Murder By The Book - Ender's Game

It's too bad that cyber



Now he's



You know who I'd like to see more words out of? bigro.

primarily for this:

Lynch: Nova

which seems like one of those votes that could really use an explanation.

Theo Van Doesburg looms over the stove, nervously toasting a slice of bread in a pan. He hadn't wanted to come to this 'party' and now it seemed that his sentiment had been justified. Someone was dead and someone had disappeared. To top it all off, he was trapped with some of the people he had most wanted to avoid. You couldn't trust authors, especially this bunch. He had watched them carefully the day previous. Each and every one had seemed suspicious, so quick to accuse, so quick to wield the instruments of death. One of them probably worked for the government, most likely that Kellerman character. You couldn't trust people who analyzed things in such clinical ways. Math, very suspicious. He needed more time, he needed to figure out who the rats were. He knew he would have to talk to them eventually, only so much could be obtained by careful listening. He would have to be careful though. He couldn't reveal too much about himself in this den of spies and murderers. Eventually someone would have to die but it was too early for that, too early to see the wolves among the sheep.

Vote: No Lynch for now...

HEY YOU. NO EDITING POSTS.

Sorry. If it helps, I did not change any of the main text, just moved the bold to cover 'Vote:' and put a space between the ':' and the start of 'No'. It was a purely aesthetic edit. I will keep in mind the no edit rule for future posts.

sheesh ruru how many books has she written

I apologize if double posting is considered rude, but I would like to note an inconsistency in Schazer's speculation.

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The nightkill choice seems to me very "polite", although I guess if they had a janitoring the scum got the net benefit of picking someone who you can't really link to other players.

...

I mean by that logic the "politest" kill would've been to murder Amos, which makes Truegreen as his replacement somewhat suspect, and the only reason Truegreen's not dead is because he's mafia??? I don't want to start aggressively pushing for a newbie's lynch yet though.

---

I would like to bring up evidence of this post.

Truegreen has replaced amosmyn.

Day 2 will be starting fairly soon.

If I am to interpret this correctly, my entrance into this contest was announced before the end of the first night. Unless my understanding of this game is off, (Which it may well be) this implies the mafia had some time to consider their choice after my introduction.

there's also the part where mafia probably doesn't care about "polite" and just kills based on ~reasons~

Okay. Can you think of any ~reasons~ scum would shoot one of the scummier looking players instead of, say,...

huh. Y'know I can't think of anyone who came out of yesterday looking particularly townie. Seedy maybe?

Anyways I agree that this looks like a politeness killing which implicates a lot of the early people on the "no lynch" wagon.

Alt theory: Someone in scum is really afraid of this game drying up.

Sotek, could you explain your convictions a bit more? You voted for Granola after he replied to me with something that, while technically true, missed the point of my argument. Is that sufficient to say that he is scum? Especially that we are now in a situation, with an even number of players, where we've lost the low-information lynch advantage.

The even/odd thing only applies if there are no failed nightkills, no forms of doublekills, etc, etc, etc.

this is some pretty heavy assumptions to be making, I think.

Aside from that ... is it sufficient to say he's scum? No, but nobody else seems interested in lynching him, which suggests the scum are uninterested in lynching him. Also, it wasn't just him missing the point, but also him casting a vote in a 'pileon' way, that looks to me like scum trying to push a mislynch.

I see, the argument is that Undercover would leap at the opportunity to lynch an innocent author, so the failure of anybody to join you in voting for him implies that he is not an innocent author. I guess that would hinge on whether or not there were more likely ways of lynching an innocent author available at the time you voted for Granola. I'd have to go back and check the records on that count. It's a good thing we're all recording every word that every one of us says.

As for the even/odd thing, I am, as you point out, assuming that Undercover will have the opportunity to kill exactly one person after we all make our decision. That assumption seems to be holding up so far, though the ability to remove a body without a trace is rather disturbing. Maybe Dr. Lester isn't even dead, and has discovered some secret exit from the building? I'd be overjoyed if we could all simply leave without having any more killing.

It was a pretty polite kill, though I say it myself.

Which I say because I did it.

I didn't like Cyber's posting yesterday, so I used my Secret Shady Ability on him. I had the oneshot ability to designate a kill-nexus who would absorb any and all nightkills on the night I used my ability, even ones originating from themselves. Schazer's read was spot-on except for the part where I'm a member of Undercover in it, and her reasoning for why I (or Mirdini) would have done it were accurate too. I don't know how many night-kills there are, and I don't know what factions any such kills came from. I expected using it tonight would prevent multiple townies from dying to potential vig/sk/mafia attacks and give us enough information to start at least examining the votes and suspicions cast.

I didn't expect the mafia (or potentially some 3rd party) to use a janitoring night one, though! Usually they're oneshot, and what sort of doofidiot uses a oneshot on night one? So, uh, this gives us even less information than I expected it to. We don't even know cyber's not mafia, because he could well have done himself in, or his teammates could have.

Sorry?

Out of the pan and into the oven, day 2 is more of a head scratcher.

(off topic to donut: She written alot, trust me. my mom has quite the shelf full.)

well that's interesting.
Assuming Slorange isn't pulling a false claim, which I don't think they are. And a mafia person with such a role would, I'd reason, wait till the later game when they're more at risk to be hit by a vig. The janitoring was unfortunate, but I think using it N1 was a good call mathematically. Cyber was probably as good a target as anyone.

some silly stream-of-consciousness ramblings that should definitely be ignored but I'm posting it here for good form

SpoilerShow

But if Slorange was pulling a false claim, who would benefit and how? In my eyes, this cements Slorange as a townie pretty well. it could be one elaborate ruse to sneak slorange amongst us. alternatively, who's made suspicious by the cyber kill that slorange would have to write it off? Schazer said their logic was overthinky and elaborate but I see your elaborate and raise you byzantine. suppose they're spot on: it was the nice ones. who would that be? slorange, since in this scenario we're assuming they are performing a highly improbable claim-clear. schazer might then be leveraging their meta-leaderly status by bringing up the polite-argument first and directing the conversation accordingly, but that would be total overkill for a role-claim that has no reason to be doubted. Moreover slorange could have pulled that stunt N2 and enjoyed the numerical advantage of nightkills firing everywhere, and it wouldn't have diminished from their claim in any significant way. also why would mafia even have a kill-nexus-maker? and im assuming the false part of the hypothetical fake claim is that slorange is a townie; if mafia tried to fake-claim a town role that leaves them open to some obvious repurcssions. that makes like, shit sense. having thought myself in circles, I'm confident in my confidence of slorange's cleanliness. and if we're accepting slorange's explanation of the night, schazer's got no especial reason to be questioned with regards to slorange's claim aside from being presumably good at mafia

sheesh ruru how many books has she written

Mmm, I don't know about all that. If I am Undercover, it'd be an easy fakeclaim to make on a night where there was only one kill. Doubly so if I knew that kill would be janitored because I'm on a team with the janitor, and triply so if I'm the godfather and know I'm safe from any investigators who are suspicious of my claim.

I mean, it seems like a prrretty pointless gambit given that if I weren't me it wouldn't change my opinion about my alignment, but I suppose anything that takes some suspicion off them early game can be helpful for scum, especially if it's not something that will bite them at endgame (as something unprovable any which way like this would be). I don't think this really proves anything, I just wanted to make sure people didn't start assuming that cyber was town and framing their beliefs based on that.

Slorange, I know you said you're heading to sleep soon but to satisfy my curiosity: flavourwise, how did you do what you did?

Mechanics ramble engage; post may not go anywhere promising if I hit "post" without editing it into something coherent

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So first up (as in before we attempt to logically resolve Slorange's ministrations), Cyber's disappearance is one of two things: A janitor (an anti-town role, usually one-shot, lets them prevent the night victim's identity from being revealed. They usually find out the dead player's identity and use the extra information to support whatever stories they invent to look like a town-sided role.) or a commuter (a passive (usually) town role. It's kind of like a bulletproof, in that you dodge the first kill aimed at you, but you'll get ganked out of the game for a fixed duration instead.)

A Janitor is usually one-shot; the victim of a janitor (and their identity/role) may or may not be revealed when the janitor dies. The mafia may or may not know Cyber's identity. If they do and, for example, he was a cop, one of them may proceed to claim they are the cop, evade the lynch, receive protection from a hypothetical doctor, and make up reports which lead to mislynches.

Janitor variants exist. You can have multishot janitors (a counter exists; I'm going to refrain from mentioning it because a) if we have a oneshot janitor, it's a moot point, and b) if we do have a multishot janitor, it's a really safe claim for a mafia player.). You can have a janitor who steals the abilities of the victim (that one's been middlingly popular in games from the MSPAF days).

The Commuter, meanwhile, is a less common role. When it does show up and do its job, though (as Slorange (and Sotek!) will concur with me from the MSPAF game Quarantine at CJ Memorial) it can seriously fuck up a scum team's stride.

If Slorange were aware of a janitor's existence (because he's, y'know, part of the mafia), he could've suggested "let's janitor Cyber" and had this overtly elaborate fake-claim as soon as someone like me noticed the odd nature of the kill. That fits the observed events. However, it'd be just as easy for Slorange to state my meta-reasoning reveals nothing, there's other people in the game who could double-think us both, etc etc.

I can't really get a read on Slorange's actions here until the dust has settled, a few days have passed, and either a janitor flips or Cyber turns out to be a Commuter. I keep trying to map out the logical progressions but I just get an inconclusive mess of possible motivations. The only things I can be sure of are:

- The claim in general is not a stunt worth making for scum on D1, at least not given the pressure (my voteless post) which prompted the claim. If a tracker or watcher had got an incriminating read of his movements, yeah, maybe. As it is it attracts more attention than a mafia!Slorange would want right now.
- if Cyber turns out to be a Commuter, Slorange is very town.
- if a janitor of any description turns up, the odds of Slorange being town drop (not to "oh ok he's scum then", but to the point we'd need to re-examine the claim and its ramifications).

I'm gonna reply to Truegreen's #233 next, stay tuned

Also: Thanks to Gnauga's reply at Post #241, I feel that Gnauga and Slorange are not in a scum team together. Scum would not be gutsy enough to be the first to say "oh yeah, that totally checks out" to their partner's elaborate claim.

(@Truegreen: Yup! Double- or even triple-posts are totally ok in a game of mafia! In fact, I'm probably going to pull one off right now!)

It was a pretty polite kill, though I say it myself.

Which I say because I did it.

I didn't like Cyber's posting yesterday, so I used my Secret Shady Ability on him. I had the oneshot ability to designate a kill-nexus who would absorb any and all nightkills on the night I used my ability, even ones originating from themselves. Schazer's read was spot-on except for the part where I'm a member of Undercover in it, and her reasoning for why I (or Mirdini) would have done it were accurate too. I don't know how many night-kills there are, and I don't know what factions any such kills came from. I expected using it tonight would prevent multiple townies from dying to potential vig/sk/mafia attacks and give us enough information to start at least examining the votes and suspicions cast.

I didn't expect the mafia (or potentially some 3rd party) to use a janitoring night one, though! Usually they're oneshot, and what sort of doofidiot uses a oneshot on night one? So, uh, this gives us even less information than I expected it to. We don't even know cyber's not mafia, because he could well have done himself in, or his teammates could have.

Sorry?

I don't think I'm going to buy this. I don't know what abilities are usually used in this game but I can't be sure there aren't combinations that won't create a scene such as this.

My point is that this situation seems very beneficial to the mafia. We have a guy gone and there is only a little more information than there was on the first day.

This claim presents a certain line of reasoning that is dependent on us believing that Slorange has the ability he claims he does.

I think, whether or not he is scum he is certainly lying about his ability. There is a significant inconsistency within his statement. He claims he popped his oneshot 'Secret Shady' ability on the first turn. Later in the same statement he states "what sort of doofidiot uses a oneshot on night one?" This sentiment makes no sense in the light of his supposed action. We can't be sure if Slorange is Mafia or not, but we can be reasonably sure whatever his ability is it is either, 1) not a oneshot, or 2) he has not used it.

It is my opinion that Slorange is deliberately trying to mislead us on the nature of his ability. Something that would likely not come into question as events resolved themselves, and something that has not come into question in the speculations of others. We have been too busy focusing on the unusual nature of the kill to question the other aspects of his statement, something I believe he intended.

I am unsure of Slorange's involvement in Cyber's disapearence, but I do question his motives. Which is why...

I change my vote to SleepingOrange

If I might clarify the first sentence of my previous post.

I am saying that I am unsure of what combinations of abilities (Beyond those mentioned by others) there might be that could lead to the visible outcome.

Oh hey sorry workthings happened, lemme respond to Truegreen about my speculating.

If I am to interpret this correctly, my entrance into this contest was announced before the end of the first night. Unless my understanding of this game is off, (Which it may well be) this implies the mafia had some time to consider their choice after my introduction.

So, first up: Given the known information (Cyber has vanished (either because Janitor or Commuter), Slorange claims that he used his oneshot and redirected all kills onto Cyber), all of the following are still possible:

a) Slorange is telling the truth, he's town (or at least Not Mafia) and redirected a kill onto Cyber
b) Slorange is lying, for a myriad of plausible reasons but he's not actually in the mafia
c) Slorange is lying, in the mafia, and ordered the Cyber kill because his thought patterns played out in the way I initially posited (the polite murder option).

Based on how I know Slorange, a) is a probable thing I'd see him doing, c) is a slightly less probable thing I could still see him doing, and b) is not his style at all.

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So! When I saw Daystart and Cyber vanished, something about it felt "weird" to me. The Mafia use their nightkill to help them increase their influence and control during the day phase; in a best play scenario they'd pick off the active players, the members of the lynch mob who are trying to drum up discussion and preventing people (the mafiosos) from lurking, and also people with a play history of being good town players.

Obviously, as a community plays more games together, double-guessing and triple-guessing and silly grudges and junk happens, but generally as mafia you try to kill the town leaders, or more usually the second-towniest person (because a doctor's probably protecting the town leader).

Cyber (if town, the possibility remains that he's mafia) probably didn't nail the whole scum team D1, seeing as in their three posts they voted Garuru in RVS, unvoted Garuru, and tried to get Eberron lynched at the last second. His existence generally helped the scum team, because as long as they were more active than him they could always deflect and say "lynch that lurker instead!"

If a mafia team really wants to win at the cost of a fun game, they can just pick off all the active players with nightkills, and by day prod the lurkers into mislynch after mislynch and win through Town Apathy.

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Therefore, based on everything I know about sensible N1 mafia kills, Cyber's doesn't make sense (before Slorange claimed he forced a redirect). Before the possibility of a redirection came up, the only way I could see that kill happening was if someone on the mafia team said "let's not kill all the active players, at least for N1, let's kill a lurker instead."

And the people who (in my understanding of personalities) I thought would say something like that? Mirdini and Slorange. Hence my initial suspicion of those two.

But that got me thinking. If this hypothetical Slorange/Dini-led mafia team was going to make the politest kill, wouldn't the sensible option as of March 23 (when D1 ended) have been to kill the Amos slot? Fogel was having a hell of a time trying to find someone to replace in, so if the mafia were really trying to be nice guys they would've done Fogel a favour and killed the dead slot. I could especially see Scum!Akumu being a proponent of a N1 Amos kill, as eager a beaver as he's been to get the game moving on to D2.

So, why didn't they? My initial hypothesis was that they didn't kill Amos because Amos (and by proxy, you) was/are on the scum team. It simply wasn't a practical option.

Of course, the mystery resolves itself rather neatly if Slorange is legit about his N1 movements, though it's a little vexing for me because it makes all my musing and rambling about the mafia's motivations for naught. For all I fucking know it's Granola, Eberron, Sotek, donut and Crowsy, and they decided to kill Mirdini N1 like what happens to him every other game he signs up for, except Slorange done fucked their plans up.

OBJECTION
I think, whether or not he is scum he is certainly lying about his ability. There is a significant inconsistency within his statement. He claims he popped his oneshot 'Secret Shady' ability on the first turn. Later in the same statement he states "what sort of doofidiot uses a oneshot on night one?" This sentiment makes no sense in the light of his supposed action. We can't be sure if Slorange is Mafia or not, but we can be reasonably sure whatever his ability is it is either, 1) not a oneshot, or 2) he has not used it.

OBJECTION
sarcasm's hard to convey over the internet, but I'm pretty sure slorange was being facetious.
https://objection.mrdictionary.net/go.php?n=7244933
nah jk I can't hold it against you. I did a double-take when I saw slorange's line there too.

and I'll just let schazer do the mental heavy lifting

Also! Mechanicswise, there are plenty of roles which will redirect night actions.

Lightningrods draw all night actions, or sometimes a specific subset of night actions (e.g. kills). You could either have a player who is a lightningrod and gets the opportunity once per game to activate themselves, or you could have a cackling douchebag who can turn other people into lightningrods.

Nexuses deflect night actions, by contrast. The action basically "bounces off" onto another player at random. Lots of variants exist; you can have someone who is told they're a nexus and can switch it on and off, nexuses who only "bounce" particular night actions, nexuses who can choose where their night actions go. Nexuses are rarer because of the RNG aspect, but they do exist.

Busdrivers can choose two players. If Player A was targeted with a night kill and Player B was targeted by a cop and both of them were busdriven, then Player B dies and the Cop will be told that Player B's alignment is (actually whatever Player A's was).

Sometimes a busdriver can also mean "choose players A and C. If A targets B and C targets D, then instead A will target D and C will target B." or "choose players A and B. If A has a night action, it hits B instead." These are usually called other, inconsistent names, like Redirector or Deflector. There's no gold standard for what these words mean in Mafialand, so the best thing to do is just explain the ability upfront.

So, yeah. Mechanically, I think Slorange's role sounds plausible. I should actually get to scumhunting at some point instead of all this mechanicschat

Slorange, I know you said you're heading to sleep soon but to satisfy my curiosity: flavourwise, how did you do what you did?

I will not. Remember Schmaltz(es)?

I think, whether or not he is scum he is certainly lying about his ability. There is a significant inconsistency within his statement. He claims he popped his oneshot 'Secret Shady' ability on the first turn. Later in the same statement he states "what sort of doofidiot uses a oneshot on night one?" This sentiment makes no sense in the light of his supposed action. We can't be sure if Slorange is Mafia or not, but we can be reasonably sure whatever his ability is it is either, 1) not a oneshot, or 2) he has not used it.

Gnauga's right, I was making a joke. It's usually strategically best to wait a little while before using one- or limited-shot abilities (so they're more likely to have beneficial results), especially ones that are or affect kills, but I wanted to use mine early on because a) I often don't live long in games like this so I didn't want it to go to waste and b) it honestly seemed kind of funny to throw a wrench in the mafia's works on night one. Especially if cyber was himself mafia.

None of that proves anything, of course, and your suspicion is reasonable if I think a little overzealous. Maybe it's my leeriness of reciprocal votes, but I'm going to assume for the moment you're genuinely suspicious of my weird actions, and not mafia fishing for an easy lynch.

Just wanted to pop in and say Slorange's claim is just conplex enough to be believable. Plus, mafia has little to nothing to gain from claiming responsibility for the night kill.

Complexity does not usually imply Veracity. It is in fact the complexity of Slorange's claim that I have issue with. To me it would make a lot more sense for Slorange to be gunning for a misdirection attempt, perhaps having something to do with Cyber's disappearance or even just taking advantage of an unusual situation.

While I can buy the inconsistency I noted was a joke I am still suspicious. Schazer's defenses of Slorange seem dogmatic to me, more based on what he has known Slorange to do in past games. While this may occasionally be a reliable gauge of behavior it is not enough for me. I do not know how Slorange plays mafia games, I don't know if Slorange might suddenly change their tactics or decide to act in unexpected ways.

His post seems to have increased his status in other's eyes and reduced their interpretation of him as a member of the mafia. I must assume this is the reaction intended from that post. I can see little reason to reveal such a thing at least in such detail. I might be missing something but the way I see it, it would be a bad idea to reveal your abilities and whether or not you can use them this early in the game.

In short I believe the post was a ploy, to make him look less dangerous. I am confident that he is either Mafia or a third party.

It is perhaps the most suspicious thing I have seen so far. Unless I see something that will change my mind, I think I'm going to stick with my decision.

I'd be way more satisfied with Slorange's claim if it involved redirecting everything. Maybe it's just me but only redirecting kills sounds kind of suspicious? I can't cook up a single reason why that makes sense as a role.

That said, I can't think of a reason why mafia would hit cyber (beyond Schazer's) so that's enough to put Slorange on the sideline for now.

Kind of want to go back to eberron for only showing up to drop a 'oh my how mysterious' line but I'm also interested in looking at Novawatts, possibly trying to figure out what Sotek sees (seedy is kind of a weird choice for 'one person I see as townish'), or sifting through the last page to find out who was making useless posts just to look active (and I swear to god if it was all of you).

Gotta run, but I'll hopefully get back to this again before the day is out.