on D1. Because D1 lynches are close to random anyway. Does that make sense?

But if there's an actual reason to kill Karnage I'm fine with killing them. And in any case I'm not particularly invested in telling anyone else not to kill Karnage. I think they'd be a better lynch than Experience.

Hmm. It's a fair reason to not want to vote for Karnage. This matches up with what you said earlier, but it still doesn't make sense why the statement you made earlier was taken as a message by Pyro to move off of Karnage.

(Spoilered for Length)

Spoiler

23 hours ago, DrakeMarshall said:

I will just say here and now that I don't personally suspect Karnage any more or less from the fact that they got voted on for a short period of time before the votes switched to somebody else, and I kind of disagree with the reasoning of anyone who does.

I will also say I didn't think the reasons for switching off of Karnage were particularly unclear? But more on that later.

 

19 hours ago, DrakeMarshall said:

• I still didn't like the Coda lynch. Since I chose last time and Pyro followed, I said I would follow whatever Pyro chose this time.
• Pyro chose Karnage.
• I asked Pyro if they could pick somebody else. If I find a reason to suspect Karnage I won't hold back of course, but since D1 lynches are barely more than random, I would rather not target the same player across multiple games more than is necessary. And I had recently finished gunning for Karnage's mislynch in the last game I played.
• I eventually conceded to lynching Karnage.
• Pyro responded to my request by suggesting Walin or Hatz as an alternative lynch.

These are the only two posts I can find that refer to Karnage during the time when Pyro was voting for him. Neither appear to be a plea to Pyro not to lynch Karnage, just a statement that you didn't want to lynch Karnage last cycle. And yet Pyro claims to have taken it as such and quickly moved his vote off of Karnage. That's very odd.

It appears that Karnage isn't getting lynched today under any circumstances, so I'll probably move my vote. I'm not entirely suspicious of the XP vote, but neither do I have any solid suspicions on XP. Drake, however, I'm coming to suspect more and more. I'm convinced that Drake and Pyro are doing something together, I just don't know what they're up to. 

Then again, I'm loathe to start or follow another bandwagon after what happened last time. Besides XP, Araris has been fluctuating in votes, while Kyndeth is just now rising... and Mage is also suspicious of Drake for other reasons.

You know what, fine. Drake. Let's see what happens with this, but I'm keeping an open mind. I'm fairly certain that Drake and Pyro are on the same team, so lets see if one flips Elim.

Ooooh, or maybe they're both Kandra...

And, of course, I am ninja'd by Drake. Well, I think my analysis answers your door #3. How do you respond to the rest?

[Experience he/him]

1 minute ago, Ashbringer said:

Ooooh, or maybe they're both Kandra...

I'm pretty sure that if there were multiple Kandra, they wouldn't know about each other. But whos knows.  

[Lahilt he/him]

Has anybody got a vote count?

[Magestar he/him]

2 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

1. From your phrasing, you sound like you are saying it's better to give the elims control later on in the game? Clarify? I'd say it's very much the opposite. Early in the game the village greatly outnumbers the elims. We have much more control, but don't know how to use it. What we desperately lack is information. So it can be a good thing for the village to sacrifice control in the early game in exchange for information. But in the late game the gap between the village's control and the eliminator's information has shrunk considerably, and it is much more important for the village to fight for every ounce of control it has and not give any of it up.

That's not quite what I was saying.  I wasn't saying one or the other so much as I was saying neither.  I don't necessarily disagree with the idea that we should occasionally have competition in the lynch to try and ferret out Elims, but I don't believe that it's necessarily bad to just have a single strong lynch either.  If I felt strongly about the Exp lynch, I might just leave it alone.  Basically, my problem with what you were saying was that it gave too much control to the Elims.  I don't know quite where you got that I thought it was better to give it to them later, but that's not what I was trying to say.

5 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

2. Since you've declined to explain what you mean by this, I have no way of responding to it. I'd really like it if you did explain what you were thinking here, though. Regardless, I'm not sure why my voting patterns are elimy, because I'm not really sure why elim!Drake would waste so much effort stirring things up and drawing attention to himself. What does he gain from it?

Well it muddied the waters pretty well.  Enough that todays lynch seems not in that much of a better place than last day cycles lynch.  People are still basically voting based on gut reads and the analysis of one or two people.  Even if that wasn't the intent, the shenanigans between Coda, Karnage, and Hatz successfully muddied people's reads, in my mind.

8 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

3. I will generate much more information in the long run if you keep me alive. I'm not about to stop generating discussion. In any case, I am curious: you are saying that knowing how I flip would be useful, and you may be right, so if I flipped villager, who would you then be more inclined to trust or suspect due to that information?

I'm not saying you'll stop generating discussion.  I'm just saying you'll help my reads if you die.  So would Karnage, as I've said, but I don't have any real suspicions of them.

I'm not sure how I feel about giving that information... I'll give a bit of it.  If you flip villager I'll be more likely to trust Pyro, who I'm kind of middling on at the moment, as well as two others I won't name.  I'd be more suspicious of Xino and Araris and another I won't name.

9 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

What parts of what TJ said do you agree with? Because as far as I can tell the main thing they said this cycle was that I didn't provide enough information up-front in my reads post, which is something I am a bit inclined to say applies to you as well.

I haven't really done read posts.  I've only given my reads on people who I've voted on or who seemed village, IIRC.  At least that's what I've been trying to do.  If I give a read without some anticipation of the responses it might get, I don't really get anything out of it other than alerting the player I'm suspicious of of the reasons I'm suspicious of them.  (That sentence is kind of a mess but I think it makes sense.)  My suspicions align with TJ on some of your interactions with players.  He kind of limits it to Pyro, but I've got a few more ideas that I'll share if you die.  Anyone can hold me to that if they like.

The biggest problem with my suspicion of you is that it might come from your interactions with the Shouty Shout thing.  That whole PM is kind of a weird wrench in the fabric of this game for me.

That's all I've got at the moment.

[Ashbringer he/him]

Raow the kitten listened to the voices around the table. They were shouting again. It seemed they all thought one person was guilty that shouldn't be killed, and one person was innocent that should be killed. Or something. Raow wasn't very up to speed with the conversation yet, but he didn't really like all the talk of killing. It made it sound so complicated. There were hunters within the crowd, that much Raow had ascertained - he liked that word, ascertained - but the people didn't seem to know what to do.

To Raow, hunting was simple. He, as a Felis catus, was the predator, and the mice were the prey. He found the mice, the mice ran, he chased the mice, the mice hid, he caught the mice, the mice died. That was always the sequence of things. Although now, Raow always found the hiding spots before the mouse did. He just tended to notice a spot where a mouse would tend to go.

"Mraow," Raow excused himself, and leaped off the table. For humans, hunting seemed different. They seemed to know they were being hunted, but didn't see their hunters. They knew there were hunters, but refused to run or hide. And they seemed peculiarly convinced that they could find their hunters and be free of fear in time for an afternoon tea tonight.

Raow walked over to where his landlord sat talking. He and his landlord had an interesting relationship from the past few days. He insisted that he was Raow's owner - what a concept - he liked that word, concept - and also had deluded himself into thinking Raow's name was "Lucky". Raow had yet to ascertain what sort of payment his landlord wanted from him - he'd tried paying in mice, but that seemed to disgust him, but he was always so proud when he caught one, peculiar - but Raow knew that he had no idea about anything about Raow.

---

Side note, Raow is a bystander party in all of this. Faleast is my main "me" character here. So Raow's hunting analogy isn't meant to mean anything. 

Edit: somehow I made all the text and things small on the website when I tried to do command-I for italics and my finger slipped. HELP!

Edited June 9, 2020 by Ashbringer

[Lahilt he/him]

As many people have said we never did have much read on experience more just gut reads and for this reason i will retract my vote i am not sure who else to vote yet or if i will get a vote in yet at all. 

[Magestar he/him]

I'm pretty sure one more vote on Drake and it's a tie.  That'd be pretty sweet.  Anyone got a vote count?

[Shard of Reading he/him]

Sorry to pop your bubble but you have to vote on someone else to retract your vote.

Edit:Ninja'd by magestar

Edited June 9, 2020 by Shard of Reading

[Mist she/her]

Vote count here was incorrect.

@Shard of Reading, that's a mechanic in MR42, but not this game.

Edited June 9, 2020 by Mist

[StrikerEZ he/him]

Experience (4): Araris Valerian, Elandera, Emi, Ventyl
DrakeMarshall (3): Ashbringer, Magestar, TJ Shade
Araris Valerian (2): Shard of Reading, xinoehp512
Emi (2): Experience, Karnage
Kynedath (1): DrakeMarshall
Walin (1): The Young Pyromancer

This should be correct.

Edited June 9, 2020 by StrikerEZ

[Shard of Reading he/him]

2 minutes ago, Mist said:

DrakeMarshall (3) - TJ Shade, Magestar, Ashbringer 

Experience (2) - Elandera, Ventyl

Araris Valerian (2) - Xinoehp, Reading

Emi (2) - Karnage, Experience 

Kynedath (2) - Araris, Drake

Walin (1) - Pyro 

I believe this is the vote count. 

@Shard of Reading, that's a mechanic in MR42, but not this game.

Oh. I thought that it was all inclusive.

[Magestar he/him]

@Experience if you drop a vote on Drake you've got a chance to save yourself.    Figure I might as well give this a shot.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

@StrikerEZ I moved my vote to Kynedath.

[Magestar he/him]

Just now, Araris Valerian said:

@StrikerEZ I moved my vote to Kynedath.

Oh shoot so it's tied?

Dang.  This'll be fun to watch.  This game is going great!  Day 2 and already so much stuff going on.

[Ashbringer he/him]

15 minutes guys. My screen text is still tiny. One more vote ties Drake with XP. (ninja'd: maybe?)

Got to go and eat dinner. I'll see how this plays out in a half hour or so.

 

Faleast sat and wondered. It seemed that the votes being given by people were coming to a close.

Suddenly Faleast's eyes drooped and everything seemed small. He was tired.

Then he drifted off to sleep again.

[StrikerEZ he/him]

Thanks for letting me know Araris. Not sure how I missed that change. This should be right.

DrakeMarshall (3): Ashbringer, Magestar, TJ Shade
Experience (3): Elandera, Emi, Ventyl
Araris Valerian (2): Shard of Reading, xinoehp512
Emi (2): Experience, Karnage
Kynedath (2): Araris Valerian, DrakeMarshall
Walin (1): The Young Pyromancer

[Araris Valerian he/him]

@Experience, @Karnage, could I convince either of you to vote on Kynedath? While I'm not sure about Drake's alignment, I also don't really agree with some of the reasons people have for voting on him currently.

[Mist she/her]

Of the players with two or three votes, I don’t have much of a read on any of them. Since Kynedath has been less active, I’d prefer to lynch him to Drake, Experience, or Araris, who are encouraging discussion. Emi is a newer player, so I’d like to give her another round.